A cat and an owl become unlikely besties.

Via Bits and Pieces.

I had cap guns as a boy, but nothing like a 500 shot Tommy gun like this!!

Sure 'nuff!

This looks interesting.

Could it be about how to hypnotize the Beatles into being Communists?

Epic swimming holes.

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man posted this striking picture of Alejandra Benitez, olympic fencer, and now the newly appointed Sports Minister for the Venezuelan government.

Whew!  That's an intense stare!

Peter wonders whether we should import her!

Such an image brings to mind this old English sea shanty, which seems appropriate right about here:



And the American pop culture version:

Serious badassery here.

A man is walking down a New Orleans street when an " urban thug" sticks a shotgun in his face.  His response is to grab the shotgun out of the thug's hand and chase him with it.

Give this guy a medal for huevos magnificos.

 Space station commander Chris Hadfield has photographed a hole in one of the ISS solar panels. "Bullet hole - a small stone from the universe went through our solar array," he tweeted from orbit. "Glad it missed the hull." 

Here's a little Wikipedia magic for your Tuesday.

I had never heard of this gal before, but what a story!  The Lioness of Brittany!  From the French nobility and the mother of seven children, to a head chopping pirate.  Hooo-rah!

Jeanne de Clisson (1300–1359), also known as the Lioness of Brittany, was a feared Breton pirate who plied the English Channel for French ships from 1343 to 1356.

She was born Jeanne-Louise de Belleville, Dame de Montaigu, the daughter of Maurice IV of Belleville-Montaigu and Létice de Parthenay, in 1300. At the age of 12, she was married to 19-year-old Geoffrey de Châteaubriant, by whom she had two children, Louise and Geoffrey. In 1326, the marriage ended with the death of Châteaubriant. Four years later, in 1330, Jeanne married her second husband, Olivier III de Clisson. This union was an especially close one; Olivier and Jeanne were of an age and seemingly content, as they had five children together: Maurice, Guillaume, Olivier, Isabeau (died 1343) and Jeanne. Olivier was also a wealthy nobleman, holding a castle at Clisson, a manor house inNantes and lands at Blain; in 1342 he joined Charles de Blois in defending Brittany against the English claimants.

During the Breton War of Succession, Olivier came under suspicion and criticism from Charles de Blois for failing to hold Vannes against the English forces, and so he defected to the English side. In the summer of 1343, while he was attending a tourney in French territory, Olivier was arrested and taken to Paris for trial. Fifteen of his peers, including his putative friend Charles de Blois, found him guilty of treason and on 2 August 1343, he was executed by beheading at Les Halles, on the orders of King Philip VI. Olivier's head was then sent to Nantes and displayed on a pole outside the castle of Bouffay. Jeanne de Clisson, enraged and bewildered over her husband's execution, swore revenge on the King, and Charles de Blois in particular. She sold off the remnants of the Clisson lands, and sold her bodily services to noblemen, to raise money, whereupon she bought three warships, and the aid of many of the lords and people of Brittany to ensure their independence.

The ships that Clisson purchased were painted all black on her command, and the sails dyed red. The 'Black Fleet' took to the waters and began hunting down and destroying the ships of King Philip VI, and were merciless with the crews. But Clisson would always leave two or three of Philip's sailors alive, so that the message would get back to the King that the “Lioness of Brittany” had struck once again. Jeanne and her fleet also assisted in keeping the English Channel free of French warships, and it is very likely that as aprivateer she had a hand in keeping supplies available to the English forces for the Battle of Crécy in 1346. When King Philip VI died in 1350, it was not the end to Jeanne's revenge. She continued to wreak havoc among French shipping, and it was reported that she took particular joy in hunting down and capturing the ships of French noblemen, as long as they were aboard. She would then personally behead the aristocrats with an axe, tossing their lifeless bodies overboard.

In 1356, after 13 years of piracy, Clisson took refuge in England and married Sir Walter Bentley, a lieutenant to the English King Edward III.

[edit]

Via Ninety Miles From Tyranny

Cool video on a massive hurricane on Saturn.

And today schools don't even want to teach algebra or cursive writing.  See how well you do on this five hour test, and then imagine it being given to a class of eighth graders today.

Via Bonnie Gadsden and Don't Tread on Me.

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA.  It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS – 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.

2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph

4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie,”play,’ and ‘run.’

5. Define case; illustrate each case.

6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.

7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you

understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?

4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000.. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft.. Long at $20 per metre?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided

2. Give an account of the discovery of  America by Columbus

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals.

4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u.’

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each..

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Freckles, they are good

Mondays, they're like that.

Cabin porn via the Scottish Highlands.  Oh aye!

Epic swimming hole.

Boy reports to the commander of the 11th squad 3rd Leningrad Partisan Brigade G.V. Gvozdev about the location the Germans, 1943.

As an aside, their personal arms seem well maintained.

Via Comrade Zhukov

Knife porn.

Hinderer Kerambit

Read this article on how the surviving terrorist was prematurely Mirandized and then ask yourself exactly whose side Eric Holder and his justice department are on: ours, or the terrorists?

From the article:

   "Attorney General Eric Holder on Saturday defended the decision to read the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon terror bombings his Miranda rights.

Holder said the decision was “totally consistent with the laws that we have.”

He also pointed to the federal magistrate on the case.

“The decision to Mirandize was one that the magistrate made,” Holder told CNN as he arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington.

Early on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler showed up at the hospital unannounced with a federal prosecutor and public defender while the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was being questioned by the FBI."

Weasel Zippers offers a further trenchant analysis:

Let’s count the ways he dances:

1. “It’s completely consistent with the laws that we have”. This is quite a dance. Of course, it is not inconsistent with the laws to Mirandize Tsarnaev earlier than one had to in this case. It’s also stupid, unwise, and counter to the best interests of the security of the people of the United States.

2. “The decision to Mirandize was one the magistrate made”. Hogswallop. No magistrate is going to hunt down a suspect in a hospital without prior request and arrangement with the prosecution, in this case, Holder’s team. Holder is simply hoping no one has any sense of procedure and/or he will not be pressed on this point. Someone have a conversation with the magistrate as to how she came to be at the hospital.

3. “We had a two-day period under where authorities questioned him under the public-safety exception”. Well, now, no, you didn’t, did you? You had a 16 hour period, after which investigators were abruptly,  inappropriately interrupted. Why did the DOJ want to cut off questioning early? Was someone getting cold feet about the public safety exception? Concern because some on the left was beginning to talk about the suspect’s Miranda rights? Based upon the accounts of the evidence supposedly in the hands of the prosecution, prosecutors did not need to worry about the admissibility of statements  from Dhzokhar, they would have enough evidence for prosecuting him.  Thus the only real concern should be the safety of the citizens of the United States.

4. “Everything was done appropriately, and we got good leads.” The FBI brought in a special interrogation team. During the 16 hours, Tsarnaev’s story changed from, “we are going to party in NYC”, to “we were planning on taking our bombs to NYC”. He said they got info on how to make the bomb from online. Indications show that to be unlikely, according to Congress members now speaking out. What might investigators have found out, given proper time?

I'll offer this addition.  Keep in mind that Eric Holder was the man whose Justice Department supervised the sale of what are termed "assault weapons" to Mexican drug gangs, and who, during his service in the Clinton administration, assisted in the pardon of Puerto Rican terrorists, some of whom hadn't even asked for a pardon. He is the man who dropped charges against the night stick wielding Black Panthers who had terrorized voters in Philadelphia, even after the Panthers had offered no defense.

This man Holder has no truth in him.  He is not just amoral, but worse, totally corrupt. That he is in charge of the Justice Department is a cruel tragedy for the American people, making a mockery of the purpose of his department,  and the sooner he is gone, the better.

An American woman rescues her kidnapped son from her Muslim ex husband and the hell hole of Muslim Egypt.

   "Through the slit of the burqa she wore to blend in on the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, Kalli Atteya waited and watched until the boy climbed off the school bus. When she saw him, she moved quickly, grabbing his arm and steering him toward the waiting motorized cart.

"Get in," she said to the 12-year-old, who recognized his mother's piercing blue eyes and obeyed wordlessly.

Soon, they were speeding toward a safehouse where they would wait for three weeks before returning to the U.S., and ending a 20-month ordeal that began with another abduction — one the boy, Khalil Mohamed “Niko” Atteya, did not accept willingly. His father, Mohamed Atteya, who is wanted by the U.S. authorities, is accused of luring the mother and son to his homeland, then snatching the boy and leaving Kalli Atteya and her sister on the side of a desolate road between Cairo and Port Said on Aug. 1, 2011.

“My Dad forced me to be Muslim, which I did not want to do,” Niko, who has been back in Pennsylvania for more than a month, told FoxNews.com."

It's interesting from the article how the husband justified what he did by calling Western society "rotten," yet used his wife for his own purposes and played around with multiple other women after their marriage before kidnapping their son to force him into a religion he did not want. So which society is rotten and without morality?

Climber chicks are cool

My loathing of the MSM is no secret.

So Sarah Palin made my day when she called the press corps "pathetic assclowns."

Do you thing the press po'ed our favorite Alaskan with their coverage of her and her family?

Via The Hill:

   "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday blasted the White House Correspondents Association dinner, calling it a “pathetic” party for “assclowns.”

Palin tweeted her criticism of the annual event, which attracts Washington’s media elite and stars from the entertainment world.

“Yuk it up media and pols. While America is buried in taxes and a fight for our rights, the permanent political class in DC dresses up and has a prom to make fun of themselves,” Palin added in a Facebook post. “No need for that, we get the real joke "

Gotta admit, she calls it accurately.

Found this compelling picture over at Comrade Zhukov's tumblr.

Supposedly it was taken in 1944 in the Berdichev district of the old Soviet Union.

I'd say by the body language, trouble was coming fast.

I've scratched my head in confusion at the incredible amount of gunfire perpetrated by the Boston police and their allies in the manhunt for the two Tsarnaev brothers in Boston.

Especially on the last day, I recall hearing the news play sound tape of the literal barrage of gunfire at the boat that the wounded terrorist was hiding in.  It sounded like someone was unleashing a mini gun at the guy, and indeed the boat he was in was totally perforated with bullet holes.

And the joker was not killed.

Now we learn, via Bob Owens, that the scary terrorist brother wasn't even armed, even though that same barrage of shooting was described by the police as a gunfight!!

Set aside the fact that it was a supremely bad idea to torch off that much ammo in a crowded city.

Set aside the fact that they didn't kill him outright, or maybe didn't even hit him at all, after shooting that much.

Set aside the fact that they supposedly wanted to capture him alive for questioning.

Set aside the fact that the relevant authorities instinctively lied about what happened during that "firefight."

The guy didn't even have a gun!

And later they wanted him to give himself up!  After all the gunfire and all the flash/bang grenades, would you have given up?

Bob has an explanation for this really ridiculous display of incompetence:

Although police feared he was heavily armed, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings had no firearms when he came under a barrage of police gunfire that struck the boat where he was hiding, according to multiple federal law enforcement officials.

Authorities said they were desperate to capture Dzhokhar Tsarnaev so he could be questioned. The FBI, however, declined to discuss what triggered the gunfire.

I think I can answer that question.

When you arm, armor, and equip peace officers like combat infantrymen, but don’t give them the training, don’t be remotely surprised when they sling lead like a bunch of scared recruits just out of basic training.

If you want cops to act like peace officers, force them to act like peace officers, not make-believe adjuncts to Seal Team 6.

 Indeed.  There has been a lot of concern over the militarization of the police force, but as we here in California learned recently with the behavior of the LA police when one of their own went bad, it all depends on the guy behind the gun, and his ability to make a sound and reasoned decision about when to shoot. Panic seems to be the default behavior.

At least in Boston they didn't shoot up a couple of little hispanic ladies delivering newspapers.

It was one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System.   First seen in late 2010, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around the planet. The storm was tracked not only from Earth but from up close by the robotic Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn.Pictured above in false colored infrared in February, orange colors indicate clouds deep in the atmosphere, while light colors highlight clouds higher up. The rings of Saturn are seen nearly edge-on as the thin blue horizontal line. The warped dark bands are the shadows of the rings cast onto the cloud tops by the Sun to the upper left. A source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm was thought to relate to seasonal changes when spring emerges in the north of Saturn. After raging for over six months, the iconic storm circled the entire planet and then tried to absorb its own tail -- which surprisingly caused it to fade away.


Via APOD.

A perspective that the liberal media would have never allowed during his presidency:

George W. Bush has saved more lives than any other president.

From the article:

Take it from me, a liberal Democrat who voted for Obama twice. I know a little about Africa: I have been to the continent 17 times over the last 32 years
.

No American president, before or since, has had Bush’s vision and determination to save so many millions of lives.  

For Africans, that vision traces back to the early years of his presidency. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush introduced the "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief" (PEPFAR.)

And that proposal had real meat: $15 billion over five years, as well as a serious look at African health problems, beyond HIV/AIDS.  

Bush proposed it, and his proposal wasn’t just a few throw-away lines in a speech; even as the Iraq war raged, Bush spent precious political capital to get PEPFAR enacted.  

The result was the largest upfront contribution ever made by any country to fight HIV. And the numbers are staggering. 

Five million children, women and men have received antiretroviral treatment under PEPFAR. In 2010 alone, 600,000 pregnant mothers received treatment so their newborn children would not be infected.  

Yes, millions of people live productive, healthy lives due to Bush 43.  

This past winter, the National Academy of Science did an evaluation of President Bush's PEPFAR.  It said:

"Overall, PEPFAR has reset the world's expectations for what can be accomplished with ambitious goals, ample funding, and humanitarian commitment to a public health crisis….Working with a wide range of international and local partners, PEPFAR has expanded HIV testing and increased the number of people living with HIV who are receiving care and being treated with antiretroviral drugs.  

The initiative has trained hundreds of thousands of service providers, strengthened partner countries' health systems, provided additional nonclinical support services for people living with HIV, and made an unprecedented investment in programs for orphans and vulnerable children living with or affected by HIV."

How about that!  The hated Booosh, doing more good in a forlorn and forgotten part of the world than any other president, and to zero political gain.  

I'd say he's getting into Norman Borlaug territory in the competition to determine what American has done the most good for humanity, ever.

Via Free North Carolina,  there is this very interesting statistic that the Obama administration and their allies in Congress have managed to borrow more money per household (53,616.00) than the median household income (50,502.00).

From the article:

  "To actually pay back what Obama’s has already borrowed, the federal government would need to tax away from the private sector an amount that equals more per household than the median household earns--and then it would need to refrain from spending those additional tax dollars on new or expanded government programs so the money could be used to pay down the debt.

On Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama first took the oath of office, the federal debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the U.S. Treasury. At the close of business on April 25, 2013, it was $16,794,349,827,897.30."

If that weren't worrisome enough, this headlong rush to encumber Americans with crushing debt is exactly what two Columbia professors taught would be necessary to cause the country's economy to collapse, allowing radicals like them to reconstruct the country in a hard Socialist image.  These two professors named their idea the Cloward Piven strategy.

Finally, Obama was a student at Columbia, although he and his people have spent millions to keep his transcripts and records there private and unknown to the American people.  Only the assistance of the Main Stream Media has made this extraordinary secrecy possible, as no other president would have been able to so blatantly hide his history.

So, to summarize: Insane and unsustainable levels of debt, instituted by a president whose college experience was steeped in a radicalism that he himself felt could not be divulged to the American people.  To top it off, this is the same college that is home to a cabal of professors that advocate the destruction of American society using the exact same techniques that Obama and his allies in Congress are instituting.  

Coincidence?  

Scout insanity.

Epic swimming hole

Climber chicks are cool.

Friday open road