1
Server Move and Outage Reports / We down ?
« on: August 21, 2009, 02:46:24 PM »
I am getting a DB error -
Anyone?
Nevermind -
Anyone?
Nevermind -
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2
Server Move and Outage Reports / Monday maintenance -
« on: June 01, 2009, 01:03:48 PM »
Hi everybody -
5
Curio & Relic / Swede M96
« on: December 04, 2008, 09:54:22 AM »
Picked up this beauty a few days ago - Numbers all matching - Beautiful bore -
6
Handguns / WTT-WTS-1999-Intratec-AB-10-9mm-pistol
« on: November 26, 2008, 10:06:35 PM »
Good deal on this off list here -
http://parallaxscurioandrelicfirearmsforums.yuku.com/topic/30276/t/WTT-WTS-1999-Intratec-AB-10-9mm-pistol-w-32-round-magazine.html
http://parallaxscurioandrelicfirearmsforums.yuku.com/topic/30276/t/WTT-WTS-1999-Intratec-AB-10-9mm-pistol-w-32-round-magazine.html
7
Been hunting for this for a long time now - Finally came accross one at the Cow Palace show - I jumped on it - It's a MkIV 70 series Goverment - The gentleman selling had a bunch of other collectible Colts - But could only afford one - I did the PPT using High Bridge Arms in SF - I didn't even knew they were still there - It's Bob Chow's old shop - Here's a few pics, I'll get some better pics later -
11
Rifles / HK SP89 CA Legal
« on: November 15, 2008, 07:18:58 PM »
Anyone in the market -
This was on .net for awhile - No bites, here it is before the.......
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=115673799
This was on .net for awhile - No bites, here it is before the.......
http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=115673799
12
Curio & Relic / French MAS 44 and 36
« on: November 10, 2008, 03:57:27 PM »
Here they are - They are both in excellent condition - All matching numbers - The 44 has CAI import markings on the barrel - The 36 is pre-war - Still learning about them -
13
Off Topic Discussion / California voters ban gay marriage
« on: November 05, 2008, 12:37:13 PM »
It's like a game to everyone - Court made its decision and now folks are trying to change it one way or another -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27523989
California voters have passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
NBC News has yet to confirm the passage of this amendment, which would overturn a court ruling that gave gay couples the right to wed just months ago.
The passage of Proposition 8 represents a crushing political defeat for gay-rights activists, who had hoped public opinion on the contentious issue had shifted enough to help them defeat the measure.
It also represents a personal loss for the thousands of couples from California and others states who got married in the brief window when they could. Legal experts said courts will have to resolve whether their unions still are valid.
California joins Arizona and Florida, where voters also approved amendments banning gay marriage. Gay-rights forces also suffered a loss in Arkansas, where voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Supporters made clear that gays and lesbians were their main target.
Meantime, Colorado and South Dakota rejected anti-abortion initiatives.
In Washington state, voters decided to join Oregon as the only states offering terminally ill people the option of physician-assisted suicide.
Michigan approved medical marijuana, and Massachusetts decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana.
Those results were among the more than 150 measures voted on in 36 states.
'Culture wars'
In California, gay-rights supporters had hoped that a large Democratic-voter turnout would help defeat the state's proposed ban on same-sex marriage.
Similar bans had prevailed in 27 states before Tuesday's elections, but none were in California's situation — with about 18,000 gay couples married since a state Supreme Court ruling in May.
Some in San Francisco vowed to continue fighting for the right to marry if the proposition passed. "My view of America is different today," said Diallo Grant, a gay man with mixed-race parents. "The culture wars will continue."
Gay rights also was an issue in Arkansas, where voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples living together from being adoptive or foster parents.
The measure's sponsors painted it as a battle against a "gay agenda." Opponents argued it would make it harder for the state to find the foster parents it needs to take care of children.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27523989
California voters have passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
NBC News has yet to confirm the passage of this amendment, which would overturn a court ruling that gave gay couples the right to wed just months ago.
The passage of Proposition 8 represents a crushing political defeat for gay-rights activists, who had hoped public opinion on the contentious issue had shifted enough to help them defeat the measure.
It also represents a personal loss for the thousands of couples from California and others states who got married in the brief window when they could. Legal experts said courts will have to resolve whether their unions still are valid.
California joins Arizona and Florida, where voters also approved amendments banning gay marriage. Gay-rights forces also suffered a loss in Arkansas, where voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Supporters made clear that gays and lesbians were their main target.
Meantime, Colorado and South Dakota rejected anti-abortion initiatives.
In Washington state, voters decided to join Oregon as the only states offering terminally ill people the option of physician-assisted suicide.
Michigan approved medical marijuana, and Massachusetts decriminalized the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana.
Those results were among the more than 150 measures voted on in 36 states.
'Culture wars'
In California, gay-rights supporters had hoped that a large Democratic-voter turnout would help defeat the state's proposed ban on same-sex marriage.
Similar bans had prevailed in 27 states before Tuesday's elections, but none were in California's situation — with about 18,000 gay couples married since a state Supreme Court ruling in May.
Some in San Francisco vowed to continue fighting for the right to marry if the proposition passed. "My view of America is different today," said Diallo Grant, a gay man with mixed-race parents. "The culture wars will continue."
Gay rights also was an issue in Arkansas, where voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples living together from being adoptive or foster parents.
The measure's sponsors painted it as a battle against a "gay agenda." Opponents argued it would make it harder for the state to find the foster parents it needs to take care of children.
14
Handguns / Convert a 1911 in .38 super to 9mm -
« on: November 03, 2008, 11:18:08 PM »
How? What do I need?
15
Off Topic Discussion / U.S. border agents detain Mexican troops
« on: November 01, 2008, 10:59:23 AM »
These things happens all the time in the world - These incident will reinforce the fence builders position.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/01/mexico.border/index.html
(CNN) -- Seven members of the Mexican military were found inside the United States on Friday, telling border agents they had become disoriented while on patrol and accidentally crossed into the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said.
The incident began about 8 a.m. Friday, when the Border Patrol's Yuma, Arizona, sector was notified that a military-style Hummer was broken down, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) said in a written statement.
Agents said they found the vehicle about 200 yards from the Colorado River and the seven individuals were dressed in military-style clothing. The CBP later determined the troops' entry was unauthorized.
CBP agents told the Mexican troops they were inside the United States and "peaceably" took them into custody, the statement said. "At no time were any hostilities exchanged between the agents and military officials." Watch how Mexican troops found their way in the United States »
The Hummer was equipped with a turret-mounted machine gun, the Border Patrol told CNN.
According to the CBP, the soldiers were assigned to the 23rd Regiment Motorized Cavalry of the Mexican Army. The soldiers said they believed they were still in Mexico because they remained on the south side of a newly constructed border fence.
"The soldiers, weapons and vehicle were placed in Border Patrol custody and transported to the CBP San Luis, Arizona, Port of Entry, where each of the subjects was processed in accordance with Border Patrol policy," the statement said. None of the seven had any criminal or immigration history, the agency said.
The soldiers, weapons and vehicle were repatriated and "remanded into the custody of their commanding officer," the Border Patrol said. The incident remains under investigation, however, and the CBP's Office of Internal Affairs was notified, the statement said.
"This is not an uncommon occurrence," Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, told CNN. "Often times, it is the result of the Mexican military providing cover essentially for drug transportation across into our country, and/or creating a diversion so it will draw our people away from the place where the drugs are coming across."
In August, the Border Patrol said Mexican troops had crossed the border illegally 42 times since October 2007.
Tancredo said the U.S. State Department lodged a complaint with the Mexican government for the first time over the military incursions a few weeks ago. Attempts by CNN to contact the State Department and the Mexican government Friday were unsuccessful.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/01/mexico.border/index.html
(CNN) -- Seven members of the Mexican military were found inside the United States on Friday, telling border agents they had become disoriented while on patrol and accidentally crossed into the country, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said.
The incident began about 8 a.m. Friday, when the Border Patrol's Yuma, Arizona, sector was notified that a military-style Hummer was broken down, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) said in a written statement.
Agents said they found the vehicle about 200 yards from the Colorado River and the seven individuals were dressed in military-style clothing. The CBP later determined the troops' entry was unauthorized.
CBP agents told the Mexican troops they were inside the United States and "peaceably" took them into custody, the statement said. "At no time were any hostilities exchanged between the agents and military officials." Watch how Mexican troops found their way in the United States »
The Hummer was equipped with a turret-mounted machine gun, the Border Patrol told CNN.
According to the CBP, the soldiers were assigned to the 23rd Regiment Motorized Cavalry of the Mexican Army. The soldiers said they believed they were still in Mexico because they remained on the south side of a newly constructed border fence.
"The soldiers, weapons and vehicle were placed in Border Patrol custody and transported to the CBP San Luis, Arizona, Port of Entry, where each of the subjects was processed in accordance with Border Patrol policy," the statement said. None of the seven had any criminal or immigration history, the agency said.
The soldiers, weapons and vehicle were repatriated and "remanded into the custody of their commanding officer," the Border Patrol said. The incident remains under investigation, however, and the CBP's Office of Internal Affairs was notified, the statement said.
"This is not an uncommon occurrence," Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado, told CNN. "Often times, it is the result of the Mexican military providing cover essentially for drug transportation across into our country, and/or creating a diversion so it will draw our people away from the place where the drugs are coming across."
In August, the Border Patrol said Mexican troops had crossed the border illegally 42 times since October 2007.
Tancredo said the U.S. State Department lodged a complaint with the Mexican government for the first time over the military incursions a few weeks ago. Attempts by CNN to contact the State Department and the Mexican government Friday were unsuccessful.
16
Off Topic Discussion / Boy, 12, shot dead while trick-or-treating
« on: November 01, 2008, 10:50:52 AM »
Horrible - First tainted candies, now you just shoot them -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27482694
SUMTER, S.C. - A 12-year-old boy trick-or-treating with his family in central South Carolina was shot from inside a home Friday and killed, and his father and brother were wounded by the gunfire, authorities said.
The shooting suspect, Quentin Patrick, was in custody, a jail official said. Patrick, 22, has been charged with murder and three counts of assault and battery with intent to kill.
The family was headed home from a city-sponsored event downtown when they decided to stop at a few homes, Sumter Police Chief Patty Patterson said. The father and his four children approached a home with a porch light on about 8:30 p.m. local time while their mother waited nearby in a vehicle
As the family was at the door, they thought they heard fireworks. The 12-year-old boy, his father and brother were all hit by the gunfire. The boy died at a hospital, Coroner Verna Moore said. The other two children were not hurt.
'Very tragic evening'
The boy's father and brother were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities have not released the identity of the family.
"The investigation is continuing into what has been a very tragic evening," Patterson said. "Our sorrow and sympathy goes out to this family."
The police chief said there were other people inside the home at the time of the shooting, but she didn't expect any of them to be charged.
neighbor said he heard a loud noise about the time of the shooting and thought it was simply Halloween mischief.
"I thought, trick-or-treat night — pranks go down. Anything goes," said Lenwood Dixon, 49, who works at a hazardous waste and recycling company. "I heard a noise like maybe gunfire, then my daughter saw a bunch of lights flashing and saw some cops."
In his six years in the neighborhood, he said he wasn't aware of any violent crimes. He said a few trick-or-treaters had been on his block that night.
"I'm surprised. Since I was here, I'd never heard of anything like that happening. It's a quiet neighborhood," he said. "You don't see many children in the neighborhood. It's more elderly."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27482694
SUMTER, S.C. - A 12-year-old boy trick-or-treating with his family in central South Carolina was shot from inside a home Friday and killed, and his father and brother were wounded by the gunfire, authorities said.
The shooting suspect, Quentin Patrick, was in custody, a jail official said. Patrick, 22, has been charged with murder and three counts of assault and battery with intent to kill.
The family was headed home from a city-sponsored event downtown when they decided to stop at a few homes, Sumter Police Chief Patty Patterson said. The father and his four children approached a home with a porch light on about 8:30 p.m. local time while their mother waited nearby in a vehicle
As the family was at the door, they thought they heard fireworks. The 12-year-old boy, his father and brother were all hit by the gunfire. The boy died at a hospital, Coroner Verna Moore said. The other two children were not hurt.
'Very tragic evening'
The boy's father and brother were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities have not released the identity of the family.
"The investigation is continuing into what has been a very tragic evening," Patterson said. "Our sorrow and sympathy goes out to this family."
The police chief said there were other people inside the home at the time of the shooting, but she didn't expect any of them to be charged.
neighbor said he heard a loud noise about the time of the shooting and thought it was simply Halloween mischief.
"I thought, trick-or-treat night — pranks go down. Anything goes," said Lenwood Dixon, 49, who works at a hazardous waste and recycling company. "I heard a noise like maybe gunfire, then my daughter saw a bunch of lights flashing and saw some cops."
In his six years in the neighborhood, he said he wasn't aware of any violent crimes. He said a few trick-or-treaters had been on his block that night.
"I'm surprised. Since I was here, I'd never heard of anything like that happening. It's a quiet neighborhood," he said. "You don't see many children in the neighborhood. It's more elderly."
17
Off Topic Discussion / Why do we have daylight saving time?
« on: November 01, 2008, 10:40:54 AM »
All your answer lies here -
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=BNDaylightSavingTime>1=27004
First of all, it's the law. We in the United States, and in almost every industrialized country, advance our clocks one hour in the spring. (Actually, as of 2007, we in the U.S. get a jump on daylight saving time before winter is officially over. But "winter ahead, fall back" just doesn't have the same ring to it.) Technically, the big "spring ahead" happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. But most people adjust their clocks before bed on Saturday night. Then, we leave 'em that way all summer. In Europe, it's called "Summer Time," but in the U.S. it's "daylight saving time." In autumn, we return to standard time by setting our clocks back an hour -- the "fall back."
Along with the semiannual confusion, there is controversy around daylight saving time. Some people think it saves energy and thereby, perhaps, helps average Americans save money. The argument here is that we keep our lights off more when the Sun is still up later in the day.
Other people assert that we actually use more energy than we would without daylight saving time, because we drive around and shop more while the Sun shines. These are apparently both real effects: Less electricity is used with more daylight available, but more energy is consumed as automobile usage increases.
So far, studies agree that traffic accidents go down a tad during daylight saving time, but it's not clear how much.
Legislating daylight
A Department of Energy study about our energy use, commissioned in 2005, is still being ... er ... studied. Regardless, the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 declares that we continue to observe daylight saving time indefinitely. It even changed the start and end dates to give us four more weeks of DST. Since March 2007, DST begins each year on the second Sunday in March, and ends the first Sunday in November. (It used to start the first Sunday in April, and end the last Sunday in October.)
Many argue that daylight saving time (not "savings time") just causes more confusion than it's worth. Everyone agrees that there is a loss of efficiency whenever the time changes. At world stock markets, for example, one estimate claims that $31 billion leaks away in the confusion every year. Airline schedules are just a pain in the neck when the clocks are messed with. The actual time it takes to get from one place to another stays the same, still it's easy to end up being late (or early) if you forget to change your clock along with the rest of the world. But with all this, we've stuck with daylight saving for about a century.
Ben Franklin's Joke
Writer, inventor and American founding father Ben Franklin is often credited (or blamed) for starting daylight saving time. He apparently joked that the people of Paris should be home and in bed as soon as the sun set because horse-drawn coaches -- taxis -- should be banned from the streets at night. He took his facetiousness further by saying the citizens of the City of Lights should be awakened every morning by a blast of cannon fire, and that anyone shuttering their windows from sunrise would be taxed.
Franklin was writing with his well-known dry wit. He loved Paris and traveled there frequently. But somehow, his suggestions about going to bed early and rising early planted the notion that he was behind this whole business of changing our clocks to match the sunrise and sunset.
In reality, Englishman William Willett, an avid outdoorsman, gets the credit for all this clock adjusting. The Victorian-era builder and pamphleteer felt that people were missing the best part of every summer day and argued strongly for daylight saving. One of the primary points of his argument was that adjusting our clocks would save money and resources since people would be using artificial lights less if they were up and working when the Sun was up.
Minority report
His idea was not popular, but Britain tried it out in 1916, in an effort to save money during World War I. Willett had died the previous year, so he was not around to see the various trial-and-error attempts at making his proposal work. Appropriately enough, the memorial sundial dedicated to Willet is always on Summer Time.
This is where I'd like us all to start thinking about the problem -- the value and reasoning behind daylight saving time. For starters, keep in mind that this is a minority idea worldwide. Most people on Earth don't use it.
After all, about half the people on Earth have never even used a telephone! It's a developed-world idea. People in parts of the world without clocks get up with the Sun and reckon midday by the moment the Sun is highest in the sky. Why don't we all just do that?
Any way you slice it ...
If we divided the day into "halves" based on daylight and darkness, winter "hours" would be much shorter than summer hours. You can note this well for yourself by comparing a stopwatch or an oven timer, say, to a sundial.
In planetary science, "solar noon" is the moment when the Sun is highest in the sky. But during solar noon the Sun is not straight overhead in North America -- it's actually well to the south. In South America, it's to the north. And, since not everyone starts daylight saving time/Summer Time reckoning at the same time, there are one-, two- or three-hour differences between north and south twice a year. Phew.
But, if you're going to pick a time to start counting, solar noon is a pretty good one. We humans have gone on to divide the year, Earth's orbit of the Sun, into an equal number of seconds: 31,557,600.
By so doing, the clock's noon hardly ever lines up with the Sun's noon. We have come to like it this way. We can make our trains, planes and computer games all work together, coming and going to places north, south, east and west, to altitudes high and low, in the fourth dimension -- in time.
So is daylight saving worth holding on to? For my part, I like it. I love being outside all summer, often missing some good television and not having time for it, even if I record it. But, others must find it a messy inconvenience.
Arizona and Hawaii, sunny places, don't bother. In Alaska, certain citizens' groups want to discontinue it. Why don't we all just get up earlier in the summer and enjoy what Willett called the best part of the day? Apparently, there is something about our mathematical nature that finds daylight saving time appealing.
We've grown so accustomed to our precise arithmetic dividing the year into seconds -- even if we think of the year in larger increments -- that we prefer it to straight-up astronomical reckoning or the Sun's path in the sky.
We'll see how that Department of Energy study comes out, but I've got a feeling we all just like moving our clocks ahead, because we can sleep to the same part of the Sun's day, but get up when our clock reads what we feel is a civilized time.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=BNDaylightSavingTime>1=27004
First of all, it's the law. We in the United States, and in almost every industrialized country, advance our clocks one hour in the spring. (Actually, as of 2007, we in the U.S. get a jump on daylight saving time before winter is officially over. But "winter ahead, fall back" just doesn't have the same ring to it.) Technically, the big "spring ahead" happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. But most people adjust their clocks before bed on Saturday night. Then, we leave 'em that way all summer. In Europe, it's called "Summer Time," but in the U.S. it's "daylight saving time." In autumn, we return to standard time by setting our clocks back an hour -- the "fall back."
Along with the semiannual confusion, there is controversy around daylight saving time. Some people think it saves energy and thereby, perhaps, helps average Americans save money. The argument here is that we keep our lights off more when the Sun is still up later in the day.
Other people assert that we actually use more energy than we would without daylight saving time, because we drive around and shop more while the Sun shines. These are apparently both real effects: Less electricity is used with more daylight available, but more energy is consumed as automobile usage increases.
So far, studies agree that traffic accidents go down a tad during daylight saving time, but it's not clear how much.
Legislating daylight
A Department of Energy study about our energy use, commissioned in 2005, is still being ... er ... studied. Regardless, the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 declares that we continue to observe daylight saving time indefinitely. It even changed the start and end dates to give us four more weeks of DST. Since March 2007, DST begins each year on the second Sunday in March, and ends the first Sunday in November. (It used to start the first Sunday in April, and end the last Sunday in October.)
Many argue that daylight saving time (not "savings time") just causes more confusion than it's worth. Everyone agrees that there is a loss of efficiency whenever the time changes. At world stock markets, for example, one estimate claims that $31 billion leaks away in the confusion every year. Airline schedules are just a pain in the neck when the clocks are messed with. The actual time it takes to get from one place to another stays the same, still it's easy to end up being late (or early) if you forget to change your clock along with the rest of the world. But with all this, we've stuck with daylight saving for about a century.
Ben Franklin's Joke
Writer, inventor and American founding father Ben Franklin is often credited (or blamed) for starting daylight saving time. He apparently joked that the people of Paris should be home and in bed as soon as the sun set because horse-drawn coaches -- taxis -- should be banned from the streets at night. He took his facetiousness further by saying the citizens of the City of Lights should be awakened every morning by a blast of cannon fire, and that anyone shuttering their windows from sunrise would be taxed.
Franklin was writing with his well-known dry wit. He loved Paris and traveled there frequently. But somehow, his suggestions about going to bed early and rising early planted the notion that he was behind this whole business of changing our clocks to match the sunrise and sunset.
In reality, Englishman William Willett, an avid outdoorsman, gets the credit for all this clock adjusting. The Victorian-era builder and pamphleteer felt that people were missing the best part of every summer day and argued strongly for daylight saving. One of the primary points of his argument was that adjusting our clocks would save money and resources since people would be using artificial lights less if they were up and working when the Sun was up.
Minority report
His idea was not popular, but Britain tried it out in 1916, in an effort to save money during World War I. Willett had died the previous year, so he was not around to see the various trial-and-error attempts at making his proposal work. Appropriately enough, the memorial sundial dedicated to Willet is always on Summer Time.
This is where I'd like us all to start thinking about the problem -- the value and reasoning behind daylight saving time. For starters, keep in mind that this is a minority idea worldwide. Most people on Earth don't use it.
After all, about half the people on Earth have never even used a telephone! It's a developed-world idea. People in parts of the world without clocks get up with the Sun and reckon midday by the moment the Sun is highest in the sky. Why don't we all just do that?
Any way you slice it ...
If we divided the day into "halves" based on daylight and darkness, winter "hours" would be much shorter than summer hours. You can note this well for yourself by comparing a stopwatch or an oven timer, say, to a sundial.
In planetary science, "solar noon" is the moment when the Sun is highest in the sky. But during solar noon the Sun is not straight overhead in North America -- it's actually well to the south. In South America, it's to the north. And, since not everyone starts daylight saving time/Summer Time reckoning at the same time, there are one-, two- or three-hour differences between north and south twice a year. Phew.
But, if you're going to pick a time to start counting, solar noon is a pretty good one. We humans have gone on to divide the year, Earth's orbit of the Sun, into an equal number of seconds: 31,557,600.
By so doing, the clock's noon hardly ever lines up with the Sun's noon. We have come to like it this way. We can make our trains, planes and computer games all work together, coming and going to places north, south, east and west, to altitudes high and low, in the fourth dimension -- in time.
So is daylight saving worth holding on to? For my part, I like it. I love being outside all summer, often missing some good television and not having time for it, even if I record it. But, others must find it a messy inconvenience.
Arizona and Hawaii, sunny places, don't bother. In Alaska, certain citizens' groups want to discontinue it. Why don't we all just get up earlier in the summer and enjoy what Willett called the best part of the day? Apparently, there is something about our mathematical nature that finds daylight saving time appealing.
We've grown so accustomed to our precise arithmetic dividing the year into seconds -- even if we think of the year in larger increments -- that we prefer it to straight-up astronomical reckoning or the Sun's path in the sky.
We'll see how that Department of Energy study comes out, but I've got a feeling we all just like moving our clocks ahead, because we can sleep to the same part of the Sun's day, but get up when our clock reads what we feel is a civilized time.
18
Off Topic Discussion / 2 Blue Angels grounded for inappropriate relationship
« on: October 31, 2008, 09:51:35 AM »
Stay focus up there men -
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/31/blue.angels.ap/index.html
PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) -- A spokesman for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels says the stunt-flying team will be down one jet the rest of its season after removing two members from duty for having an inappropriate relationship.
Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger, a spokesman for the team based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, said Thursday the squadron will finish its last three air shows next month with five jets.
Dunkelberger would not identify the two members but said the relationship was between a man and a woman. All six of the F-18 stunt pilots are men, and 23 of the 133-member squadron are women.
Dunkelberger says a military administrative hearing will be held to determine further disciplinary actions, which could include removal from the military.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/31/blue.angels.ap/index.html
PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) -- A spokesman for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels says the stunt-flying team will be down one jet the rest of its season after removing two members from duty for having an inappropriate relationship.
Capt. Tyson Dunkelberger, a spokesman for the team based at Naval Air Station Pensacola, said Thursday the squadron will finish its last three air shows next month with five jets.
Dunkelberger would not identify the two members but said the relationship was between a man and a woman. All six of the F-18 stunt pilots are men, and 23 of the 133-member squadron are women.
Dunkelberger says a military administrative hearing will be held to determine further disciplinary actions, which could include removal from the military.
19
General Gun Discussion / Gun Sales Thriving In Uncertain Times
« on: October 31, 2008, 09:07:19 AM »
I've bought a few, not due to the election of anything - Just saw what I like at the right price -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/26/AR2008102602505.html?hpid=topnews
Americans have cut back on buying cars, furniture and clothes in a tough economy, but there's one consumer item that's still enjoying healthy sales: guns. Purchases of firearms and ammunition have risen 8 to 10 percent this year, according to state and federal data.
Several variables drive sales, but many dealers, buyers and experts attribute the increase in part to concerns about the economy and fears that if Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wins the presidency, he will join with fellow Democrats in Congress to enact new gun controls. Obama has said that he believes in an individual right to bear arms but that he also supports "common-sense safety measures."
"Even though [Obama] has a lot going for him, he's not very pro-gun," said Paul Pluff, a spokesman for Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, which has reported higher sales. Gun enthusiasts are "going to go out and get [firearms] while they still can."
Gun purchases have also been climbing because of the worsening economy, which fuels fears of crime and civil disorder, industry sources and specialists said.
"Generally, we know that hard economic times always result in firearm sales," said James M. Purtilo of Silver Spring, who publishes the Tripwire Newsletter.
Gary Kleck, a researcher at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice whose work was cited in the District's recent Supreme Court gun-control case, said that although there are no scientific studies linking gun sales and economic conditions, people often buy firearms during periods of uncertainty. People often buy weapons because of concerns about personal safety or government actions to limit access to firearms, causing spikes in sales, Kleck said.
Industry experts and law enforcement officials point to several examples over the years. In 1994, there was a rush to buy guns when President Bill Clinton pushed for a ban on military-style semiautomatic rifles. Handgun sales jumped last year after the massacre at Virginia Tech as some worried about personal protection and others feared sweeping restrictions on handguns, pushing applications for concealed gun permits in Virginia alone up 60 percent. People also rushed to buy guns after the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and the breakdown of order in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Bob Leyshion, who visited a gun shop in Manassas recently, said the economic crisis and Obama's lead in the polls were on his mind.
"People are preparing for catastrophe right now," said Leyshion, 55, of Nokesville. "It's insurance. With the stock market crash and people out of work, and the illegal aliens in this area, the probability of civil disorder is very high."
Gun owners haven't been especially thrilled about the prospect of Sen. John McCain in the White House. They see the Arizona Republican as less of a threat than Obama, but they are still angry over McCain's support for certain gun-control measures in the past, such as requiring purchasers at gun shows to undergo background checks.
Gun owners said McCain's moose-hunting running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is far more likely to champion Second Amendment rights.
"The industry and sportsmen have not been in love with McCain, but the selection of Palin wiped that all away," said Anthony Aeschliman, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation
More than three dozen interviews with gun dealers and buyers in Virginia and Maryland and with experts nationwide indicated that the increase in gun sales appears to be driven predominantly by concerns about the presidential election and the economy.
Gun buyers were more likely to say they were responding to the political situation than to the economy, and all but three people said they feared that Obama would restrict gun rights. Two who indicated that they would support Obama anyway said their concerns about the economy and health care outweighed those about gun rights.
Most buyers who emphasized the economy said they thought the worsening situation could lead to an increase in crime and jeopardize their safety. A few said they were buying guns as an investment.
"Look at the political situation and the financial situation," said Fred Russell, owner of Russell's Gun Emporium in Hagerstown, Md. "It's common sense. People are scared."
Brad, 42, and Margaret Marcus, 47, who were at a Fairfax County shooting range recently with their two children for weekly target practice, said they sped up the purchase of two semiautomatic rifles that had been banned during the Clinton administration because they feared they could become illegal again if Obama wins. The couple, who run an online retailing business from their Ashburn home, said they viewed Obama's remarks about protecting the Second Amendment as campaign trail "pandering."
"I think right now people are scared Obama is going to take their rights away," said Margaret Marcus, who was carrying a Glock 19 9mm semiautomatic pistol under a blue jean jacket embroidered with "Winnie the Pooh" characters. "He's definitely anti-gun, despite what you see in the mainstream media."
Law enforcement and industry data and anecdotal reports show that guns are selling well this year. In 2008, there were 8.4 million background checks from Jan. 1 to Sept. 28, compared with 7.7 million in the same period last year, a 9 percent increase, according to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The increase is also notable because it follows a heavy year for gun purchases, which industry officials and experts link to the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007 and a burgeoning housing market crisis. NICS checks show a 20 percent increase in April 2007, compared with the previous year.
This year's jump is a continuation of a trend that began in 2006, about the time the housing bubble popped in parts of the nation, and remained steady last year as the political season began to take shape and the housing crisis grew. It is also a bigger jump than the average annual increases of about 5 percent or less typical since instant background checks began in 1998.
Federal tax data also show that quarterly excise taxes collected on sales of firearms and ammunition have increased about 10 percent this year, compared with last year, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Gunmakers see the same trend. "We're ahead of last year," said Pluff, of Smith & Wesson. "There's a few things that drive the market, and one of them is political elections."
On a recent weekend, a crowd of lookers and buyers milled around in the Virginia Arms Co. in Manassas. Some were shopping for large-capacity magazines, or clips, that attach to firearms and hold additional rounds of ammo. Those were banned during the Clinton administration and became legal again when the ban expired.
"I'm looking for gun clips because I got the funny feeling that prices are going to rise, or they're going to be banned," said Wayne Heglar, 48, who lives in Aldie and builds custom motorcycles. Heglar said he also planned to stock up on ammo.
"When the Democrats are in office, it seems like anti-gunners come out of the woodwork," Heglar said. He said he expected Obama to use tax law to restrict gun ownership. "A bullet will be a luxury," he said.
At Clark Brothers Gun Shop in Warrenton, a sign over the door says: "Experts Agree . . . Gun Control Works!" Underneath are photos of Hitler, Stalin, Fidel Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. There are also posters that criticize Obama's record on guns.
Steve Clark, the shop's owner, said customers have been buying weapons they fear would be restricted and that have been before, such as Colt AR-15s, semiautomatic rifles that go for $1,100.
"What I hear a lot is fear that Barack will win the election and tax everything to the point that you can't afford anything," said salesman Eugene Proko, 51.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/26/AR2008102602505.html?hpid=topnews
Americans have cut back on buying cars, furniture and clothes in a tough economy, but there's one consumer item that's still enjoying healthy sales: guns. Purchases of firearms and ammunition have risen 8 to 10 percent this year, according to state and federal data.
Several variables drive sales, but many dealers, buyers and experts attribute the increase in part to concerns about the economy and fears that if Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wins the presidency, he will join with fellow Democrats in Congress to enact new gun controls. Obama has said that he believes in an individual right to bear arms but that he also supports "common-sense safety measures."
"Even though [Obama] has a lot going for him, he's not very pro-gun," said Paul Pluff, a spokesman for Massachusetts-based Smith & Wesson, which has reported higher sales. Gun enthusiasts are "going to go out and get [firearms] while they still can."
Gun purchases have also been climbing because of the worsening economy, which fuels fears of crime and civil disorder, industry sources and specialists said.
"Generally, we know that hard economic times always result in firearm sales," said James M. Purtilo of Silver Spring, who publishes the Tripwire Newsletter.
Gary Kleck, a researcher at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice whose work was cited in the District's recent Supreme Court gun-control case, said that although there are no scientific studies linking gun sales and economic conditions, people often buy firearms during periods of uncertainty. People often buy weapons because of concerns about personal safety or government actions to limit access to firearms, causing spikes in sales, Kleck said.
Industry experts and law enforcement officials point to several examples over the years. In 1994, there was a rush to buy guns when President Bill Clinton pushed for a ban on military-style semiautomatic rifles. Handgun sales jumped last year after the massacre at Virginia Tech as some worried about personal protection and others feared sweeping restrictions on handguns, pushing applications for concealed gun permits in Virginia alone up 60 percent. People also rushed to buy guns after the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and the breakdown of order in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Bob Leyshion, who visited a gun shop in Manassas recently, said the economic crisis and Obama's lead in the polls were on his mind.
"People are preparing for catastrophe right now," said Leyshion, 55, of Nokesville. "It's insurance. With the stock market crash and people out of work, and the illegal aliens in this area, the probability of civil disorder is very high."
Gun owners haven't been especially thrilled about the prospect of Sen. John McCain in the White House. They see the Arizona Republican as less of a threat than Obama, but they are still angry over McCain's support for certain gun-control measures in the past, such as requiring purchasers at gun shows to undergo background checks.
Gun owners said McCain's moose-hunting running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is far more likely to champion Second Amendment rights.
"The industry and sportsmen have not been in love with McCain, but the selection of Palin wiped that all away," said Anthony Aeschliman, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation
More than three dozen interviews with gun dealers and buyers in Virginia and Maryland and with experts nationwide indicated that the increase in gun sales appears to be driven predominantly by concerns about the presidential election and the economy.
Gun buyers were more likely to say they were responding to the political situation than to the economy, and all but three people said they feared that Obama would restrict gun rights. Two who indicated that they would support Obama anyway said their concerns about the economy and health care outweighed those about gun rights.
Most buyers who emphasized the economy said they thought the worsening situation could lead to an increase in crime and jeopardize their safety. A few said they were buying guns as an investment.
"Look at the political situation and the financial situation," said Fred Russell, owner of Russell's Gun Emporium in Hagerstown, Md. "It's common sense. People are scared."
Brad, 42, and Margaret Marcus, 47, who were at a Fairfax County shooting range recently with their two children for weekly target practice, said they sped up the purchase of two semiautomatic rifles that had been banned during the Clinton administration because they feared they could become illegal again if Obama wins. The couple, who run an online retailing business from their Ashburn home, said they viewed Obama's remarks about protecting the Second Amendment as campaign trail "pandering."
"I think right now people are scared Obama is going to take their rights away," said Margaret Marcus, who was carrying a Glock 19 9mm semiautomatic pistol under a blue jean jacket embroidered with "Winnie the Pooh" characters. "He's definitely anti-gun, despite what you see in the mainstream media."
Law enforcement and industry data and anecdotal reports show that guns are selling well this year. In 2008, there were 8.4 million background checks from Jan. 1 to Sept. 28, compared with 7.7 million in the same period last year, a 9 percent increase, according to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
The increase is also notable because it follows a heavy year for gun purchases, which industry officials and experts link to the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007 and a burgeoning housing market crisis. NICS checks show a 20 percent increase in April 2007, compared with the previous year.
This year's jump is a continuation of a trend that began in 2006, about the time the housing bubble popped in parts of the nation, and remained steady last year as the political season began to take shape and the housing crisis grew. It is also a bigger jump than the average annual increases of about 5 percent or less typical since instant background checks began in 1998.
Federal tax data also show that quarterly excise taxes collected on sales of firearms and ammunition have increased about 10 percent this year, compared with last year, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Gunmakers see the same trend. "We're ahead of last year," said Pluff, of Smith & Wesson. "There's a few things that drive the market, and one of them is political elections."
On a recent weekend, a crowd of lookers and buyers milled around in the Virginia Arms Co. in Manassas. Some were shopping for large-capacity magazines, or clips, that attach to firearms and hold additional rounds of ammo. Those were banned during the Clinton administration and became legal again when the ban expired.
"I'm looking for gun clips because I got the funny feeling that prices are going to rise, or they're going to be banned," said Wayne Heglar, 48, who lives in Aldie and builds custom motorcycles. Heglar said he also planned to stock up on ammo.
"When the Democrats are in office, it seems like anti-gunners come out of the woodwork," Heglar said. He said he expected Obama to use tax law to restrict gun ownership. "A bullet will be a luxury," he said.
At Clark Brothers Gun Shop in Warrenton, a sign over the door says: "Experts Agree . . . Gun Control Works!" Underneath are photos of Hitler, Stalin, Fidel Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. There are also posters that criticize Obama's record on guns.
Steve Clark, the shop's owner, said customers have been buying weapons they fear would be restricted and that have been before, such as Colt AR-15s, semiautomatic rifles that go for $1,100.
"What I hear a lot is fear that Barack will win the election and tax everything to the point that you can't afford anything," said salesman Eugene Proko, 51.
20
Off Topic Discussion / Funeral Home Owners Evicted
« on: October 24, 2008, 02:26:26 PM »
The signs of the times - Can't even rest in peace, damm foreclosures follows you to your resting -
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/17794018/detail.html
PONTIAC, Mich. -- A funeral home owner was evicted and all of the belongings were tossed out into the parking lot on Friday morning.
The House of Burns Memorial Chapel recieved a court-ordered eviction notice back in Jan. 9. 2008.
The sign was posted on the door of the chapel on South Boulevard in Pontiac.
Owner Toyanne Burn, arrived at the home and watched as her fixtures, caskets and other belongings were tossed.
The Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office posted five notices on the door of the business that they removed the remains of five deceased and cremated remains of 22 people.
Those names are Christopher Ellis, Lee Reed, Darcie Thomas, Joyce Donaldson and Senyszia Styles.
Families of the deceased should call the medical examiner's office at 248-858-5099 to make arrangements.
Several family and friends of the owner showed up early Friday to help remove the business property from the parking lot.
They held hands and had an impromptu prayer service outside of the church.
One friend, Pastor Antonio Gibson of the New Experience Church in Pontiac, was critical of the eviction , which happened in the middle of the night.
Gibson said Burns provided funeral services at reasonable costs. He also said this is a sign of the times that this area is facing with the Michigan and national economy.
The owner has not spoken about the incident.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/17794018/detail.html
PONTIAC, Mich. -- A funeral home owner was evicted and all of the belongings were tossed out into the parking lot on Friday morning.
The House of Burns Memorial Chapel recieved a court-ordered eviction notice back in Jan. 9. 2008.
The sign was posted on the door of the chapel on South Boulevard in Pontiac.
Owner Toyanne Burn, arrived at the home and watched as her fixtures, caskets and other belongings were tossed.
The Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office posted five notices on the door of the business that they removed the remains of five deceased and cremated remains of 22 people.
Those names are Christopher Ellis, Lee Reed, Darcie Thomas, Joyce Donaldson and Senyszia Styles.
Families of the deceased should call the medical examiner's office at 248-858-5099 to make arrangements.
Several family and friends of the owner showed up early Friday to help remove the business property from the parking lot.
They held hands and had an impromptu prayer service outside of the church.
One friend, Pastor Antonio Gibson of the New Experience Church in Pontiac, was critical of the eviction , which happened in the middle of the night.
Gibson said Burns provided funeral services at reasonable costs. He also said this is a sign of the times that this area is facing with the Michigan and national economy.
The owner has not spoken about the incident.
21
Off Topic Discussion / Transplanted cornea still sees after 123 years
« on: October 24, 2008, 02:19:57 PM »
What a neat story - I wonder if you can transplant it again -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27339516/wid/11915773?GT1=31037
OSLO - Bernt Aune’s transplanted cornea has been in use for a record 123 years — since before the Eiffel Tower was built.
“This is the oldest eye in Norway — I don’t know if it’s the oldest in the world,” Aune, an 80-year-old Norwegian and former ambulance driver, told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “But my vision’s not great any longer.”
He had a cornea transplanted into his right eye in 1958 from the body of an elderly man who was born in June 1885. The operation was carried out at Namsos Hospital, mid-Norway.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world,” eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.
In the 1950s, doctors expected it to work for just five years, Hasanain said. Such cornea operations date back to the early 20th century and were among the first successful transplants.
“It wasn’t unusual to use corneas from elderly people who had died,” Aune said.
The oldest person who had documents to prove it was France’s Jeanne Calment, who was 122 old when she died in 1997, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The Eiffel Tower was built from 1887 to 1889. U.S. inventor Thomas Edison patented a film camera for motion pictures in 1888.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27339516/wid/11915773?GT1=31037
OSLO - Bernt Aune’s transplanted cornea has been in use for a record 123 years — since before the Eiffel Tower was built.
“This is the oldest eye in Norway — I don’t know if it’s the oldest in the world,” Aune, an 80-year-old Norwegian and former ambulance driver, told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. “But my vision’s not great any longer.”
He had a cornea transplanted into his right eye in 1958 from the body of an elderly man who was born in June 1885. The operation was carried out at Namsos Hospital, mid-Norway.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the oldest living organ in the world,” eye doctor Hasan Hasanain at Namsos hospital told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang.
In the 1950s, doctors expected it to work for just five years, Hasanain said. Such cornea operations date back to the early 20th century and were among the first successful transplants.
“It wasn’t unusual to use corneas from elderly people who had died,” Aune said.
The oldest person who had documents to prove it was France’s Jeanne Calment, who was 122 old when she died in 1997, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The Eiffel Tower was built from 1887 to 1889. U.S. inventor Thomas Edison patented a film camera for motion pictures in 1888.
22
Rifles / XM21 in Nam
« on: October 23, 2008, 10:45:13 PM »
This is my brother in law's boss in Vietnam -
23
Off Topic Discussion / Calguns.net
« on: October 23, 2008, 04:25:35 PM »
Well it's been awhile now since we've migrated here - We were blame for a lot of things at .net - Cluttering up the site, slowing it down, tying up bandwidth are a few things. Guys were wanting to do away with this/that, ect.
I logged in this morning, there were approximately 325 unread - I've just logged back on half an hour ago - There were +250 unread.
Have the site improved with some not posting? Have the prolems been removed? I've welcome the latest additions, IE - Ladies, youth forums. How do you think those forums are doing? I've read some of the opinions and they all have their places.
I logged in this morning, there were approximately 325 unread - I've just logged back on half an hour ago - There were +250 unread.
Have the site improved with some not posting? Have the prolems been removed? I've welcome the latest additions, IE - Ladies, youth forums. How do you think those forums are doing? I've read some of the opinions and they all have their places.
24
Off Topic Discussion / States target sex offenders before Halloween
« on: October 23, 2008, 03:31:57 PM »
I don't have children yet - What are parents thinking? I have a rental and the neighbor is a reg. sex offender - I've cheked him out on Megan't law - Didn't even know about it until my new tennant had moved in - They were the one to notify me of my neighbor's situation - He was convited of forced and violence, rape in concert - But not with minors. Well the tennant lasted one month - They have a 2 year old daughter.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27336655
SAN ANTONIO - Authorities arrested 24 sex-offense suspects during a two-day nationwide sweep ahead of Halloween.
Most of those sex offenders were arrested for violating their registration requirements. This roundup was part of a trend that targets sex-offense suspects or registered sex offenders on or before Halloween. It's an effort to restrict their activities that night.
The ACL sued Missouri, saying a new state law aimed at sex offenders was too vague. It required them to avoid all Halloween-related contact with children, remain inside their homes and post a sign saying they have no candy to keep trick-or-treaters away.
Texas, Maryland and South Carolina passed similarly strict laws about what convicted sex offenders can do on Halloween.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27336655
SAN ANTONIO - Authorities arrested 24 sex-offense suspects during a two-day nationwide sweep ahead of Halloween.
Most of those sex offenders were arrested for violating their registration requirements. This roundup was part of a trend that targets sex-offense suspects or registered sex offenders on or before Halloween. It's an effort to restrict their activities that night.
The ACL sued Missouri, saying a new state law aimed at sex offenders was too vague. It required them to avoid all Halloween-related contact with children, remain inside their homes and post a sign saying they have no candy to keep trick-or-treaters away.
Texas, Maryland and South Carolina passed similarly strict laws about what convicted sex offenders can do on Halloween.
25
Off Topic Discussion / BEIRUT ATTACK: THE START OF ISLAMIC TERRORISM
« on: October 23, 2008, 03:25:52 PM »
It's been 25 years already - How times fly - Do you believe this was the start to terrorism as we know it today?
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/23/1584456.aspx
Twenty-five years on and it still appears in my nightmares and daydreams: the visual equivalent of a lone, empty shoe or sandal, on top of a pile of rubble, all that remains of the child who once wore it.
Only in my mind’s eye it’s not a shoe – it’s a stepladder. The aluminum kind you’d use to change a bulb or paint the ceiling. It was lingering somewhere inside or against the 1/8 Marines’ barracks in Beirut when a suicide bomber drove his five-ton yellow Mercedes truck, laden with six tons of TNT, right through an unfortified perimeter fence and straight into the lobby of the barracks, setting off the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.
I came across the ladder hours later, and hundreds of yards from the scene. It had impaled a tree trunk like a huge dart, and was hanging, parallel to the ground, swaying in the breeze. A strange image – but one that is seared in my mind when I think about that awful day 25 years ago that marked the first of what would become many radical Islamic terror attacks against Western interests.
Peacekeepers on an unwelcomed mission
By the fourth week of October 1983, our NBC News team had spent several months, off and on, covering – the term "embedding" didn’t exist yet – the 1,600-strong contingent of U.S. Marines out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., in Lebanon. They were part of a multinational peacekeeping task force, including French and Italian troops, sent in to ease tensions between Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli factions, following Israel’s invasion and the pull-out of Yasser Arafat’s PLO fighters from Beirut the previous September.
The beaching of U.S. Marines on the Lebanese coast was a big deal – proof, said Ronald Reagan’s White House, that the dark days of Vietnam were over and that, once again, America could engage, militarily, in the defense of freedom. But the Marines weren’t welcomed, and tensions didn’t ease.
Alpha Company, based at the Lebanese Science Faculty building, about 3 miles from the main barracks, was quickly surrounded by nameless Muslim resistors who would eventually coalesce into groups called Amal and Hezbollah.
Capt. Paul Roy, the company commander, had that grim look of grit and frustration I would so often see in future years. His troops were supposed to be peacekeepers, so he couldn’t build an offensive firewall or serious protective barrier; his weapons were always unloaded unless his troops were fired upon; and they couldn’t fire back until the source of fire had been positively identified and it had been cleared with higher-ups.
Over time, our team – reporter Stan Bernard, cameraman Brian Prentke, soundman Thierry Meaume and myself – filed more than a dozen stories with Alpha Company, living with these brave sitting ducks, under fire, as their patrols dwindled and their area of operation shrank. Sleeping on concrete, eating the first (bad) generation of Meals Ready to Eat, taking bottled water showers.
Every day began with Roy peering through binoculars from the roof’s sniper nest, fixing the large Marine barracks to the southwest as his main landmark; and every day ended with all of us non-combatants huddled in a shallow clay trench as rocket propelled grenades and AK-47 fire snapped and boomed overhead.
‘The barracks will always be there’
By Oct. 22, we’d had enough. And were determined that our next story would be more comfortable. Close to showers. And real food. Why not do a "day-in-the-life" with U.S. Marines "inside the wire" – at the battalion’s barracks – where troops spent their down time cleaning weapons, doing laundry, reading mail, pumping iron and barbequing hamburgers to country western tunes? In a word, Heaven.
Our plan was to spend the night at the barracks and return to our base – at the Commodore Hotel in West Beirut – when our "slice of life" story was in the can. It was a great plan, on paper.
But early Saturday evening when our portly Lebanese driver who we called "Haj and a Half" picked us up, our car hit Beirut’s chaotic traffic and didn’t budge for an hour. Now it was dark. And we were hungry, smelly and angry. "Screw it!" I bellowed from the back seat. "The barracks will always be there. Let’s go back to the f… ing hotel. We deserve it."
"The barracks will always be there" came back, of course, to haunt me. A little after 6 a.m. the following morning, the force of the blast, four or five miles away, knocked me from of my hotel bed.
‘It’s gone. It’s just … gone’
The unbelievable news traveled quickly, by way of colleagues’ shouts in the corridors, and on BBC radio bulletins. Within minutes news teams dressed, loaded up and raced off to a ground zero that would, inexorably, lead to the Ground Zero, a generation later. Many of us who had to record and make sense of what we saw flipped on "auto pilot" that day.
The four-story barracks was flattened as if by a massive earthquake. The wailing beneath the rubble; the naked dead bodies pulled from a morass of concrete and cinderblocks; bruised and bloodied survivors who couldn’t grasp why they weren’t dead, too stunned to even cry…we took it all in as if in a trance.
We collected telephone numbers from survivors, like many of my colleagues in those days before cell or satellite phones, and called families back in the states with the good news. Instinctively, the following day, we returned to the Science Faculty building to visit our buddies from Alpha Company. Nothing – and everything – had changed.
It seemed like the soul had been ripped out of their mission. These Marines had already checked out. We spent the night, mostly out of respect. There was the obligatory RPG attack during the night. And the next morning, Capt. Roy climbed up, as always, to the sniper nest, we right behind him. He looked through his binoculars, as he did every morning, across the urban sprawl of southwest Beirut.
But this time he peered much longer than usual, as if he’d lost his bearings. Then he turned to me, this war-hardened Marine’s Marine, tears streaming down his face, catching the sun’s glare. And croaked, "It’s gone. It’s just … gone.’’
First of many attacks
In all, 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, died in the blast. And 58 French peacekeepers were also killed that morning when a second suicide bomber detonated yet another truck outside the French barracks, nearby.
This was not only a new chapter in the way the West would have to deal with Islamist terror; this was the table of contents for a new, very thick book. The first suicide truck bombers, even seen to be smiling as they met their fate; the first act of Islamist jihad against the U.S. military; the first humiliating defeat at the hands of a force few Westerners even knew existed.
The loss was so big it drove President Reagan to make an about-face and pull U.S. forces out of the Middle East, allowing a young Osama bin Laden to remark how America didn’t have the stomach for real warfare. The atrocity set the bar for a whole generation of future attacks on U.S. targets, from Saudi Arabia to the World Trade Center. But none of that makes Oct. 23, 1983 any easier to handle, even 25 years later.
In 1985 a secret U.S. grand jury found Lebanese radical Imad Mughniyeh guilty of masterminding the Marine barracks bombing. But Mughniyeh went on for years after that to strike elsewhere, allegedly killing 19 U.S. soldiers and wounding dozens at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. And there were other attacks – until last February, when Mughniyeh died in a car bomb in Damascus, Syria.
And, though it was no longer my beat, in yet another quirk of fate I was assigned to cover Mughniyeh’s funeral in Beirut. His coffin was laid out on a wide wooden dais, draped in flowers and Hezbollah slogans. He received full military honors, including a marching brass band and a visit and eulogy by Iran’s Foreign Minister.
I watched from the press section, in front of the dais, one of the few obviously Western reporters in a vast room the size of a hangar, thinking how easy it would be to be kidnapped and disappear then and there. I thought about how weirdly symmetrical it was to be gazing at the coffin of the man who likely killed so many Marines, and – but for a traffic jam – could have killed me.
And then I thought of that stepladder.
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/10/23/1584456.aspx
Twenty-five years on and it still appears in my nightmares and daydreams: the visual equivalent of a lone, empty shoe or sandal, on top of a pile of rubble, all that remains of the child who once wore it.
Only in my mind’s eye it’s not a shoe – it’s a stepladder. The aluminum kind you’d use to change a bulb or paint the ceiling. It was lingering somewhere inside or against the 1/8 Marines’ barracks in Beirut when a suicide bomber drove his five-ton yellow Mercedes truck, laden with six tons of TNT, right through an unfortified perimeter fence and straight into the lobby of the barracks, setting off the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.
I came across the ladder hours later, and hundreds of yards from the scene. It had impaled a tree trunk like a huge dart, and was hanging, parallel to the ground, swaying in the breeze. A strange image – but one that is seared in my mind when I think about that awful day 25 years ago that marked the first of what would become many radical Islamic terror attacks against Western interests.
Peacekeepers on an unwelcomed mission
By the fourth week of October 1983, our NBC News team had spent several months, off and on, covering – the term "embedding" didn’t exist yet – the 1,600-strong contingent of U.S. Marines out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., in Lebanon. They were part of a multinational peacekeeping task force, including French and Italian troops, sent in to ease tensions between Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli factions, following Israel’s invasion and the pull-out of Yasser Arafat’s PLO fighters from Beirut the previous September.
The beaching of U.S. Marines on the Lebanese coast was a big deal – proof, said Ronald Reagan’s White House, that the dark days of Vietnam were over and that, once again, America could engage, militarily, in the defense of freedom. But the Marines weren’t welcomed, and tensions didn’t ease.
Alpha Company, based at the Lebanese Science Faculty building, about 3 miles from the main barracks, was quickly surrounded by nameless Muslim resistors who would eventually coalesce into groups called Amal and Hezbollah.
Capt. Paul Roy, the company commander, had that grim look of grit and frustration I would so often see in future years. His troops were supposed to be peacekeepers, so he couldn’t build an offensive firewall or serious protective barrier; his weapons were always unloaded unless his troops were fired upon; and they couldn’t fire back until the source of fire had been positively identified and it had been cleared with higher-ups.
Over time, our team – reporter Stan Bernard, cameraman Brian Prentke, soundman Thierry Meaume and myself – filed more than a dozen stories with Alpha Company, living with these brave sitting ducks, under fire, as their patrols dwindled and their area of operation shrank. Sleeping on concrete, eating the first (bad) generation of Meals Ready to Eat, taking bottled water showers.
Every day began with Roy peering through binoculars from the roof’s sniper nest, fixing the large Marine barracks to the southwest as his main landmark; and every day ended with all of us non-combatants huddled in a shallow clay trench as rocket propelled grenades and AK-47 fire snapped and boomed overhead.
‘The barracks will always be there’
By Oct. 22, we’d had enough. And were determined that our next story would be more comfortable. Close to showers. And real food. Why not do a "day-in-the-life" with U.S. Marines "inside the wire" – at the battalion’s barracks – where troops spent their down time cleaning weapons, doing laundry, reading mail, pumping iron and barbequing hamburgers to country western tunes? In a word, Heaven.
Our plan was to spend the night at the barracks and return to our base – at the Commodore Hotel in West Beirut – when our "slice of life" story was in the can. It was a great plan, on paper.
But early Saturday evening when our portly Lebanese driver who we called "Haj and a Half" picked us up, our car hit Beirut’s chaotic traffic and didn’t budge for an hour. Now it was dark. And we were hungry, smelly and angry. "Screw it!" I bellowed from the back seat. "The barracks will always be there. Let’s go back to the f… ing hotel. We deserve it."
"The barracks will always be there" came back, of course, to haunt me. A little after 6 a.m. the following morning, the force of the blast, four or five miles away, knocked me from of my hotel bed.
‘It’s gone. It’s just … gone’
The unbelievable news traveled quickly, by way of colleagues’ shouts in the corridors, and on BBC radio bulletins. Within minutes news teams dressed, loaded up and raced off to a ground zero that would, inexorably, lead to the Ground Zero, a generation later. Many of us who had to record and make sense of what we saw flipped on "auto pilot" that day.
The four-story barracks was flattened as if by a massive earthquake. The wailing beneath the rubble; the naked dead bodies pulled from a morass of concrete and cinderblocks; bruised and bloodied survivors who couldn’t grasp why they weren’t dead, too stunned to even cry…we took it all in as if in a trance.
We collected telephone numbers from survivors, like many of my colleagues in those days before cell or satellite phones, and called families back in the states with the good news. Instinctively, the following day, we returned to the Science Faculty building to visit our buddies from Alpha Company. Nothing – and everything – had changed.
It seemed like the soul had been ripped out of their mission. These Marines had already checked out. We spent the night, mostly out of respect. There was the obligatory RPG attack during the night. And the next morning, Capt. Roy climbed up, as always, to the sniper nest, we right behind him. He looked through his binoculars, as he did every morning, across the urban sprawl of southwest Beirut.
But this time he peered much longer than usual, as if he’d lost his bearings. Then he turned to me, this war-hardened Marine’s Marine, tears streaming down his face, catching the sun’s glare. And croaked, "It’s gone. It’s just … gone.’’
First of many attacks
In all, 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, died in the blast. And 58 French peacekeepers were also killed that morning when a second suicide bomber detonated yet another truck outside the French barracks, nearby.
This was not only a new chapter in the way the West would have to deal with Islamist terror; this was the table of contents for a new, very thick book. The first suicide truck bombers, even seen to be smiling as they met their fate; the first act of Islamist jihad against the U.S. military; the first humiliating defeat at the hands of a force few Westerners even knew existed.
The loss was so big it drove President Reagan to make an about-face and pull U.S. forces out of the Middle East, allowing a young Osama bin Laden to remark how America didn’t have the stomach for real warfare. The atrocity set the bar for a whole generation of future attacks on U.S. targets, from Saudi Arabia to the World Trade Center. But none of that makes Oct. 23, 1983 any easier to handle, even 25 years later.
In 1985 a secret U.S. grand jury found Lebanese radical Imad Mughniyeh guilty of masterminding the Marine barracks bombing. But Mughniyeh went on for years after that to strike elsewhere, allegedly killing 19 U.S. soldiers and wounding dozens at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. And there were other attacks – until last February, when Mughniyeh died in a car bomb in Damascus, Syria.
And, though it was no longer my beat, in yet another quirk of fate I was assigned to cover Mughniyeh’s funeral in Beirut. His coffin was laid out on a wide wooden dais, draped in flowers and Hezbollah slogans. He received full military honors, including a marching brass band and a visit and eulogy by Iran’s Foreign Minister.
I watched from the press section, in front of the dais, one of the few obviously Western reporters in a vast room the size of a hangar, thinking how easy it would be to be kidnapped and disappear then and there. I thought about how weirdly symmetrical it was to be gazing at the coffin of the man who likely killed so many Marines, and – but for a traffic jam – could have killed me.
And then I thought of that stepladder.
26
Off Topic Discussion / Kids less likely to graduate than parents
« on: October 23, 2008, 03:21:58 PM »
What happened? How, where did we fail? This contradicts everything I've read -
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27336656
Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group.
More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday.
And dropout rates haven't budged: One in four kids is dropping out of high school.
"The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.
In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report said.
High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases, is acceptable.
For example:
—In North Carolina, schools must improve by 0.1 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take nearly a century to raise the graduation rate, now 72 percent, to the state goal of 80 percent.
—In Maryland, schools must improve by 0.01 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take most of a millennium for the graduation rate among African-American students, now 79 percent, to reach the state goal of 85.5 percent.
—In Delaware and New Mexico, schools will never have to meet a state graduation goal as long as they manage to maintain the same graduation rate. Delaware's graduation rate is 76 percent; New Mexico's is 67 percent.
Why is bar so low?
Why are states setting the bar so low?
Because they can, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
State and school officials are under pressure to improve test scores under the No Child Left Behind education law or else face penalties. But they got a break on graduation rates: Schools have to meet annual goals, but the government lets each state set its own goal.
"A lot of states said, `Well, we're under a lot of pressure; let's not make this too hard on ourselves,"' Balfanz said. "They were given a loophole, and they took it."
So in North Carolina — which has won praise for a series of innovations to keep kids in school — the graduation goal has not changed. Officials are coming up with a new goal but are hoping that No Child Left Behind will be rewritten to be less punitive.
"To be candid, we're waiting for NCLB to change," said June Atkinson, North Carolina's state schools superintendent. "Those numbers do not tell the story. Our mission is that 100 percent of our students will graduate from high school. Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do."
In Maryland, officials say their slower goal is more realistic.
"If you really want to bring about change, you have to have reachable goals that people believe they can work toward," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy.
"By not making these numbers pie-in-the-sky, I think we have a better chance," Peiffer said.
Graduation rates take longer to improve than test scores, because a child's educational experience must be transformed over a period of years, Peiffer said.
Dropout crisis
The U.S. was slow to realize it was facing a dropout crisis. For years, researchers reported dropouts as the number of kids who quit school in 12th grade, failing to capture those who left high school earlier.
States and schools clouded the picture by using a mishmash of different methods to keep track of students who graduated, transferred or dropped out.
Then came the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, with its requirement that states meet graduation goals. In 2005, the nation's governors made a pact to adopt a common system of tracking graduation rates.
Now the federal government is poised to raise the bar on graduation rates. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is expected to issue new rules next week that will force states to use the common tracking system and will judge schools not only on graduation rates but on the percentage of black and Hispanic students who graduate, too.
Among minority students, more than one in three students drops out of school.
Spellings proposed the new rules earlier this year. Final rules may differ somewhat, but Spellings said earlier that states would be required in most cases to count graduates as kids who leave high school on time and with a regular diploma.
Critics have worried that by judging test scores more heavily and graduation less so, No Child Left Behind encouraged schools to push weak students out.
Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said the dropout problem is driven by "dropout factories," schools in poor communities where kids face challenges inside and outside the classroom.
He argued the government could make a big dent in the dropout problem by plowing more money, and firm guidance on how to spend it, into those schools.
More resources are desperately needed, said Mel Riddle, who retired in July as principle of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.
"The world's changed; we have to change to meet those demands," said Riddle, now an official of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "To think we can do it in the same way, with the same resources, is not realistic."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27336656
Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group.
More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday.
And dropout rates haven't budged: One in four kids is dropping out of high school.
"The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and poor children. "And that is going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to compete," she said.
In fact, the United States is now the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to earn a diploma, the report said.
High schools are required to meet graduation targets every year as part of the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.
But those targets are set by states, not by the federal government. And most states allow schools to graduate low percentages of students by saying that any progress, or even the status quo in some cases, is acceptable.
For example:
—In North Carolina, schools must improve by 0.1 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take nearly a century to raise the graduation rate, now 72 percent, to the state goal of 80 percent.
—In Maryland, schools must improve by 0.01 percentage point each year. At that rate, it would take most of a millennium for the graduation rate among African-American students, now 79 percent, to reach the state goal of 85.5 percent.
—In Delaware and New Mexico, schools will never have to meet a state graduation goal as long as they manage to maintain the same graduation rate. Delaware's graduation rate is 76 percent; New Mexico's is 67 percent.
Why is bar so low?
Why are states setting the bar so low?
Because they can, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
State and school officials are under pressure to improve test scores under the No Child Left Behind education law or else face penalties. But they got a break on graduation rates: Schools have to meet annual goals, but the government lets each state set its own goal.
"A lot of states said, `Well, we're under a lot of pressure; let's not make this too hard on ourselves,"' Balfanz said. "They were given a loophole, and they took it."
So in North Carolina — which has won praise for a series of innovations to keep kids in school — the graduation goal has not changed. Officials are coming up with a new goal but are hoping that No Child Left Behind will be rewritten to be less punitive.
"To be candid, we're waiting for NCLB to change," said June Atkinson, North Carolina's state schools superintendent. "Those numbers do not tell the story. Our mission is that 100 percent of our students will graduate from high school. Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do."
In Maryland, officials say their slower goal is more realistic.
"If you really want to bring about change, you have to have reachable goals that people believe they can work toward," said Ronald A. Peiffer, Maryland's deputy superintendent for academic policy.
"By not making these numbers pie-in-the-sky, I think we have a better chance," Peiffer said.
Graduation rates take longer to improve than test scores, because a child's educational experience must be transformed over a period of years, Peiffer said.
Dropout crisis
The U.S. was slow to realize it was facing a dropout crisis. For years, researchers reported dropouts as the number of kids who quit school in 12th grade, failing to capture those who left high school earlier.
States and schools clouded the picture by using a mishmash of different methods to keep track of students who graduated, transferred or dropped out.
Then came the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, with its requirement that states meet graduation goals. In 2005, the nation's governors made a pact to adopt a common system of tracking graduation rates.
Now the federal government is poised to raise the bar on graduation rates. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is expected to issue new rules next week that will force states to use the common tracking system and will judge schools not only on graduation rates but on the percentage of black and Hispanic students who graduate, too.
Among minority students, more than one in three students drops out of school.
Spellings proposed the new rules earlier this year. Final rules may differ somewhat, but Spellings said earlier that states would be required in most cases to count graduates as kids who leave high school on time and with a regular diploma.
Critics have worried that by judging test scores more heavily and graduation less so, No Child Left Behind encouraged schools to push weak students out.
Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said the dropout problem is driven by "dropout factories," schools in poor communities where kids face challenges inside and outside the classroom.
He argued the government could make a big dent in the dropout problem by plowing more money, and firm guidance on how to spend it, into those schools.
More resources are desperately needed, said Mel Riddle, who retired in July as principle of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.
"The world's changed; we have to change to meet those demands," said Riddle, now an official of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. "To think we can do it in the same way, with the same resources, is not realistic."
27
General Gun Discussion / Reloading
« on: October 22, 2008, 04:04:17 PM »
Convince me that I should do this - I don't shoot with any frequency. For instance, this year I've been out shooting only on 4 different occasions. Used about 1k each of 9, .45 and 2k .223. That's with letting friends shooting also.
So why should I reload?
So why should I reload?
28
Off Topic Discussion / Stripper shoe lawsuit
« on: October 21, 2008, 07:41:37 PM »
Becareful out there gentlemen - It's a dangerous world.
http://a-list.msn.com/default.aspx?cp-searchtext=Stripper%20shoe%20lawsuit
You head to a strip club, settle in with a drink, watch the routine … and then you wind up with a shoe in your eye? That's just what happened to a Florida man.
The details?
Apparently one of the strippers got carried away during a pole dance and kicked off her shoe. It hit the club's mirrored ceiling, and both mirror shards and the shoe rained down on the unfortunate patron. He ended up with facial cuts, a nosebleed and grounds for a day in court.
It's amazing, the ways we collect injuries and, sometimes, payouts:
http://a-list.msn.com/default.aspx?cp-searchtext=Stripper%20shoe%20lawsuit
You head to a strip club, settle in with a drink, watch the routine … and then you wind up with a shoe in your eye? That's just what happened to a Florida man.
The details?
Apparently one of the strippers got carried away during a pole dance and kicked off her shoe. It hit the club's mirrored ceiling, and both mirror shards and the shoe rained down on the unfortunate patron. He ended up with facial cuts, a nosebleed and grounds for a day in court.
It's amazing, the ways we collect injuries and, sometimes, payouts:
29
Curio & Relic / French MAS 49/56
« on: October 21, 2008, 09:22:52 AM »
Found one in .308 flavor - Please shed some lights on it - Read about not functioning properly, gas issues, ect. Thanks in advance.
30
Off Topic Discussion / Bush, Bernanke: Time is right for new stimulus
« on: October 20, 2008, 02:52:24 PM »
Not another round - I am now officially nervous.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27277381
WASHINGTON - Momentum is building for a fresh dose of economic stimulants to boost the country out of the doldrums — perhaps by putting more money in Americans’ pockets. The White House said Friday that President Bush was open to some sort of action after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned the slump could drag on without the extra bracing tonic.
On Wall Street, stocks bolted higher, with the Dow Jones industrials rising 413 points. There also were some new signs that credit conditions were thawing a bit.
The national economy, already wobbling, has been rocked by a trio of hard punches from the housing, credit and financial crises. With a recession widely seen as inevitable, if not already under way, the focus in Washington has shifted to the questions of how bad, how long and how to limit the pain.
There is increasing talk of a post-election special session calling Congress back to the Capitol. But urgency varies greatly according to whom you talk to — and when.
“We’re continuing to have conversations with members of Congress, and we’re open to ideas that they would put forward ... that would stimulate the economy and help us pull out of this downturn faster,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said around noon Friday, shortly after Bernanke endorsed the need for a fresh and “significant” round of government action.
A couple of hours later, Bush seconded those remarks, but he also said in a more optimistic tone: “I have heard that people’s attitudes are beginning to change from a period of intense concerns — I would call it near panic — to being more relaxed.” He commented after a closed meeting with business leaders in Alexandria, La.
If congressional leaders and Bush — who has been cool to more federal stimulus spending given already exploding budget deficits — were to hash out an acceptable package, it would require a special session after the Nov. 4 elections.
If an agreement can’t be worked out, the effort probably would be taken up by the next Congress and the next president. Democrat Barack Obama has strongly advocated more government stimulus, while Republican John McCain is keeping his options open.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and fellow congressional Democrats are pushing a package that could cost as much as $150 billion. Some economists, however, have advised them in recent days that to have a real impact, the total would have to be far larger, as much as $300 billion.
As part of that package, Democrats want to resurrect a $61 billion House-passed measure that included about $37 billion in public works spending, $6 billion to extend jobless benefits, $15 billion to help states to pay their Medicaid bills and $3 billion in food stamp assistance for the poor.
The Democrats also are considering a second round of tax rebates to follow the $600 to $1,200 checks most individuals and couples got earlier this year. That money, going directly to consumers in hopes they would spend it, could push the price tag much higher.
Unemployment — now at 6.1 percent — is expected to hit 7.5 percent or higher next year. And millions of Americans have been watching their retirement nest eggs and home values shrivel.
One-third of Americans are worried about losing their jobs, half fret they will be unable to keep up with mortgage and credit card payments, and seven in 10 are anxious that their stocks and retirement investments are losing value, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll of likely voters released Monday.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic leadership, predicted Congress would return in November. “We couldn’t have gotten a better supporter for a stimulus package than Ben Bernanke,” Schumer said. “His support will change the stimulus from a possibility to a reality.”
Pelosi said, “I call on President Bush and congressional Republicans to once again heed Chairman Bernanke’s advice and as they did in January, work with Democrats in Congress to enact a targeted, timely and fiscally responsible economic recovery and job creation package.”
However, in an interview with The Associated Press last Friday, Pelosi had said Congress is unlikely to approve a tax rebate before Bush leaves office, and she signaled that prospects were dim that Democrats would be able to strike a deal with the president on an economic aid package during a post-election session.
In February, Congress enacted a $168 billion stimulus package that included tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses. The rebate checks did help to lift economic growth in the spring. After that, though, consumers cut back sharply and businesses have retrenched in turn.
“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Bernanke told the House Budget Committee. It marked the first time Bernanke endorsed the need for another round of economic stimulus.
The Fed chief suggested that Congress design the package to limit the longer-term affects on the government’s budget deficit, which hit a record in the recently ended budget year and is undoubtedly headed higher.
Bernanke said the package also should include provisions “to help improve access to credit by consumers, home buyers, businesses and other borrowers.”
He also left the door open to further interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve itself.
Fed policymakers meet next on Oct. 28-29, and many economists believe they will again lower their key rate — now at 1.50 percent — to bolster the economy. Just a few weeks ago, the Fed and the world’s other major central banks joined forces to ratchet down rates, the first coordinated action of that kind in the Fed’s history.
There were some signs that credit problems were improving a bit. Bank-to-bank lending rates fell for a sixth straight day on Monday. Demand for Treasury bills, regarded as the world’s safest investment, lessened somewhat but remained relatively high in a sign that there was still much fear in the markets.
Last week, the Treasury Department announced it would inject up to $250 billion in U.S. banks in return for partial ownership. So far this year, 15 banks have failed, including the largest U.S. bank failure in history, compared with three last year. And major Wall Street investment firms have been swallowed by other companies, have filed bankruptcy or have converted themselves into commercial banks to weather the financial storm.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27277381
WASHINGTON - Momentum is building for a fresh dose of economic stimulants to boost the country out of the doldrums — perhaps by putting more money in Americans’ pockets. The White House said Friday that President Bush was open to some sort of action after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned the slump could drag on without the extra bracing tonic.
On Wall Street, stocks bolted higher, with the Dow Jones industrials rising 413 points. There also were some new signs that credit conditions were thawing a bit.
The national economy, already wobbling, has been rocked by a trio of hard punches from the housing, credit and financial crises. With a recession widely seen as inevitable, if not already under way, the focus in Washington has shifted to the questions of how bad, how long and how to limit the pain.
There is increasing talk of a post-election special session calling Congress back to the Capitol. But urgency varies greatly according to whom you talk to — and when.
“We’re continuing to have conversations with members of Congress, and we’re open to ideas that they would put forward ... that would stimulate the economy and help us pull out of this downturn faster,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said around noon Friday, shortly after Bernanke endorsed the need for a fresh and “significant” round of government action.
A couple of hours later, Bush seconded those remarks, but he also said in a more optimistic tone: “I have heard that people’s attitudes are beginning to change from a period of intense concerns — I would call it near panic — to being more relaxed.” He commented after a closed meeting with business leaders in Alexandria, La.
If congressional leaders and Bush — who has been cool to more federal stimulus spending given already exploding budget deficits — were to hash out an acceptable package, it would require a special session after the Nov. 4 elections.
If an agreement can’t be worked out, the effort probably would be taken up by the next Congress and the next president. Democrat Barack Obama has strongly advocated more government stimulus, while Republican John McCain is keeping his options open.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and fellow congressional Democrats are pushing a package that could cost as much as $150 billion. Some economists, however, have advised them in recent days that to have a real impact, the total would have to be far larger, as much as $300 billion.
As part of that package, Democrats want to resurrect a $61 billion House-passed measure that included about $37 billion in public works spending, $6 billion to extend jobless benefits, $15 billion to help states to pay their Medicaid bills and $3 billion in food stamp assistance for the poor.
The Democrats also are considering a second round of tax rebates to follow the $600 to $1,200 checks most individuals and couples got earlier this year. That money, going directly to consumers in hopes they would spend it, could push the price tag much higher.
Unemployment — now at 6.1 percent — is expected to hit 7.5 percent or higher next year. And millions of Americans have been watching their retirement nest eggs and home values shrivel.
One-third of Americans are worried about losing their jobs, half fret they will be unable to keep up with mortgage and credit card payments, and seven in 10 are anxious that their stocks and retirement investments are losing value, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll of likely voters released Monday.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Democratic leadership, predicted Congress would return in November. “We couldn’t have gotten a better supporter for a stimulus package than Ben Bernanke,” Schumer said. “His support will change the stimulus from a possibility to a reality.”
Pelosi said, “I call on President Bush and congressional Republicans to once again heed Chairman Bernanke’s advice and as they did in January, work with Democrats in Congress to enact a targeted, timely and fiscally responsible economic recovery and job creation package.”
However, in an interview with The Associated Press last Friday, Pelosi had said Congress is unlikely to approve a tax rebate before Bush leaves office, and she signaled that prospects were dim that Democrats would be able to strike a deal with the president on an economic aid package during a post-election session.
In February, Congress enacted a $168 billion stimulus package that included tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses. The rebate checks did help to lift economic growth in the spring. After that, though, consumers cut back sharply and businesses have retrenched in turn.
“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate,” Bernanke told the House Budget Committee. It marked the first time Bernanke endorsed the need for another round of economic stimulus.
The Fed chief suggested that Congress design the package to limit the longer-term affects on the government’s budget deficit, which hit a record in the recently ended budget year and is undoubtedly headed higher.
Bernanke said the package also should include provisions “to help improve access to credit by consumers, home buyers, businesses and other borrowers.”
He also left the door open to further interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve itself.
Fed policymakers meet next on Oct. 28-29, and many economists believe they will again lower their key rate — now at 1.50 percent — to bolster the economy. Just a few weeks ago, the Fed and the world’s other major central banks joined forces to ratchet down rates, the first coordinated action of that kind in the Fed’s history.
There were some signs that credit problems were improving a bit. Bank-to-bank lending rates fell for a sixth straight day on Monday. Demand for Treasury bills, regarded as the world’s safest investment, lessened somewhat but remained relatively high in a sign that there was still much fear in the markets.
Last week, the Treasury Department announced it would inject up to $250 billion in U.S. banks in return for partial ownership. So far this year, 15 banks have failed, including the largest U.S. bank failure in history, compared with three last year. And major Wall Street investment firms have been swallowed by other companies, have filed bankruptcy or have converted themselves into commercial banks to weather the financial storm.
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