Monday, August 19, 2013

Space Shuttle Endeavor flight deck powered up for the last time


NASA

These rare photos capture the Flight Deck (cockpit) of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, fully powered for one of the final times. Just a few weeks later, at 9:58am EDT on May 11, Endeavour was powered down for the final time in history. It was the last of the three space shuttles to have power. Below, other views show the mid-deck, gutted of its lockers and storage areas, and three final photos show the white room entrance in the Orbiter Processing Facility, signed by thousands over the years.
 
More here from NASA

Hat tip to Harley Standlee, Placerville, CA 

Dog Saves Drowning Puppy

Girl interrupted - Seattle sledder ruins reporters live broadcast for killing her buzz

"I live in Seattle and this tradition of bombing down Queen Anne Ave on a sled or whatever you have has been going on for years. Now, with the News covering... "snow"... the Cops had to put the P.C. pants on so [they] couldn't be blamed for anything. Can't we just have fun anymore?"
Read more at liveleak.com

MSNBC: your source for real journalism

MSNBC: Rodeo Clown Wearing Obama Mask A “Modern Day Lynching”…
"Just when you think it can’t get any more absurd."
The Missouri NAACP has called for a federal investigation into the matter. Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas), who invited the clown that wore the Obama mask, said the NAACP didn’t speak out when President George W. Bush was portrayed as a murderer. (CNS)
 
MSNBC's Joy Reid Links Rodeo Clown to GOP, 'Shrinking Down to Its Most Extreme Elements'   On Friday's PoliticsNation show, during a segment in which host Al Sharpton linked the Obama rodeo clown in Missouri to alleged GOP extremism, MSNBC contributor Joy Reid declared that "the people who were whooping it up at that rodeo clown show are going to be all" the GOP have "got left," and went on to predict that the party is "shrinking down to its most extreme elements."

Al Gore Calls MSNBC's Chris Hayes 'This Generation's Edward R. Murrow'
"Hayes did mention that we currently have about 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.
"However, he failed to inform his viewers that roughly three percent of that 400 ppm is manmade. The rest is naturally produced."

Bozell, Hannity Slam MSNBC for Still Insisting Boston Bombers Were Not Islamists  

 
"This isn't the first time MSNBC has done this," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell reminded Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity during Hannity's August 15 "Media Mash" segment. Indeed, it was Hardball host Chris Matthews who on the day of the attack theorized that it was a homegrown right-wing terrorist responsible for the bombing because it occurred on Tax Day, Bozell noted. "....

Latest on the Clinton Foundation

Media Matters Attacks NYT over Clinton Foundation Exposé

"In the wake of last week’s much-discussed New York Times investigative report detailing cronyism and mismanagement inside the Clinton Foundation, former president Bill Clinton issued an open letter in an attempt to stem the public relations backlash. Clinton’s letter challenged a couple of the Times’ assertions that his nonprofit had run deficits."

Maureen Dowd writes the former first couple are needy, think too much of themselves, and imagine they are "entitled to everyone's money.
"Indeed, just one day after Bill Clinton and Media Matters’s retort, liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd followed up the Times’ Clinton Foundation cronyism report with this: “If Americans are worried about money in politics, there is no larger concern than the Clintons...Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.” "

The Dowd column: Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY!  "Why is it that America’s roil family always seems better in abstract than in concrete? The closer it gets to running the world once more, the more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time around.
"The Clintons’ neediness, their sense of what they are owed in material terms for their public service, their assumption that they’re entitled to everyone’s money.
"Are we about to put the “For Rent” sign back on the Lincoln Bedroom?"


NY Times, Aug 13; Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions

The White House credibility deficit; "When we can´t trust what government tells us, we come to trust those whom government doesn´t trust."

From the UK Guardian: "According to Britons, Americans are incapable of irony – and our president is certainly proving their point.
"In his address about Egypt's military coup – or whatever bowdlerizing euphemism is permitted this week in Washington – Obama condemned the notion that "security trumps individual freedom." Really?
"After his press conference announcing an oversight commission for the NSA, it emerged that the NSA's truth-challenged director of national intelligence, James Clapper, would apparently oversee the oversight. The White House had to explain the joke, and then said Clapper would merely facilitate."

Sudan & Obama’s Legacy of Death


FRONTPAGEMAG.COM  ...."Today, “more than four years into his presidency, President Obama continues to oversee a disastrous approach to the ongoing genocide in Sudan,” says Act for Sudan. “This approach has failed to prevent the tragic loss of countless lives and the mass displacement and starvation of countless more innocent people. Unless President Obama ACTS NOW to protect innocent civilians from their genocidal government, he will ultimately be remembered for his stained legacy on genocide,” Act for Sudan warns."
In 2007, President Obama stated on the campaign trail:
“When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us, a stain on our souls. . . . We can’t say ‘never again’ and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.”
...."A personal letter from Mohamed Suleiman to President Obama:"

Fifty years from now, it will be incomprehensible to those who will learn the history of genocides that you sat as an American president for two terms, and allowed al-Bashir, the mastermind and executioner of the Darfur genocide, the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, to continue to commit these terrible crimes. History will remember that you failed to stop the killing, displacement, rapes and other destructive consequences called genocide by the U.S. Congress and by you.

Headline of the day: 'Iraq wants U.S. Troops back'

Thomas Lifson  ...."Jonah Goldberg recently called, the "To hell with them" coalition, composed of those who reject an interventionist foreign policy and those who have just given up on the possibility of Middle Eastern Muslims ever making democracy work. But he acknowledges his intellectual debt in  using the term."
....
"God help Israel, because the "to hell with them" crowd probably won't want to."
glogster.com/

Big Oops – Business Insider says Reince Preibus did not say self-deportation “racist”

Legal Insurrection  "In my post this morning RNC “self-deporting” enthusiasm out of the Republican base I noted that Reince Preibus was quoted by Business Insider as follows:
“Using the word ‘self-deportation’ — it’s a horrific comment to make,” Priebus said, in a forceful rebuke. “I don’t think it has anything to do with our party. When someone makes those comments, obviously, it’s racist.” 
"I was wondering how the RNC Chair could make such a comment since the policy was in the GOP 2012 Platform and the term used by Mitt Romney.
So I contacted the RNC press office before turning my post live, and the press office confirmed by email that the quote was “accurate.”  (added)  Here was my email to the RNC’s press contact at 8:55 a.m.:"....