Feelin' great... no gym today!
Whoo-hoo!
Body Pump on Mondays and Wednesdays... cardio Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays... days off - Friday and Sunday!
So... what else...? Oh... up to page 116 of "Into The Fire: A Firsthand Account Of The Most Extraordinary Battle In The Afghan War." Not good, folks... not good...
Bottom line, folks... our "Rules of Engagement" get our men and women killed. But, hey... I'll let the authors - Medal of Honor Recipient Dakota Meyer Vietnam combat veteran and former DOD official Bing West - lay it out:
"The officers in the tactical operations center (TOC) could see on the map that the fire missions were being called in close to the farming compounds; those officers could not see the friendly troops who were dying. That's the problem - guys like that sit back and worry about protecting their rank more than taking risks and supporting the troops. Even worse, at the end of the day the troops not getting the support go home and have to deal with losing their friends while the officers get promoted and never have to see the results of their decisions up close." (See pages 102, 103, 104.)
Hey... speaking of the military... whatever happened to General Patraeus...? How'bout General Allan...? Hmm... perhaps they're hangin' with Leon Panetta and poor.... poor... poor "recovering" Hillary Clinton.
(Yep, folks... a real team of winners we've got running the country...)
Let's see... what else...? Oh! Decision time! Should I go see "Reacher" today at a matinee showing or take Mary over the weekend? (I'm leaning towards the later; she did enjoy Skyfall.)
Anyway... onward to today's newsbites!
6 comments:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CLOTHING_STORE_ROBBERY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-11-09-37-23
Robbers stabbed a clothing store employee and sexually assaulted another during an hours-long hostage drama that ended early Friday with a police SWAT team surging into the shop and rescuing 14 workers.
No robbers were found.
The officers saw a man leave the second-floor store but he ran back inside when they tried to contact him...
* BUT... er...
No robbers were found.
Moments later, another man came out with a woman, but when he saw the police he grabbed her and pushed her back inside...
* BUT... er...
No robbers were found.
SWAT members surrounded the location but...
No robbers were found.
When they finally burst into the store, they found hostages locked in a storage room and others in a bathroom...
* BUT... er...
No robbers were found.
* ONE... MORE... TIME...
Officers searched the store to make sure nobody was hiding but didn't find the robbers...
* IS IT ME FOLKS...??? DOES SOMETHING SOUND JUST A BIT... er... "ODD" ABOUT THIS...???
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/10/16451715-exclusive-dea-agents-arranged-prostitute-for-secret-service-agent?lite
Two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents “facilitated a sexual encounter” between a prostitute and a U.S. Secret Service agent days before President Barack Obama visited Colombia for a summit meeting in April 2012, according to a Justice Department investigation obtained exclusively by NBC News.
* MAKES YA PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN, DOESN'T IT?!
* NOTE... IT DOESN'T SAY "TWO FORMER DEA AGENTS..."
* NOTE... IT DOESN'T SAY "A FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT..."
A summary of the findings of the investigation, included in a Dec. 20 letter from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General to Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, indicated that a third DEA agent present on the night of the incident was not involved in procuring the prostitute for the Secret Service agent.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
* BUT DID HE (OR SHE?) KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON...? HMM...???
“While DEA agent #3 was present for a dinner that took place earlier that evening with the USSS agent and the other two DEA agents, he was not present in the residence when the sexual encounter took place and played no role in facilitating it,” the summary said.
* WAN'T PRESENT... OK...
* HERE'S... THE... PROBLEM... THOUGH...
All three DEA special agents admitted that they had paid for sexual services of a prostitute, the investigation also found, and “used their DEA Blackberry devices to arrange such activities.” In addition, the report says the agents tried to destroy incriminating information or initially lied to investigators about the incidents.
All three agents have high-security clearances.
* OF COURSE THEY DO! HELL... THEY'LL PROBABLY BE PROMOTED...!!!
The summary concluded that the agents’ actions did not warrant criminal prosecution.
* NO... OF COURSE NOT... WHY WOULD CRIMINAL ACTIVITY - OR AT THE VERY LEAST DIRELICTION OF DUTY... EVIDENCE TAMPORING... LYING TO FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS... WARRANT CRIMINAL PROSECUTION IN THE AGE OF OBAMA?!
[T]he U.S. Attorney’s Office also “declined to initiate legal proceedings.”
* AH... ERIC HOLDER... WHAT A GUY...
In a letter sent Wednesday to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, Collins, R-Maine, called the findings “troubling” and the conclusion that law enforcement officials obstructed the OIG investigation “deeply troubling.”
* YA THINK SO...??? REALLY...???
(*SNORT*)
She also asked Leonhart to explain why – nearly four months after the Office of the Inspector General referred the matter to the DEA - “It is my understanding that those administrative actions are still pending.”
(*GUFFAW*)
* FOLKS... THIS IS YOUR OBAMA-LED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN ACTION! ALL HAIL OBAMA! ALL HAIL HOLDER! ALL HAIL THE DEA AND SECRET SERVICE!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324081704578231960669011712.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
The National Labor Relations Board is the point of the spear for President Obama's labor agenda, and he's packed it with Big Labor loyalists. Now one of those appointees has been named as a defendant in a federal racketeering lawsuit that claims he was complicit in covering up a union embezzlement.
The defendant is Richard Griffin, one of three controversial NLRB recess appointments Mr. Obama made in January 2012.
Before going to the labor board, Mr. Griffin was general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE), a union of heavy-equipment operators with a history of unsavory behavior.
Mr. Griffin is named in a federal complaint filed in October by 10 members of IUOE Local 501, out of Los Angeles, which describes a "scheme to defraud [the local] out of revenue, cost savings and membership," by means of kickbacks, bribery, violent threats and extortion.
The suit names dozens of IUOE officials as defendants, and Mr. Griffin is highlighted in a section describing an embezzlement and its subsequent hush-up.
According to the suit, Local 501's then-business manager James McLaughlin in 2009 uncovered suspect expenditures by Dennis Lundy, who ran the local's apprenticeship fund for training and the other costs of new workers. Mr. McLaughlin brought in two colleagues, plus an outside auditor and outside lawyer, to investigate. The suit says the auditor concluded that in six months in 2007 Mr. Lundy had charged some $26,000 to the fund in food, entertainment, travel and lodging costs.
* NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT...
The suit contends that many of the charges went "for expensive lunches with his mistress," who was a fellow employee at the local.
* HMM... I WONDER IF GRIFFIN EVER WORKED FOR THE DEA OR SECRET SERVICE...? (OR WAS PERHAPS A GENERAL IN THE ARMY...?)
The lawsuit describes even larger sums drawn from the fund in 2006, some of which were "undocumented" or "unsupported" charges and some of which were believed to be "false submissions used to embezzle funds for a cosmetic breast augmentation procedure Lundy obtained" for the mistress.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
The investigating trio demanded that Mr. Lundy repay some misappropriated funds. Instead, the suit alleges, Mr. McLaughlin received a call from then-general president of the national operating engineers union, Vince Giblin, described in the lawsuit as a "personal friend" of Mr. Lundy. Mr. Giblin demanded Mr. McLaughlin "drop" the investigation.
When Mr. McLaughlin refused, the lawsuit claims Mr. Giblin began to harass the three local officials and threatened to "punch their ticket." Mr. Giblin is also accused in the suit of voicing his specific intent to "kill or have these three union officers killed."
* HOLY SOPRANOS, BATMAN!
* FOLKS... IF YOU'RE INTERESTED READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELVES. MY ONLY POINT IN POSTING... (*PAUSE*)... SO MUCH FOR "HOPE"... SO MUCH FOR "CHANGE."
(*SIGH*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337454/whos-afraid-fracking-deroy-murdock
If frackophobes are to be believed, natural-gas fracking is the most frightful environmental nightmare since Japan’s Fukushima nuclear-power plant melted down amid an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
In Promised Land, Matt Damon’s new anti-fracking film funded by the United Arab Emirates...
* YEP... HE'S SERIOUS!
...one character demonstrates this production technique’s “dangers” by drenching a toy farm with household chemicals and then setting it ablaze.
(*SIGH*)
In the upcoming pro-fracking film, FrackNation, one Pennsylvania homeowner absurdly claims that fracking polluted his well water with weapons-grade uranium. (For details, watch AXS-TV on Tuesday, January 22, at 9 p.m. EST.)
In an agitprop poster from the group New Yorkers Against Fracking, the Statue of Liberty furiously topples natural-gas drilling towers with her torch as energy-company big rigs flee in horror.
These warnings might be believable if fracking regulators seemed even slightly worried. Instead, federal and state environmental officials appear positively serene about hydraulic fracturing, a decades-old technology that uses sand and chemically treated water to shatter shale deposits 5,000 to 8,000 feet below the water table...
* ...BELOW THE WATER TABLE...
* ...BELOW THE WATER TABLE...
* ...BELOW THE WATER TABLE...
...and liberate natural gas from the ruptured rocks.
“In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater,” Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson stated last April.
In May 2011, Jackson told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: “I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”
The EPA tested drinking water in Dimock, Pa., which ecologists claim fracking has tainted.
* AND...???
“EPA has determined that there are not levels of contaminants present that would require additional action by the Agency,” it concluded last July.
* BUT THAT'S JUST PENNSYLVANIA... WHAT ABOUT OTHER STATES...?
“A study that examined the water quality of 127 shallow domestic wells in the Fayetteville Shale natural-gas production area of Arkansas found no groundwater contamination associated with gas production,” the U.S. Geological Survey announced Wednesday. “Methane is the primary component of natural gas,” the report observed. “What methane was found in the water, taken from domestic wells, was either naturally occurring, or could not be attributed to natural gas production activities.” USGS director Marcia McNutt elaborated: “This new study is important in terms of finding no significant effects on groundwater quality from shale gas development within the area of sampling.”
* WELL... PENNSYLVANIA... ARKANSAS... MAYBE NEW YORK WILL BE DIFFERENT...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* OOPS... MAKE THAT A THREE-PARTER... (Part 2 of 3)
“Significant adverse impacts on human health are not expected from routine HVHF,” or high-volume hydraulic fracturing, according to a February 2012 preliminary report from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
* ...OR NOT.
(*SHRUG*)
Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) has pondered this issue since 2010 and promises further contemplation, including another draft of what DEC now calls an “outdated summary.”
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
“New York would be crazy not to lift the moratorium” against fracking, former governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) told the New York Post in November. The former chairman of the Democratic National Committee continued: “I told Governor Cuomo I would come to testify before any legislative committee. . . . It’s a good thing to do.”
“I do find it stunningly hypocritical to buy gas that comes from fracking wells somewhere [else] in the U.S. and then say fracking is bad,” John Hanger, Rendell’s former secretary of environmental protection, remarked in the Post. “If you’re saying no to gas, you’re saying yes to more coal and oil.”
* I ASSUME HANGER IS REFERRING TO WHAT HAPPENS HERE IN NEW YORK WITH CUOMO'S APPROVAL..
Hanger, a Keystone State Democratic gubernatorial contender, lately lauded the benefits of gas fracking: Using more natural gas has slashed U.S. carbon emissions and toxic air pollution — lead, mercury, arsenic, soot — in the nation’s air by displacing large amounts of coal and oil. That cleaner air saves thousands of lives every year. And no nation in the world has cut its carbon emissions more than the U.S. since 2006. Indeed, thanks in substantial part to shale gas, U.S. carbon emissions are back to 1995 levels and fell about another 4% in 2012.
“We have never had any cases of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing,” Elizabeth Ames Jones said in 2011. The then-chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, which supervises natural gas, added: “It is geologically impossible for fracturing fluid to reach an aquifer a thousand feet above.”
* AS IF FACTS EVER STOOD IN THE WAY OF A GOOD FEAR-MONGERING... (*SNORT*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
“We have drilled 3,500 wells in Arkansas and explored every complaint of a compromised well,” Lawrence Bengal, director of the state’s Oil and Gas Commission, noted in 2011. “We have found no fracturing fluid in any of those well complaints.”
While California last month unveiled new disclosure and monitoring rules for fracking, Tim Kustic, the Golden State’s oil-and-gas supervisor, told the San Jose Mercury News: “There is no evidence of harm from fracking in groundwater in California at this point in time. And it has been going on for many years.”
“We’ve used hydraulic fracturing for some 60 years in Oklahoma, and we have no confirmed cases where it is responsible for drinking water contamination — nor do any of the other natural gas–producing states,” Bob Anthony, chairman of the state’s public-utilities commission, wrote in August 2010.
“In the 41 years that I have supervised oil and gas exploration, production, and development in South Dakota, no documented case of water-well or aquifer damage by the fracking of oil or gas wells, has been brought to my attention,” said the Department of Environment’s Fred Steece. “Nor am I aware of any such cases before my time.”
(Steece commented in a June 2009 New York DEC document that cites regulators from 15 states who identified zero examples of fracking-related water pollution.)
“Facts matter,” says Robert Bryce, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and author of four books on energy. “Over the past six decades, the fracturing process has been used more than 1 million times on American oil and gas wells. If it were as dangerous as the anti-drilling/anti-hydraulic fracturing crowd claims, then hundreds, perhaps thousands, of water wells would have been contaminated by now. That hasn’t happened.” Adds Bryce, who also appears in FrackNation: “The simple truth is that the shale revolution is the best possible news for the U.S. economy, and it’s coming at a time when good economic news is desperately needed.”
The officials quoted here are neither gas-company executives nor petro-publicists. These are public servants who oversee this industry, and many work or have worked for red-tape-loving Democrats. Nonetheless, they are unafraid of fracking.
Clearly, frackophobes have nothing to offer but fear itself.
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