It's been two-and-a-half years since I last posted. So what has happened in that time? Let me tell you....

 

Shortly after the previous post, we started hearing about a new (novel) flu-like virus in China that was initially called the China Virus before that was labeled insensitive and everybody resorted to calling it Covid-19 (or, the coronovirus). Personally, I like China Virus, Flu Manchu, Egg Flu Yung, and finally, the WuFlu. WuFlu because there's plenty of evidence to say that it was created in a lab in Wuhan China. It was in the news more and more, and in late January 2020 it had reached the US. What happened next is like something out of an apocalypse movie: The entire nation shut down. Seriously. Curfews were put into effect, businesses were forced to close, schools shut down... And it was all for nothing.Face masks were forced upon us, as was required "social distancing." The stupidity (stupid, because none of what the government did actually made a significant difference) lasted thru 2021, until people just got tired of dealing with it and resumed normal lives.

 

In 2020, a criminal named George Floyd died while in police custody. This resulted in widespread rioting across the country, with people lionizing St. Floyd of Fentanyl. Cities cut police funding, and cops were demonized. The result? Cops left the field in droves, cities are hurting for staffing, and crime is going up around the country.

 

Joe Biden was allegedly elected President in 2020. He allegedly received 81 million votes. He's a piece of shit, his VP is a piece of shit, and Democrats in general are pieces of shit. Enough on this.

 

I'm retired! My last day of work was February 15, 2022, and I was officially retired on March 1.

It has been over a year since I last posted, and so much has happened. During the summer of 2018, we took our family vacation on top of Sugar Mountain, and it was fabulous. Being a mile high in the NC mountains meant that we didn't need air conditioning, and we kept the windows open in the resort the whole time we were there. While we were there, Angela saw that someone was needing to find a home for a beautiful 2 year old golden retriever, so upon our return home we picked up Buddy, who is now a member of our family.

Then in September, we got hit by Hurricane Florence. We received 3 FEET of rain over three days. The creek behind our house flooded our back yard and got into my workshop. We had no power for a week. After the storm passed, we could see and hear the Coast Guard and National Guard helicopters doing rescues all over the southern part of our county. A woman died in her vehicle when she drove into a washed-out section of highway about a mile from us. Life was...rough. My lovely bride got pushed to her breaking point, but she did an amazing job of trying to keep life as close to normal as possible. My stepson drove all through the night, finding back roads when necessary, to bring us a generator that could power much more than the small one we own. Then, each morning, I would head to work while Angela would load up gas cans and seek out gas stations. We were burning through $70 in gasoline every day in order to keep an A/C, fridge, freezer, and an entertainment center running. The storm felled a 60-foot tall birch in our yard, along with several 20 and 30-foot pine trees. Miraculously, none hit the house or the thee outbuildings. All things considered, we got off lucky. Nobody lives on the southern part of my road, anymore. 8 homes flooded, and those families never returned.

And now? We are entering the busy part of the hurricane season....

I'm still alive

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post. So many things to talk about. So many things have happened in the world. But, with that, this is just an update to let everybody know that I'm still alive!

The facts.

The Myths of Black Lives Matter
By

Heather Mac Donald, Wall Street Journal

A television ad for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign now airing in South Carolina shows the candidate declaring that “too many encounters with law enforcement end tragically.” She later adds: “We have to face up to the hard truth of injustice and systemic racism.”

Her Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders, met with the Rev. Al Sharpton on Wednesday. Mr. Sanders then tweeted that “As President, let me be very clear that no one will fight harder to end racism and reform our broken criminal justice system than I will.” And he appeared on the TV talk show “The View” saying, “It is not acceptable to see unarmed people being shot by police officers.”
Apparently the Black Lives Matter movement has convinced Democrats and progressives that there is an epidemic of racist white police officers killing young black men. Such rhetoric is going to heat up as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders court minority voters before the Feb. 27 South Carolina primary.

But what if the Black Lives Matter movement is based on fiction? Not just the fictional account of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., but the utter misrepresentation of police shootings generally.

To judge from Black Lives Matter protesters and their media and political allies, you would think that killer cops pose the biggest threat to young black men today. But this perception, like almost everything else that many people think they know about fatal police shootings, is wrong.
The Washington Post has been gathering data on fatal police shootings over the past year and a half to correct acknowledged deficiencies in federal tallies. The emerging data should open many eyes.
For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black homicide deaths. According to the Post database, in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.) Using the 2014 homicide numbers as an approximation of 2015’s, those 662 white and Hispanic victims of police shootings would make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths. That is three times the proportion of black deaths that result from police shootings.

The lower proportion of black deaths due to police shootings can be attributed to the lamentable black-on-black homicide rate. There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.
Police officers—of all races—are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.
Some may find evidence of police bias in the fact that blacks make up 26% of the police-shooting victims, compared with their 13% representation in the national population. But as residents of poor black neighborhoods know too well, violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there.

Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force.

The Black Lives Matter movement claims that white officers are especially prone to shooting innocent blacks due to racial bias, but this too is a myth. A March 2015 Justice Department report on the Philadelphia Police Department found that black and Hispanic officers were much more likely than white officers to shoot blacks based on “threat misperception”—that is, the mistaken belief that a civilian is armed.

A 2015 study by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway, formerly acting director of the National Institute of Justice, found that, at a crime scene where gunfire is involved, black officers in the New York City Police Department were 3.3 times more likely to discharge their weapons than other officers at the scene.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been stunningly successful in changing the subject from the realities of violent crime. The world knows the name of Michael Brown but not Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old black child lured into an alley and killed by gang members in Chicago last fall. Tyshawn was one of dozens of black children gunned down in America last year. The Baltimore Sun reported on Jan. 1: “Blood was shed in Baltimore at an unprecedented pace in 2015, with mostly young, black men shot to death in a near-daily crush of violence.”

Those were black lives that mattered, and it is a scandal that outrage is heaped less on the dysfunctional culture that produces so many victims than on the police officers who try to protect them.
Ms. Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops,” forthcoming in July from Encounter Books.

It has been a long, long time since I posted anything. Yeah, life tends to get in the way of having fun. Well, not completely true. I'm still having fun. Shooting, reading, watching TV, Internet surfing....just not doing the blogging thing. I don't know; I guess as I get older, there's that strange dichotomy of becoming more and more opinionated, but at the same time not caring what other people think, so I keep my deeper thoughts to myself.

Anyway, right now there are so many things going on in the world. And the world isn't getting any better. We have the most divisive president ever, who had done more to set race relations back worse than any other president. We have two different groups of Muslims, ISIS and Al Qaeda, who hate each other and hate non-Muslims even more. ISIS is methodically destroying significant historical artifacts in every land that they conquer. The front runners for president are a boisterous businessman and a lying bitch. The media continues to fan the flames of hatred towards cops. There's some virus called Zika that is spreading and making deformed babies. Global warming is now called Climate Change, since the original mantra doesn't fit with what is actually happening.

What's good in this world?

Pizza. Pizza is good.

If you don't like the weather, just wait 24 hours...

...which is a common saying here in Eastern North Carolina. Last week, we were visited by the 'Polar Vortex,' and we set records for low temperatures and low high temperatures. Getting cold in the winter isn't unusual. Neither is an occasional dip into the high teens at night. But getting into the low teens at night and not getting out of the mid-20's during the day is highly usual. In the stretch of 7 days, we went from opening the windows in the house, to running the gas logs continuously, to opening the windows in the house. Four days ago, I was dressed in four layers of clothes in order to be outside. Right now, it is 0900 and the temp is 66 degrees, and I'm sitting in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, it has been raining off and on, and there is a potential for a severe thunderstorm this afternoon.

If you don't like the weather here, just wait 24 hours...

My "new" addiction

When I was about five or six, my dad bought me a Daisy BB gun. I don't remember the model (not a Red Ryder), but it was a small rifle with a cocking handle that cocked like a lever action, but the cocking arm was contoured into the pistol grip of the rifle. BB's were fed into a side port towards the front of the barrel. Thinking back, it probably launched BB's at around 250 feet per second. It had fixed sights and was quiet. I remember spending hours in the back yard of our house in base housing at Richards Gebaur Air Force Base, shooting a target my mother made by packing brown grocery bags into a large grocery bag and drawing circles on it. I would shoot for hours, standing about 10-15 feet away. I can remember that the only way that I could cock it was to hook the stock on my thigh and then pull the cocking handle. Great memories....

When I was 13, my parents bought me a Crosman 2100 pneumatic (pump) rifle for Christmas. The following summer was the '84 Olympics, and I remember watching a story about 10-meter air rifle that lit a fire under me. I measured out 33 feet in my back yard, and I would spend hours shooting at a target attached to hay bales. A year or two later, girls, cars, and school took priority over everything...

In 2003, I saw an ad for Chinese air rifles, and I bought this crappy looking underlever spring-piston air rifle that I really didn't do much with. I would shoot a few pellets out of it from time to time, but that was it. In 2008, I bought a nice looking Crosman air rifle that came with a scope, but I could never get it zeroed in so that it would hold it shots. Out of frustration, the threw the Crosman rifle in a closet and forgot about it.

About a year ago, I saw an ad for something called a Nitro Piston, and I had some extra cash, so I bought a gas piston air rifle, only this time I did a lot of on-line research. The new rifle was great! I also learned why that Crosman rifle from 2008 wasn't working. From that point, I became addicted to air guns. I have a nice collection of them, now. I have spring piston guns, gas piston guns, CO2 guns, multi-pump guns, and single-stroke pneumatic guns. Men and their toys....

I'm baaack!

It has been a long, long time since my last post. Life seems to always get in the way of things, and I'm not going to lie: Blogger took a back seat to Facebook over the last few years (and will continue to do so!). So, let's catch up:

In 2012, I weighed 247 pounds, and one day I woke up and decided that I was tired of being fat. I started to pay more attention to what I was eating, and I began to increase my activity. As I got into the summer, I started to walk on the treadmill, and the foot pains that I have lived with for the last 20 years got worse. The pain nagged me enough that my wife made me an appointment with a podiatrist. While at the podiatrist, they checked my blood pressure. Not good! So I went to see a regular doc.

The regular doc checked my BP and nearly sent me to the emergency room! My BP at the time was 190/118! I could have had a stroke at any time! So I was immediately put on meds. Oh, how awful I felt for the next couple of days. My body was so used to having such a high pressure that it was trying to adjust to a lowered pressure. I returned a week later, and my pressure was going down. A month later, I returned and also had a fasting blood test done. Not only was my BP high, but so was my cholesterol (280!) and I was a borderline diabetic. Started meds for cholesterol. At this time, I weighed about 238. I then began quarterly check-ups.

At subsequent check-ups, we found that my BP was being difficult, and since that first day, I've encountered 4 different changes in BP medicine. Want to know what else happened? I quit getting headaches! All this time, I figured it was the job and the building I was in that gave me headaches, and it wasn't; it was my BP. So, even now, my BP is being closely monitored because it doesn't want to get to the magical 110/70.

Anyway, my sugar levels weren't going down, either, so the doc decided to put me on Metformin. Oh, man! The abdominal pains I endured for two days! Horrible!! That first month, I dropped a pound every three days. At my most recent full check-up just before Thanksgiving, I have recovered from being a borderline diabetic, my cholesterol is 160, and I weighed in at 216 pounds. I'm still a work in progress, but I'm getting there. Oh, and the benefits? I need new pants, I don't wake up gasping for air due to apnea, and I don't have reflux anymore. Plus, headaches are rare...

Today you, tomorrow me.

Just about every time I see someone I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years, moved to a big city and all that, my girlfriend wasn’t too stoked on the practice. Then some shit happened to me that changed me and I am back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it is long story and has almost nothing to do with hitch hiking other than happening on a road.
This past year I have had 3 instances of car trouble. A blow out on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out of gas situation. All of them were while driving other people’s cars which, for some reason, makes it worse on an emotional level. It makes it worse on a practical level as well, what with the fact that I carry things like a jack and extra fuses in my car, and know enough not to park, facing downhill, on a steep incline with less than a gallon of fuel.
Anyway, each of these times this shit happened I was DISGUSTED with how people would not bother to help me. I spent hours on the side of the freeway waiting, watching roadside assistance vehicles blow past me, for AAA to show. The 4 gas stations I asked for a gas can at told me that they couldn’t loan them out “for my safety” but I could buy a really shitty 1-gallon one with no cap for $15. It was enough, each time, to make you say shit like “this country is going to hell in a handbasket.”
But you know who came to my rescue all three times? Immigrants. Mexican immigrants. None of them spoke a lick of the language. But one of those dudes had a profound affect on me.
He was the guy that stopped to help me with a blow out with his whole family of 6 in tow. I was on the side of the road for close to 4 hours. Big jeep, blown rear tire, had a spare but no jack. I had signs in the windows of the car, big signs that said NEED A JACK and offered money. No dice. Right as I am about to give up and just hitch out there a van pulls over and dude bounds out. He sizes the situation up and calls for his youngest daughter who speaks english. He conveys through her that he has a jack but it is too small for the Jeep so we will need to brace it. He produces a saw from the van and cuts a log out of a downed tree on the side of the road. We rolled it over, put his jack on top, and bam, in business. I start taking the wheel off and, if you can believe it, I broke his tire iron. It was one of those collapsible ones and I wasn’t careful and I snapped the head I needed clean off. Fuck.
No worries, he runs to the van, gives it to his wife and she is gone in a flash, down the road to buy a tire iron. She is back in 15 minutes, we finish the job with a little sweat and cussing (stupid log was starting to give), and I am a very happy man. We are both filthy and sweaty. The wife produces a large water jug for us to wash our hands in. I tried to put a 20 in the man’s hand but he wouldn’t take it so I instead gave it to his wife as quietly as I could. I thanked them up one side and down the other. I asked the little girl where they lived, thinking maybe I could send them a gift for being so awesome. She says they live in Mexico. They are here so mommy and daddy can pick peaches for the next few weeks. After that they are going to pick cherries then go back home. She asks if I have had lunch and when I told her no she gave me a tamale from their cooler, the best fucking tamale I have ever had.
So, to clarify, a family that is undoubtedly poorer than you, me, and just about everyone else on that stretch of road, working on a seasonal basis where time is money, took an hour or two out of their day to help some strange dude on the side of the road when people in tow trucks were just passing me by. Wow…
But we aren’t done yet. I thank them again and walk back to my car and open the foil on the tamale cause I am starving at this point and what do I find inside? My fucking $20 bill! I whirl around and run up to the van and the guy rolls his window down. He sees the $20 in my hand and just shaking his head no like he won’t take it. All I can think to say is “Por Favor, Por Favor, Por Favor” with my hands out. Dude just smiles, shakes his head and, with what looked like great concentration, tried his hardest to speak to me in English:
“Today you…. tomorrow me.”
Rolled up his window, drove away, his daughter waving to me in the rear view. I sat in my car eating the best fucking tamale of all time and I just cried. Like a little girl. It has been a rough year and nothing has broke my way. This was so out of left field I just couldn’t deal.
In the 5 months since I have changed a couple of tires, given a few rides to gas stations and, once, went 50 miles out of my way to get a girl to an airport. I won’t accept money. Every time I tell them the same thing when we are through:
“Today you…. tomorrow me.”

Well, the end of October is here. Where does the time go? The eastern area of the United States is facing an early winter. From Maryland on north, they had a major nor'easter this weekend, causing a lot of snow and ice damage. Down here, it went from a Friday that was near 80 degrees for a high to a low of near freezing last night and tonight.

Yesterday, I noticed that the voltage gauge in my truck wasn't where it should have been; I think that my 15 year-old alternator is shot. It is to the point now that my little pickup is probably going to start to nickel-and-dime me to death, so I guess I'm going to have to start keeping an eye out for a cheap, simple pickup truck to replace it. I don't need anything major, as long as it has an air conditioner.

My son turned 11 this past week. I seems like just yesterday that I was carrying him around in a baby carrier. He is growing up way too fast.

Ten years ago today...

On this day in 2001, I had just gotten off work at 0330 and went home to get a few hours of sleep. It was Dad's birthday, so I took the day off, and planned on getting about 3 or 4 hours of sleep before driving across town to the Walmart to buy him a birthday present (it would be his first DVD player). I woke up around 0830 or so, and - unusual for me - did not turn on the TV. I jumped in the shower, got dressed, and headed out around 0930 or so. As I was driving to the Walmart, the radio DJ was talking about how the Red Cross was mobilizing and that they would be needing blood for the folks in New York. I remember thinking to myself, "Huh, must've had a bad accident up north," and didn't give it much more thought.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Walmart, I noticed two police cars parked side by side in the parking lot. While not unusual, the Walmart parking lot usually isn't the favored spot to go door to door, since there are a lot of citizen interruptions in such a high-visbility area. I parked and walked inside, and that is when I first realized that something really big was happening. You see, at this time, the Walmart I was in was the only Walmart in Jacksonville, and it was one of the three busiest Walmarts in the entire Eastern US. But on this morning, as I walked in, you could have heard a pin drop. The front security monitor that hangs from the ceiling that lets shoppers see themselves walking in to remind potential shoplifters that they are being videoed was tuned to the news, and people - shoppers and employees - were gathered around it. I watched as the video showed the first tower being hit, and I thought to myself, "Wow, just like the B-25 that hit the Empire State Building. Someone really screwed up." Then I saw the second impact. Holy shit! It couldn't be!! I couldn't believe that America was under attack.

The walk through Walmart was surreal. I went to the electronics section and picked out Dad's DVD player, and I didn't have any problems getting around because everybody in the back area of the store was gathered around the TV's in electronics.

I dropped off Dad's gift, and I went to work.

In the days that followed, people saw terrorists everywhere. I had grown men thank me for being a police officer while tears streamed down their faces. Cars people didn't recognize around various infrastructure locations were suddenly terrorists probing for more targets. We feard for our water supply. We were afraid of a lot of things.

America changed a lot that day. But guess what? Since that day, I've visited many Walmarts, and purchased many things, and I'm still raising and taking care of my family, and as long as I am able to keep doing that, the terrorists haven't won.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says

CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.

In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

The news touched off an extraordinary outpouring of emotion as crowds gathered in the Senate District and outside the Imperial Palace, waving imperial flags, cheering, shouting, laughing and chanting, “Hail to the Emperor! Hail Lord Vader!” In the alien protection zone, crowds sang “The Ten Thousand Year Empire.” Throughout the Sah'c district, airspeeder drivers honked horns deep into the night.

“For over two decades, Kenobi has been the Jedi rebellion’s leader and symbol,” the Lord of the Sith said in a statement broadcast across the galaxy via HoloNet. “The death of Kenobi marks the most significant achievement to date in our empire’s effort to defeat the rebel alliance. But his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that the rebellion will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi ’s demise is a defining moment in the stormtrooper-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who turned against the Empire at the end of the Clone Wars. What remains to be seen, however, is whether it galvanizes Kenobi’s followers by turning him into a martyr or serves as a turning of the page in the war against the Rebel Alliance and gives further impetus to Emperor Palpatine to step up Stormtrooper recruitment.

In an earlier statement issued to the press, Kenobi boasted that striking him down could make him "more powerful than you could possibly imagine."

How much his death will affect the rebel alliance itself remains unclear. For years, as they failed to find him, Imperial leaders have said that he was more symbolically important than operationally significant because he was on the run and hindered in any meaningful leadership role. Yet he remained the most potent face of terrorism in the Empire, and some of those who played down his role in recent years nonetheless celebrated his death.

Given Kenobi’s status among radicals, the Imperial Galactic government braced for possible retaliation. A Grand Moff of the Imperial Starfleet said late Sunday that military bases in the core worlds and around the galaxy were ordered to a higher state of readiness. The Imperial Security Bureau issued a galactic travel warning, urging citizens in volatile areas “to limit their travel outside of their local star systems and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

The strike could deepen tensions within the Outer Rim, which has periodically bristled at Imperial counterterrorism efforts even as Kenobi evidently found safe refuge it its territories for nearly two decades. Since taking over as Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy, Lord Vader has ordered significantly more strikes on suspected terrorist targets in the Outer Rim, stirring public anger there and leading to increased criminal activity.

When the end came for Kenobi, he was found not in the remote uncharted areas of Wild Space and the Unknown Regions, where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a massive compound about an hour’s drive west from the Tatooine capital of Bestine. He had been living under the alias "Ben" Kenobi for some time.

The compound, only about 50 miles from the base of operations for the Imperial Storm Squadron, is at the end of a narrow dirt road and is roughly eight times larger than other homes in the area, which were largely occupied by Tusken Raiders. When Imperial operatives converged on the planet on Saturday, following up on recent intelligence, two local moisture farmers “resisted the assault force” and were killed in the middle of an intense gun battle, a senior Stormtrooper said, but details were still sketchy early Monday morning.

A representative of the Imperial Starfleet said that military and intelligence officials first learned last summer that a “high-value target” was hiding somewhere on the desert world and began working on a plan for going in to get him. Beginning in March, Lord Vader worked closely with a series of several different Admirals serving onboard the Death Star to go over plans for the operation, and on Friday morning gave the final order for members of the 501st Legion (known commonly as "Vader's Fist") to strike.

Kenobi and a group of his followers were eventually captured while fleeing the system, and taken aboard the Death Star, which was in the midst of surveying the recent environmental disaster on Alderaan. Darth Vader called it a “targeted operation,” although officials said four tie fighters were lost because of "mechanical failures" and had to be destroyed to keep them from falling into hostile hands.

In addition to Kenobi, two men and one wookiee were killed, one believed to be his young apprentice and the other two his couriers, according to an admiral who briefed reporters under Imperial ground rules forbidding further identification. A woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, the Admiral said. Two droids were also reported missing.

“No Stormtroopers were seriously harmed,” Lord Vader said. “They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, I defeated my former master and took custody of his body.” Jedi tradition requires burial within 24 hours, but by doing it in deep space, Imperial authorities presumably were trying to avoid creating a shrine for his followers.

Lord Vader has denied requests to present photographs of the body, describing them as "too gruesome" for the general public.

Usama Bin Laden Killed in Firefight With U.S. Special Ops Team in Pakistan

Published May 02, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Declaring “justice has been done,” President Obama announced late Sunday that Usama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, marking the end of the worldwide manhunt that began nearly a decade ago on Sept. 11, 2001.

The president made the stunning announcement within hours of informing congressional leaders. He said bin Laden was killed Sunday, the culmination of years of intelligence gathering. The news drew a large crowd to the front of the White House, as well as in Times Square, as people chanted “USA. USA.”

Obama, in his address to the nation shortly before midnight, thanked the Americans who have toiled in pursuit of bin Laden and applauded those who carried out the successful mission in Pakistan. Describing that mission only briefly, he said its result “is a testament to the greatness of our country.”

“For over two decades, bin Laden has been Al Qaeda’s leader and symbol,” Obama said. “The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda.”

The president traced the death of bin Laden to a tip received last August. He said he was briefed at the time on the “possible lead,” and that after months of intelligence work it was determined bin Laden was hiding in a compound “deep” inside Pakistan. Obama said, after determining the intelligence was sound, he authorized the operation to bring him to justice last week.

He said a “small team” of Americans went after bin Laden in Abbottabad on Sunday. “After a firefight, they killed Usama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” the president said.

Senior administration officials, in a briefing with reporters, afterward said the administration had determined by February that they would pursue the compound "custom built to hide someone of significance" in Pakistan. This decision led to a series of national security meetings starting in March to develop a course of action. Obama gave the final order to pursue the operation on April 29, officials said.

The house was 100 yards from the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, an army run institution where top officers train. A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 3,000 square feet.

At 3:30 p.m. EST, a 40-man Navy Seals squadron raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing the Al Qaeda leader with a bullet to the head.

Four Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters dropped 24 men on the compound. One helicopter suffered a "hard landing" inside the compound after an experiencing a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed on the site, according to one defense official.

There was a large shootout. The residents at the compound resisted. The total raid took 40 minutes.

No Americans were killed in the mission Sunday. Officials said three adult men other than bin Laden were killed – one was believed to be bin Laden’s son, the others couriers. Two women were also injured, the officials said.

Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 a.m. local time.

"I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast," he said. "In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field."

"Intelligence analysts concluded that this compound was custom built to hide someone of significance," he said.

In the wake of bin Laden’s death, authorities around the world are being urged to take security precautions. One source said officials are concerned bin Laden’s death could incite violence or terrorist acts against U.S. personnel overseas.

The State Department issued a travel alert for U.S. citizens abroad overnight, citing “the enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan.”

Obama said Americans must continue to be “vigilant.” But he said the death of the architect of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil should be welcomed around the world.

“Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims,” Obama said. “So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Sources said the vice president informed congressional leaders late Sunday night that the world’s most wanted man had been killed.

Officials said bin Laden’s body, which was in U.S. custody, was given a sea burial.

The announcement comes nearly a decade after the 2001 terror attacks which triggered the Afghanistan war and started a tireless hunt for the terrorist mastermind and Al Qaeda leader.

In recent years, that hunt had increasingly led U.S. intelligence across the border and into Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is thought to be concentrated.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/05/01/usama-bin-laden-dead-say-sources/#ixzz1LBlblvdS

What global warming?

We are currently in the middle of our second winter storm of the season. We endured 5 inches of snow the day after Christmas, and now we are in the middle of another 5 inches, plus freezing rain. As a matter of fact, we just endured the coldest December on record here in Eastern NC.

I enjoy winter more than summer, because our winters here are usually mild, and I prefer to be a little cold than to be hot, but I must say that I've about had it with this winter!

Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going outside to play in the snow with my son!

I'm jealous

Two months ago, I got my first smartphone, a Motorola Droid. If you sit back and think for a minute, it is a marvel of modern technology. Here, inside a small glass, plastic, and metal case not even one inch thick, is a computer that has more computing power than the entire Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space missions. It has more computing power than the start of the shuttle missions.

Inside this wondrous little brick is a processor that can run the computer and provide clear, vivid video on the full-color screen. It has a GPS system in it. It can connect to 3G or wireless Internet. It has a compass built in. You can download applications that pretty much provide unlimited uses for it. It has a camera that can take pictures every bit as good as a 35mm camera.

I think back to 22 years ago, when I graduated from high school. Cell phones were huge monstrosities. A home computer was a luxury, with a large computer tower and a monitor that provides the colors of black and green. VHS tapes were the way to go, and CD's had only been popular for a few years.

Then there was college. My roommate brought in an IBM computer with a whopping 32kb of memory, and we will dial into Prodigy at a speedy baud rate of something like 4k! My first personal computer was bought in 1999, and it had a 3.2gig hard drive, 32mb of RAM, and a 300khz processor, at a cost of over $700. I'm working on a cheap laptop right now, paid less than $400 for it, and it 100 times the memory and 50 times the storage space, along with a processor that leaves that original one in the dust.

My first cellular phone was obtained in 1997. It was literally the size of a brick, with an antenna that you had to pull out before use, and my contract gave me a huge!! huge!! sixty minutes of free airtime a month.

Around this time, the DVD began to surface. I purchased my first DVD player in 2000, and it was a huge machine with limited functions, and I can remember the huge jump in picture clarity and sound. I paid a sizeable chunk of change for it, too. Today, you can buy a DVD player only 1/8 the size of that first one, and pay a simple 20 to 30 bucks for it.

I remember Atari, the old 2600 that my parents got me in 1981. Games on it look so cheesy today! We had Pong before that!

In 1996, I bought a 32" stereo television, a huge monstrosity that basically takes two people to move. 12 years later, I bought my first LCD TV, and the differences are incredible.

I'm not at the forefront of getting all of the newest gadgets, but I can sit in my living room, typing on my wireless keyboard (as I am doing right now), surf the Internet or do research, print wirelessly to the printer on the other side of the house, while watching TV on my LCD TV that is receiving a signal froma satellite system. If I get up, I can connect to the world via my laptop computer, or my Dell pocket PC, or my Droid. I can go outside to work in the yard and can carry my entire music collection on my small Sansa music player. I can get in my car and explore the world without ever getting lost.

What am I getting at? I think back over the last thirty years of my life (I'm 40), and the technology - the things that are out there that have become such a regular part of life - have changed so much! My son turns 10 next week. What will technology be like thirty years from now when he is 40?

There are exciting times ahead for him, and I'm jealous over the stuff we know nothing about now, but will be a part of his life then.

Happy Birthday America!!!!!

It has been an absolutely hot spring. Wait, let me take that back. We didn't have a spring. It has just been hot. Period. Pretty much the entire month of June here in eastern North Carolina has been nothing but 90 degrees or more every day. To make things worse, we haven't been getting much rain, which isn't doing much for the garden, fruit trees, or grass.

Also, my electric bill is killing me.

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. I guess I've become a Facebook junkie, and really haven't been much on keeping up with Blogger.

I've had a horrible couple of weeks at work. There has just been so much crap going on.

I need to start doing more posts. Maybe I'll get the motivation to do some this week...hopefully.

27 years old: the Chinook from the Falklands STILL serving in Helmand

By Peter Almond
Last updated at 9:58 PM on 18th July 2009

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It is an RAF legend - children scramble around a copy of it at the RAF Museum in Hendon, and Baroness Thatcher has been photographed with it.

But Bravo November, a remarkable Chinook helicopter which first saw service in the Falklands, is still going strong on the battlefields of Afghanistan.

The 18-year-old soldiers boarding it in Helmand know only from a small brass plaque inside that this helicopter is a nearly decade older than they are - and it's still not ready for retirement.

Valiant veterans: A Chinook drops off British troops in Afghanistan

Bravo November - named after BN, its original identification tail number - is probably the most remarkable RAF aircraft of the last 30 years.

It won its first Distinguished Flying Cross for pilot Squadron Leader Dick Langworthy in May 1982, when it was only two months out of its packing crate at RAF Odiham, Hampshire.

It won its second DFC for pilot Sqn Ldr Steve Carr on the opening night of the Iraq War in 2003, and its third for pilot Flight Lieutenant Craig Wilson in Afghanistan in 2006.

Now officially known as ZA718, Bravo November still holds a world record for carrying the largest number of troops in a single flight.

'Bravo November is a hugely significant aeroplane to the RAF,' said retired Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Johns when he opened an exhibition honouring it at the RAF Museum on the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war.

'The RAF almost never singles out individual aircraft for tribute. But Bravo November is exceptional.'

But is its survival just down to luck? Certainly it seems to have been lucky in the Falklands.

It was away on a flight test when an Argentine Exocet missile sank its transport ship, the Atlantic Conveyor, along with all four of the other Chinooks on board.

Bravo November went almost immediately into action after the first British troops landed on the Falklands, initially carrying 105mm guns to support SAS troops on Mount Kent who were under fire from Argentine artillery.

On a later mission it ran into a snowstorm on its way back to San Carlos Water. The crew's night-vision goggles failed and the helicopter crashed into the sea at 100 knots. Water poured over its cockpit and the two engines started to 'flame out'.

Service record: Bravo November during the Falklands War

But luck was with pilot Dick Langworthy and his co-pilot Andy Lawless. Their controls had been set to climb, and with the twin rotors flailing, the helicopter leapt into the air like a cork from a bottle.

Slightly damaged, and without spare parts or adequate lubricants, Bravo November managed to hold together for another vital two weeks, delivering troops and supplies wherever they were needed.

At one point Bravo November rushed into battle with 81 troops jammed inside. It was twice the normal maximum load - a feat that to this day stands as a record for a troop-carrying helicopter anywhere in the world.

By the time the Argentines surrendered, Bravo November had flown for 109 hours and carried 1,500 troops, 95 casualties, 550 prisoners of war and 550 tons of cargo.

It also served in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Germany and Kurdistan.

At the start of the first Gulf War in 2003, Bravo November took the first Royal Marines on to the Al-Faw peninsula to seize vital oil-pumping facilities. Any one of the five Chinooks on that first British attack could have led the way.

But either by luck, coincidence or the scheming of RAF engineers, the lead commander, Sqn Ldr Steve Carr, found himself flying Bravo November.

Three years later, on the night of June 11, 2006, Flt Lt Craig Wilson was captain of Bravo November in Helmand when he was ordered to recover a casualty at a landing site.

Even though he had done little night flying in the country, he flew at 150ft, made a precision landing and recovered the casualty.

A few hours later he was back on another evacuation mission, although this time he was forced to delay his landing while an Apache gunship suppressed enemy fire.

After this, despite having been on duty for 22 hours, Flt Lt Wilson volunteered to deliver reinforcements to threatened troops. He brought back two wounded soldiers, saving their lives. His actions earned him the DFC - Bravo November's third.

Curiously - or out of concern for ending Bravo November's 'luck' - no mention of this award was made at the Falklands 25th anniversary the next year.

And today, after many months of deep maintenance back in England, Bravo November is back in Afghanistan quietly doing its job - several times narrowly dodging Taliban bullets and rocket-propelled grenades.

'It just always seems to be there when you need it,' said Wing Commander Andy Naismith, former commanding officer of Bravo November's 18 Squadron. 'It never lets us down.'

Irony, I have found you.

Man killed by dogs after saving them from death

By REUTERS

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia - A Slovenian who saved his three dogs from being put down for attacking humans was himself mauled to death by them, police said on Wednesday.

“Three dogs bit their 52-year-old owner to death in Ljubljana yesterday,” police spokeswoman Maja Adlesic said.

Four years ago, the three bullmastiffs attacked and seriously injured a passer-by outside their owner’s house. They spent years in custody pending legal hearings, but when one of them attacked a dog handler, authorities ordered them to be put down.

Their owner, a doctor, succeeded last June in his legal appeals to get the dogs back, sparking a national controversy. After his death, an opposition party said the agriculture minister should resign for failing to stop the dogs being released.

The dogs attacked the man in his garden on Tuesday, killing him before the police arrived. All three dogs were put down following the attack.

Stupid is therule of the day

Written by Alex Teach
January 20, 2010 – 12:45 pm

Shortly after the close of World War II, the United States government began the practice of adding fluoride to public drinking water in an effort to reduce tooth decay, particularly in young children and the poor in general who experienced agony from such decay frequently and without the means of affording care for the relief of it. Cavities, it turns out, cost society more to treat than any other disease, and scientists globally regarded this practice as “a pretty good move”.

What they never counted on, however, was the adverse reaction fluoride has when put in contact with tinfoil.

Hats, specifically.

There have been conspiracies for as long as there have been stupid, insecure people on this planet (which scientists also concur has been “pretty much forever”), but this one is the Stupid Grandfather of the modern age. Fluoridation has been associated with pacifism, mind control, population control, the abandonment of civil liberties and as an imminent sign of total governmental control of the populace, in lieu of a Democratic “supermajority” in the Senate. (“The 2008 Elections” is a column for another day.)

2008. There are 5.8 million car crashes nationally. That is 5,800,000: A ridiculous number, particularly for those educated in the Hamilton County public school system. Of those, 1.6 million people were injured, and 34,017 were killed. As with the masses with rotted teeth wandering around holding their jaws and making a huge racket 62 years ago, the government again takes notice of this and decides a society cannot remain civilized with 34,017 dead folks scattered all about the place…so again, it acts.

The initial thought is to educate people with positively huge reflective signs directly on the roadsides dictating the recommended limit for speed (or “speed limit”), but for a large number (it took at least 2,900,000 people to hit the other 2,900,000), this proves ineffectual and other ideas are sought.

The second most popular idea is one occupied police car being assigned to each driver in order to monitor and regulate their speed, but this is deemed not just cost prohibitive, at $50,000 a pop with training, salary, and equipment, but with no small amount of irony it is also abandoned for fear of being misconstrued as an infringement of civil liberties.

A compromise was instituted in which one officer would regulate about 10,000 motorists on average, but the ratio of 1:10,000 people being regulated and ticketed was still leading to deaths in the tens of thousands. The government goes back to the drawing board, and this time, finds the answer in every bank, gas station, hotel, airport and cell phone in America: Cameras.

Americans go to hotels, gas stations, banks, airports, and many other places every hour of every day. They also complain to nine in ten officers pulling them over, “What about the real criminals out there? Don’t you have anything better to do?” Turns out, they do. So this marriage of ideas produces the Automated Ticketing System.
Fatalities in one section of Hixson Pike go from dozens to ZERO for more than two years now, addressing the scattered corpse issue directly.

People speeding in excess of 10 mph over the posted limits start receiving tickets by the bucket, with only one officer manning that ubiquitous White Van, and it doesn’t even add points to your driving record.

Costs of the cameras themselves are provided by the private sector, not taxpayers, and taxpayers don’t even have to cover the hideous costs of paying and training more police officers.

Then most unexpectedly (or was it?), the officers once assigned to sitting on the roadsides not catching “real criminals” are present in their communities, and a domino effect occurs in which response times to violent crimes goes down, and the number of property crimes begins falling in double digits in some areas.

Revenue generated from these tickets then goes towards once-abandoned driver-education programs (which, again, reduce crashes) and covers the cost of new police equipment for (you guessed it) further crime reduction actions.

The Government smiles. Then tilts its head in confusion.

The Stupid arrive with their nice teeth, and instead of joy at the wise use of tax dollars and reduction of dead folk, insurance rates, and crime in general…they complain. Automated ticket cameras from speed vans and red lights are associated with pacifism, mind control, population control, the abandonment of civil liberties and an imminent sign of total governmental control of the populace. (See why I told you that whole first story now? Clever, clever Officer Teach.)

Their right to privacy while driving on a public street is being infringed upon by a revenue generation system. (Think on this a second.)

I’m short on space, so I’ll just say this: There IS no privacy in the middle of a one- or six-lane roadway, Nimrod. It’s a ROADWAY. You can’t even drive a car without windows to hide yourself. You even have to have a picture of yourself on a card saying you’re allowed to drive there. Besides, if you said you did have an expectation of privacy in the middle of the street, besides being stupid, where is your moral outrage over the cameras you put yourself in front of in every aforementioned bank, gas station, hotel, and airport? It’s not there, because they are necessary and make sense. The difference is, you are upset on the roadways because you have been caught speeding by an unbiased scientific device.

As for revenue generation? Of course it is! So—what now, when a human catches you and you go to court, you shouldn’t be fined? All fines are wrong now? Or just the ones in which you have been caught? Again, where was the outrage before? Speeding and red light fines going to police equipment? “Duh!”

Your ever-present demands to see the radar gun and certification? They’re right there. The red light cameras? Video is now awaiting you in the courtroom, every time.
When an officer caught you, it was a “trap”. He lied about you running the sign or the light, and the judge took his word over yours. Now you’re on video…so it’s “unconstitutional”.

The Constitution doesn’t give you a right to speed, folks. It doesn’t even give you a reasonable expectation of privacy on the public roadways. I checked.

But, “Stupid” is the rule of the day, so you’ll probably win. We’ll take those officers back out of your neighborhoods, and go back on the side of the roadways. We’ll let the bodies pile up in the S-curves, and property crimes increase like your property taxes to hire more officers to address the rising crime again.

All those government-based shiny teeth, all those savings of money and lives, but no one smiles for the camera.

You win.

Right?

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.

The difference between guts and balls

Guts - is arriving home late after a night out with the guys, being assaulted by your wife with a broom, and having the guts to ask: "Are you still cleaning, or are you flying somewhere?"

Balls - is coming home late after a night out with the guys, smelling of perfume and beer, lipstick on your collar, slapping your wife on the ass and having the balls to say - "You're next fatty."

Las Vegas

I just returned from a week long business trip to Las Vegas. I stayed in the Stratosphere Hotel, on the 18th floor. Right outside my window was the Stratosphere Tower, all 109 stories of it. It was really cool to go up in it to the top; even the tall Vegas buildings looked short when you get to the top. I played the slots, got up a hundred bucks, and then quit when I started losing my ass and broke even.

But...all things considered, this was a trip the I probably should not have taken.

Police Harassment

Recently, the Chula Vista Police Department ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being, "Community Policing."

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question, "I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor replied:

"First of all, let me tell you this...it's not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as "patrol") where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. And at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment.

Another popular one is, "There's a guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver's licenses and the like.. It's lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

STATUTES: When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Statutes"; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc... They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really
mess with people.

After you read the statute, you can just drive around for awhile until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to "harass" some people.

Next time you are in my town, give me the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It means, "You can't harass me."

It's one of our favorites.