April 08, 2009
— DrewM
Above the original post update:
The US crew of a ship hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia has retaken control of the vessel, according to Pentagon sources.Unnamed US defence officials said one pirate had been captured by the crew of the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama, which was seized earlier in the Indian Ocean.
The status of the other pirates was unknown, but officials said they were "in the water".
FNC says the crew has control of the ship and captured one of the pirates. Thomas Jefferson emailed to say, "Fuck yes!"
UPDATE 2: FNC is saying the captain of the ship might still be held hostage. There's a lot of uncertainty right now.
Original post:
Given all of the ships that have been hijacked recently, this was just a matter of time.
Somali pirates hijacked a U.S.-flagged, Danish-owned container ship on Wednesday with 20 American crew on board in a major escalation in attacks at sea off the Horn of Africa nation, officials said.Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Program, told Reuters the 17,000 ton Maersk Alabama had been seized off Mogadishu far out in the Indian Ocean, but all its crew were believed to be unharmed.
So far it seems the pirates have been interested in the big payout and I don't think they've killed anyone (though I'm not 100% sure of that). Here's hoping the Americans are safe and freed soon.
Over to you Mr. President. And just a bit of free advice, I don't think the pirates are going to accept a DVD box set, a couple of trinkets from the White House gift shop and iPod with your greatest hits as part of the ransom.
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— Ace Recap at Big Hollywood.
Incidentally, there's an interesting debate going on about the "new atheists." David Brooks is involved, but nevertheless, it's somehow interesting.
David Brooks argues that the view that moral decision-making results from an intuitive, pre-rational engagement with the world, rather than from logical deduction from a set of moral principles, is a challenge to “the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.”
This gets at something I think is important: I believe that evangelical atheists like Bill Maher are more obsessed with religion than the Pope because they believe that if people simply reject God, they'll automatically agree with Maher's libertine liberal take on the world.
They won't. Religion is often associated with traditional values, but it is not always the cause of them. There is a religious left which, I'm sure, is quite serious about its religious beliefs, and yet champions a liberal values system more in line with Bill Maher's preferred politics.
On the other hand there are atheists like Allah and agnostics like myself who nevertheless are mostly traditionalists. Despite Bill Maher's desperate belief, a lack of affirmative faith in God has not made us good little liberals.
Maher and the evangelical atheists want, ultimately, for people to think like themselves, and so they attack Christianity and other faiths. But their ferocity is directed at the wrong object. You don't need to believe in God to be conservatively inclined, and you don't need to be an atheist to be liberally inclined. What Maher really needs to do is to prove liberalism makes sense, but apparently that's too difficult a challenge, so he bashes God all day long.
Oh... And as Allah headlines, our notably-religious president still hasn't attended church since inaugurated.
I'm sure it's on his list, though.
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— Ace Levi Johnston declares that his family is not white trash.
I understand his desire to protect them. I have trouble understanding, however, why a supposed non-white-trash family would do white-trash type things, like going on a white-trash show to attack a young girl now raising a baby as a single mother thanks to the white-trash move of the man in question abandoning her.
On "The Tyra Banks Show" earlier this week, Johnston said Sarah Palin almost certainly knew the two teens were having sex before Bristol got pregnant, and he admitted the obvious -- that they didn't always practice safe sex.
Let me just note the bias here -- yes, in most cases, an accidental pregnancy is due to unprotected sex. But it's not quite "obvious" that's the case. CBSNews apparently doesn't believe the disclaimers on all forms of contraception noting that they are, in fact, only somewhere between 95 and 99% effective, depending on type. Condoms break, diaphragms slip, and the pill occasionally doesn't work.
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— Gabriel Malor
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— Purple Avenger Raytheon is working on downsizing the tractor trailer sized "pain ray" device the military has developed.
Raytheon Company's Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) business has been awarded a phase-two contract to develop a gallium nitride (GaN) solid-state source for use in non-lethal weapons...The release is sketchy, but my take is they're looking for a sort of GaN "microwave LED"...which sounds quite doable since the crew I'm with has developed solid state transducers for all sorts of stuff...."Our support of the JNLWD is for very high frequency, millimeter-wave GaN to provide the warfighter with a lower-cost, lighter-weight, non-lethal engagement alternative,"...
[GaN = Gallium Nitride]
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April 07, 2009
— Open Blog How did it come to this? The collapse of the housing market will apparently spare no one as Credit-Crunched Nicolas Cage is Forced to Sell Castle. ItÂ’s a very short blurb from ABC News (the Australian one) but guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings (at least until you swat it away and tell it to knock that needy shit off):
”"Due to the difficult economic situation, unfortunately, I was no longer able to keep it," the 45-year-old told German celebrity weekly Bunte.”“Cage, whose mother has roots in Bavaria, bought the 28-room Neidstein castle with 165 hectares of forest and gardens two years ago, reportedly paying $US2.6 million for the property, which dates back to the 16th century.”
“But Cage has not been seen since flying off in a helicopter in 2008, according to local media.”
No word yet on whether these people have taken away his helicopter. Also, $2.6 million seems kind of a low price for a 28-room castle with all that hectarage (keeping in mind that one hectare is approximately equal to 13 decalitres or seven leagues as a unit of time as well as temperature). There has to be a typo there. That or the castle had previously been used as a crack house and brothel.
(And say what you will about Nicolas Cage and his more recent work, but he did get to have his way with Laura DernÂ’s funbags at length in Wild at Heart, for which I remain eternally grateful and/or jealous.)
Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.
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— Ace Fun fact you didn't know about the Taliban: despite the crudity of their intellect and culture, they have a very highly evolved sense of dramatic irony.
The September 11 terror attacks were a watershed event in the life of a Canadian journalist named Beverly Giesebrecht.
Soon after Al Qaeda terrorists killed 3,000 people in the U.S., Giesebrecht converted to Islam, adopted a new name — Khadija Abdul Qahaar — and spent the next two years studying the Koran in Egypt.
She created a pro-Jihadi Web site, Jihad Unspun, and she developed a network of contacts, contributors and translators, some of whom introduced her to the Taliban in Pakistan.
[She wrote:]
"There was no question in my mind, from the first days of my research, that the so-called war on 'terrorism' was a sham. This is not a war on 'terrorism' — this is a war against Muslims and our resources.
"It is my hope that this will inspire others to Islam and to take a stand against this shameful war on 'terrorism.'"'
...
And then last November, the Taliban, the group she had befriended, kidnapped her while she was chasing a story in the Bannu region of northern Pakistan. In a video released after her capture, Qahaar says she's being held by the Taliban, though it's not clear exactly who is holding her. Officials have not provided clarification, saying only that there are many criminal gangs in the region who call themselves the Taliban.
Now, four and a half months later, 11th-hour negotiations continue in efforts to save Qahaar's life and secure her release. Her captors have demanded $375,000 in ransom money by the end of March, and they have threatened to kill her if their demand isn't met.
In related news, a man whose sexual tastes ran only towards sodomizing bull Kodiaks somehow managed to get mauled.
In other related news, Jeffrey Dahmer was reported to have said "What on earth could I possibly have done to deserve this?" as he was being murdered in prison.
Via Moonbattery, thanks to Maetenloch.
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04:28 PM
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— Ace Call it the opposite of the "starve the beast" plan attributed to Reagan, in which taxes were cut down in order to restrain the growth of the government -- raising taxes to pay for new government programs would be politically unpalatable.
Obama's plan? Gorge the beast so it becomes so fat that unless we feed it more it will die. And once his "down payments" on budget busting future programs are in place, he hopes that they'll be so popular that cutting them will be politically impossible, and hence the public will support the "next-worst" solution of jacking up taxes.
Not sure whether or not you actually need to read this pap -- the liberal writer spends most of his time telling us how remarkably candid Obama is, even while lying through his teeth, apparently, and justifies his continuing lies as effective politics.
In a less-friendly analysis of Obama's budget-busting ways, Clive Cook says that a European style Value Added Tax is coming.
Even before the rise in top marginal rates promised by Mr Obama, the US income tax collects 45 per cent of its revenues from the highest-income decile. Compare that with Britain at 39 per cent, Canada at 36 per cent, France at 28 per cent, Sweden at 27 per cent and an OECD average of 32 per cent.This difference is only partly explained by the less-equal US income distribution. The fact that the US has no broadly based national sales tax – value added taxes make Europe’s overall tax codes less progressive still – only underlines the point. The US tax system raises comparatively little revenue; what little it raises already comes disproportionately, by international standards, from the rich.
I have previously argued that the US will need a VAT. Even before Mr Obama unveiled his ambitions for healthcare reform, wage subsidies to help the working poor, better education and the rest, the US middle class was seriously under-taxed. The governmentÂ’s promises, on present plans, will be unaffordable. If they are honoured regardless, the only question is which comes first: broadly based tax increases or fiscal collapse. Welcome home, Mr President.
There is a dirty little secret about taxes -- a government must tax the middle class to get any meaningful increase in revenue. Simply because there are so many middle-class taxpayers and comparatively few rich ones. As Willie Sutton said of banks, the government goes after the middle class because that's where the money is.
And the middle class is being lied to left and right by Obama, convinced, at the moment, that it can have all these hugely expensive new programs without any of the costs falling on their shoulders. That's a lie and it always has been.
The question is whether the middle class will revolt when the bill comes due, or if Obama will have by then convinced them that paying ever-higher taxes is patriotic.
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04:14 PM
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— DrewM And by killed, I mean helped "save the lives of".
Former President George W. Bush's international AIDS-fighting campaign has reduced by 10 percent the mortality rates in 15 targeted countries, primarily in Africa, and has saved 1.1 million lives, according to a study that for the first time quantified the successes of his program...."It has averted deaths - a lot of deaths - with about a 10 percent reduction compared with neighboring African countries," said Dr. Eran Bendavid, a fellow in infectious disease and in health policy and research at Stanford who led the study. "However, we could not see a change in prevalence rates that was associated with PEPFAR."
When reached for comment Kanye West said, ".............." (apparently his vocal track machine wasn't working again).
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— Dave in Texas Because in these troubled times of economic woes at home, self-flagellation abroad, you'd really hate yourself if this cocksucker went and died on you before you had a chance to kiss his wrinkled ass in the new age of hopeygoodmess.
Served up thusly by State:
"Members of Congress have the right to travel where they want and to discuss issues with whom they want," Wood said. "And I am sure members of that delegation will be raising some of the concerns that the U.S. government has with Cuba, in terms of allowing Cubans to have some of the same rights and freedoms as other countries in the hemisphere."
Oh hellyeah, you know when it's time to throw down with Fidel over his "clumsy, silly indiscretions" that have concerned you for these many decades, there's nobody you want at the plate more than Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
She's got that wicked eye shit that makes you want to set your face on fire.
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