drones – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

TOP DRONES OF 2014

MQ-9 Reaper 578-34

The unanimous choice for Top Drone Of 2013 had another strong showing, but was unable to recreate the incredible run that set it apart from the pack last year, including its record-breaking 79 percent accuracy rate. However, there’s no doubt that 578-34 remains one of Operation Enduring Freedom’s best UAVs.

MQ-1 Predator 158-09

This super-hot drone, which famously burst onto the scene last year at an Afghan tribal wedding, was back with a vengeance in 2014, racking up over a dozen combatant kills and only a single-digit civilian casualty count in July.

MQ-1 Predator 142-92

Many predicted the legendary 6-year-old 142-92 would be decommissioned in 2014, but the UAV proved to all the doubters that it can still do the job after using Hellfire missiles to destroy a line of trucks as well as the suspected neighborhood of a high-ranking Taliban insurgent.

MQ-1C Gray Eagle 771-59

After a rather unremarkable early few months of the year, 771-59 really came into its own in April and never looked back, killing at least two top ISIS officials and an undisclosed number of civilians. Talk about finishing the year strong!

RQ-4B Global Hawk 49

While 49 didn’t receive as many plaudits or the same level of attention as its missile-equipped fleet-mates, it nevertheless had a banner year secretly gathering footage over Syria in November that will soon be used to justify a highly politicized increase in American military activities—paving the way for more armed UAVs in the region! 49 is a truly selfless unsung hero of this year’s drone fleet.

MQ-9 Reaper 323-14

323-14 is a drone that the surviving family members of a suspected Yemeni arms trader, his wife, four kids, and two locals who happened to be passing by won’t soon forget!

Unnamed Lockheed Martin Weapons Project

Though not officially acknowledged by Pentagon sources as actually existing, this advanced drone is rumored to have a vastly increased weapons payload and cutting-edge stealth technology. This is definitely a drone that you—and thousands of Middle Eastern civilians—will want to look out for next year!

Via The Onion

WHERE’S THE OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE TO ANNOUNCE THIS LATEST MILITARY FAILURE?

We droned some folks.

We got some hostage folks killed.

We are the USA.

Did we bury the body of Sommers at sea?

US Hostage Held By al Qaeda Killed In Botched Special Ops Rescue Attempt

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/06/2014 09:48 -0500

Overnight, two hostages including an American photojournalist, 33-year-old Luke Sommers, who was held for more than a year by al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, as well as a South African teacher, Pierre Korkie, were killed in a botched rescue attempt by US special operations forces. This was the second rescue attempt in as many weeks. According to the WSJ, Luke Somers, 33 years old, was killed by militants, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Several members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, were also killed in the raid.

South African teacher Pierre Korkie was also killed in the raid, according to a charity that had been trying to help negotiate his release.

The ill-advised raid had been ordered by President Barack Obama because “there were compelling reasons to believe Mr. Somers’ life was in imminent danger” according to outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who will be all the more eager to leave the Pentagon after this latest failure which will conclude an administrative career of one debacle after another.

“Both Mr. Somers and a second non-U.S. citizen hostage were murdered by the AQAP terrorists during the course of the operation,” Mr. Hagel said in a statement.

A U.S. official said Mr. Somers was shot by militants as the raid unfolded and wasn’t killed in crossfire. It wasn’t immediately clear where Mr. Somers’s remains were.

The raid took place after AQAP had warned that they would kill Mr. Somers if U.S. forces attempted another “foolish” rescue attempt, in a video statement released Thursday. In the video, an AQAP commander threatened to kill Mr. Somers by the end of the week if their unspecified demands weren’t met.

AQAP was true to its word: Somers was indeed killed after US forces attempted another “foolish” rescue attempt. At least al Qaeda gives out fair warnings.

According to CBS News, the raid was carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs who flew into Yemen on a V-22 Osprey aircraft and hiked to the location where Somers was being held.

CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reports that a Defense Department official said Somers was apparently shot by his captors during the raid. Something must have alerted Somers’ captors of the raid, giving them enough time to shoot Somers and Korkie, D’Agata reports.

When the SEALs reached Somers he was alive but had been badly wounded and died of his wounds by the time he reached a U.S. Navy ship, D’Agata reports. There were no U.S. military casualties, D’Agata reports.

Some background on the killed hostage:

Somers was kidnapped in September 2013 as he left a supermarket in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, said Fakhri al-Arashi, chief editor of the National Yemen, where Somers worked as a copy editor and a freelance photographer during the 2011 uprising in Yemen.

Somers, who was born in Britain, earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing while attending Beloit College in Wisconsin from 2004 through 2007. “He really wanted to understand the world,” said Shawn Gillen, an English professor and chairman of Beloit College’s journalism program who had Gillen as a student.

Fuad Al Kadas, who called Somers one of his best friends, said Somers spent time in Egypt before finding work in Yemen. Somers started teaching English at a Yemen school but quickly established himself as a one of the few foreign photographers in the country, he said.

“He is a great man with a kind heart who really loves the Yemeni people and the country,” Al Kadas wrote in an email from Yemen. He said he last saw Somers the day before he was kidnapped.

“He was so dedicated in trying to help change Yemen’s future, to do good things for the people that he didn’t leave the country his entire time here,” Al Kadas wrote.

This was the second attempt to rescue Somers: In a statement Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby acknowledged for the first time that a mysterious U.S. raid last month had sought to rescue Somers but that he turned out not to be at the site. The U.S. considers Yemen’s al Qaeda branch to be the world’s most dangerous arm of the group as it has been linked to several failed attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Kirby did not elaborate on the joint U.S-Yemeni operation to free Somers, saying details remained classified. However, officials have said the raid targeted a remote al Qaeda safe haven in a desert region near the Saudi border. Eight captives – including Yemenis, a Saudi and an Ethiopian – were freed. Somers, a Briton and four others had been moved days earlier.

Lucy Somers, the photojournalist’s sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her 33-year-old brother’s death from FBI agents at 12 a.m. EST Saturday.

“We ask that all of Luke’s family members be allowed to mourn in peace,” Lucy Somers said from London.

Yemen’s national security chief, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Ahmadi, said the militants planned to kill Luke Somers on Saturday.

“Al Qaeda promised to conduct the execution (of Somers) today so there was an attempt to save them but unfortunately they shot the hostage before or during the attack,” al-Ahmadi said at a conference in Manama, Bahrain. “He was freed but unfortunately he was dead.”

The news of the failed rescue comes after a suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed nine alleged al Qaeda militants early Saturday, a Yemeni security official told the AP before news of Somers’ death. The drone struck at dawn in Yemen’s southern Shabwa province, hitting a suspected militant hideout, the official said. The official did not elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists.

Needless to say, the strikes are despised by many in Yemen due to civilian casualties, legitimizing for many the attacks on American interests.

It was not clear as of this writing how many innocent Yemeni people were killed in the latest US strike in Yemen, but what is clear is that in a world in which operators of remote-control fighter jets kill thousands of innocent people half way around the globe with absolute impunity, tragic incidents such as this one will certainly continue.

HELL MOTHERF#@KING YEA!!!!!

The last few years in Wildwood I haven’t gone to the beach much. I was content to sit on the deck, read a book, and watch the sights go by. But Joyce and Mike upgraded their Section 8 Estate in the off season by installing a storm door, so they could keep their door open all day long and allow their two yappy dogs to bark at anyone and everyone on the porch. So, the lesser of two evils is now to spend a few hours on the beach among the tattooed, pierced, obese, ignorant land whales.

Don’t get me wrong. There are your fair share of hotties in bikinis, but they are astronomically outnumbered by the morbidly obese diverse masses speaking foreign languages who find it funny to feed the seagulls with no concern for those around them on the beach. The ignorance and lack of acceptable social skills is breathtaking to behold. How 250 pound women think they can or should wear a bikini on a beach is beyond my limited comprehension. I need sunglasses to prevent my eyeballs from burning at the sight of some of these people.

I was surrounded by thousands of Obama voting, EBT using, future SSDI recipients. I find it amusing that the morbidly obese have absolutely no shame regarding their appearance. They are entitled to go to the beach, but if I was as big as these people, I would wear clothing that didn’t accentuate my sloth. I also find it amusing that these people reproduce at a greater rate than normal looking people. They are usually surrounded by a horde of mixed race unruly obese cherubs running across people’s blankets (Avalon was not happy getting sand kicked in her face).

The slovenly ignorant masses also seem to have enough Obama cash to smoke a few packs a day as they sit on the beach relaxing from their hard week of not working, puffing away and enjoying nature. The vast majority are day trippers who pile into their government financed GM SUVs and head to the shore. Somehow these “poor” can afford to spend $10 a pack for their cigarette habit and drive $40,000 automobiles, while sucking off the American taxpayer teat. The only thing that could arouse them from their funnel cake and fried oreo induced beach blanket stupor was the call of the Fudgy Wudgy man pushing his cart of ice cream treats. I’ve never seen the obese masses move so fast. Like a flash they surrounded the guy dishing out $4 for a 25 cent fudgy wudgy. It would hold them over until they hit Dunkin Donuts for some Munchkins on the way back from the beach. I thought it was fitting that the American flag was flying proudly over the obese beach land whales.

The first day we were on the beach we all settled into our chairs and I started to read a book. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something hovering in the sky to my left. I looked up and to my surprise saw my first real drone. It hovered above us as if it knew I was a dissident that needed to be watched. It stayed above us for about three minutes, then moved on down the beach. About ten minutes later it came back past our spot on the beach. I was half expecting a tiny missile to be launched in my direction. I really think the task of this DHS drone was to try and find a thin person on the Wildwood beach. Mission Un-accomplished.

The truth is that the government is slowly but surely desensitizing the ignorant masses to being under constant surveillance. I looked around the beach to see if anyone else even noticed the flying surveillance vehicle “keeping them safe from terrorists”. The masses were oblivious. They were too busy chowing down on their choco-taco ice cream bars. I’m sure the vast majority of people on that beach think drones are cool and don’t have the critical thinking skills or desire to think about the long term implications of unmanned surveillance vehicles protecting the shit out of them.

Avalon did a little research and found that the New Jersey Institute of Technology is being funded by the Department of Homeland Security and is conducting a “TEST” with drones to “protect” the good citizens of New Jersey from catastrophic weather emergencies. Yeah right. The Orwellian Federal Government funds local governments, who partner with educational institutions to keep you under control and monitored 24/7. They are using your money to spy on you. This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is truth.

During the Saturday night fireworks there it was again. It hovered high above the display on the beach. I was hoping for a misfire that would take it out. It was not to be.

After this eventful day, we went back into the water the next day. Poor Avalon. I don’t even know how to take a picture with my flip phone. She settled down on the blanket to read her book and then it appeared, like Godzilla from the depths of the sea. I glanced to my right and there before my very eyes was confirmation of everything I’ve been writing about. Some people think I’m exaggerating the degradation and ignorance of the masses. The land whale in the picture below was the mother of a horde of obese welfare recipients frolicking in the waves. She was proudly taking pictures with her $300 iPhone.

I made Avalon take the picture so I could prove how far humanity has fallen. You can’t see the front of the shirt where is has HELL in huge capital letters. But you can clearly see the Motherfucking Yea!!!!!!! on the back. This is a mother alright. If a grown middle aged woman would wear this shirt in public, how do you think her hoard of welfare babies by different daddies are going to turn out? She’s an Obama voter. She believes you owe her. She deserves to be supported by you working suckers.

It is clear to me that I will be a minority in this country in the very near future. There are just too many ignorant people in this country. Their entitlement mentality, lack of intelligence, and ability to be manipulated by consumerism propaganda will keep them enslaved in debt and ignorance. And if that starts to fail, you have the Orwellian Federal government arming local police departments with military weapons and widening their surveillance state with unassuming little drones watching everything you do.

Welcome to the machine. Off to the waterpark. I can’t wait to see what happens there.

WHY SAN BERNARDINO IS BANKRUPT

Nothing like spending 99% of your career siting around a firehouse playing cards and eating lobster and steak on the taxpayer, while getting paid $190,000 per year, retiring at 50 years old at full salary, and acting like you deserve it. This is the kind of shit that will not continue. There will be no tears shed when greedy government union drones lose their sweet salaries, benefits and pensions. The unsustainable will not be sustainable.

Via Public Sector Inc.

Firefighter pay shows why San Bernardino is bankrupt

Steven Greenhut June 24, 2014 Pensions

San Bernardino is a poor city about 50 miles east of Los Angeles in the Inland Empire — a place where a $50,000 salary would be typical and where home prices are nowhere near what they are in fancier areas of coastal Southern California. Yet the bankrupt city is trying desperately to unload some of its outlandish contracts with public employees, especially with the firefighters’ union. “San Bernardino, California, said that to exit bankruptcy it must terminate a union contract that pays an average annual salary of $190,000 to each of its top 40 firefighters,” according to an article in Bloomberg. That’s just salary. Firefighters receive the generous “3 percent at 50″ retirement package that allows them to retire with 90 percent of their final years’ pay at age 50. And there are lots of pension-spiking gimmicks and other benefits on top of that.

As the article notes, because of a voter initiative it may not be legal to dump those contracts. And I’ve looked at a city salary schedule, and the salaries are almost unbelievable throughout the city. City officials blame the economic downturn and the popping real-estate bubble for their financial plight. But that’s like saying that a salary cutback is the cause of an individual’s personal bankruptcy — never mind the Maserati in the garage, the trips to Hawaii, the diamond rings and the $200 nightly bottles of wine.

San Bernardino is in a financial fix that other California cities have mostly avoided, but the level of public-employee enrichment there is typical. These cities are run for the benefit of those who work there. Public services are a side matter at best. Two-thirds of the nation’s firefighters do this job for free, as volunteers. In what world is making them millionaires (when you add in their retirement benefits) a sensible idea? As usual, the city’s residents will pay the price in the form of reduced services. In Stockton and Vallejo, where similar salaries are common, residents also got hit with increased taxes. There’s something vulgar about hitting poor residents with higher taxes to pay for the city’s wealthy elite. And I hear no progressive voices complaining.

About Steven Greenhut

Steven Greenhut is the California columnist for U-T San Diego. Greenhut formerly was vice president of journalism at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, where he managed a team of 35 investigative reporters and editors who covered state capitols across the country. He founded CalWatchdog in 2009, which provided Sacramento-based investigative news coverage and he writes regularly for publications including Reason, Human Events, Bloomberg and City Journal. He is author of the 2009 book, “Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives And Bankrupting the Nation” and the 2005 book, “Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.” View all posts by Steven Greenhut →

AMAZON HIRING 9,000 ROBOTS

This should keep Amazon’s Obamacare costs under control. Maybe the BLS can change their jobs definition to include robots now. That could do wonders for the official unemployment rate. Maybe Applebees can add some new dishes to their menu – Sauteed Nuts & Bolts with an Oil Smoothie. That could really juice revenues. These newly employed robots can travel in Google driver-less cars. And you thought the Jetsons world would never arrive. Human beings are becoming obsolete. All hail Jeff Bezos. Who needs profits anyway? I can’t wait for my first drone delivery. I hope it isn’t care of the U.S. military.

Amazon to Add 9,000 Robots to Workforce, Ending Great Robot Depression

It’s a robot invasion!

By Sage Lazzaro 5/28 10:52am

Were you hoping Amazon would go away so you could stop buying things you don’t need solely because they come in two days? Oh well.

Amazon is about to multiply their robot army times 10, CNN reported.

The online retailing giant announced plans to increase their robot workforce to 10,000 by the end of this year. Currently, Amazon employs 1,000 of the wondrous warehouse machines.

The announcement, made by CEO Jeff Bezos in a shareholders meeting this morning, spurred the question of the fate for the actual human beings who package and ship our ear buds and iPhone cases.

An Amazon Spokeswoman assured CNN that the increase in robot workers will have no influence on the number of people employed.

Amazon must know that its robot fleet is piquing people’s interest, because the company just began offering public tours of their U.S. warehouses last month.

If that’s too much trouble, the video below will show you all about Amazon’s leap into the futuristic robot world. What we’re really wondering, though, is where are the damn drones?!

Follow Sage Lazzaro on Twitter or via RSS.

GOVERNMENT DRONE CREDIBILITY

Don’t ever believe government reported data.

Yemen Drone War Is Making More Terrorists, Not A Safer America

by Ron Paul

Earlier this month, CIA-operated drones killed as many as 55 people in Yemen in several separate strikes. Although it was claimed that those killed were “militants,” according to press reports at least three civilians were killed and at least five others wounded. That makes at least 92 US drone attacks against Yemen during the Obama administration, which have killed nearly 1,000 people including many civilians.

The latest strikes seem to contradict President Obama’s revised guidelines for targeted killings, which he announced last May. At the time he claimed that drones would only be used against those who posed a “continuing and imminent threat to the American people,” that there must be a “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured,” and that safeguards to prevent civilian casualties were at “the highest standard we can set.”

None of these criteria seem to have been met. In fact, the threshold in Yemen is considerably lower than the president claims. In 2012 President Obama approved “signature strikes” in Yemen, a criteria for attack that is not based on actual or suspected wrongdoing, but rather on a vague set of behaviors that are said to be shared by militants.

This means that the individuals killed in the most recent drone attacks were not necessarily terrorists or even terrorist suspects. They were not proven to have committed any crime, nor were they proven to have been members of al-Qaeda or any terrorist organization. Yet they were nevertheless targeted for attack, and the sovereignty of Yemen was violated in the process.

Some may claim that we need to kill suspected terrorists overseas so that we can be safer at home. But do the drone attacks in places like Yemen really make us safer? Or are they actually counter-productive? One thing we do know is that one of the strongest recruiting tools for al-Qaeda is the US being over there using drones against people or occupying Muslim countries.

How can we get rid of all the people who may seek to do us harm if our drone and occupation policies continually create even more al-Qaeda members? Are we not just creating an endless supply of tomorrow’s terrorists with our foolish policies today? What example does it set for the rest of the world if the US acts as if it has the right to kill anyone, anywhere, based simply on that individual’s behavior?

We should keep all of this in mind when the US administration lectures world leaders about how they should act in the 21st century. Recently, the US administration admonished Russian president Vladimir Putin for his supposed interference in the affairs of Ukraine, saying that violating the sovereignty of another country is not the 21st century way of conducting international relations. I agree that sovereignty must be respected. But what about the US doing the same thing in places like Yemen? What about the hundreds and even thousands killed by US drones not because they were found guilty of a crime, but because they were exhibiting “behaviors” that led a CIA drone operator safely hidden in New Mexico or somewhere to pull the trigger and end their lives?

What about a president who regularly meets in secret with his advisors to determine who is to be placed on a “kill list” and who refuses to even discuss the criteria for placement on that list? Is this considered acceptable 21st century behavior?

The Obama Administration needs to rein in the CIA and its drone attacks overseas. They make a mockery of American values and they may well make us less safe.

http://www.dailypaul.com/317740/audio-ron-pauls-texas-straight-talk-4-28-14-end-americas-drone-war-in-yemen?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailypaul%2FFClq+%28The+Daily+P.Au.L+-+Peace+%7C+Gold+%7C+Love%2

14 YEAR OLD FIGURES OUT HOW TO SAVE GOVERNMENT $400 MILLION PER YEAR

You would think one of the millions of government drones would realize how to save the taxpayers money with a creative idea. Nope. It takes a 14 year old doing a science project to figure out a simple painless way to save taxpayers $400 million per year. Watch the interview at the link. The kid reached out to the Federal government for input when he started his project. Of course they didn’t respond to his request. They’re the government. After he got some publicity, the government drones showed up. Will they implement his easy cost savings technique. Of course not. They’re the government.

In case you were wondering, Suvir doesn’t go to John Bartram High School or West Philly High.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/student-money-saving-typeface-garamond-schools/index.html?iref=allsearch

(CNN) — An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right?

Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed.

OK, so that may have been a first for you, but it came naturally to 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani when he was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money at his Pittsburgh-area middle school.

It all started as a science fair project. As a neophyte sixth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School, Suvir noticed he was getting a lot more handouts than he did in elementary school.

Interested in applying computer science to promote environmental sustainability, Suvir decided he was going to figure out if there was a better way to minimize the constant flurry of paper and ink.

Reducing paper use through recycling and dual-sided printing had been talked about before as a way to save money and conserve resources, but there was less attention paid to the ink for which the paper served as a canvas for history and algebra handouts.

“Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume,” Suvir says with a chuckle.

He’s right: Chanel No. 5 perfume costs $38 per ounce, while the equivalent amount of Hewlett-Packard printer ink can cost up to $75.

So Suvir decided to focus his project on finding ways to cut down on the costly liquid.

Collecting random samples of teachers’ handouts, Suvir concentrated on the most commonly used characters (e, t, a, o and r).

First, he charted how often each character was used in four different typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. Then he measured how much ink was used for each letter, using a commercial tool called APFill® Ink Coverage Software.

Next he enlarged the letters, printed them and cut them out on cardstock paper to weigh them to verify his findings. He did three trials for each letter, graphing the ink usage for each font.

From this analysis, Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually.

Encouraged by his teacher, Suvir looked to publish his findings and stumbled on the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI), a publication founded by a group of Harvard grad students in 2011 that provides a forum for the work of middle school and high school students. It has the same standards as academic journals, and each submission is reviewed by grad students and academics.

14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani began studying fonts as part of a science fair project.

Sarah Fankhauser, one of JEI’s founders, says that of the nearly 200 submissions they have received since 2011, Suvir’s project was a real standout:

“We were so impressed. We really could really see the real-world application in Suvir’s paper.”

Fankhauser said Suvir’s findings were so clear, simple and well thought-out, it had the peer reviewers at JEI asking, “How much potential savings is really out there?”

For the answer, JEI challenged Suvir to apply his project to a larger scale: the federal government.

With an annual printing expenditure of $1.8 billion, the government was a much more challenging task than his school science project.

Suvir repeated his tests on five sample pages from documents on the Government Printing Office website and got similar results — change the font, save money.

Will government printers embrace a change?

Using the General Services Administration’s estimated annual cost of ink — $467 million — Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% — or $136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved annually if state governments also jumped on board, he reported.

Gary Somerset, media and public relations manager at the Government Printing Office, describes Suvir’s work as “remarkable.” But he was noncommittal on whether the GPO would introduce changes to typeface, saying the GPO’s efforts to become more environmentally sustainable were focused on shifting content to the Web.

“In 1994, we were producing 20,000 copies a day of both the Federal Register and Congressional Record. Twenty years later, we produce roughly 2,500 print copies a day,” he said.

On top of this, the Congressional Register is printed on recycled paper, which GPO has been doing for five or six years, Somerset says.

One federal initiative that focuses on minimizing ink-usage is called “Printwise.” Organized by the General Services Administration, it teaches government offices how to default their computer settings to Times New Roman, Garamond and Century Gothic to minimize printing waste. According to GSA’s press secretary Dan Cruz, they hope this type of initiative could save the federal government up to $30 million annually.

Suvir appreciates the government’s efforts, but he sees his project as a means of making an even bigger impact nationwide.

“Consumers are still printing at home, they can make this change too,” he says.

Holding out hope

At 14, Suvir understands how difficult such a project might be to implement — “I recognize it’s difficult to change someone’s behavior. That’s the most difficult part.”

But he holds out hope: “I definitely would love to see some actual changes and I’d be happy to go as far as possible to make that change possible.”

With decades ahead to lend a hand, Suvir and other young men and women like him may even be able to untangle some of the knotty political and technical issues that beset Washington, corporate suites and the world at large.

PHILA GOV’T DRONES TICKET YOU TO DEATH & AFTER DEATH

We already know Philadelphia and every other urban shithole in this country is run by dumbass liberal Democratic politicians of color. The government union drones are generally incompetent, overpaid, ignorant and have no interest in serving the taxpayers who pay their bloated salaries and pensions.

The Philadelphia Parking authority drones go above and beyond when it comes to stupidity and hate for the people they are supposed to serve. They are nothing but a revenue generating machine for the liberal utopian shithole city of Phila.

This past week they exceeded expectations on a grand scale.

It seems a 22 year old Pre-med student from Temple University, and mother of two young children, had gone missing on February 9. A statewide search was underway. Presumably the police knew the make, model, and year of her car and had entered it into some sort of database that could be accessed by the Phila Parking Authority. A search of license plate numbers would have surely revealed the car as being owned by a missing person.

It seems the boneheads at the Phila Parking Authority towed her car from downtown Phila on February 10 and for some unknown fucking reason parked it on another street near 30th Street Station. Evidently they parked it in an illegal spot because this very same group of douchenozzles then proceeded to ticket the car seven times and eventually place a a boot on the wheel for unpaid parking tickets. All of this took place over a two week period.

One little problem. The woman was dead inside the car the entire time in the driver’s seat. Not one drone at the parking authority had the wherewithal to run a check on the license plate number? These worthless schlubs felt their only duty was to generate revenue by writing 7 tickets and meeting their quota for the week.

The article in the Daily News quotes another government drone police officer desperately trying to spin this disgusting display of gross negligence and incompetence by these “public servants” by trying to convince people the tinted windows made it impossible to see the dead body in the driver’s seat. Here is a picture of the car. I can see inside the fucking windows from half a block away.

Think about this for one minute. You had at least one worthless government drone who had to tow the car. You would think he would look inside. Then you have one or more government drones placing a ticket on the windshield for seven consecutive days, with the dead woman sitting there.

And still the vast majority of ignorant Americans actually think more government in our lives will be better. Your healthcare is going to be run by these same drones.

MALALA TELLS OBAMA TO STOP MURDERING INNOCENT PEOPLE WITH HIS DRONES

Not a peep about this in the liberal MSM. They wouldn’t dare question the murderous policies of dear leader. Malala is a brave girl and tells the thug how terrorism works. American terrorism begets terrorism against America.

Bravo Malala!

Sunday October 13, 2013

It was supposed to be an approval ratings-boosting photo-op with the youngest ever nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize, but as any parent knows kids can be hard to control. They have a tendency to blurt out inconvenient truths at the most inconvenient of moments.

So it was when 16 year old Malala Yousafzai, who had been shot by extremists in Pakistan over her vocal support for girls’ education, was at the White House on Friday to meet the president and first lady along with their daughter of similar age.

The young Peace Prize nominee (who ultimately lost out to the UN-affiliated Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), took the opportunity, while the world’s attention was upon her for her brave and fearless efforts, to tell the US president directly that his foreign policy was harming both her home country, Pakistan, and harming US security as well.

Said young Malala in a statement after the meeting:

“I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.”

She could have played it safe and simply smiled for the camera. Instead she took another huge personal risk for peace. She told the president of the US that he was wrong to make war on her country. Bravo!

Considering past Nobel Peace Prize winners, it is probably better that she did not win. The prize is tarnished.

OBAMA PURPOSELY TRYING TO MAKE YOUR LIFE MISERABLE

This entire government shutdown farce is nothing but bullshit political optics. First of all, why is the American taxpayer paying to employ 800,000 non-essential government drones? Where I work, if you are non-essential you are not needed. Obama is trying to make the American people feel the pain of a government shutdown. Therefore, he is using government employees to block access to places where government employees are never needed. He is spending more of your money to keep you from accessing government run properties.

The longer this fake shutdown goes on, the more it reveals that we can do without the 800,000 drones. Our lives aren’t being impacted by these drones getting a paid vacation on our dime. The lowlifes in Congress have already agreed to provide back pay to these people while they sit at home and watch Jerry Springer. Will they owe the taxpayer the days they didn’t work? Not a fucking chance. They have probably filed for unemployment too. Will they have to pay that back when they receive their back pay? I doubt it.

Let’s assume each of these non-essential government drones is costing the taxpayer $100,000 in salary and benefits. That is probably conservative. I just found $80 billion of annual cost savings. Sounds like a lot, but let’s consider it in relation to the big picture. Your leaders spend $3.7 trillion of your money annually. That is $10 billion per day. We could fire those 800,000 non-essential government drones and it would amount to 8 days of government spending. Let that sink in for a moment.

I picture the government as Jaws and myself as Sheriff Brody.

No matter what ultimate bullshit compromise is reached by the lowlifes in Washington DC, it won’t even make a dent in what really needs to be done. This boat is going to sink.

Park Ranger: ‘We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can’

Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times reported yesterday that “the Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice.”

It is difficult to imagine that shutting people out of parks and privately owned concessions has to do with anything other than politics. One of these “whims” is the parking lot at Mount Vernon, which is “privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.”

A Park Service ranger in Washington said that

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Steven Dinan of the Washington Times reported today that Bruce O’Connell, the owner of the Pisgah Inn, which holds a concession on the Blue Ridge Parkway was told to “cease operations.” He said

“The level of intimidation and coercion became such that we backed down. Then after sleeping on it, our own convictions took front and center and we decided to reopen.”

According to mounting sources, President Obama has been hard at work trying to make the public feel the “shutdown,” despite the fact that eighty percent of federal employees are still working. Josh Barro of Business Insider reported this week,

“…of about 4.1 million people who work for the federal government, about 80% will still be expected to show up for work.”

The owner of the “privately run, funded and staffed” Claude Moore Colonial Farm said that “we think they have closed us down illegally…” as reported today by J.D. Tuccille of reason.com. The staff was even “threatened with arrest” if they showed up for work, despite the fact that they are not government employees. The owner said,

“We have had to cancel every event at the Farm this week so we have already lost more than $15,000 in operating income because October is the busiest month of the year for us.”

Hans Bader of OpenMarket.org compiled many of these distrubing stories today. He reported that sites that were previously open without guards, such as the Lincoln Memorial, now have guards assigned to keep out the public. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial is now “fenced off” despite the fact that it was previously open 24/7 without guards. Bader writes,

“the government is actually expanding its presence at national monuments in order to drive people away, at increased expense to taxpayers.” [added emphasis]

Bader also reflected at Liberty Unyielding on the politics surrounding the sequester, where similar tactics were used.

Additionally, Patrik Jonsson of the CSMonitor reported today that the National Park Service has rebuked “offers by state and private officials to help keep the Grand Canyon and other places open.” It is clear that the goal of keeping the public away from national (and privately owned) parks and monuments is a disturbing, expensive and childish political move.

Follow Renee Nal on Twitter @ReneeNal and Facebook.

Check out her news and political commentary on Liberty Unyielding, Gather and TavernKeepers.com for news you won’t find in the mainstream media. Renee is also a guest blogger for the Shire Blog.