Sunday, May 24, 2009

Things your father never told you about the war...

 Subject: WWII trivia, interesting
 You have to dig deep for facts like these:
1. The first German serviceman killed in WW II
was killed by the Japanese ( China, 1937), the first
American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians
(Finland 1940); highest ranking American killed was Lt Gen
Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.
 2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old
 Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable
 Discharge
for lying about his age. His benefits
 were later restored by act of Congress.

 3. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy
command was called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us" the
shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry
division
was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train
was named "Amerika." All three were soon changed for PR
purposes.!

4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps
than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30
missions, your chance of being killed was 71%.

 5. Generally speaking, there was no such thing
as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or
a target. For instance, Japanese Ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa
shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a
cargo plane.

6. It was a common practice on fighter planes
to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in
aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics
so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target
80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly
told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction.
Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of
tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of
ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell
the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their
success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

7. When allied armies reached the Rhine, the
first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal
from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a
big show of it) and Gen. Patton, who had himself photographed
in the act.

8. German Me-264 bombers were capable of
bombing New York City, but they decided it wasn't worth the
effort.

9. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a
malfunctioning toilet. 10. Among the first "Germans" captured at
Normandy were several Koreans. They had been
forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by
the Russians, and forced to fight for the Russian
Army until they were captured by the Germans, and forced to
fight for the German Army until they were captured by the
US Army.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST....

11. Following a massive naval bombardment,
35,000 United States and Canadian troops stormed ashore at
Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands. 21 troops were killed in the
assault. It would have been worse if there had been any
Japanese on the island.

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Socialism?

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. 

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. 

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.  

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.  

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. 

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
 
The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.  

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
 

Could not be any simpler than that.
 

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

'Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not.'   
  
~ Thomas Jefferson

 FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE
  
1.  An armed man is a citizen.  An unarmed man is a subject. 

  
2.  A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3.  Colt:  The original point and click interface.
 
  
4.  Gun control is not about guns; it's about control. 
  
5.  If guns are outlawed, can we use swords? 

  
6.  If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words. 

  
7.  Free men do not ask permission to bear arms. 

  
8.  If you don't know your rights, you don't have any. 

  
9.  Those who trade liberty for security have neither. 
  
10.  The  United States  Constitution (c) 1791.  All Rights Reserved. 
  
11.  What part of 'shall not be infringed' do you not understand? 

  
12.  The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others. 

  
13.  64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday. 
  
14.  Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians. 
           
  
15.  Know guns, know peace, know safety.  No guns, no peace, no safety. 
          
16.  You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive. 
  
17.  911:  Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer. 
              
18.  Assault is a behavior, not a device. 
  
19.  Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer. 

  
20.  If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson. 
  
21.  Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them. 
  
22.  You have only the rights you are willing to fight for. 

  
23.  Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more. 
  
24.  When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves. 

  
25.  The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control. 

              
  
IF YOU AGREE, PASS THIS 'REFRESHER' ON TO TEN FREE CITIZENS.  


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Monday, March 23, 2009

can anyone pinpoint

just exactly when it was the the paradigm shift occured that now presents us with a conservative community that has become a bunch of chicken littles running around waving their wings in the air clucking that the end of democracy,and hence civilization, is at hand...
 
Back when bush was busy giving all the treasure to the rich elite and the lowly iraqis they were wailing that it was unpatriotic to bash the president and down right treasonous to oppose the war.
 
Now, every word out of hannity's mouth is a slight to the president and his family or some other trite comparison to similarities to soviet russia, and glen beck is pointing to stallin as a familiar point of reference in describing Obama...
 
They would like nothing more than to put up as many road blocks in the way of recovery to support their premis that the Democrats are going to screw up the world and the U.S.
 
Yet they were whooping and gladhanding each other when bush gave away the surplus's to the wealthy in the form of taxbreaks and no bid contracts for the war he created to make his friends and cohorts happy that they subverted the democratic process and raped the constitution...
 
They thought it was great when bush brought rummy, wolfowitz, armatege, pearle and the rest of the neocons in to run the country for him and gave him eight years in which he completely destroyed this country...yet they didn't even giv Obama 10 days before they declared his presidency a disaster...
 
They rant and rave about Pelosi like she is the devil in carnate yet they seem to embrace on the Faux Noise channel that Rove, Gringrinch and dennis hastert are nearly as beloved as the great reagan...they even embrace traitors like oliver north who was instrumental in trading weapons on the behalf of reagan to Iran, as well as terrorists in South America the Iran/Contra disaster...
 
Now that the Conservative have embraced the likes of Boss Limpbaugh as their spokes person with michael steele as the lawn jockey they have lost all rights to the high ground. When they espouse a higher moral authority by demanding that women yield to their taliban like attitudes concerning their own bodies by decrying that abortion is murder yet they have no qualms about murdering innocent civilians in the name of the noble war...the Ten Commandments state that thou shall not kill, not thou shall not kill unless it suits your needs...
 
It's ok for them to drop the switch on ten innocent men as long as they get the one guilty one. As we all became aware, bush was the most executionist governor in texas history and he never put an innocent man to death, just ask him...maybe at the same time you can ask him about the WMD's.
 
Most of the time it seems like the Rebumblicans don't even realize that when they are speaking they are being recorded and that their words will come back when their lies and distortions are exposed...
 
A least now there is a chance we will get some of our money back,the money is at least going out in the form of loans not just in giveaways to the cronies, affiliates and buddies...
 
Only time will tell if this new adminstration will succeed or fail but I am at least willing to give him at least the first hundred days before I declare the patient dead...they gave bush eight years and then still wanted more.
 
 


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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Odd, bouncing fish with lollipop face dubbed new species

March 3, 2009
Courtesy University of Washington
and World Science staff

Psychedel­i­ca seems the per­fect name for a fish that is a wild swirl of tan and peach zeb­ra stripes and acts in ways con­tra­ry to its breth­ren. So says the Uni­ver­s­ity of Wash­ing­ton’s Ted Pietsch, who is the first to de­scribe the new spe­cies in the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture and thus the one to pick the name.

With its flat­tened face, sci­en­tists say the fish's eyes ap­pear to be di­rect­ed for­ward. These may pro­vide it with bin­oc­u­lar vi­sion, a spe­cial at­trib­ute well de­vel­oped in hu­mans that pro­vides the abil­i­ty to ac­cu­rate­ly judge dis­tance. On­ly very few fish­es have eyes whose field of vi­sion over­laps in front, pro­vid­ing such vi­sion. (©David Hall / sea­pho­tos.com)


Psychedel­ica is per­haps even more apt giv­en the cocka­mamie way the fish swim, some with so lit­tle ap­par­ent con­trol they look drunk.

Mem­bers of His­tio­phryne psych­edel­ica don’t so much swim as hop. Each time they strike the seafloor they use their fins to push off and they ex­pel wa­ter from ti­ny gill open­ings on their sides to jet­ti­son them­selves for­ward. With tails curled tightly to one side – which lim­its their abil­ity to steer – they look like in­flat­ed rub­ber balls bounc­ing hith­er and thith­er.

While oth­er frog­fish and si­m­i­lar spe­cies are known to jet­ti­son them­selves up off the bot­tom be­fore they beg­in swim­ming, none have been seen hop­ping, ac­cord­ing to Pietsch. It’s just one of the be­hav­iors of H. psy­ch­edel­ica un­seen in any oth­er fish, added the re­search­er, lead au­thor of a pa­per on the new spe­cies in Co­peia, the jour­nal of the Amer­i­can So­ci­e­ty of Ichthy­ol­o­gists and Her­petol­o­gists.

It was lit­tle more than a year ago that the fish with rare, for­ward-facing eyes like hu­mans and a se­cre­tive na­ture drew world­wide at­ten­tion af­ter hav­ing been ob­served in the busy har­bor of Am­bon Is­land, In­do­ne­sia. An adult fish was ob­served in Jan­u­ary 2008 by To­by Fa­dirs­yair, a guide, and Buck and Fi­trie Ran­dolph, co-own­ers of Ma­lu­ku Di­vers, based in Am­bon. They and other co-own­ers An­dy and Ker­ry Short­en event­ual­ly found Pietsch to help them iden­ti­fy the fish. Since the first sight­ing di­vers have ob­served a num­ber of adults and ju­ve­niles, now that they know what to look for.

Adults of H. psy­ch­edel­ica are fist-sized with ge­lat­i­nous bod­ies cov­ered with thick folds of skin that pro­tect them from sharp-edged cor­als as they haunt ti­ny nooks and cran­nies of the har­bor reef. Fins on ei­ther side of their bod­ies have, as with oth­er frog­fish, evolved to be leg-like, and mem­bers of H. psy­ch­edel­ica ac­tu­ally pre­fer crawl­ing to swim­ming. (See a Quick­Time vi­deo of the ani­mal here.)

The leg-like pec­to­ral fins used for walk­ing are com­mon­ly found in an­gler­fish which pre­fer crawl­ing to swim­ming. More than a doz­en in­di­vid­u­al fish have been seen in Am­bon Har­bor, In­do­ne­sia, since di­vers with Ma­lu­ku Di­vers first spot­ted one of the fish in Jan­u­ary 2008. The fish have been found in 15 to 25 feet of wa­ter near a com­mer­cial jet­ty in the busy har­bor. (Cred­it: ©David Hall / sea­pho­tos.com)


The spe­cies has a flat­tened face with eyes di­rect­ed for­ward. It’s some­thing Pietsch, with 40 years of ex­pe­ri­ence stu­dy­ing and clas­si­fy­ing fish­es, has nev­er seen be­fore in frog­fish. It causes him to spec­u­late that the spe­cies may have bin­oc­u­lar vi­sion, that is, vi­sion that over­laps in front, like it does in hu­mans. Most fish, with eyes on ei­ther side of their head, don’t have this; they see dif­fer­ent things with each eye.

DNA work in­di­cat­ed H. psy­ch­edel­ica joins two oth­er spe­cies in a ge­nus called His­tio­phryne, though the oth­er two look very drab in com­par­i­son. The ge­nus is but one of about a doz­en in the frogfish or An­ten­nari­idae family, ac­cord­ing to Pietsch. The frog­fish are, in turn, part of the larg­er or­der of Lo­phi­iformes, or an­gler­fish.

Unlike oth­er an­gler­fish, mem­bers of H. psy­ch­edel­ica have no lures grow­ing out of their fore­heads to at­tract prey. The oth­er an­gler­fish sit out in the open on the seafloor or cor­al reefs, of­ten adapt­ing their col­or­ing so their bod­ies are cam­ou­flaged, but the lures are meant to be no­ticed so the fish wave, wig­gle and some­times blink the lures on and off.

In­stead of that show­i­ness, mem­bers of H. psy­ch­edel­ica are shy and se­cre­tive, probably one rea­son they weren’t pre­vi­ously spot­ted, Pietsch said. When a mem­ber of H. psy­ch­edel­ica is un­cov­ered by di­vers it usu­ally seeks a new place to hide with­in 10 or 15 min­utes.

And while oth­er an­gler­fish change their col­or­ing de­pend­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment, the new spe­cies ap­pears to main­tain its wild strip­ing no mat­ter the sur­round­ings.

The col­or­ing led co-au­thor Da­vid Hall, a wild­life pho­tographer and own­er of seapho­tos.com, to spec­u­late that the fish is mim­ick­ing cor­als. In­deed, Hall pro­duced pho­tos for the new sci­en­tif­ic pa­per show­ing cor­als the an­i­mals may be mim­ick­ing.

The oth­er co-au­thor, Ra­chel Ar­nold, a mas­ter’s stu­dent at the uni-ver-sity, did the DNA work. Ar­nold, who dove in Am­bon Har­bor last year, said the strip­ing of each fish is dis­tinc­tive, “like a fin­ger­print of pat­tern­ing on their body so from what­ev­er an­gle you look, you can tell in­di­vid­u­als apart.”

The sci­en­tists found, how­ev­er, that the viv­id col­ors fad­ed in a mat­ter of days once a spec­i­men was pre­served in eth­a­nol. The flesh of the pre­served spec­i­men looks white, but with a mi­cro­scope one can still see the strip­ing, Pietsch discov­ered.

This got him think­ing about two spec­i­mens sent to him in 1992 that he’d kept. The Dal­las Aquar­i­um had sent him two frog­fish, found in a ship­ment of live fish­es from Ba­li that they said had un­usu­al pig­ment pat­terns. The staff had nick­named them “pais­ley frog­fish.” But the pho­tograph Pietsch was sent was of poor qual­ity and the pre­served spec­i­mens Pietsch re­ceived were white, so he did­n’t give them much thought.

Pietsch re­trieved the old spec­i­mens from the col­lec­tion, put them un­der a mi­cro­scope and found the strip­ing dis­tinc­tive to H. psy­ch­edel­ica. He’d had two spec­i­men of a new spe­cies of fish for 17 years, but did­n’t know it.

time and again...

Martha Mccalum on fox news asked Rep. Boner and then Areola Flesher why didn't all the Bumblicans get together and take all their little earmarks out of the Omnibus bill and make a statement to the publice and each time she got nothing but political babble...and come to think about it, what with all the attention John Mccainiac is trying to muster he is not screaming at the Bums as well...Michael Steele and Rush Limpbutt can argue about minutia and enui but I don't hear them chiding their contemporaries on the right side of the aisle for their Pork and Beans gluttony either...
 
If the Bums were genuinely outraged by the size of this bill they should unilaterally withdraw all their earmarks instead of leaving them in and then voting against the bill so that their CONstituencies think they are being fiscally responsible...all the while feeding at the traugh with the best of them...


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Monday, March 09, 2009

If roughly half of the earmarks in the omnibus bill are rebumblcan how come no bums are voting for it?

Sunday, March 01, 2009

10 things you should know about Obama's plan

The plan:

  1. Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.1
  2. Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.2
  3. Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.3
  4. Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.4
  5. Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.5
  6. Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 6
  7. Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.7
  8. Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.8
  9. Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.9
  10. Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.10
Pretty amazing, right? Can you pass this on to your personal network too, to make sure everyone knows how far-reaching and progressive Obama's plan is?
Thanks!
P.S. Turns out there are way more than 10 amazing things in Obama's budget and we couldn't resist sharing just a few more.
  1. Stops unnecessary government subsidies to big banks, health insurance companies and big agribusinesses.11,12,13
  2. Expands access to early childhood education and improves schools by investing in programs that make sure every child has a qualified, strong teacher.14
  3. Negotiates for better prescription drug prices using Medicaid's tremendous bargaining power.15
  4. Expands access to family planning for low-income women.16
  5. Caps the pollution that causes global warming, and makes polluters pay to support clean energy innovation.17
Sources:
1. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
2. "Obama Expects Fight Over $3.55 Trillion Budget Plan," Bloomberg News, February 28, 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiLyabbGqJBo&refer=home
3. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/energy_sunshine.html
4. "The Economic Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan," The New York Times, March 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/weekinreview/01glanz.html
5. "Tax Cuts," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-tax.html
6. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/energy_sunshine.html
7. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html
8. "Obama unveils budget blueprint," CNN, February 26, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/budget/
9. "Obama budget would boost SEC, CFTC, FBI," Reuters, February 26, 2009
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE51P5RD20090226
10. "Obama's budget," Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-budget27-2009feb27,0,2535327.story
11. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html
12. "Health Insurance Stocks Dive on Medicare Advantage Cuts," The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/02/26/health-insurance-stocks-dive-on-medicare-advantage-cuts/
13. "Agriculture," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-agri.html
14. "Investing Wisely in Our Children," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/education_budget.html
15. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
16. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-health.html
17. "Setting 'Green' Goals," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-energy.html


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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

After eight years...

of the most opaque governing in the history of the United States the GOP do nothing party can't see their way to do the hard things necessary to bring this country out of the worst years in history...it's obvious by their actions and the words of their chief cheerleaders like Bush Limbaugh and that crazy Ham head Hanity that they need this administration to fail at any cost just so they can have some sort of shot at regaining the once prominant postition they once held...
 
It's obvious they don't understand plain english...when they complain that the stimulus bill is full of spending...well duh...
 
let's all just remember who the players were if this all works out...we can't let them jump on the bandwagon when things turn around and maintain that it's just the policies of the bush admin kicking in...
 
 


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Saturday, January 17, 2009

Harry Truman after the presidency:

Harry Truman, from Missouri , was a different kind of President.  He probably made as many important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents.  However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House
 
Historians have written the only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri .  On top of that, his wife inherited the house from her Mother. 
 
When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year.  Congress, noting that he was paying=2 0for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ' allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25 ,000 per year. 

After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves.  There were no Secret Service following them. 

When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, 'You don't want me.  You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me.  It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale.' 

Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, 'I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.' 
 
He never owned his own home and as president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food. 
 
Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth.  Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices.  Political offices are now for sale. 

Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, 'My choices early in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician.  And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.'


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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Suddenly John Boner wont go along with releasing the rest of the TARP funds until he remembers who he gave the first half to.
It is kinda interesting how now that we have a Dem admin the bumblicans have developed a fiscal concience about the bailout