Good evening. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by—
Excuse me, Mr. President. Where’s the body?
Er, we don’t have a body.
What?
There isn’t one. It, um, fell overboard.
Mr. President, you can’t be serious!
No, really, it— (aide whispers in his ear) it, uh, was in accordance with Muslim burial traditions.
Burial at sea is a Muslim burial tradition?
Yes. And I should know, uhh—I mean, uhh, that’s what I’m told.
OK. Then may we see pictures of the body?
No. They’re just too gruesome.
Too gruesome for the families of those who perished on 9/11? Shouldn’t that be their choice to make?
No. It’s my decision, and the photos are simply too awful, awful. Look, if you’re so desperate to be grossed out, just go to rotten dot com.
Mr. President, is it true Bin Laden was unarmed at the time he was shot?
That’s the information that was given to me, yes.
Then why was he killed? Wouldn’t it have been better to capture him alive and bring him to trial? Or were you afraid of what he might say?
Not at all. As to the details of the operation, you’ll have to speak to those who were on the ground and carried it out.
Very well then, Mr. President: may we speak to those Navy SEALs who conducted the operation?
No. Their identity must be kept secret to ensure the success of future operations.
Operations like this cover-up?
Exactly. No, no!!! Operations like, uhh, like our mission in Libya.
Mr. President, what exactly is our mission in Libya?
To ensure the safety of the Libyans.
Which Libyans?
Well, not Gaddafi’s grandkids, that’s for sure.
What do we know about the rebels and their motivations?
They’re fighting for freedom against an evil regime.
An evil regime with oil?
That thought never entered my mind.
Mr. President, haven’t we been down this road before? Supporting the Taliban against the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan? Supporting Saddam Hussein against the Ayatollah Khomeini? The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
This time it’s different.
How so?
Our side’s in charge this time.
Mr President, thanks for your time.
You’re welcome. God Bless America.
(exeunt omnes)
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
I think this song is appropriate….
Ozboy surely that last line should read “Allah”.
Writes Kitler at 1:26 PM on 5 May:
–
Well, considering Barry’s history as a nominal Christian – and the pastor whose services he attended for so many years as a “poverty pimp” in the Chicago Machine – I’d think his invocation would more likely have been:
“God damn America!”
Gotta wonder to what extent the Navy issued their operations orders on a “kill him first, then tell that traitor in the Oval Office” basis.
Anybody reading here also wondering why nobody in the old, dying, increasingly irrelevant Lamestream Media has asked (or written about) the intelligence “take” from that Abbottabad mansion in which they found our TelePrompTer-in-Chief’s co-religionist and fellow America-hater?
From what little has actually been published about the raid, Seal Team Six personnel came away with computers and other items likely to contain boatloads of information being used by Osama Bin Laden to track and coordinate those activities with which he was concerned, and that’s pretty much everything in the jihadi universe.
The senior servitors of Allah in al-Qaeda have got to be undergoing severe sphincter spasms in their appreciation of just how much stuff is now in the hands of No Such Agency.
Unless Barack Hussein shuts ’em off preemptively, the shooters in SoCom are going to be ever so busy for the next couple of months making martyrs all over the Islamic world.
Allah gonna run out of virgins, ain’t he?
“the Seal Team Six came away with computers” ??
Didn’t I read that there was no internet access or telephone connections? Surely he wouldn’t have used traceable mobile phone connections? I’m not very well up on the latest technology – can someone enlighten me.
Seems to me Obama couldn’t have done a better job of creating a ‘conspiracy theory’ if he tried. It’s beginning to make Alex Jones sound rational!
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/forensics/osama-bin-ladens-dna-how-sure-is-ninety-nine-point-nine-percent-sure-5680593?click=pm_latest
It also appears that the DNA testing might not be quite as accurate a measure as stated. (link came from Richard North’s blog)
You know Prince Harry lurks here, don’t you? Breathe a sigh of relief, kiddo – Oz 😛
Stick to the environment.
You make a poor conspiracy theorist.
And the conspiracy I’ve alleged is?
No, I leave conspiracy theories to my colleague Captain Sherlock. He’s the pro. All I’ve given is a précis of Brucker Bummer’s own press releases – Oz
P.S. And I don’t “stick to the environment” these days.
At 4:41 PM on 5 May, [b]meltemian[/b] had written:
–
Ever heard the expression “sneakernet,” fella?
Computers do not need to be on the ‘Net in any way to facilitate information storage and retrieval. Until Ordnung rulings came down against it some years ago, Old Order Amish farmers in these United States were using simple personal computers – working off car batteries by way of DC-to-AC inverters – to run database programs and other software conducive to the most efficient management of their dairy herds and other commercial operations.
They sure as hell didn’t have Internet access or telephone communications.
I would assume that if it were true that Osama Bin Laden and his immediate underlings were “off the grid” while ensconsed in their Abbottabad hidey-hole, and there were indeed computers found there, it could be reliably inferred that information was being fed into those computers (and digital files carried from those computers to al-Qaeda confreres) by way of stable RAM in “flash drive” form, CD-ROM disks, or DVD disks.
Even were the [i]jihadi[/i] inhabitants of that mansion carefully encrypting and wiping their digital memory devices, there’s little doubt that the application of computer forensic investigation methods could bring forth much actionable information from such materials.
As for the morisco mulignan farting into that comfy chair behind the Resolute desk, what conspiracies should we not attribute to him? His overt destruction of the U.S. economy isn’t enough to convice even those favorably disposed to respect the office into which he slimed that he is one of this nation’s most deadly enemies?
I’m prepared to believe the story……. When they stop changing it.
Fen,
That’s such a good point.
I thought that, in the white house and CIA, they had the best and the brightest?
Oh dear.
Supposedly AQ is pretty good with its operational security. They’re supposed to be keeping stuff on the net, rather than their own machines. that way, if an operative gets stopped and his laptop checked, there’s nothing to incriminate him.
cyphers will stand or fall anyway, it’s far easier to keep their humans out of Gitmo by keeping their machines clean.
I don’t know how security minded the zero Bin Laden was with his data. What age was he? 50 ish? That’s assuming that it was him that they croaked.
On that question, how good is DNA analysis after 14 centuries plus of cousin marrying (yep, that’s the right collection of genetic diseases and those are the base pairs encoding “Dueling Banjos”)?
It’s reckoned to be poor enough in the Welsh towns where everyone has the same surname.
In advance of the Gold Standard post,
here’s a croniest illustration of Mark Twain’s definition of a mine
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13275704
“A hole in the ground with a crook on top”
“On that question, how good is DNA analysis after 14 centuries plus of cousin marrying (yep, that’s the right collection of genetic diseases and those are the base pairs encoding “Dueling Banjos”)?”
Luton Ian,
From what I’ve read Britain’s Royal family comes from a long line of first cousins, too.
Dr Dave that is why they had to out breed this time to weed out some bad genes.
Also the thing is about inbreeding you are just as likely to produce a genius as an idiot albeit with 24 webbed fingers and toes.
It’s been an interesting exercise trying to weave all the disparate (and often conflicting) news reports together to synthesize a reasonable narrative of what happened in the bin Laden affair. I don’t know anything for certain any more than the next guy, but here is my hunch:
– The “harsh interrogations” at Gitmo yielded a lot of good intel. Remember, bin Laden disappeared before we caught most of these guys.
– The CIA had a pretty good idea bin Laden was holed up in Pakistan and by August of last year had a pretty good idea where.
– Obama had almost certainly been aware of this for many months.
– Military planners put together operational scenarios to take bin Laden out.
– I suspect Obama had been sitting on this as a hole card for his 2012 reelection campaign. If he could have stalled even another 6 months it would have better for him politically.
– Wikileaks forced his hand and he had to act on it. If Obama knew where bin Laden was and didn’t act and he disappeared again he would stand no chance at being reelected. He wanted to wait but had no choice. This is important – OBAMA had no choice.
– Finding bin Laden was a CIA priority since 2001. It didn’t become one only after Obama took office. Bush actually implemented all the structure for the operation long before anyone knew who Obama was.
– I can’t believe for a second that “military planners” wanted to bomb the bin Laden compound. They have developed very specialized assets to avoid that sort of thing. What would be more provocative, running a snatch, kill and grab mission with Navy SEALS or dropping 2,000 lbs bombs on a sovereign nation (that’s allegedly our ally)?
– Obama was probably presented with all the options, but I don’t believe for minute bombing was ever seriously considered as an option.
– You can bet the mission was to go in, kill bin Laden, gather intel and get out.
– It doesn’t matter if bin Laden was armed or if anyone in the compound shot back. This was a highly professional hit mission. Pity such things are so distasteful for Democrats.
Obama didn’t want to do this. He had no choice. He’s agonizing over his image in the Muslim world. Why not show us the corpse of bin Laden? On any given night you can see images every bit as gruesome on any one of a number of CSI-type programs (only these are often complete with maggots). During the first Gulf war Bush the elder gave the nod to the military and then stayed out of the way and let them win the war (in about 4 days). LBJ micro-managed Vietnam and we all know how well that worked out.
But let’s wait until tomorrow and see what the story is. The MSM is working overtime to make this whole matter all about Obama. In reality he had nothing more to do with it other than giving the nod of approval to proceed.
OK…I’ll wander off-topic.
The other day I read an amusing tale of a community in northern California. Their water utility had encouraged strict water conservation and the people responded. They took 3 minute showers, drove dirty cars, let their landscaping wither and die and even flushed less often. What happened? Well, the water utility began losing money. They didn’t have enough revenue coming in to cover their pensions and benefits. So they raised the rates. Now the people got less water for more money. This year presents a real quandary. The snow pack was excellent, their reservoirs are filled to capacity (even beyond capacity in some cases) yet the water conservationists are still preaching “if it’s brown, flush it down”. The same thing happened here where I live about 10 years ago. We had an extended drought for several years. The local water nazis outlawed car washing and watering. They mandated low flow toilets and low flow shower heads. They even imposed a building moratorium in the area. The eco-water totalitarians were swollen with self importance. Then their revenues fell so they boosted the water rates. Then the drought ended. We had several years of excellent snow pack and generous monsoon seasons. The wells all recharged to capacity…the restrictions ended but the water rates never went down.
The same thing happens (or will happen) with electricity. As consumers use less, producers charge more. Electric utilities are mini-monopolies. Conservation works out to their advantage. The consumer gets charged more for using less and the producer makes just as much for producing less. This situation gets exacerbated with government interference in the form of taxpayer paid subsidies and tax credits to producers, the imposition of mandated use of expensive and inefficient “renewable” energy sources and even mandates about which lightbulbs we use. The utility monopoly never loses, the government never loses…the taxpayer and the consumer get raped. It’s artificial manipulation of the free market.
Now Obama wants to take this a step further. He wants to institute a “mileage traveled tax”. The plan is to install a device in vehicles (at the owners’ expense) that will measure the number of miles traveled. The device would be read at gas stations. So the consumer would be taxed on the fuel they purchase PLUS the number of miles traveled. This extracts more taxes from fuel efficient vehicles and even mythical electric cars. Of course, there’s no mention of the gas tax going away. This is tax enhancement “for critical transportation infrastructure”. Of course, this is what the fuel taxes are supposed to fund. Government doesn’t tax for all it needs, it spends all it taxes.
Once enough Americans become aware of these scams, the fact that bin Laden is dead will seem meaningless.
Luton Ian,
I neglected to say thank you for the Dueling Banjos YouTube link. I haven’t heard that in years. I used to play that tune in my old bluegrass band. The guy playing guitar in the movie is Ronnie Cox. He’s originally from a little mountain town in New Mexico and can actually play guitar (very well, too). You might remember him as the bad guy corporate big wig “Dick” in Robocop or as Captain Jellico in two episodes of Star Trek Next Generation. He’s been in all sorts of stuff but folks don’t seem to make the Deliverance connection. He was Capt Bogomill in the Beverly Hills Cops movies but in real life he’s a damn fine guitar picker.
Thanks Dr Dave.
Arranged and free marriages to cousins are surprisingly common. one of my grandparents was the result of one (don’t ask!) and I have people who I’m related to through both of my parents.
Loops in the family tree probably aren’t that uncommon, if people but knew their ancestry. I have the disadvantage of coming from an area where, before the invention of TV and radio, subjects for conversation must have been quite limited, and before the mass produced bicycle came along, subjects for marriage must have been too. So, it happened and pedigrees were endlessly recited.
Around where I’m living now, we have a large minority of Irish Travellers. These are the “Pikies” in Guy Ritchie’s movie, Snatch.
I don’t think anyone knows what their origins are, they have their own language and usually practice cousin marriage (as do “Roma[nian]” Gypsies). Some are settled, but most are still functionally illiterate, average male life expectancy is something like late forties to very early fifties. They do have a certain characteristic appearance, most are pretty skillful at barter and live by their witts / cum varing degrees of crimminality.
Of the ones I know, it’s difficult to tell whether they have low iq (Ireland’s average iq is 92, so, about half a std dev lower than most of northern Europe’s to begin with), or whether it is poor education, or whether they cultivate an image of being dumb and harmless, the better to size you up.
The other big cousin marriers are some of the orthodox Jewish sects. I’ll let Kitler flesh out the stuff about the Ashkinasi, and their claims of the advantages of the practice. I gather that they have now reached the point where the traditional match makers use DNA testing to avoid putting two Tay-Sachs positives together. How long that will work for, who knows. I do know that people who marry into the community and their partners tend to get a hard time from the mother-in-law. Gentile/mudblood and the like… (second mention of Guy Ritchie and his ex, and another reference to becoming a roundhead!)
Dr Dave, do you have any info on the relative health of inbreeds versus the rest of us mongrels?
The anecdotes which I have come accross, including some research Ayaan Hirsi Ali had compiled when she was a member of the Dutch Parliament, suggested that Moslems had the lowest school attainments, poorest economic performance and highest health care costs of any group, regardless of the country which the moslems came from, all other groups of immigrants, even from the same countries as some of the moslems, out performed the host population.
Compared to the moslems at the bottom, we have the Jews, economically and educationally outperforming every other group, but I can only think of one Jewish winner of an olympic gold medal; Mark Spitz.
Dr Dave on water,
I’ve seen a few posts recently about current production washing machines giving much poorer cleaning than models from the 90s, before all the interference mandating lower water use, front loading and shorter cycles.
There were also posts about how dish washers now need two or more cycles to get glass clean, since Caliphornia kalifornicated with phosphate detergents.
Here the toilets use, I think it was 25% less water per flush, except it now takes about five flushes to take away a big jobby, and it is no fun rodding the drains when it doesn’t quite make it to the treatment tank.
Ireland currently has no domestic property tax, or domestic water charge. The government is busy installing meters, ready for a water charge. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be charged, as I’m on a private supply at both ends.
Despite the pleas of the state being hard up, I notice a whole crop of new propaganda road signs that have just gone up. Bastards!
The way ahead is clear isn’t it; you don’t knowingly place yourself in a position of vulnerability. Down here the response is to say ; fuck ’em!
Put in your own water tanks; generate your own power; grow your own firewood/ fuel.
The only way to escape road user charges is to ride a bicycle though.
Amen FB. I must get around to the survival thread some day – Oz
Marriages to first cousins are not at all common in the US. There is a social stigma against marrying a second cousin but by this time the chromosomes have been sufficiently mixed to attenuate any real harm. To be honest, I’ve never really looked into the issue. I know that years ago in the Appalachian regions we had very isolated communities and interbreeding was commonplace. This resulted in some physical characteristics being “amplified” (e.g. “pie pan hillbilly face”), a number of birth defects and a higher incidence of sub-normal IQ and mental retardation. But those days are largely over.
I have made some casual observations that have absolutely no statistical relevance nor scientific basis. I worked with clinics up on the Navajo reservation for years. The Navajo pretty much marry and reproduce among their own people. The Navajo population in NW New Mexico is about 60,000. Over a few hundred years this makes for a rather shallow gene pool. Navajo have a rather distinctive body type and appearance. But they also have about a 20-25% incidence of adult onset diabetes. It is (shamefully) politically incorrect to even suggest that this may be due to inbreeding. Instead, it is the white man’s fault for changing their traditional diet. To me inbreeding sounds far more plausible.
Another casual observation I’ve made is that a lot of the local Hispanics tend to be of short stature and those who have received regular dental care have absolutely wonderful dentition. These folks are ultra-mongrels. Their ancestry includes Spanish and northern European as well as Native American blood. There are always exceptions, but as a whole I think they’re a pretty healthy lot. You don’t encounter many with myopia as severe as I have (and my two siblings as well).
Don’t feel too bad about Ireland…it was just reported that 47% of the population of Detroit is functionally illiterate.
Luton Ian the Ashkenazim are descended from just 6 maternal bloodlines from the 1500’s a somewhat limited gene pool as about 250 humans are needed to establish a healthy population. Fortunately for them it has given them on average high IQ’s the unfortunate bit is that they have a number of assorted genetic health issues as well.
They also have a certain appearance easily spotted clothing not with standing, which is to be expected because of the high inter marriage.
The Pushtun in Pakistan and Afghanistan are distant cousins and were one of the lost tribes of Israel they also practice cousin marriage, unfortunately for them it has not resulted in a high IQ.
Off topic (do I need to say that?).
What ever happened to men wearing suits that had a darker jacket and lighter pants? A visible pattern on the tie? Warm colours (not necessarily ‘power red’)?
Look at this line-up of current GOP presidential hopefuls (trust me, these are the weakest of the lot: the strong horses will appear much later). All the same dark suits, though second-from-left (sorry — don’t know his name; never seen him before!) is at least distinguished enough to wear a double-breasted suit (always dashing on a man, in my opinion). For ties we have three golds and two blues of essentially the same hue. Ron Paul is distinguished (barely) by having a tie with stripes, which doesn’t look good (nothing wrong with stripes, just not on that tie). Also, poor old Ron looks like a little boy who’d much rather be splashing on a beach somewhere. Certainly, his suit doesn’t want to be there, especially the jacket.
When you look at what men of money and style and class typically wore in the late 18th, early 19th centuries (not afterwards: too much featureless black and WAY too much facial hair!), you wonder: what happened to the male fashion sense? It briefly returned in the late 1960s, early 70s, and boom — disappeared again. Look what’s in the stores: BOR-ING! If I were condemned to wear the blandest stripes and checks in the boringest most off-vivid colours for the rest of my life, I’d be really depressed. But this apparently is what men want. Weird.
I’ll shave it off now – Oz 😥
Oh, here’s the picture of the candidates: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/05/gop-contenders-look-seize-moment-presidential-debate/
Now, here was a man with fashion sense:
Not yours, darling. I mean the beards that reached navels and embraced innocent passersby, etc.
Amanda men wear what is comfortable and feel under no obligation to dress up unless they are on the prowl for mates are in the military or other occupation requiring a uniform. If David Cameron could get away with it he would be wearing jeans and a T shirt.
Kitler: What you have just said proves nothing but that men should really still be in caves wearing furs with faces still attached to them.
Anyway, what is so uncomfortable about paisley or pips???
Ozboy from my picture you can tell I’m a rather snappy dresser with a distinguished moustache.
Amanda er we haven’t exactly gotten beyond that and I have noticed women really want their men to be manly maybe better dressed but manly. I don’t get to pick my wardrobe except for shoes as I have wide feet and my choice has to be for comfort because the number of styles are limited.
If anyone could tell me what wide feet as opposed to big feet mean let me know?
At 1:17 PM on 6 May, Amanda had written:
I suppose that the one-word answer is snipers.
When projectile weapons became sufficiently accurate and lethal to make conspicuousness a liability (“The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”), it became more and more likely that “men of money and style and class” would decline to indulge in the wear of gaudy finery.
Heck, even subdued insignia of military rank becomes a bullet magnet.
As a child in parochial school, when I was taught the story of the plucky young stone-slinging shepherd boy, David, and the big, heavily armored Phillistine, Goliath, I realized that in a stand-off fight where the agile contender with a ranged weapon wasn’t going to get within poking or bashing range of any hand-held implement, the outcome had never been in doubt.
Once rifled musketry began to appear on the battlefield – look up the history of Daniel Morgan and his troops during the American states’ war of secession from the British Empire – “men of money and style and class” who dressed so as to draw attention to their discriminating taste and high status began quite reliably to wind up rotting in shallow graves, bits of them exposed by frost heave to the cursing farmer’s plow in later years.
Tucci78,
This is really rather amusing. I have always discouraged co-workers, colleagues and patients from addressing me as “Doctor”. I believe it only builds barriers to useful communication. I have a rule…if anyone addresses me by my first name I shall address them by their first name. This goes for physicians, dentists, veterinarians, optometrists, etc. If they insist on addressing me as Doctor I shall address them as Doctor. This cuts through the bullshit pretty quickly. When co-workers were REALLY pissed at me they would address me as “Doctor Dave” or (worse still…if they were really mad) as Doctor [my last name]. Hence my screen name.
I used to love to dress the part. I had a glorious wardrobe and an amazing selection of ties. My ex-wife used to remark, “Dave loves to get dressed up”. Well…I didn’t really. I’m far more comfortable in boots and jeans. About 10 years ago I showed up for a job interview with a new haircut and a fine suit. I got the job but my new boss told me that that was the LAST time he wanted to see me in a suit. We practiced in the frontier clinics and he expected us to blend. So my “uniform” became black jeans, well polished Tony Lama boots and a dress shirt. Damn comfortable! Lousy pay but a cool job. These patients would pucker up if you presented with a tie and a long white coat. They were at ease if you’re wearing boots and jeans and a clean shirt It’s all a matter of presentation.
Some of the least “fancy” men have the best comportment.
Dr Dave an example of a well dressed man…
My place of work decided over 12 years ago to go from formal wear to casual and I’m glad for it, although they had to implement a dress code and showering requirement shortly afterwards, as some guys refused to shower and a lot of the ladies ended up dressing like hookers. A fat woman dressed like a hooker is not something you wish to look at with overflowing everything.
In my youth I was very dapper in a suit and tie but the climate is very anti suit and tie.
I’ve never worn the long white coat except in laboratories (gross anatomy especially) and when I’ve had to run around in scrubs – and that’s because the only coats on the laundry carts were long. As a house officer, I got an issue of “ice cream suit” whites, including short white jackets, and – gawd, is it more than thirty years later now? – I still fit in ’em. I keep at least one pair of those white trousers handy as “shruggable loss” work pants for use around the house. They’re still holding up remarkably well. Come of never letting a hospital laundry get at ’em.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable speaking to people who’ve got to take orders from me – nurses, technicians, whatever – by their first names when they’re not entitled to call me anything but “Doctor.” Yeah, there’s a real disparity in status. The principle isn’t called “respondeat superior” for nothing. But I’ve always hated giving even the least impression that I’m patronizing the people with whom I’ve worked, or who’ve worked for me.
Speaking to a nurse or a tech as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in front of patients, to my way of thinking, conveys both to the patient and to the ancillary care provider that I value the professionalism and ability of the person addressed. And the patient had better take those people seriously, too. “Una cosa di rispetto,” I guess.
As for how I’ve dressed in the office or when out on social occasions, I’ve always referred to it as “Republican drag.” White or blue or (daringly!) tan long-sleeved dress shirts, ties (and what the hell is wrong with stripes, anyway?), two- or three-piece off-the-rack suits (double-breasted? Jeez, not even my father ever owned a double-breasted suit jacket), or more commonly a sport coat or blazer with a pair of passable dress trousers.
In a racket where there’s always the likelihood of getting spattered with blood or Betadine, who the hell wants to dress up in expensive clothes?
As for wearing a white coat in the clinic or the office setting…. Gawd, that’s just pretentious as all hell, isn’t it?
I’ve tried to get away without a tie whenever possible because even with a tack or a clip or a chain or a clasp (and they’re getting harder to find all the time), neckties dangle, damn them, and get into stuff at the most inconvenient times. I’ve commonly had to stuff ’em into my shirt between the second and third buttons, in the manner prescribed by U.S. Army regulations during World War II for personnel wearing ties but not wearing a blouse (often miscalled the “service jacket”)
If you do any amount of munchkin medicine, they’re a heckuva temptation to grabby toddlers, too.
By the bye, have you EVER filled out a birth certificate or a death certificate and listed the race of anyone named therein as “African“?
Tucci78,
This may sound weird but…I love you, man! I have NEVER filled out ANY form that listed a race as “African”. I thought maybe it was just me. I have always used “Negro” or more recently “Black”. I’m not an old timer but I sure as hell ain’t no kid. This weirded me out, too.
I’ve done my level best to distance myself from the screaming snot bubblers with ear infections…that’s why God made Nurse Practitioners (if you ask me). Yeah…OK…I’m a prick. But I HATE dealing with little kids…especially their parents. The most adamant drug seeker you will ever encounter is not the druggie seeking opiates, it is the mother demanding antibiotics for her kid’s viral ear infection.
Most adults are a lot like children…except they give better histories and are only half as whiny. That reminds me…I have to shine my boots tonight.
Damn, I get some interesting patrons here!
BTW I’m stuffing my head with gold bullion at the moment, so to speak. Give me a few days – Oz
DrDave as for the viral stuff and antibiotics my daughters now dead pediatrics doctor always prescribed antibiotics for viral infections when I queried her on this once she said it was to prevent secondary infections. Personally I think it was to avoid potential lawsuits. I was disgusted with her for doing this knowing full well what the over prescription of antibiotics was only encouraging resistance in bacteria to make that antibiotic useless.
DrDave on reflection what they were doing is a secondary placebo effect on mothers demanding a cure for viral infections that a child will get over from naturally. My mother as a nurse deliberately exposed us to German Measles because she knew that as young children we would get over it quickly and build up an immunity quickly. A friend who got it at age 14 was bed ridden for two months. My mother used to pull our baby teeth by hand when we were getting our adult teeth a lot better than seeing a dentist and quicker once they were loose.
Now that brings back memories of growing pains and a rather painful boil my father treated with hot water too draw the puss out, home cures are pretty effective.
Ozboy we have two doctors that question the Obama’s birth certificate on purely procedural grounds with no axe to grind go figure.
At 5:02 PM on 6 May, Dr. Dave had written:
Particularly when you consider that that long-form birth certificate had supposedly been completed in 1961. What passed for political correctness back then required that one say “Negro” instead of “Black.”
H.L. Mencken commonly made reference to the term “Aframerican,” but only by way of puncturing the pretenses of the Negro press of his time. In The American Language, he attributed the word to Sir Harry Johnston.
But “African” on a birth certificate? That includes every ethnic group on the continent, from Berber to Afrikaner.
Jeez, might as well have characterized my grandparents as “European” on the birth certificates of my mother and my father because each of them was from Italy.
Like everything else about the past personal history of our “poverty pimp” excuse for a lawful president, that long-form birth certificate stinks on ice.
I dunno about the relative reliability of adults as giving “better histories” than children do. I’ve observed that little kids lie and evade a helluva lot less often than adults do.
I’ve never found it difficult to deal with small children or infants. Comes of having been raised in a big family, perhaps. By way of pure laziness, I discovered that one key trick is to begin the encounter with the kid seated next to his/her parental unit on a high exam table, and then park my butt on one of those roll-around stools so that I’m looking up into the child’s eyes instead of towering above.
Then I talk to the kid even though I’m really interrogating (and later advising) the grown-up. The youngster is part of the conversation, which is what they’re really used to at home.
I’ve had parents tell me on subsequent visits and in encounters in the community that because I’d directed my instructions to the youngsters, even very small children would pester their parents subsequently to ensure that everything they (the kids) had been directly told to do in treating what brought them to the doctor’s office got done as ordered.
Like any other human beings, small children want command and control of their situation. That involves knowing what’s going on, taking the responsibility to act effectively, and exerting the authority necessary.
I’ve never treated ’em as adults, though. Adults, after all, are commonly damned fools.
Tucci…You are right about snippers. Military fashion does influence civilian fashion for men a lot. And before accurate and effective fire arms, the military ‘look’ was to be as imposing as possible. Sometimes taken to extraordinary lengths. ….(The Polish winged hussars, for instance.)
We are now in a period, where the military look is to ‘blend in’ and not be noticed. It started around about the time of black and whiskers, that Amanda speaks of. The whiskers, I think, were an attempt at making a statement anyway, that wouldn’t necessarily get you shot.
The cavalry Light brigade and the British army in general, were a little bit slow to catch up with fire arm developments and its effect on fashion. Even if the rifle brigade had.
I’m going on topic (don’t worry, only for a short while – I haven’t suffered a head injury or anything like that…)
The new raghead scare looks like it is starting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13304809
I wonder what else will be “found” which is just ever so convenient for penning the sheeple ever tighter, and of course permitting more groping and spying…
Like climategate code, and the kings new clothes, I suspect that only the anointed few will ever get to “see” it.
At 6:44 PM on 6 May, fenbeagle had written:
There’s also the fact that the battlefield has always been a confusing place. Throughout recorded history (and I’m mindful of combat accounts ranging back through First Megiddo), command and coordination have required that there be some readily discernable distinctions between combatants on one side and those on the other.
Not a matter of “imposing” but rather “easy to see.” There’s also the fact that a commander doesn’t want orders for the Emperor’s Own Ravening Bloodletters being couriered instead to the Second Squadron of Imperial Chariotry by mistake.
Distinctions of such character could make the “dancing-ground of armies” look pretty colorful, and commonly did.
Civilian dress had its impact upon military costume as well. When gunpowder use became common on the European battlefield, the relative tactical value of body armor began to diminish, and it wasn’t until indirect artillery fire came into use (with shrapnel and shell fragments doing great injury to personnel) that head protection – helmets – got issued.
During those early years before uniformity came to be seen as valuable, utility and cost tended to dictate. Soldiers’ campaign clothing during the English Civil War (for instance) didn’t differ that much from what might be seen in civvie street. They just added collored ribbons and scarves and sashes and such.
Later, during America’s War of Northern Aggression, prescribed uniform regulations tended on both sides to be honored more in the breach than in the observance. For example, the odious French-style kepi (retained in the regular U.S. Army for decades after the southern states had been pillaged and conquered) was scorned by thousands of soldiers in favor of the much more practical and protective broad-brimmed slouch hat that most people working outdoors in the American west tend to wear even today – the “cowboy hat.”
If you want to keep the sun and the rain off the back of your neck and out of your eyes, short-brimmed headgear like the kepi and forage cap (not to mention the garrison cap and the truly idiotic beret) ain’t gonna do the job.
I don’t think that’s true. The British first formed the units that became rifle regiments in the mid-18th Century, before the Napoleonic wars, when it was decided that combat on the American frontier required special troops to implement the Jäger style of light infantry combat in forested and broken terrain. These units took up the dark green uniform not long after their creation.
Possibly the British Army became hospitable to the concept after the accession of the House of Hanover. Certainly, the rifle battalions were the first units in British regular service to commission foreigners – mostly German, Dutch, and Swiss – as officers. I suspect, however, that Braddock’s defeat in 1755 had more to do with the decision to take up the “unconventional warfare” style of fighting for which the rifle units were created.
Well I’m glad that we apparently have so many manly men on here, who can remember the Boer War (‘Look to your front!’), but I have to say I’m not the least impressed. Most Western men never get within 100 miles of a battlefield — not those of my generation, anyway (and the one ahead of me and the one behind me). They are not dressing to avoid snipers, for heaven’s sake!
And I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with stripes. The problem is when you are all wearing stripes all the time like escapees from Alcatraz or something. When they’re not looking like a 1940s tablecloth. There are other patterns, you know? If men find geometry acceptable and floral swirls not, then why can’t they wear dots, circles, arrow-tips (fancy way of saying triangles), wheat-sheafs, chevrons, or runic characters? Anything but stripes on the one hand and checks (which are just stripes running also at right angles) on the other?
I was shopping with hubby last weekend. I had to persuade him to buy the bright yellow polo shirt, and the crisp white one, as well as the navy he was already inclined to buy. I’ve had to persuade him that pink is good. I agree that green is not his colour but have said that he ought to wear more red (brown is usually a great colour for both sexes, and not deadening on the skin as black can be). We couldn’t do more than the yellow, white, and navy because the other colours were sort of off-colours: bricky orangey red (yuck), olivey don’t-ask beige, blue that’s not like the sky or sea, etc. Men look as good in jewel-like colours as women do, yet they so rarely wear them.
The dangling tie is a bit of a problem at times, mainly because your average man can’t keep it away from his lunch. Pre-Regency and Regency-era men wore colourful cravats which didn’t dangle. Bring back the cravat!
Kitler, someone should have explained to the group what a melody is, number one. And number two, the really correct pronunciation of ‘Neanderthal’ is Tal not Thal. I know that some posh people (including a paleoanthropologist I know) do pronounce it the latter way — at least when addressing the public — but it’s a bit like the Michael-angelo / Mickel-angelo divide. The former is the Anglican version, the latter is more authentic. Once you’ve heard the authentic it’s hard to forget it.
Those of you that object to dressing up should go here and join in:
http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Local/May-6-Weekend-Events.aspx?cp-documentid=28619981&imageindex=2&cp-searchtext=No%20Pants%20Day&FORM=MSNIIT
Those of you interested in the BATF gunwalker scandal should read this:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/time-for-daylight-u-s-weapons-reaching-cartel-hands-a-huge-scandal/?singlepage=true
Ozboy,
It’s nice to know how highly regarded we are in Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/1418100.html
How can a country that elected Joolia consider us stupid?
Bob Ellis (sigh). At the bottom of the article it states, “Bob Ellis is a writer and commentator”. I could lengthen that list considerably, but there are ladies present.
Anti-Americanism is one of the shibboleths of the urban Left throughout the Western nations, including, need I point out, the United States. I first encountered it as a child, watching the anti-Vietnam War protests on television, then when I attended university, where I was shocked by its depth and ferocity. Without exception, people serenely divorced from the realities of life.
If you’re ever in Australia, go to Canberra and visit this. Financed by public donation, by people whose opinion matters.
Oh, and BTW, I’m not sure which country you’re referring to that “elected Joolia”; mine certainly didn’t – Oz
Amanda,
Thank Heavens it’s nearly Saturday here so I’ve missed all those men parading around in boxers and socks! Yuckkkkk.
At 2:45 AM on 7 May, Dr. Dave had written:
Er, didn’t we (“Whaddaya mean, we, Kemo Sabe?”) elect not only Ms. Dunham’s Incomplete Abortion but also the Shrub, the Irrumator, the Republican Party’s Good Soldier Švejk, Bonzo’s Babysitter, and Jimmy the Malaise before him?
Tucci78,
As soon as I wrote that and hit POST I knew I was in for it. “We” elected Obama. This reflects all the willing idiocy of accepting Prince Chuck as your King. “We” elected Bush (43)…but consider our choices. How do you think a Gore or Kerry presidency would have worked out? Clinton is a national embarrassment eclipsed only by Obama. I actually liked Bush (41). I loved Reagan. Imagine what he could have accomplished with a Republican Congress. I remember the Carter years with deep shame. He was the first Presidential candidate I was old enough to vote against.
I was too young to vote for or against Nixon, LBJ or Kennedy. Eisenhower was President when I was an infant. In my memory I’ve never actually HATED any President until Obama. Clinton disgusted me but I mostly hated his wife. I didn’t always agree with W but I never felt great animosity towards him.
It is embarrassing to admit, but ANYONE other than Obama would be a significant improvement.
Meltemian: Thanks for the laugh! :^)
Oz wrote: “but there are ladies present”.
I think that means you and me, Meltemian. You, anyway!
“people serenely divorced from the realities of life”.
An apt description for my dad, a mechanical engineer with a good head on his shoulders, personal responsibility, and a lot of common sense — BUT, in politics, a babe in the woods, I’m afraid. Having no formal or informal political education, he just went adrift amid the sea of funny gas that they have so much of in Canada. Lives like a conservative, but voted for the way-out deep-red NDP in the latest election (New Democratic Party). Poor dear, it’s almost embarrassing. Fortunately most of his fellow citizens disagreed (Dad is London-born like me but emigrated a lot time ago).
LOL At one point I privately referred to him as ‘Comrade Dad’. I disapproved, but he and I are very mutually fond and he is so normal otherwise that actually we get along well.
At 1:05 AM on 7 May, Amanda had written:
The generation behind mine put eight million men from these United States in military uniform, and a bunch of us wound up spending time getting shot at in Southeast Asia, not to mention commitments undertaken with our G.I.-clothed bodies in Korea, West Germany, Okinawa, and all to hellangone over the rest of the American Empire.
Even if we didn’t actively serve, there’s that concept in American law called “the unorganized militia,” upon which the various Selective Service Acts (military conscription) are predicated in these United States. My own personal call to the colors was deferred, not eliminated, during the time in which I was of age for my friends and neighbors at the draft board to put the arm on me.
I went in as a medical officer, not in the line of command (you even get different insignia on your shoulderboards), a feathermerchant over whom the incantations of the Sacred Brotherhood of Them What Has Been Shot At were only cursorily chanted.
When one spends one’s childhood being raised by people who had gone through World War II and the Korean “police action” in a cultural milieu strongly influenced by their experiences, ever mindful of the prospect of getting drafted (if only to serve a couple of dreary years in Camp Swampy or Fort Huachuca or some other stateside hell-hole), it’s damned difficult not to have your consciousness raised about matters military.
You’re not planning to make a career of it, but you learn before you begin high school – possibly from the uncle who’d made the parachute drop on Corregidor’s Topside in 1945 – that if you “Look to your front!” all the time, the other guy’s gonna sneak up behind you and shoot you in the ass.
Stripes provide a contrast to the generally uniform colors of dress shirts and suit jackets. I’m just a happy with a solid color (my nephew in the Marine Corps jokes about sending me a couple of his field scarves), but boldly colored patterns other than stripes tend to show up most commonly in the average American man’s wardrobe by way of gag gifts from family and friends.
You don’t wear ’em unless you’re thumbing your nose at the situation in which you’re presenting yourself.
I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned those ties of solid color decorated with patterns of little insignia. I’ve got several of the Quill-and-Sword ties of the U.S. Naval Institute as well as insignia-bearing neckties sold in fundraising efforts by professional organizations to which I’ve belonged over the years.
And of course you don’t mention serviceable, utilitarian, easy-to-maintain gray.
Hm. Most of us on the libertarian side in SF fandom like to consider ourselves – in spirit – Browncoats.
Oh, that’s nothing. Have the tip of your tie damn’ near dip into a wound field sometime.
Dr Dave Wrote;
“As soon as I wrote that and hit POST I knew I was in for it.”
Goodness knows what electing B-Liar, not just once (like we did Major), but multiple times says to the world, and not ousting his Calvinist successor until his time was up…
Come to think of it, I do know what it says.
I remember an experiment when I was at school, “democratically” electing head boy. The choice was between a right pair of c###s.
The headmaster moaned that there were three squandered opportunities to choose.
One of those spoiled papers was mine.
Fortunately in adult life we have a logical sequence of several boxes in democracy the peaceful ones being;
1/ Soap Box
2/ Ballot Box
3/ Jury box
No wonder our un civil – would be masters, dislike all three, almost as much as they fear the next two in the sequence.
Looking on the bright side with the zero;
Have we ever had a better recruiter to a libertarian viewpoint?
Has there ever been a better gun salesman?
Is there any better person to annoy the hell out of the left, as their electoral base deserts them, and they wish that someone would give them the same sort of free ride that LBJ got?
I hope to hell that they never get the opportunity for that free ride (there side has after all got more to gain from someone being THAT stupid, than a libertarian or conservative has).
So Long Live Obama, I just wish impeachment would hurry up and take him out of the oval office.
At 6:32 AM on 7 May, Luton Ian had posted:
And none of ’em mean a damned thing unless there’s the maintenance of ready and widespread resort to the cartridge box. I like that line of H.L. Mencken’s:
“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-bye to the Bill of Rights.”
I worked in South Africa for a while.
Most guys my age had seen service on the borders, in Namibia, and quite a few of them on incursions into Angola. One guy I did a lot of work with used to specialise in parachuting in, finding arms caches over the border, then either booby trapping them or, if they seemed to be actively tended, dealing with the guys who were tending them. I never asked him how. Once done, he’d walk to the border.
Having seen conscription, and in many cases fought in guerilla and sometimes cross border war, those guys had a very different attitude to the military and to violence than my generation in Britain and Ireland have.
Some of my Father’s contemporaries did their national service in Korea, My father was in a reserved occupation, so were both of my grandfathers for WWii, and the one grandfather who was old enough for service in WWi was considered medically unfit then.
Getting back to South Africa and the Boer War.
The British Infantrymen had red Tunics and little pork pie hats, coupled with a short haircut, it earned them the Afrikaans nickname “Rooineck” (red neck), and that sunburn must have hurt like hell. There was another nickname, which I can’t remember the Afrikaans for, that meant “salty penis”, I don’t want to imagine how they earned that one!
The British soldiers were largely drawn from urban areas, and as Churchill wrote in his memoir “My early life”, as officer cadets at Sandhurst, they never expected to see a war, the nations were all far to civilised for it to happen, all they were used to were occasional punitive expeditions in the colonies, when a few rusty muzzle loaders or a few spears might get used against them.
The name “Boer” is Afrikaans for farmer. Like the American war of independence, they were frontiersmen, skilled at stalking game, judging range, living off the land and using the available cover. They were also a bit nerdy about guns, and the youngsters had the latest model 7×57 Mausers or Norwegian 6.5×55 Krags. The old guys liked the .577/.450 Martinis. Their clothes were old washed out khakis (not that the Afrikaans, and especially old Kruger, their leader had any reputation for personal hygiene!).
The Brits got such a shock that as soon as they could they experimented with the hotshot .276 round in the rifle that became the p14 and M17 Enfield. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the .303 Lee rifle they had (in the trenches of the 14 – 18 war, it was a better service rifle than the Mauser), it was the vastly superior tactics and field craft of the Boers.
Just got pointed to this:
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-twofer.html
a guy simply carrying pistols in his suitcase, through the TSA checks in the US and through whatever security in the UK.
Check out the comments too.
Tucci,
I gather that a Brit, who did much to ensure the availability of the fourth box of democracy, died of cancer last month. Philip A Luty. I don’t think he was even 50 years old.
He certainly suffered at the hands of the bureaucrats for showing that gun bans cannot be made to work.
Apparently, the brits even considered banning home workshops as a result of his work with bits of pipe and a few DIY hand tools.
Tucci and Dave,
Re the birth certificate, Mrs Oz just raised a point with me. In the US, who fills out the birth certificate? When Ozgirl was born last June, we filled it out ourselves, and it was signed off by the attending obstetrician and nurse. Not meaning to be a contrarian, but could it have been that Obama’s birth certificate was filled out by his father? If so, the racial designation of African would seem to make sense.
At 9:50 AM on 7 May, Ozboy had written:
In these United States, though a bunch of information might be filled in to some extent by a ward clerk (or whatever the hell they’re being called nowadays), legal documents like birth certificates and death certificates are signed by an attending physician, and that’s the guy who is “drop-dead” responsible for the content thereof.
I’ve lost count of the number of birth and death certificates I’ve personally completed and signed. Never once have I ever seen, heard of, or had proposed to me that under the classification of “Race” there could be any entry reading “African.”
Not once. Not at any time, not in any way.
As I’d observed, “African” is a race categorization that embraces Berbers, Afrikaners, Egyptians, and other people with cutaneous melanin content about the same as that found in the average Georgia cracker.
The technical term for such an usage is, I believe, “bullshit.”
Now, if Barry the Stoner’s alleged daddy had been characterized as “Luo” (which would have been accurate and sensible, though unlikely), I’d grant some credence to the validity of the information being pushed in this forgery. But “African“?
Gimme a break!
Point taken about the meaninglessness of “African” as a descriptor of race (does that then make a mockery of the term “African-American”?) To respond to that, I’ve heard plenty of Pakistanis, Indonesians and Japanese all describe themselves as “Asian”. But to return to the original question: who would typically fill in that part of the form? It’s not part of the birth certificate in Australia. If it was Obama’s father, then while you’re quite correct in pointing to his lack of precision, it doesn’t add up to a conspiracy. If, on the other hand, it was cooked up by a bunch of progressive zealots in the White House who couldn’t bring themselves to use the word “negro”, then it’s a game-changer – Oz
At 8:30 AM on 7 May, Luton Ian had written about:
Thanks. His Web site, The Home Gunsmith*, is still being maintained online by his survivors. I’d read about his Expedient Homemade Firearms in an article published online in The Libertarian Enterprise last year, but I hadn’t been aware that the author had been dying of cancer.
*Ummm, my survival instinct compels me to remove the hyperlink to that site, even though I’m sure it’s legal. Google it folks if you really want to have a look. Please don’t take offence Tucci, but I’m applying the principle of more abundant caution to ensure LibertyGibbert lives to play another day – Oz
Ozboy,
Though it’s been a while, I seem to recall that a birth certificate is created by bureaucrats from information distilled from official birth records. Tucci is probably closer to this than I am but I can only recall race designations as Caucasian, Negro (or black), Asian, Hispanic and “other”. I have NEVER encountered a case where a continent was given as a race (e.g. Australian) as it is non-specific. But just because I have never seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. What’s difficult to believe is that it happened in 1961 (even in Hawaii). Hell, the original documents may have read “colored” for all I know.
I know that in England they often refer to Pakistanis as “Asian”. “Arabic” would be more accurate. A little over 20 years ago I read a fascinating book about races. Race and ethnicity are very separate issues. Tucci and I are both of European ancestry yet I’m pretty sure we look nothing alike. My ancestors were from the Netherlands, England, Ireland, France and I think a little bit Germany. Tucci’s ancestors are from Italy. I stick out like a sore thumb where I live. I’m 6’2″, weigh about 180 lbs, and have (sort of) blonde hair and blue eyes. Here I’m referred to as “Anglo”.
In truth there are very few specific “races” in all of mankind. Some have listed it as being as few as five – Caucasian, Negro, Asian, Semitic (i.e. Arabic) and one isolated native tribe in South America. Native Americans are actually Asian in origin. The peoples of India are actually Caucasian. Half the population of the planet is technically “Asian”. The indigenous peoples of sub-Sahara Africa and Australia are technically “Negro”. Ethnicity clouds the race issue. But when you drill it down to fundamentals there really are very few distinct races. If Obama’s father had been born in Egypt do you suppose they would have listed his race as “African” or even “Egyptian”?
I don’t know the answer, but when I was a kid the descriptor “Negro” was not a racial slur…it was simply accurate.
Ozboy your caution in this case is justified Mr Luty was thrown in jail on some very spurious charges and he was being held on charges relating to terrorism or some other bullshit and never saw a judge if I remember correctly.
His case shows that the UK under Blair was a fascist police state and heaven help you if you questioned the validity of WMD’s in Iraq.
Dr Dave the term Negro simply means black or more scientifically Negroid under the old racial classifications, which I know you know. The subject of race in of itself been made more interesting now that it’s been shown all people from outside of sub Saharan Africa are hybrids of two or more Homonid species.
Dr Dave when you consider how historically populations have moved around and interbred race can get sort of fuzzy especially at the edges. I’m not sure where Tucci’s family hail from in Italy but he could have Viking blood running through those veins or Moorish.
Kitler, I’m certainly not ‘fuzzy at the edges’. And where I am, I shave.
At 11:38 AM on 7 May, Dr. Dave had commented that:
…and I could not help flashing back on the National Lampoon folks’ 1969 song, “Middle-Class Liberal Well-Intentioned Blues,” the lyrics to which go:
Dr. Dave – my fellow “European” – is right about the differences in appearance between us. I’m nearly his equal in height, but weigh about seventy pounds more than he does, and where male pattern baldness has left any hair on my head and it’s not gone gray, I’m as brunette as are most other descendants of il Mezzogiorno
Tucci,
Amanda not fuzzy eh, ROFL.
It’s late, and I just want to say that it’s nice to be back at Ozboy’s.
As for race, my only contribution is to state that I am 100% Homo sapiens sapiens. Occasionally I may resemble H. sapiens stupido, but I hope not too often and never in public places. :^)
Oh hello K, didn’t see you there.
At 1:01 PM on 7 May, Kitler had written:
I wouldn’t be surprised if – in the words of W.C. Fields – “There’s a Nubian in the fuel supply,” genetically speaking, though none of my family is particularly dark in complexion. There’s certainly some residue of the Norman conquest of Sicily and southern Italy, as blue eyes and blonde hair show up occasionally in the families, all of which derive from those provinces.
I grew up in a little town where I didn’t really understand that it was possible to have a last name not ending in a vowel until I was in high school. Tutti Italiani.
Tucci,
I might recommend the DVD available through Amazon that has every issue of National Lampoon scanned. Even the ads are fun. The trouble is it is not indexed in any way. It’s worse than thumbing through a random stack of old issues. But I remember some old Chris Miller short stories leaving me laughing so hard I had tears running from my eyes. Golly, I miss the National Lampoon. They beat everyone up equally.
I apologize for the blank post. Believe it or not I actually wore out a mouse. The right click simply failed. So I swiped my girlfriend’s wireless mouse and hooked it up. Problem solved…until she notices. She’s all “laptop” these days so I have time.
I envy you, Tucci. My hair simply falls out…it’s too lazy to turn grey first. My late father had a full head of hair when he died at age 90. My maternal grandfather was bald as a cue ball long before he died at the age of 89. I’ve found evening beers counteract aging…well, at least I don’t remember growing old. Damn! It seems like just yesterday I was a young, impudent whippersnapper…now I’m just impudent.
Tucci well Italy itself has seen it’s fair share of invaders especially from Northern Europe, so ancestry can be interesting in Sicily you had the Greeks and Carthaginians way back when. It’s a history lesson lasting all day. Myself I’m a northern European mutt. I gra’ad oop in a place where the letter G did not exist on the end of a word.
Also Luton Ian is a snob he pronounces his g’s at the end of words.
DrDave…..now I’m just impudent.
That’s why they invented Viagra.
Amanda as much as we could all debate race and any differences all day it does not stop anybody on the planet being any less human.
No, just being a tyrant a la the Castro Bros, Gaddafi (sp?), Ahmadinejihad (yes), Sadist Hussein, etc. makes one less human. I don’t care for that creep in Venezuela, while we’re at it.
Goodnight, dears.
Amanda have you been following the news from Iran Ahmadinnerjackets allies and friends are being rounded up on witchcraft charges for summoning up d’jinn.
Which what you get for pissing in the wheaties of the supreme Ayatollah.
At 1:34 PM on 7 May, Dr. Dave wrote:
I’ll see if it can be found. My favorite and best-remembered NatLamp element was the parody they provided of a “throwaway” medical journal – exemplary of those non-referee’d glossy periodicals you get if you’re on the AMA list no matter what your specialty might be – complete to advertisements for imaginary prescription drugs.
One particularly nasty product had a long list of thoroughly noxious adverse effects, with the sole indication being: “Extreme antipathy toward the patient.”
‘
You don’t envy me as much as you think you do. On both sides of my family tree, androgenic alopecia is the distinguishing mark of maleness. Perhaps twenty percent of my male relatives do not show the early onset of coronal and frontal hair loss. The rest of us grow through our hairlines before we’re into our ’30s, and aren’t much bothered by it.
I began to evince such hair loss before I was out of my second decade of life, and took note of the development without regret or chagrin. When you grow up in a community where just about every man looks like that (and nobody would even think about wearing a hairpiece), you receive such as nothing more than a mark of your maturity.
Ever heard the old joke about how patterns of baldness correlate with brain activity? Those with frontal hair loss sustain follicular apoptosis owing to increased frontal lobar percolations; such men are great thinkers.
Men with coronal hair loss, on the other hand, suffer the death of hair follicles in that region because of high limbic neuronal activity; they’re emotional, sensual, sexy guys.
Those of us with both frontal and coronal baldness? We only think we’re sexy.
Kitler,
Trust me…there ain’t no drugs for impudence. I’m always a big prick.
Tucci,
I remember that issue of NatLamp vividly. It was one of my favorites (and I was still in high school). My favorite was the fake ad for a drug called Terminalin…when euthanasia is indicated. It came in multiple strengths; .22, .38 and .45. A short story by Chris Miller entitled Cat Tales and another about a guy named Moran who traveled back in time to his youth left me in stitches. Man, we could use another NatLamp today!
Dr Dave…rofl shows you definitely have a sense of humour.
Well I’m glad of my O’rish ancestry no hair loss but unfortunately premature greyness starting at 16 by the time I’m 60 or 70 there is a good chance my hair will be snow white.
So with a beard a career at Christmas is a shoe in.
G’Day all.
Sorry to have been out of touch. I’ve been laptopless and have been borrowing an i pad to stop in. They are a stupid invention. Don’t know why anybody would want one. Pain to type on.
Dave is right about the DNA. I don’t believe Osama had any full siblings and they would have to have the DNA of several (confirmed) half siblings and preferably one of the parents (the mother, as the half sibs would be paternal) to infer the type. Then it still wouldn’t be 99.9%, but much lower. That you would only get if they previously had a sample from him. Even if they dug up his parents and got forensic samples, it still wouldn’t be 99.9%, but would be high. While it’s possible to get the results within 10 hours, the timing to me is rather dubious considering the transport time, etc.
Anyway, I do think they got him, but middle eastern experts (the one’s He won’t consult because to quote the press secretary “He doesn’t like to be told what He thinks He should do.” That was too precious.) by not releasing the photos he will become a myth, and by giving him a respectful burial we are showing them we feared him and that we are weak. The evasive answers are just another example of this administration keeps its transparency promise (He promised the be the most open).
His speech when he announced it was infuriating because he was taking credit for everything. Glad to see the rest of the world sees (or is beginning to see) through him too.
Good night all, off to walk the dog.
Morning Oz’ and everyone,
It looks as though LG posting is back to where it was pre-meltdown. I got used to having my coffee and looking to see what everyone had been up to while I was asleep. It’s good to be able to do that again.
You and me both Mel – Oz
Mel and Ozboy,
I was thinking the exact same thing. The ol’ Bar & Grill is beginning to have that “old feel” again. Absent are the troublemakers. There has always been something warm and inviting about this site. I love the informality and the familiarity I experience here. It’s a great place for discussion without brow beating and name calling…and I’ll kick the living dogshit out of any idiot who disagrees with me.
Having guardians here 24/7 is a comfort, I can tell you.
You want to know something funny? Back when the joint was jumping last year, we were getting between 4 and 6 page hits for every comment. I assumed this was the normal ratio on blogs and didn’t think any more about it. But since I’ve re-opened, that ratio has blown out to 20 or even 30 to 1. In other words, we’re getting about half the hits we did back in our heyday, and the number is growing exponentially. At this rate, we’ll be back to where we were in a couple of weeks’ time. I’d infer from this we’ve retained most of our lurkers. Not a bad show really, and it’s all thanks to you guys – Oz 🙂
Ozboy,
Good on ya. [I hope I have utilized this colloquial expression correctly and in context] Perfect – Oz
I love the polite, or rather, respectful discussion on this site. I enjoy points of view from all around the world. I remember back in your “heyday” asking a question about accents and dialects and receiving nasty, snarky comments from the tribal elders that seemed to indicate that linguistics was a topic that was not to be tolerated. I’m an American who listens closely to dialects and this sort of thing fascinates me. Your former tribal elders would not tolerate such discussion. I never gave much thought to what shirts I wear until I read Amanda’s comments today. It actually made me stop and think. Amanda, if you read this, I do wear patterns other than stripes…I just never thought about it. I like bright colors, too (but not yellow…yellow doesn’t look good on me).
There are many of your previous regulars that I’m glad to see showing up again. The conspicuous absence of some of your former “tribal elders” is even more refreshing.
You’re doing a good job, Oz…keep it up. I’m always there for you, Buddy.
ozboy I have noticed our troublemakers site has not posted since February no idea why.
Not that all of them were bad people just misguided. I’m not sure whom you feel should be allowed back under probation or not but it’s your site your rules. Glad the numbers are up and anyone out there lurking please feel free to post we don’t bite informed adult discussion and opinion is welcomed even some joking around you may make some new friends.
As for my own blog bugger orf and keep orf me lawn I’m not as nice as Ozboy not that anything sensible worth discussing happens there.
Dave spoke for me back here – may they blog in peace – Oz
Dr Dave it’s a marked improvement that we can discuss what we please even controversial subjects without someone taking a hissy fit. As certain subjects always bring out the puritans your own medical opinion changed my view on drug legalization for example as it not being so cut and dried.
Ozboy well they made their bed and now they have to lie in it, as I said your blog your rules all I can say is some people are not allowed ever again on my blog some others I have relented on because I feel they have repented for their past indiscretions.
Ozboy however of those I have allowed back they would need to apologize to you personally in public pleading for forgiveness before walking barefoot over broken glass.
Kitler,
I miss hearing from Memoryvault. I love hearing from you, Amanda, Luton Ian and the others. Tucci is a treasure! I’d love to quaff a couple of beers with that guy. He’s a hoot. His comments on WUWT crack me up. I notice a lot of the old regulars on JD’s blog. I don’t miss the sanctimonious ramblings of pointless or Wally O’Pinion nor the insults of some of the other former “tribal elders”. Thankfully they have all found new homes. The new Bar & Grill is better off without their dubious contributions.
You run your own site (by the way…thanks for not banning me) so you realize that this sort of venture is a labor of love (or labour or love, if you prefer). Ozboy gives a lot of himself to make this a reality and for that I am truly grateful and appreciative. I love tormenting the lad with ideas for articles and he always does a fine job of coming through. I’m convinced the blogosphere would be a lesser place without Ozboy. That said…it’s time for bed.
Dr Dave few people are banned on my site as it’s frivolous at best just two people so far for being total assholes, free speech is allowed assholedom isn’t.
As for Walt that is up to Ozboy but not before a private apology he broke an internet unspoken rule that was below the belt.
OK folks I really appreciate your support but let’s leave that issue there… now back to the important stuff – Oz
Hi Dave, I enjoy your contributions too, and thanks very much for mentioning me. And congratulations on wearing something besides stripes. I quite understand that yellow isn’t your colour. Personally, I think I don’t look good in black, unless there are other colours close to my face. Much too funereal — whether I’m the cadaver or the undertaker! Ordered a kind of violet-y t-shirt the other day, persuaded by the discount I think. Got it in the mail, held it up in the mirror, and said immediately ‘oh my god — No!’ That one’s going on the pile for charity!
Luton Ian at 7:41: Interesting. You certainly know your native lingo, not to mention your historical firearms.
Tucci: RE: gag gifts. Yes, indeed. Reminds me of the year we bought our dad about 10 ties, all of them extreme, garish, and grotesque, which we found in a 1970s hold-over bin. I think we gave him a genuine present as well, but it wasn’t a tie.
Heh heh. Two days ago we were “conspiracy theorists”. Now we’re being paraphrased. 😛
On the subject of Memoryvault, has anyone heard from him lately?
The US Special Forces teams, probably like most other country’s Special Forces teams, are very mission oriented. It is plainly evident that the mission of SEAL Team Six was to go in and kill bin Laden…not capture, not negotiate a surrender, not molly coddle…KILL. Obama doesn’t want to admit to the Muslim world and his socialist base that he gave an order to assassinate an enemy combatant. What was truly sickening was the way he decided to take ownership of the operation. Like he planned it, hand picked the operatives, made all the decisions and gave the final approval. All he did was give the final approval. The military did the rest. Now it appears he wants to distance himself from some of the unseemly elements of this successful mission. I doubt that any other American President in our nation’s history has ever taken so much undeserved credit.
Again, this is like giving Nixon credit for the moon landing because it happened on his watch. There’s an internet joke going around. Obama got Osama…we get the 72 versions.
Dr Dave, in the future it will be the Tech corporations contracted to the CIA that will be getting all the credit for assassination “successes”:
RE Oz’s link. The key lines are these:
‘Obama’s reasoning seemed conflicted. He claimed that releasing pictures of bin Laden with a hole in the head could inflame opinion against the US, and, besides, it so was also “not who we are”, which makes me suspect Obama was fretting less over enraged terrorists than enraged Leftists’.
Note to Obama: Cut this ‘not who we are’ crap. If we are the kind of nation that fights back, and you are President Nemesis on this occasion, then OWN it. This most definitely is ‘who we are’. It’s nothing to be ashamed of!
Anyone got advice about how to get muscular abs without pain? No. Didn’t think so!
I’ll just turn off LibertyGibbert’s spam filter tonight – Oz
Amanda, uddhiyana, not effortless, but definitely painless.
Thanks, FB. I’m looking it up right now! I have no problem with effort. It’s ‘ow’ that I really would rather avoid for the most part if I can.
It’s worth while to take it a step further and to master nauli. Then you have exceptional control of the rectus abdominis muscle pair.
FB: It’s rather like a slow bent-over version of belly undulations I do while sitting at the computer. I think.
Hark at you! I thought you were a farmer and groovy musician. Didn’t know you were a yoga expert as well.
If you get really good you’ll be able to impress Ozboy:
Good lord, FB!
Mate, this can only be done in Australia, alright mate?
I have a vague feeling it must be some kind of criminal offence in Tasmania – Oz 😳
Pulling down one’s knickers (if wearing) in public can only be done in Australia. Good to know.
When in Rome….. 🙂
Riddle me this someone…
You’re going to invade a foreign country in order to capture/kill/whatever some guy you don’t like and can’t get at in any other way. He lives in a walled compound with his women and maybe a dozen guys with guns. No sweat, says the operational planner. Half a dozen choppers filled with a team of Navy SEALs could pull off this with their eyes shut. They practice this stuff week in, week out.
So far, no sweat – it all adds up.
But hold on a moment: this guy’s house is not three hundred yards from a sizeable military base of the country you’re about to invade. Whoa, slow down there, says the ops guy. For that, we’re gonna need air support. Pound the living $h!+ out of them while our choppers sneak in and get your guy.
I’m not a military planner. But can any of you imagine for a moment that the soldiers in that compound just sat there while an invading enemy force flew three hundred yards away? For all they knew, the choppers were the Indians – their mortal enemy. Can you imagine the entire Pakistani military not going instantly to their version of DefCon One? Air Force fighter jets and bombers scrambled? My God, this is a country with nuclear weapons!!!
I know most of the commentators on the Right are generally accepting that this all took place in some form or other. But the more I think about it, the more it stinks to high heaven.
Good point, Oz. I’m not sure that it stinks exactly — maybe the Pakistanis just did the right thing and said to Obama: ‘have at it!’ and the SEALS then did so. If so, that smells very sweetly of roses to me.
Suggestion: the helicopters involved were virtually silent(?). Also: there would have to be someone inside the base saying ‘don’t react; don’t explore this’.
Further suggestion: These guys really ARE the James Bonds of our times, and they really are capable of this sort of exploit.
There’s simply no way they could have tipped off the Pakistani government beforehand – the executive and the brass are riddled with his supporters. That would have been as good as announcing a state visit to OBL. No doubt the SEALs are the best of the best, but they can hardly control the enemy’s response to an airborne invasion. If Obama – and Hillary Clinton, for that matter – really are telling the truth, then the United States just went within a whisker of triggering a thermonuclear war. It’s that serious – Oz
Ozboy,
Are you suggesting that perhaps bin Laden still lives? Hmmm… Let’s look at this. The first problem I imagine is that a BIG lie is a dangerous thing to manage. AGW is a BIG lie, but it was perpetuated over a period of decades by lots of people with millions upon millions of dollars backing it up. Today no ONE person could be blamed for the fraud. All it would take to destroy Obama is for bin Laden to crawl out of cave. I’d say that’s a bit too risky. I would imagine that the personnel in the Pakistani military base were quite accustomed to hearing helicopters come and go. The helicopters used were allegedly “stealth helicopters”. I imagine this is probably about like a “quiet horse” on a tile floor but probably not so loud as typical military helicopters and they flew in from Afghanistan, not India. But more importantly, Pakistan receives billions of dollars in foreign aid from the US. I think it is entirely likely that about the time the helicopters were over their objective someone from the State Department made a phone call and strongly suggested that it would be in Pakistan’s best interest to stand down for a little while. By this time it was too late to warn bin Laden but there was time enough to save their own asses. I’d say it’s quite likely that the Pakistani military knew what was going on but weren’t informed until it was already happening.
The fact of the matter is we don’t don’t what the hell happened or who exactly was involved or to what extent. I think it’s reasonably safe to assume this mission was a bit larger than just the SEAL team that went in and did the shooting. This may be a symbolic victory for Obama (and one for which he deserves little or no credit), but in reality it doesn’t change the situation on the ground. It is nicely described in this article: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/does_the_death_of_bin_laden_re.html
Suggesting he still lives? No way. One broadcast from OBL waving yesterday’s New York Times and Obama would be impeached. It’s more like what you just said – we don’t don’t what the hell happened. But it almost certainly didn’t happen the way we’re being told. I still say it stinks – Oz
Odds are we will NEVER know what really happened and all the players involved. The CIA is funny that way. Everything is always played very close to the vest. My guess is that sometime in the night Pakistan got the word they were to stand down and let this thing happen. They could bitch about it later to save face.
Ain’t nobody gonna hit the red nuke button over a few helicopters. The only way Pakistan could deliver a nuke to the US is if they used FedEx. India would be just as quick to make THEM glow in the dark. The helicopter teams sure as hell didn’t want any triple A headed their way so I’m convinced this contingency was headed off at the pass before it ever became a potential liability. These guys don’t make mistakes and they leave nothing to chance. It may suck but in all likelihood we’re never gonna hear the whole truth. Right now the odds makers are betting how close to the election it will be before Obama releases the bin Laden corpse photos to revive the issue for a reelection boost.
Hmmm. You could be right, Dave. Look, as I responded to one commenter above, I’m not alleging some grand conspiracy. But the point I was trying to make up at the top is that your government has gone to almost comical lengths to ensure OBL’s death has become completely unverifiable (notice how in death, OBL has become a TLA). And that raises an odour. If I was the conspiracy-theorist type (and I’m not), I’d be suggesting that either a) he died a long time ago, and his death was covered up for reasons now embarrassing to the U.S., or b) at this moment he’s strapped to a table in a basement in Guantanamo Bay, screaming his lungs out while body parts are being slowly fed to the resident pig. At least it’s a pleasant mental image – Oz 😈
Ozboy,
I have absolutely nothing to base this on other than “gut instinct”. I don’t think bin Laden bought the farm many years ago. I have long suspected he has been holed up in Pakistan where, until recently, our military couldn’t reach him. It was too cozy and too easy. Further, I suspect the CIA knew where he was for probably a matter of years, not months. The trouble is you can’t trust the Pakistanis any further than you can throw them How can you launch a commando raid when you know your “ally” will blab and actually help bin Laden escape? The CIA and the SEALS did everything right. Obama has screwed up by dumping the body in the ocean, hiding the photos like they were his affirmative action college transcripts and trying to obfuscate the facts.
Actually, you could add a third option to the above list, if you were really that far into conspiracies. If you were a really, full-on paid-up, card-carrying member of the tinfoil-hat brigade, option c) has OBL stretched out on a poolside deck chair on his own Caribbean island an hour’s chopper flight from Gitmo, sipping a pina colada and chatting to Hillary on his mobile phone, giving her verbal high-fives. But let’s not even go there.
I have a completely off topic, totally mundane, but somewhat amazing anecdote to share. It fits in nicely with the title to this piece. There’s a little old joint about 6 or 7 miles from my house called Bob Cat Bite. They make burgers ans steaks. That’s it. They have no fryers. They simply make excellent burgers and steaks. Tonight neither of us felt like cooking so I called and ordered a couple of their slightly too big to finish $8 burgers. I drove out there and handed them my credit card as I only had about $7 in cash on me. They explained that they only take cash and checks. I was hungry and disappointed. The gal disappeared for a minute to grab a pen. Then she asked for my phone number (they didn’t even have my last name). She said, “just bring it in next time”. I ended up waiting for another 10 minutes for my burgers. They brought them to me and I asked how late they would be open tonight. The gal told me to go home and enjoy my dinner and stop back when they’re open again on Wednesday and not to worry about it. Their trust and kindness have earned them a life-long loyal customer. I couldn’t believe it. And…as usual…I was unable to finish all of my burger (the dogs love when that happens).
Beautiful – and it fits in perfectly with the thread’s title – Oz
New post with not very good pictures on the Mississippi Floods.
http://knottedprop.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/dat-ole-man-river-just-keeps-rolling-along/
Actually the real conspiracy is Valarie Jarred (muslim) is actually controlling Obama for George Soros, against her wishes Leon Penetta and Hilary Clinton pulled off a coup and order Osama to be taken out. Infuriating Jarred because they ignored her recall order 2 hours into the mission.
Gotta love Hilary she has more balls than Obama.
Further details:
Osama bin Laden had 500 euros ($686) in cash and two telephone numbers sewn into his clothing in case he needed to make a quick escape from his compound.
Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, said bin Laden believed “his network was strong enough [that] he’d get a heads-up” before any US strike against him. He suggested that bin Laden’s confidence might have been the reason his compound was only lightly guarded.
It may also explain why bin Laden was not armed when he was killed.
As fresh details about the raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, were made public, it was also disclosed that the US Navy SEALs who carried out the attack had to get past barricades that blocked the stairs leading to bin Laden’s second-floor bedroom.
Mr Panetta also said both the SEAL teams had to “breach three or four walls” inside the compound to get to bin Laden’s building because the Black Hawk helicopter carrying commandos whose mission was to land on the roof crashed.
His disclosure that bin Laden was carrying 500 euros raised obvious questions about whether the al-Qaeda chief was intending to flee to Europe, as US dollars would have been the obvious choice of currency to carry if he intended to change it in countries neighbouring Pakistan.
It also helped justify the CIA’s nervousness about informing the Pakistani authorities for fear that bin Laden would be tipped off.
Referring to the fact that bin Laden was found less than a mile from Pakistan’s military academy, which led to suspicions that the Pakistanis must have known where he was, Mr Panetta said: “Pakistan was involved or incompetent.”
The fresh details he gave about the raid by 25 commandos shed more light on the consequences of the Black Hawk crash-landing.
He said the plan had been for one group of Seals to abseil into the compound while the other abseiled on to the roof. Because the helicopter carrying the roof team failed, both teams went in at ground level. They had to breach three or four walls to get to the main building and then fought their way up to the second floor, where bin Laden and his family were living.
During the 40-minute raid on bin Laden’s compound, the Navy SEAL team collected computers, thumb drives, DVDs and documents. That material was being analysed by a team of computer forensics experts at the CIA and the US National Security Agency.
Mr Panetta said the SEALs had gathered an “impressive amount” of material.
With bin Laden dead, the US operation was now concentrated on locating its next big target.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who served as bin Laden’s deputy, was the main focus and the one most likely to have been in contact with al-Qaeda’s leader. The organisation’s number three, Saif al-Adel, was also high up the list.
Another senior commander, Ilyas Kashmiri, was said to have received permission from bin Laden for a Mumbai-style attack in Europe, and must have been in contact with the couriers who lived with bin Laden.
The target intelligence chiefs would most like to locate is Anwar al-Awlaki, one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but he is based in Yemen and the chances of identifying him from the material found in the compound were far slimmer.
–Duncan Graham, The Daily Telegraph
http://www.smh.com.au/world/bin-laden-believed-his-escape-plan-all-sewn-up-20110506-1eavq.html#ixzz1LjckIMW7
Actually, the last couple of paragraphs I copied and pasted are rather outside the point; but all the same, if you do see Anwar al-Awlaki in the neighbourhood, tell him that he’s needed for dog-sitting duty at the local pound.
That’s a really nice anecdote, Dave. I’ve had two cooking mags come through the door in the past few days and both feature burgers on the cover. One’s eye can’t help but linger over them….
I swear that my dog understands what ‘Burger Basket’ means (name of the roadside shack in the Smoky Mountains where we all can go and feast outside, her included). She turns her head sharpish and looks at me all interested when I say it.
Amanda…Well I cook my own burgers and have yet to find a to die for burger around here, heck even the whoppers are luke warm and definitely not flame grilled these days and MickeyD’s are well plain awful. Some of the local chains did have good burgers but they are so bland these days. So I cook my own, Worcestershire sauce added to the meat before grilling helps with some garlic salt, thai peppers if you are feeling adventurous.
Or if you want a more English style burger add an egg and Panko (Japanese) bread crumbs.
Warning bad language for you sensitive types….
Oz’, Re: your tin-hat Caribbean Island scenario, Mike Cunningham has had much the same idea.
http://mikecunningham.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/so-they-wer-right-all-along/
Kitler,
You cook burgers like my late father did. I hated them. A true burger is meat…period. You grill it over charcoal, not gas. Some of the best burgers I’ve ever had were grilled over mesquite wood fires. The proper cheese to use is extra sharp cheddar (although bleu cheese is also quite tasty). The only condiments I require are green chili, freshly sliced red onion and salt…sometimes freshly cooked crispy bacon. I’ve got burgers at home down to an art form and they’re almost always better than anything you can get at the local restaurants. What most people don’t realize is that preparing an excellent burger at home is both expensive and time consuming. It takes a lot more time to produce an excellent burger than it does to simply grill a steak or pork chops. By the time you’ve purchased ground beast, cheese, buns, fresh veggies, (maybe) bacon, green chili, charcoal, lighter fluid and hickory wood chunks you’re in for well over $20 for two burgers.
The weather is just now warming up around here. When it gets warm we cook almost everything outside. I have a nice propane grill I seldom use, a Weber charcoal grill which gets used for burgers, steaks, chops, chicken, fish, lamb and veggies, and a big smoker with an offset firebox for ribs, pork tenderloin, chickens, turkey, salmon and trout. In the warm months about the only thing that gets cooked in the kitchen is coffee and toast. My house doesn’t even have central air. When the sun goes down the temp drops to the high 60s even in mid-July (but it can be in the high 90s during the day…with withering 15% humidity). If the humidity climbs to 35% in the summer we feel like we’re living in a swamp! Hell, we don’t even have mosquitoes at this altitude (but we do get gnats).
I’d like to see Ozboy open up a a recipe section. I’d love to learn more about brewing beer at home. We readers are from all over the world and it might be interesting to share recipes. I’d love to have your recipe for fish & chips. We all have unique tastes and micro-cultures. I’d like to hear about favorite soup and casserole recipes and various and sundry favorite dishes. Time to lean on Ozboy. He obviously has too much free time on his hands.
On its way, folks (I’m a bit busy right now). Check out the menu bar at the top – Oz
Dr Dave coming from the UK where one does not cook burgers a Roman invention apparently our home made version had some unknown part of the beast content (dog food got the better bits) we tend to be more adventurous when it comes to culinary genocide.
I also scoff at your 35% humidity as I live in a yellow fever swamp with 5 foot long mosquito’s. My missus lived for a while roughly your way and learned to cook native American cuisine and boy is it good, a lot different from TexMex. She also knows how to make Green Chili but that’s more Colorado way yumm.
Ozboy does not know what he is missing with the food here especially the mom and pop places with really local specialty’s. I do like catfish and hushpuppies with fries here, with some fried green tomato’s.
meltemian LOL.
Kakul military academy. Three battalions and 12 companies. 1.36 kilometers from Bin Ladens hideout….(I measured it myself in google earth….It says ‘Bil Ladens Hideout compound’….No wonder they found him!!!)
BOOOM!!!… ‘What the ?*”!!!! was that sarge?!’
……’Don’t worry men, its coming from Bin Ladens place….He’s probably ordered another Bruce Willis video…… Stand down everyone.’
You’ve given me this mental image of Blackhawk helicopters fitted with car GPS systems (Hillary’s voice?): “Turn left at the Kakul Military Base… straight ahead, three hundred yards… Osama Bin Laden’s house is directly beneath you…” – Oz 😆
Ozboy,
Apparently folks over here are asking the same questions you have:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/did-pakistan-know-about-the-obl-raid/?singlepage=true
Oz: Neat how you can make your upper lip wiggle like that. Looks exhausting!
Smiley list here – Oz 🙄
By the way, forgot to mention that your ‘candid’ video of Obama giving the news – and kicking the door open afterwards – I found amusing.
I see 💡
Amanda thank goodness that’s a lightbulb for a moment I thought it was someone bending over. I need glasses.
At 4:47 PM on 8 May, Dr. Dave went on and on about how “A true burger is meat…period” and how it’s supposed to be grilled, what’s the only cheese is ordained by ghod to be melted over it (“extra sharp cheddar (although bleu cheese is also quite tasty)“), and so on.
Feh. After having to survive for most of my adult life for weeks and months at a time on what comes out of the average hospital kitchen, I’m content if that which I eat simply doesn’t induce food poisoning.
OK, try this scenario: the commander of the Kakul military base is sitting back in his office, smoking a cigarette, when his mobile phone rings. Hello? I know you can speak English, so listen carefully. Who is this? This is Leon Panetta, director of the CIA. Don’t believe me? In exactly thirty seconds, you will hear six Blackhawk helicopters approaching from the west, accompanied by Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Do not retaliate. They are not, repeat not, about to attack you. We are coming for your friend next door. You know perfectly well who I’m talking about, scumbag. If you so much as move a muscle, you and all your men will die. Allahu akhbar. >click<
♫ Da, da-da-da, da, da, da-da-da, da ♫….
Yeah, I know, it sounds like something out of a Frederick Forsyth novel. But that may have been the way it happened. I guess we’ll never know.
Tucci,
I’ve eaten more hospital fare than I care to think about. Every once in a great while it is actually quite good. Our local hospital used to serve a carne asada that I thought was delightful. Their pasole wasn’t too bad, either. The hospital in Texas always had some of the best fresh brewed ice tea I’ve ever had. More often than not, however, we consume hospital cafeteria food for its nutritional content, not its exquisite flavor. So let me ask you this, Dr. Tucci. What is your opinion of that stuff hospital cafeterias serve which they label as spaghetti or lasagna?
The little woman and I are both fond of what we call “war meals”. That big batch of chili, spaghetti sauce, beef stew, etc. that we can put in a bowl and nuke for a hot meal when we’re too tired to cook. We both work. She’s an excellent cook but she works all day in a law office and often comes home crabby. Trust me…this is not a good time to have her prepare dinner for you. Neither of us eat much fast food and comparatively little junk food. Cooking at home is an event. Even cooking excellent burgers is an event. If you’re not going to make them “excellent” you may as well just pick some up on your way home. I love to cook, but it’s an in-depth project for me. This is the case with most fish, pork, steaks, beef tenderloin, lamb and stuff like shrimp and crab.
Our in-home version of fast food is a whole chicken seasoned, covered in foil and roasted in the oven for about 90 minutes. Serve this up with some Basmati rice and a fresh vegetable and you’re eatin’ good. When one has the time and the inclination, cooking meals at home should be a celebration of epicurean delights. I think 3+ decades of hospital chow cemented that in my psyche.
At 8:06 AM on 9 May, Dr. Dave writes:
What they’ve called “spaghetti” I simply gave up on as inedible. Their lasagna has tended (to my surprise) not to have been all that bad, but then I came to the experience without any real experience of a comparator. For some reason, on neither side of my family has the making and serving of lasagna been practiced.
Lots and lots of pasta, with the “red gravy” produced by each of my aunts and both grandmothers so distinctly different that most of the men in my generation could discern them in blind taste tests (though I confess to having trouble telling my Aunt Louise’s product from that of my mother; they shared a kitchen for something like twenty years, and there was a lot of cross-pollination).
But for some strange reason, no lasagna.
Hospital cafeteria food (as opposed to the flavorless dietician dreck that you get as a patient even today) has improved in the past decade or so, but what we got from the steam tables in the serving lines back in ’60s and ’70s and ’80s was exactly the same stuff that went up to the patient’s rooms in the food service carts. Those of us who worked in the hospitals – and that included not only the employees and the scutpuppies in the residency programs but the attending physicians as well – were dependent upon what was being cooked for the inpatient population.
There were all sorts of interesting encounters with hospital cuisine. I spent a fair amount of time both as an undergraduate and as a medical student running around Philadelphia to dig through scientific and medical libraries in various universities and teaching hospitals, and perforce found myself browsing the cafeterias at most of these big metropolitan medical centers.
In one dining area, I took note of the distinctive scent of diethyl ether. Damned odd, I figured, but not too disquieting. I was at that time a college Biology major, and our department’s student lounge was set in a room the back of which was taken up by eight or nine 55-gallon steel drums containing dissection specimens pickled in formalin.
We didn’t get all that many Liberal Arts majors hanging around our lounge, which suited us just fine.
The problem with diethyl ether, of course, is not only that it’s quite flammable (shrug) but that it’s intensely lipid soluble. I found that before I’d gotten halfway through my hamburg steak in brown gravy, my tastebuds were quite numb.
Considering that it was hospital cafeteria food, however, I kinda figured that this was a plus. I finished my meal and got back to the library.
Dr Dave fortunately for me the wife is a chef and can put together a fairly quick but delicious meal in about 20-30 minutes, the trick is to make sure you have time to defrost the meat from the freezer and have the fresh vegetables on hand. Also use iron skillets for most things. She won’t use Teflon claims it’s carcinogenic.
Tucci,
Do you recall the halcyon days of feeding at the industry trough? Maybe you were one of the more “moral” types who wouldn’t accept any form of gratuity from big pharmaceutical concerns or device manufacturers. I have never had such moral reservations, but then again, nobody ever swayed my opinion, either. For years I went on about a half dozen drug company boondoggles a year. They would fly us off to exotic locales and wine and dine us. In the early days we even received CE credits. Sometimes the professional presentations were rather impressive, other times they were blatant commercials. The thing was, this was the pharmaceutical companies’ way of most effectively spending their marketing dollars. Think this doesn’t happen in the food, clothing and housing industries? Sure…they could buy a 4 page glossy ad in the NEJM, but that knew damn well that you and I will naturally skip right past the ad to get to the meat (and probably bitch about the opinion pages). This whole affair appeared unseemly to the GAO, CMS and the socialists at the top in the AMA. Though no one talks about it, they effectively eliminated a huge portion of an entire industry…the guys who put on these events and hotel resorts that hosted them. Did it affect a change in drug costs? No. My former brother-in-law was at one time a general manager of a large grocery store. He went on industry paid junkets that made my “medical symposiums” look like a school play. Guess what? People can survive a lot longer without medical care than they can without food. Today we have 1 in 7 Americans receiving food stamps and no moral outrage is expressed by the GAO about immoral marketing employed by this country’s “food barons”. No…they went after “rich” doctors who prescribe medications paid for by Medicare and Medicaid instead. From a drug company marketing executive’s perspective they were more cost-effectively utilizing their resources to reach their target audience. From a liberal bureaucrat’s perspective “rich” doctors were eating exotic meals paid for by the poor and the sick. No one ever bothered to mention that the “rich” doctors were giving up office time and their own time to attend these events. Further, they were actually talking shop…not just how to maximize profits.
This thread’s starting to get a little long and slow to load (like the old days, it is); unfortunately I’m tied up just now, so here’s a brief spill post to continue your discussion.
Oz
Coming to this thread a little late I’ve much enjoyed Ozboy’s ever-changing ‘conspiracy theories’, all equally as plausible as any of the assorted White House ones. However every version so far leaves almost every question unanswered.
The MSM seem to have lost interest in the story and even DT blogs which were initially full of ideas on this have moved on to the ever-so-boring Lib-Dems.
Personally I prefer the version that Jarret was never going to let him ‘initiate’ the mission, so Leon Pannetta started it anyway, then told him he’d better sign it off as there’s no way he could stop it.
I wish they’d stop muddying the waters over whether water-boarding ‘helped’ or not. It doesn’t answer any of the questions about the mission itself.
Keep the theories coming, one story has to be true, eventually !