It All Depends On The Hosing

Reports from Japan:

Japan: Reactor "relatively stable" after hosing
Reports: After 7-hour water-pumping operation, temperatures at Fukushima nuke plant reactors lower than initially feared

In the ongoing battle to prevent meltdown, there may be signs of hope after a seven-hour operation by Japan's Self Defense Force to spray the damaged Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima Dai-ichi with over 40,000 gallons of water.

Reports from America:

USA: Citizens Incensed By Two Years Of Hosing by the Obama Administration
Reports: After years of pumping good money after bad down the crapper, the electorates' temperature throughout the Country is much higher than originally feared.

In the ongoing battle to prevent complete financial meltdown. there may be signs of hope after the Republican controlled Congress agreed to reduce the national debt, spraying cold water on Democrats' plans for more deficit spending.

Anglican Imam?

Muslims are burning churches in Egypt and Ethiopia. Muslims are killing Christian converts in Pakistan. Because of terror/murder, most Christians abandoned Lebanon which at one time was 75% Christian. For the same reason Christians are abandoning Iraq.

And this man decides to abandon his religion and follow Allah for Lent.

The Rev. Steve Lawler should have just given up chocolate or television for Lent.

Instead, Lawler, of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Ferguson, decided to adopt the rituals of Islam for 40 days to gain a deeper understanding of the faith.

On Friday, he faced being defrocked if he continued in those endeavors.

"He can't be both a Christian and a Muslim," said Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri. "If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church."

Lawler, a part-time rector at the church, didn't foresee such problems when he came up with the idea. He merely wanted to learn more about Islam, he said, especially in light of the ongoing congressional hearings on the radicalization of the faith.

On Wednesday, the first day of Lent, he began performing salah five times a day, by facing east, toward Mecca, and praying to Allah. He also started studying the Quran and following Islamic dietary restrictions by abstaining from alcohol, pork and fish.

But why stop here? Lawler could practice all kinds of religions during the Lenten season. Next year he can worship Baal and sacrifice infants by tossing them into a furnace. In the years to follow there's Zeus, Odin, Ohrmazd, Nammu, Dagon, Horus, Buddha, Brahma - just to name a few.

I do not understand such thinking. His belief must be on pretty shaky ground if he thinks the observance of idolatry pleases the God of Abraham and Isaac. A holy, righteous God cares neither for political correctness nor vain observances. In John 14:15 Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" and no where in the Old or New Testament does this include waving your ass in the air five times a day.

A Portent?

A New Jersey school district is closing an elementary school named after the President.

ASBURY PARK — The state fiscal monitor who oversees financial operations in the school district Thursday morning ordered the closing of the Barack H. Obama Elementary School as of July 1.

Students next year will go to the district's two other more modern elementary schools -- Thurgood Marshall on the east side and Bradley on the west side.

Bruce Rodman, the monitor, made the decision after the school board in recent weeks failed to support a plan by Schools Superintendent Denise Lowe to reconfigure elementary grades to create early childhood learning centers in the district, a plan which would have kept the Obama school open.

Eerily prescient, the school is being shut down because of someone's poor performance and/or incompetence. Barack Obama Elementary School - FAIL.

Even better, the last name of the person who ordered the closing is "Rodman."

Oh, this is precious.

Guilty, M'Lud

SEDITIOUS LIBEL:  Written or spoken words, pictures, signs, or other forms of communication that tend to defame, discredit, criticise, impugn, embarrass, challenge, or question the government, its policies, or its officials; speech that advocates the overthrow of the government by force or violence or that incites people to change the government by unlawful means.

In 2009 the government repealed the law of seditious libel which dated from the 15thC Star Chamber. Despite that symbol of the misuse and abuse of power by the English monarchy and courts being abolished in 1641, the laws for seditious libel lingered on.  It was this law which saw Thomas Paine flee England in 1792 when he was outlawed for treason following the the publication of  The Rights of Man

The abolition was hailed as a victory for free speech by many supporters who hoped the action would lead by example and sweep across Europe and the world.  Fat chance!  Talk about delusions of influence.

I blogged about THIS at the time though I've been unable to find an update on what happened to the man and whether he was convicted or not. French laws passed in 2003 make it an offence to insult the national flag or anthem, with a penalty of a maximum £6,000 fine or up to 6 months imprisonment. There are also laws against "offending against the dignity of the Republic" include insulting anyone who serves the public.

Germany goes even further:

"Whoever removes, destroys, damages, renders unusable or unrecognizable, or commits insulting mischief upon a publicly displayed flag of the Federal Republic of Germany or one of its Lands or a national emblem installed by a public authority of the Federal Republic of Germany or one of its Lands shall be similarly punished. An attempt shall be punishable."

(As an aside, this means that under the European Arrest Warrant if you insult/burn the flag of France or Germany on a London street you could theoretically be extradited to face charges. )

The Lisbon Treaty famously removed reference to an EU flag, national anthem and slogan (that's the "Unity Through Diversity" twaddle) in order to distance itself from the Constitutional Treaty.  Anyone blogging through those times will remember that the removal lasted for an hour or four while the EC went out for a slap-up, taxpayer-funded lunch.  The clauses were very quickly and silently re-instated.

Cynic that I am I can only think that the Labour government caved in because it knew the EU had already made provision for seditious libel in the Lisbon Treaty.  I've said it before & no doubt I'll keep repeating myself - under the Lisbon Treaty it's an offence to 'insult' the flag, 'insult' one of its employees, 'insult' the anthem, 'insult' the institution itself, employees have immunity from prosecution for anything done or said during office (recently extended to employees of the European Central Bank and the European Monetary Institute), if they step out of line they lose their pensions.  There's even provision for the introduction of the death penalty 'in time of war' or during 'events leading up to' war, 'riots' or 'upheaval'.  The Treaty is an arduous read but it's enlightening if you have the time and the determination.

The Lisbon Treaty

One from my archives:  A 1649 Digger Pamphlet "We say, while we are made to hinder no man of his Priviledges given him in his Creation, equal to one, as to another; what Law then can you make, to take hold upon us, but Laws of Oppression and Tyranny, that shall enslave or spill the blood of the Innocent? And so your Selves, your Judges, Lawyers, and Justices, shall be found to be the greatest Transgressors, in, and over Mankinde."

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day,
that my child may have peace."
Thomas Paine

The Soft Racism Of Lowered Expectations

In a perfect world, how would you handle failing minority test scores?
Address educational deficiencies?
Help poorly performing students with tutors and other resources?
Identify systemic problems within the targeted population and work with community leaders to overcome them?

Get real. The teachers' unions, liberal administrators and the federal government are running the show. Simply lower the grades needed to pass the test. Make an "F" a "D" - an easy, instant fix. Soft racism is still racism. Are minorities incapable of obtaining good grades? Of course not, but don't tell the Justice Department that.

DAYTON — The city’s Civil Service Board and the U.S. Department of Justice have agreed on a lower passing score for the police recruit exam after it was rejected because not enough blacks passed the exam.

The city lowered both written exams a combined 15 points that resulted in 258 more people passing the exam, according to a statement released Thursday by Civil Service officials. The agreement allows the city to immediately resume its plans to hire police and firefighters.

The original passing scores determined by Civil Service required candidates to answer 57 of 86 (66 percent) questions correctly on one portion and 73 of 102 (72 percent) on the other. The lowered benchmark requires candidates to answer 50 of 86 (58 percent) questions correctly and 64 of 102 (63 percent) of questions on the other.

All this will do is increase the amount of work needed to piece together a proper police investigation. Poor sentence construction, the inability to capture the flow of events and draw logical conclusions can make a fairly simple prosecution nearly impossible to follow.

And from Bill O'Reilly: Dayton's test standards were already lowered in 2008 under President Bush.

If the standards get any lower the only qualifications needed to become a Dayton cop or fireman will be two armpits and a functioning butthole. And the Americans With Disabilities Act may prohibit discrimination for non-functioning buttholes.

A police report is a descriptive narrative; it has a beginning and an end. By time you are through reading it, you're supposed to have a clear idea of what transpired: who did what to whom, how, why, where and when it happened. Even in the more modern departments where reports are filed on line there is still the need for a narrative that can be easily understood.


The devil is in the details; and if the details aren't there, the devil walks out of the station scot free. I have seen hundreds of cases thrown out by judges because of simple errors in accusatory instrument templates where a single element of a crime is omitted. I have listened to criminal prosecutors scream at cops during in-service training sessions because of deficient paperwork that is never corrected.

You don't want cops who have trouble writing a simple report.
Of course there's the other extreme.


More here.

Millionaire Slaves Of The NFL

Adrian Peterson
- Slave -

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson compared NFL owners' treatment of players to "modern-day slavery," according to an online interview published Tuesday by Yahoo! Sports.

Yahoo's Doug Farrar, who conducted the interview Friday with Peterson, removed that comment from the story later Tuesday, explaining on Twitter that he wants to give Peterson the chance to provide context.

Peterson, who is known to be thoughtful when speaking with the local media in Minnesota, is in Africa with other NFL players on a goodwill trip and unavailable for immediate comment.

Adrian Peterson
- Picking his way through high cotton -

There is real slavery in the world. Arabs in the Sudan have been capturing and trading slaves for years. Perhaps Peterson could stop by while he is in Africa and explain to the tens of thousands of Sudanese slaves how badly he is treated by his slave masters in the USA.

Peterson will make almost $11 million this year.

Adrian Peterson

- His Filthy, Squalid Slave Quarters -

Peterson graduated from the University of Oklahoma.

Obviously he did not major in Communications or History.

More here.

GE - We Bring Good Things, You Buy Them ... And They Kill You

Apparently three General Electric scientists who helped develop the reactors at the failing Fukushima nuclear facility resigned in protest over what they perceived as poor reactor design. From ABC News:

Thirty-five years ago, Dale G. Bridenbaugh and two of his colleagues at General Electric resigned from their jobs after becoming increasingly convinced that the nuclear reactor design they were reviewing -- the Mark 1 -- was so flawed it could lead to a devastating accident.

The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant is so fluid that it may be days or even weeks before anyone knows how the Mark 1 containment system performed in the face of an unthinkable combination of natural disasters. Questions persisted for decades about the ability of the Mark 1 to handle the immense pressures that would result if the reactor lost cooling power, and today that design is being put to the ultimate test in Japan. Five of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which has been wracked since Friday's earthquake with explosions and radiation leaks, are Mark 1s.

GE insists that modifications to strengthen the containment structures have been made. Somehow I doubt that the Japanese are very comforted by that statement. North central Japan looks like a cheap motel where Godzilla threw a frat party.
Japan's population is less than 1% Christian but they truly need all the prayers of Christendom right now.

Shareholders Beware

The government and the United Auto Workers union are the owner/operators of General Motors. That means whatever profits are realized will be shunted to these folks and the people who have invested their money into this corporation are left holding an empty seat belt.

So if you're a GM stockholder, what can you do? Jonathan Hoenig of the WSJ has a suggestion:

Late last week I traded General Motors ( GM: 31.93, +0.51, +1.62% ) ' stock one penny off the lowest price in its history. But I wasn't buying hoping for a rebound. I was selling it short, looking for a collapse, and I'm holding that position today.

It might seem somewhat counterintuitive. Not only was the stock at an all-time low, but the company recently announced a $4.7 billion profit , its biggest in a decade. Some 45,000 union workers will receive profit-sharing payments averaging $4,300 – a record.

And on that very same day, shares of the company slid below their IPO price of $33 for the first time, a vitally important fact overlooked by most of the enthusiastic media reports. The New York Times didn't mention it in their story until paragraph 15.

This is crazy, public funds are used to rejuvenate the operations and pension funds of a private corporation and then the future recipients of those pensions are treated to a bonus while the taxpayers are left hanging on the line.

[...]If there was ever a stock that makes people emotional , it's General Motors. Either the company is the backbone of the American working man or the poster child for bad business practices. In many ways it's like discussing abortion or gun control. Minds are made up, and opinions will not be swayed.

That emotion, of course, is only exacerbated by the fact that GM received a $50 billion bailout from the Federal Government, an intervention that left taxpayers the largest shareholders, still owning 26.5% of an extremely weak stock. For the government to break even, shares will have to hit an estimated $53 – up 64% from current prices.

General Motors - adios GTO, hola P.U.M.A.

Racial Tension In Midsomer

The co-creator and executive producer of Midsomer Murders has been suspended after saying the fictional village it showcases is "the last bastion of Englishness". An ITV spokesman said:

"We are shocked and appalled at these personal comments by Brian True-May which are absolutely not shared by anyone at ITV. We are in urgent discussions with All3Media, the producer of Midsomer Murders, who have informed us that they have launched an immediate investigation into the matter and have suspended Mr True-May pending the outcome."

I don't watch much tv, save the odd comedy (in which category I include the likes of Question Time), so MM isn't on my radar.  I thought it was a day-time programme but, according to the article, it's a Sunday night staple for millions of people.  White, English people that is.

The director of the left-leaning race equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, has weighed in with:

"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a reflection of our society - particularly to this show's large international audience. It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them." 

The show obviously has something going for it; it's been running for fourteen years, retains an apparently devoted following and has been sold to 231 countries around the world.  The over-reaction from ITV and the hissy-fits from the Runnymede Trust are typical of the sanctimonious twaddle and interference we endure in this country.  It doesn't seem to bother the Scots or the Welsh so why does it always seem to be Englishness and the English culture under attack?

We're bombarded with lifestyle placement programmes and reality tv showing the scummy, seamy side of life but MM is tv's equivalent of comfort eating; it's an afternoon cream tea and the thwack-on-willow of village green cricket.  It's as far removed from the likes of EastEnders as one could possibly imagine.and if I were a fictional tv character I know where I'd rather live.  In fact, there's only one thing I can say:  I'm shocked and appalled.

Source

Calling England

Destruction Du Jour

There is too much heartbreak in the world. Through the marvel of modern telecommunications we see so many appalling images that we become desensitized to the suffering of other humans. It wasn't always so.

Last week's earthquake and tsunami has visited destruction on northern Japan not been seen since the Second World War. If you have not personally experienced this kind of horror, I imagine that words and pictures cannot do justice to the reality.

For Older Japanese, Tsunami’s Carnage Evokes WWII Horrors

NATORI, Japan — Hirosato Wako stared at the ruins of her small fishing hamlet: skeletons of shattered buildings, twisted lengths of corrugated steel, corpses with their hands twisted into claws. Only once before had she seen anything like it: World War II.

“I lived through the Sendai air raids and have seen this before,” Ms. Wako, 75, said, referring to the Allied bombings of the northeast’s largest city. “But this is much worse.”

For the elderly who make up a large percentage of the villages littering Japan’s northeastern coast, it is a return to a past of privation that their children and grandchildren have never known. As in so much of the Japanese countryside, young people have largely fled this area, looking for work in the city. Those who remained are confronting the deaths of friends and family members, the destruction of their homes and towns and a worsening threat of radiation contamination. It is a daunting task, equaled only by the one the oldest generation faced when its defeated, despairing nation had to rebuild from the rubble of World War II.

The Fukushima reactor expodes.

There is another side to this story - where are the Japanese looters?

NATCHITOCHES, La. — March 14, 2011 - The absence of looting in Japan has taken many western observers by surprise.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans experienced looting on a scale that astonished even American cynics. After last year's earthquake, the looting in Chile was serious enough to require military intervention.

There was looting in Haiti after its earthquake last year and in England during the 2007 floods.

So far, though, there is no looting reported from Japan

High Dive Into A Shallow Gene Pool

There are many issues surrounding the conflict of culture between western civilization and Islam. Westerners wonder at the volatility of the Muslim street and the blind, vicious, unreasoning nature of Islamic vengence over trival or non-existent offenses. Perhaps it's because they're keeping their squirrels on a short leash.

This is a 2008 article from the Daily Mail:

Minister: Muslim 'inbreeding' in Britain is causing massive surge in birth defects

Referring to the culture of Muslim arranged marriages between cousins, environment minister Phil Woolas said: "If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there'll be a genetic problem."

Mr Woolas, whose views were supported today by medical experts, said the practice did not extend to all Muslim communities and that most cases occur in families from rural Pakistan, where up to half of all marriages are thought to involve first cousins.

According to today's Sunday Times, the minister, who represents Oldham East and Saddleworth said: "If you talk to any primary care worker they will tell you that levels of disability among the . . . Pakistani population are higher than the general population. And everybody knows it's caused by first cousin marriage.

Pakistan, the West Virginia of the Ummah, where there is no difference between the family tree and a telephone pole.

Massive inbreeding among Muslims has been going on since their prophet allowed first-cousin marriages more than 50 generations (1,400 years) ago. For many Muslims, therefore, intermarriage is regarded as being part of their religion. In many Muslim communities, it is a source of social status to marry one’s daughter or son to his or her cousin. Intermarriage also ensures that wealth is kept within the family. Islam’s strict authoritarianism plays a large role as well: keeping daughters and sons close gives families more power to control and decide their choices and lifestyles.

And if the daughters refuse to obey? Well, that's why Allah created automatic transmissions.

[...]Today, 70 percent of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants“). A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage

So while you are looking at the people rioting in Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya, bear in mind that there may be a very good reason why God has allowed them to be ruled by strict autocrats for all these years. In some respects the differences between a tyrant and the director of an insane asylum may be slim.

Also at Pajamas Media.

Haiku

I see you driving

round town with the girl I love

and I'm like, haiku.