The Chevy Volt

Well she got her daddy’s Volt
And she drove it 'til the battery's dead now.
Seems she forgot all about the warnings
General Motors told her old man now.
And with the Volt pulled in the outlet
She’s charging just as fast as she can now.

And she’ll use the fire insurance fund
When the Volt's electrics turn into Flambé!!

Well the fire department's rolling
'Cause another Volt burst into flames now
(Burst into flames now, burst into flames)
It makes the Great Chicago Fire look like a Roman candle's glow now
(Looks like a candle, looks like a candle)
A lotta firemen try to douse it
But it looks like her goose is cooked now
(The Volt cooked your goose now, the Volt cooked your goose)

And she’ll use the fire insurance fund
When the Volt's electrics turn into Flambé!!
(Fire insurance fund 'cause the Volt's electrics turned into Flambé)


H/T to iOTW

Gender Integration - Is It Worth It?

Here's two stories about the disruptive presence of women on navy warships, the USS  Cowpens and the HMS Portland.

The USS Cowpens:

An ill Navy skipper allegedly shirked his duties by holing up in his cabin on a San Diego-based cruiser for weeks on end — effectively leaving his crew leaderless.

Capt. Gregory W. Gombert was also having an inappropriate relationship with the warship's acting executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Destiny Savage, according to a recent Navy investigation.

The "unduly familiar" relationship disturbed much of the USS Cowpens' 330-member crew, authorities said.

The results of the investigation, which were reported in U-T San Diego, show that Gombert's ailments should not have prevented him from leading the ship from early January until March.

"The violations revealed by the investigation, especially the blatant abdication of command responsibility on the part of the (commanding officer), are among the most egregious I have encountered in my 32-year career," wrote Vice Adm. Tom Copeman, who is in charge of the Navy's Pacific surface ships.

The HMS Portland:

The first female commander of a Royal Navy warship has been sent home after allegedly having an affair with another officer.

Commander Sarah West, 42, took charge of the frigate HMS Portland in May 2012, but has been sent home from duty after claims she was having a relationship with a male officer on the same ship.

This would breach the Armed Forces’ Code of Social Conduct, which prohibits personnel from having relationships with subordinates if they compromise ‘operational effectiveness’.

While the Royal Navy is investigating the affair, Cdr West, from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, retains her position as commander of HMS Portland.

It is not known whether the male officer is married.

Cdr West recently described herself as ‘single’, having been married to a former Royal Navy pilot in 1998. The pair later separated.

A Royal Navy spokesman said last night: ‘We are aware of an allegation of a breach of the Code of Social Conduct on board HMS Portland, which we are treating seriously.

‘Anyone who is found to fall short of the Royal Navy’s high standards can expect to face appropriate action. It would be inappropriate to comment further.’

Earlier this year, Cdr West said work commitments had got in the way of her love life.

She said in a newspaper interview: ‘I’m really proud to be the first woman but I’m not reinventing the wheel. Lots of women in the services have challenging roles. It’s just that I happen to be newsworthy at the moment.

Sure, it takes two to tango, I am fully and completely cognizant of that. After forty years in law enforcement I realize that people misbehave all the time. But this comment by an alleged female naval officer (Cassidy, A.) drives me nuts:

Women have served on naval ships officially since 1978. We are approaching 40 years of women in the sea services – there is not a person serving on active duty today who remembers a time when women were not on ships. Women on ships are not sirens out to get the left-behind wives’ well-meaning men (see my previous description of my daily appearance). We’re there to work and serve the public according to a deeply felt personal calling.

That said, yes, there are the anecdotes of ill-behaved adults on ships, but adults act badly in doctors’ offices, high rise buildings, teachers’ lounges and other workplaces, too.

A warship is not a doctor's office or a dentist's office or a school. I could care less if the dentist is diddling his hygienist, or if a doctor is banging the receptionist or if the school principal is humping the home economics teacher.

Why don't I care? Because none of these people are entrusted with national security. The lives of scores, perhaps hundreds of personnel are not in the balance if they are distracted by emotional issues prompted by unprofessional attachments.

I don't care if a receptionist is in a pissy mood because she'll never have to participate in the landing of a F/A-18 with bingo fuel on a heaving deck.

A hygienist will never be tasked with concentrating on a sonar return (is that a whale fart or a Russian ballistic sub oh I wanna kill that cheating sonamabitch).

A dentist won't be standing watch looking for small craft packed with explosives in an unfriendly port.

A school principal won't be guiding a tactical operation to land a squad of SEALs off the coast of a hostile nation.

Men will be men; a lot of young men make foolish decisions and a lot of guys are just selfish idiots. They can find enough trouble all on their lonesome without throwing females into the mix. Gender integration is nothing but a surrender to feminist (lesbian) demands to acknowledge their false claims that woman are just the same as men. They're not.

And let's touch on the subject of military pregnancies. It's a real problem.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Just over ten percent of women in the military said in 2008 they'd had an unintended pregnancy in the last year - a figure significantly higher than rates in the general public, according to a new study.

The findings come amid news that the Pentagon will lift the ban on women in front-line combat jobs starting in 2016.

"It does definitely have implications for troop readiness, ability to deploy (and) troops in combat missions if they are potentially at high risk for unintended pregnancy and pregnant women can't be deployed," said Dr. Vinita Goyal, who has studied unintended pregnancy in female veterans at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

[...]The rate of unintended pregnancy - 105 for every 1,000 women - was a small increase over the rate in 2005 of 97 per 1,000 servicewomen. That figure is also 50 percent higher than rates of unintended pregnancy among similarly aged women in the general, non-military public. [Emphasis mine ~ sig94]

"Clearly unintended pregnancy is an important public health problem for everyone. It seems particularly important for the military population because obviously it can disrupt a woman's career," Grossman said.

And this really drives me up a wall. This idiot Goyal is more concerned about the implications of an unintended pregnancy on a woman's career rather than the combat readiness of our nation's armed forces.

I got a career enhancing solution for ya - keep your knees together!

Obama Is Channeling Clinton

From the WashPost:

While U.S. airstrikes and drops of supplies may prevent the terrorist forces from massacring the Yazidi sect or toppling the pro-Western regime in Kurdistan, Mr. Obama lacks a plausible plan for addressing the larger threat posed by the Islamic State. In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials have described the danger in hair-curling terms: The Islamic State forces, which have captured large numbers of U.S.-supplied heavy weapons, threaten not only the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, but also Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. With hundreds of Western recruits, they have the ambition and capability to launch attacks against targets in Europe and the United States.

Well, I guess the Obama administration will worry about that when it happens. Or not.

For now, let's bomb an aspirin factory or two and let it go.

Urkel Bombs Erbil

AN F-18 drops guided munitions

We're back in the game?

The United States dropped laser-guided bombs on ISIS artillery in Iraq on Friday, the Pentagon said — the beginning of airstrikes threatened a day earlier by President Barack Obama.

The bombs, 500 pounds each, were dropped by two Navy F-18 fighter jets near Erbil, the strategically important city that serves as the Kurdish capital, and where the United States has a consulate. ISIS was using the artillery to shell Kurdish forces defending Erbil, the Pentagon said.

 ISIL artillery is being used to kill and conquer Iraqi territory ...
Oh, nevermind, it's our artillery, it just does that automatically.

The strikes marked a return to U.S. military engagement in Iraq, three years after Obama removed U.S. forces.

Obama, in a speech Thursday night from the White House, said that he was authorizing airstrikes to protect American interests in Iraq and drops of food and water for tens of thousands of refugees trapped by ISIS on a mountain in Iraq.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday: “As the president made clear, the United States military will continue to take direct action against ISIL when they threaten our personnel and facilities.” ISIS and ISIL are acronyms to describe the same Islamic militant group.

Story here and here.

Just a thought - how did the ISIS manage to roll up the Iraqi army after years of US training?

Iraqi soldiers who fled ISIS advance accuse officers of treason
Iraqi soldiers deny abandoning their posts following ISIS advance

Erbil, Asharq Al-Awsat—Iraqi troops who fled the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters into Mosul have denied that they abandoned their posts, saying that they had received orders to flee from up the chain of command.

Another thought - firing an accurate artillery barrage is not like firing a rifle. It takes training and logistics. Where did these savages learn to fire sophisticated modern artillery?  (This link is interesting)

[...]there's been an influx of skilled Saddam-era military leaders and soldiers into ISIS' ranks. "When you look at some of the reports about the leadership under [ISIS commander Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi," Rosenblatt said, "those second-in-command guys have very strong ties to Saddam's army." Acquiring lots of weapons, money, and experience over the course of the Syrian war allowed them to translate that new training into real military effectiveness.

Just one more thought - What can slow the advance of ISIS forces? ISIS is now messing with the Kurds and the US may finally be rousing from its sleep.

[...]an unexpected military intervention by a third party. The semi-autonomous Kurdish area in northwest Iraq is adjacent to ISIS' stronghold. Their powerful military, which has already had small clashes with ISIS-aligned forces, could challenge ISIS. And who knows what effect a large-scale American air campaign against ISIS would have on the balance of power.

Unbelievable

“Obama has decimated the freakin’ Constitution, so I don’t give a damn. If he doesn’t follow the Constitution, we don’t have to.”

As a retired LEO, this truly freaks me out.

UPDATE: The cop resigned. 

Santa's Summer Job

On an August day hot and sweaty

I was nagged by my wife Betty

To mow the grass as it was getting rather long

As I am getting on in years

And of heat stroke I’m afeard

I decided to hire someone who was young and strong

Never did I expect

That the man I’d soon select

To mow the lawn would be a source of so much grief

But when he showed up the next day

With his lawn mower on his sleigh

He was clad in nothing more than a pair of briefs

“Dear Sir!” I proclaimed

“The way you’re dressed! Aren’t you ashamed?

You resemble a bandaid hugging a great big side of beef!

If you persist in cutting my grass

Your thong will slip and show your ass!”

But all he did was look at me in disbelief.

“Young man,” he said with sorrow

“If I may, I’d like to borrow

A more appropriate garb with which to do my work.”

I agreed to this simple task

And upon my return I asked

Why he was dressed like some kind of nudist jerk.

He said, “It all began in two thousand ten

With Obamacare and then

An EPA visit forced me to close my reindeer farms.

The IRS reduced me to tears

Saying I was heavily in tax arrears

And then OSHA grabbed me for having no fire alarms.”

“The elves all went on strike

Mrs. Claus ran off with some dyke

Dasher and Dancer were shot to death on Opening Day

Donner and Blitzen I had to eat

Prancer and Vixen – I jerked their meat

Comet and Cupid just up and ran away.”

“Rudolph’s the only one who's left

And for this I'm truly blessed

Because I need someone to help pull that heavy sled.

I’m severely overweight

And my girlfriend’s three weeks late

To tell the truth I think I’d be better off dead.”

I was silenced, I was humbled!

“Please forgive me Santa,” I mumbled

And I let him finish my lawn with no further delay

He was fast and he was good

And in fifteen minutes he stood

Loading his mower on the flat bed of his sleigh.

Once he lashed it to the deck

He wanted cash (wouldn’t take a check)

And he grabbed the reins and gave Rudolph a whistle

Then I heard him loudly exclaim

“Obama’s an asshole! He’s to blame!”

And he took off just like a guided missile.

Thanks to FoTM for the pic.

Ballard Of The Green Mountain Boys

We need this spirit today more than ever.

Ho--all to the borders! Vermonters, come down,
With your britches of deerskin and jackets of brown;
With your red woolen caps and your moccasins come,
To the gathering summons of trumpet and drum.
Come down with your rifle!
Let gray wolf and fox
Howl on in the shadow of primitive rocks;
Let bear feed securely from pig-pen and stall;
Here's two-legged game for your powder and ball.
Then cheer, cheer, the green mountaineer, then cheer, cheer the green mountaineer!

On the south came the Hessians, our land to police;
And armed for the battle while canting of peace;
On our east came the British, the red coated band
To hang up our leaders and eat up our land.
Ho--all to the rescue! For Satan shall work
No gain for the legions of Hampshire and York!
They claim our possessions--the pitiful knaves--
The tribute we pay shall be prisons and graves!
Then cheer, cheer, the green mountaineer, then cheer, cheer the green mountaineer!

We owe no allegiance, we bow to no throne,
Our ruler is law and the law is our own;
Our leaders themselves are our own fellow-men,
Who can handle the sword and the scythe and the pen
Hurrah for Vermont! For the land that we till
Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill
Our vow is recorded--our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!
Then cheer, cheer, the green mountaineer, then cheer, cheer the green mountaineer!

Lyrics by John Greenleaf Whittier
(1779)

RIP Gen. Harold Greene

US Army Major General Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was murdered yesterday by an Afghan soldier who allegedly passed a rigorous seven step vetting process. The soldier used a machine gun to kill Gen. Greene and wound fifteen other coalition soldiers.



The assassin was killed by other soldiers.

More here.

No Wonder The Mooslims And Rooskies Are Tearing The World A New Asshole

SecState John F'in Kerry takes the training wheels off his Strawberry Shortcake bikey

President Barack Obama competes in the Tour de ShortPants

Meanwhile Putin is buggering the Ukraine and the ISIL is lopping off heads in Syria and Iraq.

Cold Cases

Det. Giuseppe “Joe” Petrosino was a NYPD cop who was murdered by the mafia. The case was finally closed when Italian police arrested Domenico Palazzoto during a major organized crime bust that netted 95 mafioso's this weekend in Sicily.

Detective Petrosino was murdered in 1909.

In a wiretapped telephone conversation, Domenico Palazzoto boasted that a relative,  Paolo Palazzoto, was the trigger man in the assassination of  Det. Petrosino 105 years ago.

Det. Joe Petrosino

Police recordings caught one of the men arrested bragging that his relative was responsible for killing a top cop boasting, “My father’s uncle, whose name was Paolo Palazzotto, was responsible for the first policeman killed in Palermo. He murdered the first police officer to be killed in Palermo. He killed Joe Petrosino.” 

Domenico Palazzoto, a descendant of a mob boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Vito Cascio Ferro, is facing charges with his fellow mafiosos including extortion and association in a criminal network. 

Italian police said Palazzoto, 29, sealed his fate during that wiretapped conversation. “As evidence of his own more than 100-year mafia pedigree, guaranteed by his descent from Paolo Palazzotto, confirmed the murder as the work of his own relative,” the statement said, according to Bloomberg.

And the mutt is proud of it, boasting of a coward's action a hundred years later.

Story here.

Putin Is Not Our Problem

President Obama Negotiates with Russian President Putin

Herbert E. Meyer was the Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council during the Reagan administration. He has some common sense advice on how the US should handle President Putin.

From the American Thinker:

[...]Simply put, we should make clear to the Russian business executives and oligarchs who are the target of Western sanctions that Putin is their problem, not ours. These people may lack the spark of political genius or the high-minded patriotism that drove our country’s Founding Fathers -- but they aren’t stupid. It won’t be long before a bunch of them get together for a quiet conversation -- perhaps in a Moscow board room, more likely on a yacht anchored off the Cote d’Azur -- to, um, decide what might be best for Russia’s future.

Since subtlety doesn’t work with Russians, the president and his European counterparts should also make absolutely clear that we have no interest whatever in how these people solve their Putin problem. If they can talk good old Vladimir into leaving the Kremlin with full military honors and a 21-gun salute -- that would be fine with us. If Putin is too too stubborn to acknowledge that his career is over, and the only way to get him out of the Kremlin is feet-first, with a bullet hole in the back of his head -- that would also be okay with us.

Nor would we object to a bit of poetic justice.... For instance, if the next time Putin’s flying back to Moscow from yet another visit with his good friends in Cuba, or Venezuela, or Iran, his airplane gets blasted out of the sky by some murky para-military group that somehow, inexplicably, got its hands on a surface-to-air missile.

Just Do It

The IDF could take Nike's corporate motto to heart, but they won't.
From the Jerusalem Post:

‘We could have taken Gaza in a week, but that wasn't our mission,’ says senior IDF source

Had the IDF been ordered to, it could have seized the whole of the Gaza Strip in a week, and spent up to two years taking apart Hamas’s guerrilla army, but this has not been the goal of the operation thus far, a senior military source said Sunday.

“Had we been ordered to defeat Hamas, we would have done it. We would have drafted four divisions, evacuated the Gazan population from battlegrounds, conquered the area and scanned it thoroughly.

It would take a week to take Gaza, and up to two years to destroy terrorist infrastructure,” the source said.

In such a scenario, “A guerrilla war would have started. This was not the mission given to the IDF, and rightfully so,” the source said. “The IDF divided up Gaza dozens of times, most recently in Operation Cast Lead [in 2009]. Every brigade can do it. The question is, what is the aim?” The goal of the offensive was not to topple Hamas, but to create a better security environment for Israel, the source continued.

At the same time, he warned, “The IDF has a range of plans. We are prepared for everything.”

Sounds like the IDF has several exit plans for Gaza. Wish we had the same for Afghanistan.

Climate Games

Remember playing this as a child?

Cold, still cold. Colder. Colder. You're so cold! Now you're getting warmer. Warmer still. Warmer. Hot! Hotter! You're so Hot!

Or this game in the pool?

Marco? Colder!

It's a freaking game with these climate alarmists. For over one hundred years the media has been reporting the impending ice age. No wait, the ice caps are melting! No, the ice caps are growing!

It's always disaster lurking just around the corner. Either we're all gonna drown or freeze.

Read some of the following headlines from long ago...

New York Times Feb 24, 1895 page 6

New York Times June 10, 1923 Amusements page 3

New York Times Feb. 15, 1959 pg. 112,

New York Times Feb 20, 1969 pg. 20

And then, not even a year later, just 330 days after saying the ice caps will melt comes this forecast that could last "hundreds of years..."

Washington Post Jan 11, 1970  pg.1

Five years later, same old, same old...

New York Times May 21, 1975 pg. 92

Until they changed their mind in the 1980's.

In 1988 the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies had this to say before Congress:

I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.

H/T Saveportland.com and American Elephant