I like to think of it like a thank you note Chase sent for my contribution helping them out of bankruptcy:

Unfreakin' believable!
Too bad for them I only have a balance of $1.50
“Tell everyone that there is still a place in the Kingdom of Romania which has not bowed to Communism. As long as our heads are on our shoulders, this corner of the country will be free. Tell the people not to lose faith, for the day will come when the whole of Romania will be free. Pray God for it, so help us God.” --Ioan Gavrila Ogoranu, Romanian anti-communist fighter 1923-2006

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One of the highlights of the Friday gathering was supposed to be the Saudi Prince’s meeting with Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri, a Saudi man who was a wanted militant from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Asiri had allegedly renounced terrorism and had requested to meet the prince in order to repent and then be accepted into the kingdom’s amnesty program. Such surrenders are not unprecedented — and they serve as great press events for the kingdom’s ideological battle against jihadists. Prince Mohammed, who is responsible for the Saudi rehabilitation program for militants, is a key figure in that ideological battle.
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After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with (Saudi) Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.
A video posted on YouTube appears to show a New Jersey elementary school class being taught to sing praises of the "great accomplishments" of President Obama.
The video shows nearly 20 young children taught a song overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for "Barack Hussein Obama," repeatedly chanting the president's name and celebrating his accomplishments, including his "great plans" to "make this country's economy No. 1 again."
Children sing songs praising President Obama's "great accomplishments"
in a video that was reportedly made in a New Jersey elementary school.
The video identifies the kids as students at the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, N.J., with taping taking place last June.
The song quotes directly from the spiritual "Jesus Loves the Little Children," though Jesus' name is replaced with Obama's: "He said red, yellow, black or white/All are equal in his sight. Barack Hussein Obama."
Among other lyrics, touting a fair-pay bill Obama signed in January: "He said we must be clear today/Equal work means equal pay."
Click here to see the video.
The author of the full lyrics is unknown, but a woman -- possibly a teacher -- can be heard in the beginning of the video correcting and helping a student who has forgotten the words.
Click here to see the full lyrics to both songs.
The office of the superintendent of Burlington Township School District did not provide comment or confirmation to FOXNews.com that the songs were recorded at B. Bernice Young Elementary when contacted by phone Thursday.
The video was originally posted Sept. 6, two days before Obama made an address to the nation's schoolchildren in which he praised the American education system as the best in the world and urged students to stay in school.
"At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world," Obama said.


Sarah Palin Saturday Double-Header
As some have probably noticed, watching the media wear themselves out barking and snapping at the end of their chain at Sarah Palin has become a rather good spectator sport. Sometimes I play sportscaster here, for the amusement of those who enjoy the sport. Palin has become something of a morality play about the downfall of the Left, and that's good clean fun.
So it is today. We had a double-header last Saturday, one a simple demonstration of character and the other a morality play about political deftness and stupidity, but both breathtaking in their own way. The latter is particularly interesting, juxtaposed as it is beside one particular political folly of the Obama administration. Or, maybe that one is about character too. Maybe they're both connected. You, sportsfans, will have to decide.
Act I: The Anti-Gillibrand
The warm-up game is simply told: Sarah Palin gave a speech on Second Amendment Rights at a meeting of the Alaska Gun Collectors Association. The dinosaur media was quiet as a grave about this, which is interesting--why not take the opportunity to underline the talking point that she's a gun-nut extremist? I mean--*collecting*?
What kept them too busy to take a swipe at their favorite victim? We'll see in Act II. But this particular episode of the ongoing national morality play appears to be about character--simple honesty and loyalty. It's best seen as the opposite of Freshman senator Gillibrand, who seems to have been extra busy shedding her gun-rights connections as fast as Carolyn McCarthy can tell her to. Why not? If you have to run over the whole state of NY, which in practice means anti-gun fortress New York City, it's the sensible thing to do.
Except--some people, non-politicians to be sure, might think that dishonest. In any rate, Sarah Palin having chosen to step onto the national stage from the Frozen wastelands of the North, seems to be choosing the opposite. I'm sure any political consultant would have told her to moderate her views, but perhaps this is simply an example of good political instincts: she could never shed the image of a gun-nut, not in the face of a homicidally insane dinosaur media. The Health Care bill is struggling over the problem of trying to please too many at one time--perhaps there is political wisdom in "dancing with the one that brung ya." It is certain that she could never earn the trust of anti-gun voters, so why risk losing the gunnies for nothing?
Or, it might not be political instincts. It might be that other thing, that outdated idea from Classical Ethics that you should be willing to suffer the consequences of being right and not be ashamed of what you believe and where you came from. Either way, it fairly takes the breath away: a politician deliberately and unabashedly going to a gun-collector function, speaking on Second Amendment rights, and accepting an NRA award. It is so flagrant a violation of the political rule of avoiding controversy and giving offense to anyone that it almost looks like a deliberate invitation to the media to attack.
But it most assuredly means this: Sarah Palin is not going to run away from gunnies for political purposes--she appears to be the anti-Gillibrand. Now, she cannot be the most pro-gun politician in American history; that history includes presidents like Jefferson, who told us that the great object is that every man be armed, Grant, a president of the NRA, and Kennedy, who said we should strive to again be a nation of riflemen. It would hardly be possible to be more pro-gun than the founding generation. But at this point, Sarah Palin may be the most pro-gun politician alive. At any rate, one would have to go outside the main party structure to the likes of Ron Paul to find a serious competitor.
But returning to the other suggestion: why would she invite the media to attack her? Why wave the red flag? Well, I don't really think she did--it would be consistent with her behavior to simply do what she likes and disregard the opinions of detractors. I think that's the real Sarah Palin, and a breathtaking level of disregard she has, too. But that very disregard seems to be at the heart of the Left's terminal case of Palin Derangement. They are the Philosopher Kings. She does not give deference. In Plato's Republic, that is a fatal error. They aren't that far yet, but their hatred of her shows how far they're willing to go in the name of hate and injured pride.
More than one ethical tradition names Pride as a particularly effective path to destruction. The Western tradition receives it from both parents--it is Homozygous for it, you might say. The Hebrews told us that Pride goes before a Fall. The Greeks said that those the Gods would destroy they first made proud. And the apostles told their Greek converts that Pride was the Original Sin. So Pride doesn't play well in that tradition. This first act in Saturday's Palin Play illustrates the source of the wounded pride of the Left; a Little Person, worse an *uneducated* person (which has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with ideological certification) refuses to genuflect, and so spectacularly that the Philosopher Kings must crush her not as an opponent, but as a traitor who commits lese majeste. Not for practical reasons, but furiously, incoherently. And, perhaps in the terror that makes men lash out at shadows.
That bring us to Act II, on the theme of Pride and Fall.
The feature game was a bit different; the blogosphere went looking for a lamb and got torn to shreds by a lion. And we can learn a few things by how that happened.
The anti-Palin bloggers seem to have felt a distinct lack of Palin news, and perhaps despairing for a reason to get out of bed in the morning decided to just make some up. OK, well, outright lying is a normal day in the blogosphere, but you'd think they'd have learned back when they lied about the parentage of her baby and all the rest. However, you'd be wrong. Rational people learn from experience, and on the subject of Sarah Palin they are not only not rational, they are stark-staring mad. So like moths to a candle, they returned to her family life, which seems to exercise an unholy power over them. The lie this time was that she and Todd were breaking up.
What's the origin of this dark obsession with family life, so strong that it makes them lack even the human decency that prompted Barak Obama to say that family is off-limits? I think it lies in the sexual mythology of the left. There are many influences there, of course, some contradictory. A powerful one is the Radical Feminist theory that all sex is an exploitative exercise of power over another. There are few traditionalists as prudish as a certain kind of Feminist, as Camille Paglia is not shy to point out. A more popular variant is that it is any vestige of traditional marriage that is exploitative. This is nearly universal; repeated over and over again until it is not even a conscious meme is that the Right has cold, passionless, sterile relationships.
Now, the problem with Sarah Palin is that she threatens that idea; pretty much nobody believes she's one of the asexual women the left has so often put up for election. Worse is the dirty little secret that most of the left's iconic women got where they are because of a man (Hillary is a public figure because of Bill, and the list is astonishingly long from there), while Sarah Palin is genuinely, unquestionably self-made; Todd Palin is not a politician and leans toward the Alaska independence party.
So the other meme is invoked, one that comes from a bizzarely Leftist version of the Victorian woman: a female Conservative who isn't frigid is a slut. This is the constant theme running throughout all of the unseemly coverage of Palin's family. But you might have thought it might them from walking into the trap that the Divorce Lie led them into.
Perhaps the problem is that the left's theory about asexual marriages is in fact true in their experience? Bill Clinton, at least, might agree. And so, somehow, they didn't anticipate the political masterstroke that came when someone finally ran down an apparently bemused Sarah Palin and asked her about the whole thing. Perhaps it's because they'd spent so much time lying about the Palins that they drank their own kool-aid. Or, perhaps it's because we don't ever seem to see public figures who really appear to like their spouses. Perhaps they expected yet another of those polite, ham-fisted denials that never, ever work. Perhaps they expected that they could keep this game going for weeks, enjoying the ever-more-strident and ever-less-believable public denials. Instead, what they got their heads handed to them on a platter:That may be the most brilliant line we'll see for a long time. Denials never work; we've seen that time and time again that "I love my wife/husband" does nothing to stop the rumors. So what she said was different, something we simply have not heard from a politician and above all a female politician: she said, in essence, "I think my husband is hot."Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarah PalinDivorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I'm not blind!
And that brings us to one of the most interesting, politically incendary things about Sarah Palin: she likes men. Thanks to the Cultural Revolutionaries of the left, we now have a culture that hates men. Television is drowning in the dual image of men as either castrated or evil. Sarah Palin threatens that image, above all because she seems to genuinely like men as men. Being the husband of the governor is almost certain to be the most castrating job in Alaska--unless you happen to be a multiple Iron Dog champion and fishing-boat skipper. At that point, you can wear a unitard and still be manly. And that, it seems, is the kind of man Sarah Palin likes.
Name me *one* woman on the left happily, unapologetically married to a similar man.
I've said before that this is another aspect of Sarah Palin that is endlessly threatening to the left. It isn't primarily women that she attracts--its men. And not because of the left's smear that she looks like a "slutty flight attendent," a sexist pig attitude that they've spread as far as they can. It's because she likes them and doesn't tell them they should be castrated for the good of society.
My guess is that, push come to shove, quite a few of them would die for her. Nothing threatens the left as much as a woman who commands respect because she gives it. If that sort of thing became common, the left would have no gender-theory left. And that's my guess as to why they'll never be able to avoid walking into that kind of trap; because they simply can't imagine what a strong, self-made woman who likes men and chooses to surround herself with them and their environment instead of blaming them for her own shortcomings would think like.
They're right to fear her like the devil. Even moderate and left-leaning men tend to appreciate not being blamed for everything. She has to be stopped and neutralized lest too many of them start to like being treated like men instead of half-domesticated animals. They might enjoy an environment without hate.
And that's the bases-loaded home run that ended Saturday's double-header. Until next time, your humble sportscaster remains....
7x57
| In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband." "I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?" "Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. "I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her." |

They carry guns
By Rosa Jurjevics | Published Wednesday, July 15, 2009
It’s a beautiful day in Pacific Beach as Nate approaches the bronze pelican statue on the boardwalk. He’s slight and blond, spectacled and clad in jeans and an army-green T-shirt. He squints. The sun’s so bright overhead that he is prompted to spray a fine mist of sunblock over his fair skin to stave off a burn.
I’ve never met Nate before, but I know it’s him (a) because I’ve seen his picture and (b) due to the handgun that sits on a holster against his hip. I’m about to get up from where I’m sitting and introduce myself when someone else beats me to the punch. A scraggly-looking beachgoer, a man of indeterminable age because he is so weather-beaten, approaches.
“What’s that for, bro?” he asks, pointing in the direction of Nate’s gun, a Taurus Tracker .44 Magnum revolver.
Before Nate can answer, the man continues.
“There are surfers at the beach looking to party, and you show up with that? That’s not right. Love life! Be mellow!”
This is when I walk up and introduce myself. The beachgoer looks at me for a moment with wild blue eyes, then looks back at Nate, as Nate is beginning to explain what he will have to reiterate time and time again to concerned and/or interested parties: he is open carrying.
The term “open carrying” refers to one who is in possession of a holstered, unloaded firearm on his or her person, displayed in plain view. Nate begins to explain the legalities of this to the beachgoer when Sean approaches, video camera in tow. In shades, a green shirt with double-breast pockets, green cargo pants, and a Sig Sauer P229 holstered on his hip, Sean looks not unlike a police officer.
The beachgoer does a double take.
“Another one!” he exclaims, as Sean greets us warmly.
The beachgoer, incredulous, excuses himself — with one final stare — to go “get baked.”
| The Joyce Foundation's last grant to Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence occurred in 2004, in the amount of $200,000, and was earmarked as a two year grant "for continued support of its efforts as a statewide resource on gun violence prevention, and to build its organizational funding and membership base". Hoover paid nearly half of that to herself, and at the end of the two years, had nothing to show for herself as far as achieving either one of the goals the Joyce Foundation set out for her. |
Gun control group disbands after losing funding
Monday, July 6, 2009, 8:50 AM
By Pat Curtis
An Iowa group once active in lobbying for gun control has disbanded after losing a major grant. The November 1st coalition began after the November 1, 1991 shootings on the University of Iowa campus and was later renamed Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence.
U-I professor Rex Honey served on the board of directors and hopes to revive the group. "I will try in autumn to get some students involved at the University of Iowa, given that the campus was what started our organization in the first place," Honey said. "So, it's not that we don't think there's an issue any longer."No more money...Honey?
Honey says most recently the group has relied on volunteers to lobby the legislature. "There was a grant with the Joyce foundation for a period of close to a decade from the mid 90s well into this decade, and that funding did end," Honey said.
"That meant we could no longer hire staff, so everything was done on a volunteer basis." The organization recently helped stop a bill to loosen restrictions on county officials who issue gun permits.
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On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on the 2nd Amendment which reinforces every American's right to bear arms, this show is a fly on the wall at "The Shootist" gun store in Englewood, Colorado, where salesman Josh Ryan is always in full-on pitch mode -- and the steady stream of customers never stops. And for every gun sold by this expert gunslinger at this family-owned store, there's a fascinating story and a fascinating buyer to tell it to him: the new parent who wants to protect his family; the teenager who's an expert hunter; the 30-something woman who feels a little more at ease with a revolver in her purse and the avid collector who simply has a fascination with guns of all kinds. There's even a shooting range in the basement to try out the merchandise before completing the sale. The show will debut in 2009.



The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.
Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.
Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.
The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.
The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.
In the decade following the party's election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million - or more than two every minute.
The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:
The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.
But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.
In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.
The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a damning indictment of this government's comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.
'We're now on our fourth Home Secretary this parliament, and all we are getting is a rehash of old initiatives that didn't work the first time round. More than ever Britain needs a change of direction.'
The figures, compiled by the Tories, are considered the most accurate and up-to-date available.
But criminologists say crime figures can be affected by many factors, including different criminal justice systems and differences in how crime is reported and measured.
In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured.
There are also degrees of violence. While the UK ranks above South Africa for all violent crime, South Africans suffer more than 20,000 murders each year - compared with Britain's 921 in 2007.
Experts say there are a number of reasons why violence is soaring in the UK. These include Labour's decision to relax the licensing laws to allow round-the-clock opening, which has led to a rise in the number of serious assaults taking place in the early hours of the morning.
But Police Minister David Hanson said: 'These figures are misleading.
Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime.
'Violent crime in England and Wales has fallen by almost a half a peak in 1995 but we are not complacent and know there is still work to do. That is why last year we published 'Saving lives. Reducing harm. Protecting the public. An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11'.'
The timing of the Europe-wide violence figures is a blow for Mr Johnson, who will today seek to reassert Labour's law and order credentials.
In his first major speech on crime since becoming Home Secretary, Mr Johnson is expected to promise a concerted crack down on antisocial behaviour.
He wants to set up a website to allow the public to see what is taking place in their neighbourhood, such as the number of louts who have been served with Asbos.
Mr Johnson is also known to support early intervention to stop children going off the rails.
























Washington, D.C. - Ray Schoenke, the President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), expressed support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Nominee. Schoenke made the endorsement in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
After sending the letter, Schoenke stated, “As with most issues involving the Second Amendment, concerns about Sotomayor are being stoked by groups who benefit financially from the politics of fear.
Elliot Firby says he decided to get a gun as a way to protect himself and his family. He says law enforcement can't be there all the time. Turns out he wouldn't even have the gun a year before it would be used.