Oh Shit! Crisis in Orbit: Space-Station Toilet Breaks Down

There’s a bit of a stinky situation in space.

The main toilet aboard the International Space Station has broken down, forcing the three crew members to use the loo on the Soyuz escape craft that’s permanently attached to the ISS, according to various media reports.

However, the Soyuz head will offer only temporary relief, as its holding tank will quickly fill up.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com’s Space Center.

To remedy the problem, space shuttle Discovery will bring spare parts for the Russian-built space toilet when it launches to the ISS Saturday.

“The Zvezda service module toilet experienced additional difficulties Tuesday morning,” the latest NASA update dryly reports.

In any case, the malfunctioning toilet’s days are numbered. In the fall, it will be replaced by a state-of-the-art system that will transform astronaut urine into drinking water.

• Click here to read more about this pressing matter from FloridaToday.com, and here for NASA’s International Space Station main Web page.

 

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VC Sold

Was this Victoria Cross bought by Kerry Stokes?

If so, Salute!

Wouldn’t Post Here…Lemme Try This Way.

Pinocchio Obama Strikes Again

UPDATE: More cover my ass….

Obama Campaign Scrambles to Correct the Record on Uncle’s War Service

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Running for Prez, is he? I wouldn’t let this guy manage a potato patch.

Report: Sex Abuse of Children by Aid Workers Widespread in War Zones

Bits:

LONDON — Save the Children UK says in a report released Tuesday that it has uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of peacekeepers and international aid workers in war zones and disaster areas.

The report said more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of coerced sex and improper sexual touching and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

In some cases, children as young as 6 years old were abused, the report said.

“The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states,” he said.

“So it’s difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them. Information is sketchy but we know there are tremendous abuses in war zones and in complex emergencies.”

Rest of this disgust, Fox News

UN U.N the U.N. Catch this filth…Shoot them on sight. If you don’t catch them, shoot someone else with an AID armband OR a U.N. sissy blue helmet or hat.

Faster, Please! Michael Ledeen

As you know, I’m a big fan of “Spengler,” the elegant and cultured columnist for “Asia Times.” He’s just come out with a new think piece on Iran, which comes to the right conclusion (that is, the same one I have), but greatly confuses the issue of why the mullahs do what they do.

Read his important essay–if you can’t be bothered, I’ll summarize most of it anyway, but it’s always a pleasure to read his prose–and then come back to me. His central theme is that the Iranian economy is a basket case, that the country is facing hyperinflation, that there is a great lack of public confidence in the regime, and that the mullahs will (quite soon) have to choose between a Gorbachev-style surrender, or war. He thinks they have already chosen war. And he doesn’t think we can offer them anything that will produce Iran’s “giving up its nuclear ambitions and kenneling its puppies of war.”

He is certainly right about the economic diagnosis, which I have discussed at great length in “The Iranian Time Bomb.” He considers the very real possibility that Iran is running a current account deficit right now, despite the extraordinary runup in oil prices:

In a May 19 statement reported by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), President Mahmud Ahmadinejad denied a report that Iran’s imports now exceed $60 billion, against an official estimate of $45 billion. This sort of discrepancy typically occurs when capital flight is disguised as imports through fraudulent invoices and similar devices. A small current-account deficit would be of little concern for a nation with normal access to world capital markets, but Iran is unable to borrow.

There is indeed massive capital flight. As I wrote a couple of years ago, Gulf bankers told me that they can’t handle all the money pouring out of Iran. Wealthy Persians long since saw the doom of the Islamic Republic, and have been looting the country’s resources for their own gain.

So far, so bad, and the regime is making things even worse. Instead of devoting real resources to improving things, they are printing money, further pauperizing Iranian workers–who are famously paid very late, if at all, as demonstrated by the ongoing demonstrations and strikes at government-owned companies–and the commercial middle class. As Spengler puts it:

If Ahmadinejad were in the pay of a hostile intelligence service, he could not have found a more effective way to sabotage Iran’s economy. If the price of goods rises faster than the cost of money, everyone who can will borrow money to purchase and hoard goods. The result will be higher prices and reduced economic activity, and the eventual prospect of hyperinflation, which no government ever has survived.

I don’t know about that last claim; to take just one current counter-example, Zimbabwe’s inflation is now seemingly beyond rational calculation, but Mugabe still rules. National suicide is not unknown, and I can well imagine the Islamic Republic martyring itself at its own hands, quite in keeping with the ideology of the leaders.

But Spengler doesn’t ask the obvious question: why? Surely the mullahs know how bad things really are, and they have plenty of resources to cope with the crisis. Why aren’t they? I think Khomeini gave the answer on the airplane that flew him from Paris to Tehran in 1979: he didn’t give a damn about Iran, he was fighting for the triumph of Islam. His heirs are of the same fanatical ilk: Iranian resources are largely devoted to the cause of jihad, not to Iran per se. If Iran goes down the drain, but a new caliphate is created, first in the region and then globally, that’s success by their standards.

Spengler knows that. He notes that “Iran is engaged in such an adventure, funding and arming Shi’ite allies from Basra to Beirut, and creating clients selectively among such Sunnis as Hamas in Palestine.” Let’s add al Qaeda to that list, while we’re at it. He then compares the Iranian regime to Gorbachev’s. By the time Ronald Reagan entered the White House, “all the communists in Russia were dead or in the gulags,” and the Kremlin was largely managed by cynical self-promoters, not true believers. So when the moment of truth arrived, the Soviets went quietly to their doom. But in Iran, “Ahmadinejad typifies the generation of Revolutionary Guards who followed the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, and now hold senior positions in the state and military.”

I think that’s why Iranian society is careening into history’s septic tank, it is why the word most often used by sensitive Iranians to describe their country’s plight is “degradation.” Persia is being gutted in order to fund the terror war against the West. From the grim figures on the economy, to the mounting trafficking of Persian women to the brothels of the world, to the drug epidemic sabotaging the future of Iranian youth, to the torture cells reserved for anyone who speaks the truth, Persia is being destroyed. All in the name of an evil ideology that drives a global war against civilization.

That war has been raging for nearly thirty years, and no Western government has yet found the will to engage in it. The message Spengler delivers is that there is no way out of this war. Left to their own devices, the mullahs will destroy Iran, and, if they can, us as well.

Just so you know…It isn’t ME.

UPDATE: Spengler writes to point out that his article was written a year ago. Another senior moment for me! And high praise for him, since it reads as if it were done this morning.

Pajamas Media/Ledeen

Report: Jimmy Carter Says Israel Has 150 Nuclear Weapons

 LONDON —  Former President Jimmy Carter caused a stir over the weekend when he claimed that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal of 150 weapons.

While experts have long maintained Israel has a nuclear arsenal, the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny it.

Most estimates, many based on evidence leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, put the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at between 100 and 200. But other experts have said the number is as low as 60 or as high as 400.

It was unclear from a report of Carter’s comments — made on Sunday and reported Monday in the Times of London — whether the former Democratic president was citing those estimates, offering his own independent assessment or drawing on U.S. intelligence he would have had access to as president.

U.S. officials have generally avoided the issue of Israel’s nuclear status, although during a 2006 Senate confirmation hearing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed that Israel was a nuclear power.

The Times said Carter made the comment Sunday while at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival on the border between England and Wales. He was discussing Iran, and the difficulty it would have in building a secret nuclear arsenal, when he mentioned the Israeli weapons, the paper said.

Former Israeli military Intelligence chief retired Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi Farkash warned that Carter’s comments could be used by Iran to push its nuclear development.

“[Carter] is not the first and he won’t be the last to talk about this,” Farkash said in an interview Monday with Israel Radio. “It would seem that in [Carter’s] latest visit to the region, he was so hurt [by the political establishment shunning him] that he saw fit to say things which I think weren’t that responsible.

“He was a president a long time ago, and these kinds of things could do damage, but on the other hand, it could enhance the deterrent,” Farkash said, adding that “some of our ‘less good’ friends, could use these claims against us.”

 

Fox News

My missus, pure evil

I found a set of funny videos on youtube called “2 girls 1 cup”, which was largely a set of reaction videos of people watching this infamous movie. (Look at a few they are quite funny)

I found the movie and couldnt make it through it, it was truely foul. D not only watched it, she laughed at and mocked me for not getting through it!!

Her mother came for a stay a wekk or so ago, so D decided to film her reaction to the film. I think she makes it 1/2 way through before the film ends….

A word of warning, dont try and watch the original, every time you think it has got as bad as it can get, it gets worse….

 

Theme Parks Are Constantly Evolving

EL ALBERTO, MEXICO — Gunshots ring out and sirens shriek, mixing with the ragged breath of muddy, panting humans. Suddenly, the full moon sweeping the ground like a searchlight reveals a disturbing scene: a group of illegal immigrants being handcuffed and led away by U.S. Border Patrol agents.

But the U.S. border is about 400 miles from this rugged municipal park in Hidalgo state, a three-hour drive north of Mexico City. The spectacle unfolding here isn’t an actual border crossing attempt but a live simulation-adventure that attempts to give participants a taste of what it’s like for the thousands of Mexican and other Latin American undocumented migrants trying to enter the promised land of el norte.

Dubbed the Caminata Nocturna (Night Hike), the three-hour simulation is a combination obstacle course, sociology lesson and PG-rated family outing.

This is a theme park with a pretty big difference, isn’t it?

The story mentions that many news reports claim that this is “training people to sneak across the border”. That’s a claim that isn’t entirely unfair, but three hours hardly compares with what it would actually take to sneak into one of the greatest nations on Earth.

The other major difference is that the creation of this theme park required absolutely zero “assistance” from the government. That’s pretty cool.

Maybe He Won’t Notice…

It’s looking disturbingly like I’ll have to eat my words.

I was having a mild disagreement with a Perth-based friend this afternoon about how those of us on Australia’s East Coast could easily invade WA for it’s constant and persistant sunny, warm weather. After all, we in the East have to keep removing ice fragments from our cars, drinking water, shower water, dog’s nose, and pretty much everything else that gets wet.

So his contention was that an invasion wouldn’t work, whereas mine was that it would, simply because Victoria and New South Wales alone would more than outnumber the population of WA.

Unfortunately, it seems like they have all the weapons.

Bugger.

I’ll have to try to distract him with a video of my tits then, and avoid admitting fault.

This could be a fun trip

McCain says he and Obama should visit Iraq together

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – Republican John McCain on Monday sharply criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for not having been to Iraq since 2006, and said they should visit the war zone together.

“Look at what happened in the last two years since Senator Obama visited and declared the war lost,” the GOP presidential nominee-in- waiting told The Associated Press in an interview, noting that the Illinois senator’s last trip to Iraq came before the military buildup that is credited with curbing violence.

“He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,” the Arizona senator added. “If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn’t had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly.”

McCain, a Navy veteran and Vietnam prisoner of war, frequently argues that he’s the most qualified candidate to be a wartime commander in chief. In recent weeks, he has sought portray Obama, a first-term senator, as naive on foreign policy and not experienced enough to lead the military.

The Iraq war, which polls have shown that most of the country opposes, is shaping up to be a defining issue in the November presidential election.

McCain, who wrapped up the GOP nomination in March, supports continued military presence in Iraq though he recently said he envisions victory with most U.S. troops coming home by January 2013 if he’s elected. Obama, who has all but clinched the Democratic nomination, says he will remove U.S. combat troops within 16 months of taking office, though sometimes he shortens it to 11 months.

“For him to talk about dates for withdrawal, which basically is surrender in Iraq after we’re succeeding so well is, I think, really inexcusable,” said McCain, who has been to Iraq eight times, most recently in March.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton declined to respond directly to McCain, saying only: “Senator Obama thinks Memorial Day is a day to honor our nation’s veterans, not a day for political posturing.”

Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of McCain’s top surrogates, laid the groundwork for McCain’s criticism in a television interview in which he noted Obama’s absence from Iraq and floated the idea that Obama and McCain should go together to be briefed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Asked whether he’d be willing to take such a trip, McCain told the AP: “Sure. It would be fine.”

“I go back every few months because things are changing in Iraq,” he said. McCain questioned whether Obama has ever been briefed by Petraeus. “I would also seize that opportunity to educate Senator Obama along the way.”

Both McCain and Obama spent part of Memorial Day in New Mexico, a general election battleground that was decided by razor-thin margins in 2000, for Democrat Al Gore, and in 2004, for Republican President Bush.

Obama addressed veterans Monday in Las Cruces while McCain used a speech at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial in Albuquerque to press his case against withdrawing troops from Iraq, saying they must continue their mission even though he’s “sick at heart” by mistakes at the outset of the war.

McCain also defended his opposition to Senate-passed legislation that would provide additional college financial aid to veterans, a measure Obama supports.

The Republican made no direct mention of the Democrat but seemed to poke at him nonetheless.

McCain said his opposition to the bill was the right rather than the politically expedient position, suggesting Obama was on the wrong side of the measure sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate. Lawmakers blocked a more limited version that McCain supported.

“I am running for the office of commander in chief. That is the highest privilege in this country, and it imposes the greatest responsibilities. And this is why I am committed to our bill, despite the support Senator Webb’s bill has received,” McCain said. “It would be easier, much easier politically for me to have joined Senator Webb in offering his legislation.”

However, McCain said he opposed Webb’s measure because it would give everyone the same benefit regardless of how many times they enlist. He said he feared that would depress reenlistments by those wanting to attend college after only a few years in uniform. Rather, McCain said the bill he favored would have increased scholarships based on length of service.

McCain spent the early part of the holiday weekend at his retreat in Sedona, Ariz., where he entertained some two dozen guests, including three fellow Republicans who have been mentioned as possible vice presidential running mates: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“It really was just a social occasion,” McCain told the AP. Asked whether he did any vetting of the three, McCain said: “None. Zero. There is plenty of time for that kind of thing.”

Breitbart

Fascinating. The little devil

Australian colonial premier dug up for paternity test

The exhumation of a lecherous Australian colonial leader for a paternity test has angered his acknowledged relatives who Tuesday described the process as “appalling.”
The remains of South Australian premier Charles Cameron Kingston, who died a century ago, were dug up in March at the request of an unnamed businessman and his sister who claim they are his descendants.

Kingston, whose government was the first to introduce legislation to give women the vote in Australia, was a known womaniser before his marriage to Lucy McCarthy.

“His marriage was not a happy union and he soon returned to lechery,” the Australian Dictionary of Biography notes.

Although his only child with McCarthy did not survive infancy, historians believe Kingston fathered as many as five children outside the marriage.

The anonymous businessman reportedly requested the exhumation and DNA testing of bone and teeth fragments to test a long-held belief that his grandmother was one of these children.

The opening up of the grave has angered Lucy McCarthy’s great nephew, Michael McCarthy, who said he was appalled that his family was not informed of the state government-sanctioned process.

“We’ve all been brought up to believe that we are the relatives of Charles Cameron Kingston, pretty much the only surviving legal relatives of Charles Cameron Kingston, and we haven’t been consulted,” he said.

“We think it’s appalling,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

But fellow former South Australian premier John Bannon said Kingston would have loved being back in the limelight.

“In terms of Charlie himself, he’d be delighted he’s back on the front page… and full of controversy and so on,” he told ABC radio.

He said the current claim was not related to money, as Kingston was a poor financial manager and there was no estate, but that it was important as the colourful premier was a leading figure in Australia’s 1901 federation.

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