This is a great idea

Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, concerned about the armed agents that surrounded Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s property, is mulling a measure to cut funding for any “paramilitary units” that work for the Bureau of Land Management, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal regulatory agencies.

“There are lots of people who are really concerned when the BLM shows up with its own SWAT team,” he said, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. “They’re regulatory agencies. They’re not paramilitary units, and I think that concerns a lot of us.”

The sooner the better.   There is absolutely no reason these federal agencies can't call on the local sheriff for assistance if it's needed in a local issue.

Honestly, the militarization of federal agencies is, in my lowly opinion, a part of the progressive plan to create a domestic military force that  they can use against those they seek to control or intimidate.

Sounds crazy in America, but just take a short look at history, and there are multiple examples of hard leftists like Obama doing exactly that in other countries, many of which never expected that something like this could happen in their own lands.  I therefore predict that there will be strong resistance from this administration to any effort to disarm the agencies. Should be interesting to watch, if this Utah Congressman can somehow get himself past "mulling" over this and actually doing the work needed to get such a law through.

Amazing fecundity

I've seen some nasty mosquito swarms, but this takes the cake!

A massive swarm of midges ( not mosquitos, thankfully) on Lake Myvatn, Iceland.  Don't open your mouth!



Via Tai Wiki Widbee

Art everyday

Street in Rouen

Paul Gauguin - 1884

With the revelation of new administration emails on Benghazi, Roger Simon demands that impeachment proceedings begin

Roger does not beat around the bush:

  "With the release of new emails it is spectacularly worse — so bad in fact that it has made a full investigation with an impeachment trial necessary for the protection of our republic.

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”From the Washington Free Beacon:

Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.

Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.

The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

The levels of criminality involved in this are mind-boggling.  Everyone from Ben Rhodes to Hillary Clinton to Jay Carney to Susan Rice to Mike Morell to Barack Obama and on and on must explain themselves minute-by-minute. American “liberals” and their media consorts should search their souls. People died here."

Go and read it all.

TV weatherman orders the evacuation of the studio due to imminent tornado strike.

Good call.  I wonder what happened next?

Hat tip: American Digest

Ouch!

Nothing like being attacked by your own back leg

Ex-Cons Squatting in Soldier’s Home Defiantly Stay Put — But Their Tune Rapidly Changes After Outraged Biker Veterans Promise a hostile Visit

Army Spc. Michael Sharkey and his wife haven’t lived in their New Port Richey house since Sharkey was deployed to Afghanistan two years ago. Now the couple lives in Hawaii where Sharky is stationed.

                                                                       The soldier

However, while away, squatters apparently broke in, changed the locks, and refused to leave.

Julio Ortiz and his girlfriend, Fatima Cardoso, told WFLA-TV in Tampa that they had a verbal “contract” with a friend of Sharkey’s — who agreed to look after the house — to do work on the property in exchange for staying there. Lisa Pettus, Sharkey’s friend, denied Ortiz’s claim, saying she hired him to do work, never agreed to let him live there, and never left them alone in the house.

Ortiz spent a dozen years in prison in New Jersey for robbery, car jacking and selling drugs on school property; Cardorso spent more than two years in prison on drug charges.

What’s more Ortiz was arrested three times in Pasco County last year on minor charges while Cardoso got busted there seven times on drug charges since 2011.

Why is this history no surprise?

The scum

 Sharkey tried going through law enforcement to remove Ortiz and Cardoso, but that turned out to be in vain — sheriffs said it’s a civil matter and would take a court order to evict them since they established residency.

Outraged,  two Tampa motorcycle clubs filled with veterans began planning to ride over to the Sharkey residence on Sunday “and peacefully make the squatters uncomfortable.”

With that, Ortiz started packing up, noting the planned biker visit was one of the reasons he and Cardoso were leaving.

Looks like when the system that is supposed to protect you just shrugs it's shoulders and leaves, it is time for self help.  The scum and his slug mate are lucky they weren't evicted with shotguns and shovels, which would have been proper justice.

The Russian cruiser Gromoboi.

The Progressives drive another company from California

How's your morning going, Jerry Brown?

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to move large numbers of jobs from its sales and marketing headquarters in Torrance to suburban Dallas, according to a person familiar with the automaker's plans.

Today, about 75% of the Toyota branded vehicles sold in the U.S. are built in America — many of them at plants in Texas, Mississippi and Kentucky.

The automaker won't be the first big company Texas has poached from California.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. said in February that it was relocating from Los Angeles to Houston, making it one of around 60 companies that have moved to Texas since July 2012, according to Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry last month visited California to recruit companies. The group Americans for Economic Freedom also recently launched a $300,000 advertising campaign in which Perry contends 50 California companies have plans to expand or relocate in Texas because it offers a better business climate.

Like these other companies, Toyota could also save money in an environment of lower business taxes, real estate prices and cost of living.

California's plummet to the status of Detroit continues, with the only question being when Californians will wise up and throw these locusts out of office.

Mondays, they're like that

Ancient days

Standing proud in the stark landscape of the Burren Co. Clare, the iconic megalithic tomb at Poulnabrone is one of Ireland’s most photographed archaeological sites. Dating from the Neolithic period, this distinctive monument has revealed a wealth of information about the lives and burial customs of Ireland’s very first farming communities.

Poulnabrone is classified as a portal tomb by archaeologists, and there are approximately 174 of these monuments in the country. The majority are located in the northern half of the island, although outliers exists further south, especially in counties Clare and Waterford. The tombs generally consist of two large portal-stones defining the entrance and a back-stone, all of which support the roof-stone. The roof-stone can be of considerable size, with the largest example at Brownshill, Co. Carlow weighing circa 100 tonnes.

It is not known how these very large stones were moved and raised but it probably involved a combination of wooden rollers, ropes and man/animal power. It is possible that ramps of earth and stone were used to haul the large roof stones into place and some portal tombs have evidence for denuded cairns, which may have been used for this purpose.

Poulnabrone represents one of the very few Irish portal tombs that have been archaeologically investigated. This excavation, which was carried out by Ann Lynch,  uncovered the remains of twenty two people, sixteen adults and six children within the interior of the tomb. Of these bodies only eight could be sexed and these were equally split between males and females.

The bones were disarticulated and appear to have been placed within the tomb in a de-fleshed condition. This suggested a complex burial ritual, where the bodies were firstly stored or buried elsewhere until they decomposed. The bare bones were then transferred to the portal tomb for final interment. A number of the bones contained scorch marks suggesting that they had been held over a flame prior to burial, possibly during a purification ritual.

Evidence for violence was also encountered amongst the burial remains.  A depressed fracture, possibly caused by a stone projectile was identified in one of the skulls, while a broken rib bone may have been caused by an aggressive blow. Even more startling, a fragment of a flint projectile point, probably and arrow head was found embedded in a hip bone. There was no trace of infection or healing so the wound must have occurred around the time of death.

The radiocarbon dates from Poulnabrone indicate that the burials were deposited at regular intervals over a period of 600 years between 3800 and 3200 BC.  This suggests that the monument was probably a significant place of burial where only certain members of the community were allowed to be interred.

Art everyday

                                                                 Vincent van Gogh

                                                            Almond Tree in Blossom

                                                                            1888

Shades of the movie Gravity.

A spacesuit floated away from the International Space Station eight years ago, but no investigation was conducted, because everyone knew that it was tossed on purpose by the space station crew. Dubbed Suitsat-1, the unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit, filled mostly with old clothes, was fitted with a faint radio transmitter and released to orbit the Earth. The suit circled the Earth twice before its radio signal became unexpectedly weak. Suitsat-1 continued to orbit every 90 minutes until it burned up in the Earth's atmosphere after a few weeks. Pictured above, the lifeless spacesuit was photographed in 2006 just as it drifted away from space station.

Kinda creepy if you ask me.  Also, how does a multi million dollar spacesuit become "unneeded," and old clothes?  Sounds like cleaning out the closet at home.  Strange.

Via APOD

Freckles, they are good.

That's an amazingly long neck as well.  Could she be the reincarnation of Edith Swan Neck, the consort of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England?

Cabin Porn

I'm guessing Norway

Cool

Got propellers?

Archeology fail

Or, Piltdown man gets it right in the noggin.

Holy smokes!

That is nasty!  Anyone know anything about this plane, or if it even really exists?  I found it on a tumblr without any explanation.

Cabin Porn

Hippie version ( that smoke probably isn't from the campfire!)

The ultimate office cubicle

Camo your firearms

Here are some successful examples I found on the internet.

This one would be so easy to lose, which I suppose is a sign of an excellent job.

A pistol done well.

There was some fresh snow in the Sierras last night

I thought we were done with snowfall for this spring, but apparently not.  There's no doubt that we need it, and we will miss it in the hot days of August, so here's hoping we get some more.

Yard sale loot

I had to take the truck into town this morning to have some work done, so on the way back, the 18 year old and I stopped at every yard sale we could see.

We scored some good swag.  

A tomato already flowering, and a Black Beauty eggplant, 1 dollar each.

A cool, hand held light that I'll stash in the truck, or maybe in the cave, 1 dollar. We tested it to make sure it worked before forking over the dollar. 

A cheap Chinese machete, which sheath, 6 dollars (we probably overpaid for that).

Finally, the best of all.  A small self published guide to jeep trails in Inyo and Mono counties ( on the eastern, desert, side of the Sierras), from 1969, complete with map and pictures, 1 dollar.

The kid striking a pose with the machete.  Eat your heart out, Danny Trejo!

We named it "The Kiss of Allah."

I'd say Saturday is already a success.

Figgers - it's in Sonoma.

For the past 13 years, computer users throughout the globe have found “Bliss” in the same spot — a hillside of vivid, velvety grass etched against a Crayola blue sky brushed with clouds.

It's estimated a billion people from heads of state to scientists to poor shopkeepers in Third World countries have gazed into that storybook spot, so simple and vibrant in its imagery that many assume it exists only on a digital file at Microsoft.

The default wallpaper for Windows XP, “Bliss,” as it has been dubbed by Microsoft, is a real photograph of a real place.

The photo was taken in Sonoma County, just west of the old Stornetta's Dairy along a treacherous stretch of Highway 121 south of Sonoma. And it was snapped by Charles O'Rear, a former National Geographic photographer who was trolling for green hillsides on a January day in 1998 and struck gold with one lucky shot.

“Bliss” is widely regarded as the most viewed picture in the world — up there with such iconic photos as the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima — considering how many computers worldwide ran on Windows XP and how long the operating system has hung around in common use.

Any real photographer would disown that image due to the shameless oversaturation of the colors.  Just  as lurid and saccharin as it can be.

Interesting

U-2's on the Friday Flyby

They used to fly these out of Chico, California, which is a couple hours north of me.

Tough news for the Church of Global Warming

NASA has confirmed that ice cover this spring on the Great Lakes is significantly above normal.  When the Aqua satellite passed over Lake Superior on April 20, the lake was 63.5 percent ice covered. Last year it was at 3.6 percent. It's the worst year in more than three decades by a very wide margin.

Lake Superior had 3.6 percent ice cover on April 20, 2013; in 2012, ice wascompletely gone by April 12. In the last winter that ice cover grew so thick on Lake Superior (2009), it reached 93.7 percent on March 2 but was down to 6.7 percent by April 21.

This graphic shows the changes since 1981.

×

That's pretty crazy. NASA explains how this happened:

Average water temperatures on all of the Great Lakes have been rising over the past 30 to 40 years and ice cover has generally been shrinking. (Lake Superior ice wasdown about 79 percent since the 1970s.) But chilled by persistent polar air masses throughout the 2013-14 winter, ice cover reached 88.4 percent on February 13 and 92.2 percent on March 6, 2014, the second highest level in four decades of record-keeping.

Friday Open Road

Genius

Chinese try to play Top Gun.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man, this interesting video put out by the Red Chinese military to show off their Russian hand me down aircraft carrier, the former Varyag, and their hot to trot fighter pilots.

The amusing thing is they are obviously exactly aping the American promotional videos, but with out the driving beat of a rock and roll sound track.

Further, those look like Russian fighter jets, which of course would match nicely with their Russian ship.

Now, let's see them land those jets at night, in a storm, and see what happens.  Since they seem to put their jets away when it gets dark, I'd guess they are still working on that part.



How it should be done:



About half the length, twice the action.  Flames, shiny jets, incredible speed, hot babes, motorcycles - yeah!  Make it like this and male Chinese adolescents will simply flock to the recruiting office.

Keep in mind as well that the action the Chinese are imitating is from a movie made in 1986!  That's nearly 30 years ago!  They got some catching up to do.

Incredible dust storm smacks China

Nothing like getting the entire Gobi Desert airborne to contribute to global warming.  How do the believers account for events like this in their computer models?  Or things like volcanic eruptions, forest fires, grass fires, and the like?  Answer: they don't.

  "A strong sandstorm swept Gansu Province in northwest China on Wednesday, reducing visibility to less than 65ft, according to the provincial meteorological center.

The sandstorm, the strongest since 1996 according to reports, started in the early afternoon in Dunhuang County."

Be happy you don't live in this part of China.



Via The Telegraph

Struggling to open the highest pass in the Sierra Nevada

Tioga Pass is the last and highest pass over the Sierra's until the Mohave, and the Park service is working hard to open it.  Anyone who has driven this road will attest to the spectacular scenery from beginning to end.  If you are ever in Yosemite, don't miss this drive.

From the Park Service's website: Plows reached Tioga Pass on Tuesday, April 22, while a few inches of new snow was falling.  However, more plowing is needed to widen the plowed portion of road, plow side roads and parking lots, and peel ice from sections of the road near Tuolumne Meadows. Additional ditching and tree work  may also be required.  The weather forecast calls for snow Thursday night through  Sunday night.

Mysterious underwater sound, described as a "Bio-duck quack," has been identified.

Via American Digest, this fascinating discovery:

First detected by submarine 50 years ago, those who heard it were surprised by its quack-like qualities. Since then, the repetitive, low frequency noise has been recorded many times in the waters around the Antarctic and western Australia. Suggestions for its source have ranged from fish to ships. The researchers now say they have "conclusive evidence" that the bio-duck is produced by the Antarctic minke whale.

Here is what the submariners heard:

Human ingenuity causes salmon populations to explode, and Greens are pissed off about it.

Via National Review: 

In 2012, the British Columbia–based Native American Haida tribe launched an effort to restore the salmon fishery that has provided much of their livelihood for centuries. Acting collectively, the Haida voted to form the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, financed it with $2.5 million of their own savings, and used it to support the efforts of American scientist-entrepreneur Russ George to demonstrate the feasibility of open-sea mariculture — in this case, the distribution of 120 tons of iron sulfate into the northeast Pacific to stimulate a phytoplankton bloom which in turn would provide ample food for baby salmon.

The verdict is now in on this highly controversial experiment: It worked.

In fact it has been a stunningly over-the-top success. This year, the number of salmon caught in the northeast Pacific more than quadrupled, going from 50 million to 226 million. In the Fraser River, which only once before in history had a salmon run greater than 25 million fish (about 45 million in 2010), the number of salmon increased to 72 million.

In addition to producing salmon, this extraordinary experiment has yielded a huge amount of data. Within a few months after the ocean-fertilizing operation, NASA satellite images taken from orbit showed a powerful growth of phytoplankton in the waters that received the Haida’s iron. It is now clear that, as hoped, these did indeed serve as a food source for zooplankton, which in turn provided nourishment for multitudes of young salmon, thereby restoring the depleted fishery and providing abundant food for larger fish and sea mammals. In addition, since those diatoms that were not eaten went to the bottom, a large amount of carbon dioxide was sequestered in their calcium carbonate shells.

Good news all around, right?\

Wrong!

Silvia Ribeiro, of the international anti-technology watchdog ETC Group, also voiced her horror at any development that might allow humanity to escape from the need for carbon rationing. “It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments,” she said. “They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil-fuel emissions.”

See, it's all about making us toe the Green line - about power: theirs over ours - and really nothing at all about the environment.  That's why true believer Greens don't need any real evidence to support global warming, and why the demand that you simply shut up if you question their "science," as it's really about controlling every aspect of your life, and taking every cent they possibly can from your pocket. Screw the salmon and the Indians and their success, it's not supportive of the narrative!

Why pull over to change a tire?

Or, what happens when you have too much time on your hands.

Via Small Dead Animals

Gun Porn

Walther P38 K

Cool

Home made finger pincher

                                                   Works good on aluminum cans too.