The organisers of a "March Against Fear" planned for Sunday to mark the Brussels terror attacks said they had cancelled the event after the authorities asked them to do so because of security fears.Oh my aching back. Cancelling a "March Against Fears" due to fears about what might happen - words fail me...
In an earlier statement, the organisers said the march planned for Sunday was meant to show that Brussels and the country at large refused to be intimidated by terrorism and that everyone stood together.I guess "Brussels and the country at large" can be intimidated by terrorism after all.
A breakaway Pakistani faction of the militant Taliban group has claimed responsibility for an Easter Sunday bombing that killed 65 people in a park in the eastern city of Lahore that was crowded with Christians, including many children.Maybe the officials in Brussels had the right idea after all.
Ahsanullah Ahsan, spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, told the Associated Press that a suicide bomber with the faction deliberately targeted the Christian community.
The Islamic State’s bombing of an airport terminal and subway station in Brussels, Belgium on March 22 horrified the world. But Donald Trump saw a silver lining in the latest terrorist atrocity.I don't know if that's true or not, but keep in mind that Jimmy Carter's ineffectiveness during the Iran hostage crisis helped propel Ronald Reagan into the White House.
During an interview a few hours after the bloodshed in Brussels, Trump announced that foreign threats benefited his presidential campaign. He proudly observed that “every time we have a problem in the world, I do better” in the polls. The reason, he asserted, was because voters view him “as much stronger” than his opponents.
Fluffy, the young Easter orphan bunny and Cedric the orphan snake lived in the forest; they were, by an amazing coincidence, both blind from birth.Easter and the NCAA Basketball Tournament:
One morning, bright and early Fluffy was hopping through the forest when he tripped over the body of Cedric who was basking in the sunlit undergrowth. Fluffy landed quite hard on the prostrate body of Cedric.
'Crikey,' exclaimed Fluffy the bunny, 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to squash you. I've been blind since birth, so, I can't see where I'm going. In fact, since I'm also an orphan, I don't even know what creature I am.'
'That's OK, mate,' commented Cedric the snake. 'Actually my story is much the same as yours. I, too, have been blind since birth and also never knew my mother. Tell you what, maybe I could slither all over you and work out what you are, so at least you'll be able to find that out.'
'What a marvelous idea,' replied Fluffy the bunny.
So the Cedric slithered all over Fluffy and said, 'Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have really long ears, your nose twitches and you have a soft cottony tail. I'd say that you must be a bunny rabbit.'
'Oh, thank you, thank you,' cried Fluffy with tremendous pleasure. Then Fluffy the bunny suggested to the snake, 'Perhaps I could be allowed to feel you all over with my paw and help you the same way that you've helped me.'
So Fluffy the bunny felt Cedric the snake all over and summarized, 'Well, you're smooth and slippery, you have a forked tongue and no backbone. I'd say you must be a politician.'
Q: What do Easter Bunny helpers get for making a basket?Easter and ... well, just Easter
A: Two points, just like anyone else.
"Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.“One of the first things that occurred to me was "What are the chances of a similar attack here in the U.S.?"
U.S. intelligence and security capabilities make a Brussels-style attack less likely on American soil, but porous borders leave the USA vulnerable to terrorists, said David Deptula, a retired general who led Air Force intelligence efforts.No word on how many people actually made it inside our country illegally.
From Oct. 1, 2014 to Sept. 30, 2015, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended 337,117 people trying to enter the USA illegally...
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were coaxed from their table at a state dinner in Argentina on Wednesday night to dance the tango. And critics already furious that the president had attended a baseball game in Cuba following Tuesday’s deadly attacks in Brussels were unmoved.Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe:
“When everybody else is worried about where ISIS is, who they are going to kill next, and [if they] are going to come over here,” former Judge Andrew Napolitano said on the cable network’s morning show, “the president shouldn’t be in Argentina doing the tango.”
Nicolle Wallace, former communications director for President George W. Bush, said Obama’s reluctance to alter his itinerary “puts him vastly … out of step with the entire American public, not just Republicans.
“His policy choice was to proceed with everything on his schedule and not to react to the threat of terrorism,” Wallace said on MSNBC. “There were mothers lying dead while their, you know, family members were at the crime scene yesterday, and to [make it] look like the priority is to go on a foreign trip instead of pausing for a minute and explaining that to America is a communications crime.”
Poland's president on Thursday threw his support behind a government decision to renege on a deal to accept thousands of refugees, blaming security concerns raised by Tuesday's attacks in Brussels.
The move could prompt similar decisions by other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, many of which have protested — or, like Hungary and Slovakia, sued over — the European Union's plan to divide up some 120,000 refugees among member countries.
Poland's conservative, anti-migrant government had grudgingly confirmed the previous government's commitment to take in 7,000 refugees from Syria and Eritrea over the next two years. At the same time, sensing general uncertainty about receiving migrants into a mostly homogenous nation, the officials stressed that permissions to settle would be preceded by meticulous security and identity checks.Our president dances. Poland's leader protects his country. I wonder if we could trade ours for theirs...?
But following the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said "I see no possibility for migrants to come to Poland now."
A Texas man who achieved brief notoriety after he was arrested for having sex on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel in February was shot dead early Saturday morning after picking up his fiancée from the Houston strip club where she worked as a dancer.Well of course she worked as
Bryant Christopher Watts, 28, and Aaron Jones, 31, were charged with capital murder in the death of 27-year-old Phillip Frank Panzica. Police caught the pair after a brief chase and Watts allegedly confessed to shooting Panzica, The Houston Chronicle reported.I just knew tequila played a part in this story. Who hasn't has a regrettable experience (or two, or three, or...) fueled by an excess of that evil drink?
Panzica had just picked up his fiancée, who was holding the cash she’d earned at the club, and was driving the woman’s black Kia Sorrento (when he was shot)... (The two suspects) dumped Panzica’s body on the side of the road and stole the woman’s money and car. The woman, who has not been identified, eventually flagged down a bus.
In February, Panzica was charged with committing sex acts in public after he was caught in a raucous romp with a woman aboard a glass-enclosed Ferris wheel in Las Vegas.
Panzica told WTVR at the time that he had initially gone to Las Vegas with his fiancée to get married – but she was not the woman he ended up with on the Ferris wheel. The two began arguing soon after arriving in Las Vegas and then Panzica went gambling.
“Won a little bit of money. Lost a little bit of money. Got some margaritas. Probably like four or five,” he told WTVR. “One thing led to another. She was there by herself.”
Panzica said he didn’t think anyone could see them when the Ferris wheel reached its pinnacle. Unfortunately for the couple, their quickie was visible on a video camera.If that isn't true love, I don't know what is.
“We get up to the highest point, and we were like, ‘We’re golden,’” he said.
Panzica spent two nights in jail before his fiancée bailed him out.
It’s been five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and released 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Environmentalists are highlighting the disaster by pointing to the 800,000 birds that have died because of the spill in the five years since the disaster, but activists have been eerily silent about the fact that way more birds have been killed by wind turbines — a supposedly “eco-friendly” energy source.
A 2013 study found that 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats are killed every year by wind turbines — a figure 30 percent higher than the federal government estimated in 2009. These deaths have likely increased as wind power capacity increases across the country.
In the time since the 2010 BP oil spill, some 2.9 million birds have been killed by wind turbines, using (the study's) figures, compared to only 800,000 that have been killed by the oil spill... It should also be noted that wind turbines routinely kill federally protected birds and eagles.
Finally acknowledging that the economically inefficient, noisy, and unsightly wind turbines that they have been strewing across the formerly beautiful countryside have been killing large numbers of eagles and other birds, the bureaucrats have proposed a solution: stop the turbines whenever there is a bird nearby:Oh yeah, that'll work great. Have you ever seen a wind turbine up close? They're HUGE. Starting and stopping those things every time a bird flies near would wear those things out within a few months.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), one of the Department of Energy’s 17 National Laboratories, partnered with industry to gather data about bird flight patterns, which will help the companies develop technology to reduce bird collisions with turbines. …
The ultimate goal is to detect birds flying near a turbine with enough time to for the turbine blades to stop spinning and prevent a collision.
One of my pet peeves is this country's penchant for massive approaches to problem-solving. I get the whole economy-of-scale thing, but IMO a smaller-scale approach would be more effective. For example, I live in a part of the country where there are still plenty of old-fashioned windmills that pump water from wells for livestock.
A better use for the money would be to send out crews to tear down the hideous wind turbines for scrap metal, so as to spare the lives of raptors and restore the beauty of the scenery. There are far wiser ways to meet our energy needs.
A federally backed, $2.2 billion solar project in the California desert isn’t producing the electricity it is contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp. , which says the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators.Environmentally Unfriendly:
A solar power plant at the center of the Obama administration’s push to reduce America’s carbon footprint by using millions of taxpayer dollars to promote green energy has its own carbon pollution problem.
The Ivanpah plant in the Mojave Desert uses natural gas as a supplementary fuel. Data from the California Energy Commission show that the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 – its first year of operation – to emit more than 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
That’s nearly twice the pollution threshold for power plants or factories in California to be required to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions.
A Death Ray...
The Ivanpah solar generating plant is located in California about 50 miles from Las Vegas near the California-Nevada border. 173,000 mirrors are used to concentrate the sun on 3 boiler-towers where water is turned into steam to drive turbines and generate electricity. The mirrors track the sun and concentrate sunlight so that the intensity of light falling on the boiler-towers is about 500 times stronger than sunlight -- a death ray. If a person were to be illuminated by this death ray, 3rd degree burns would follow within a few seconds. Insects that wander into the kill zone are quickly vaporized. Birds are severely burned or killed depending on how long they are in the kill zone....That Kills Thousands of Birds
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service previously called Ivanpah — the world’s largest concentrated solar project — a “mega-trap” for birds and insects, although the exact number of deaths has been a subject of fiery debate.Home-based solar panels, on the other hand, are becoming more and more common, because (1) they work, and (2) they are affordable. (More info here and here.)
