Blue Crab Boulevard

The A-10 Warthog (nicknamed the "devil's cross" by people it was coming after) has just received a major upgrade that should extend the operational life of the venerable ground attack aircraft until the 2020s or beyond. Even though the A-10 never did the job it was designed for - killing Soviet tanks - it has adapted to many other tasks through the years. Now, it will be a very precise weapon.

11/30/2006 - DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. (AFPN) – The A-10C Thunderbolt II made its official roll-out debut here Nov. 29, revealing its transformation and its enhanced capabilities under the Precision Engagement program.

The Precision Engagement program will offer the A-10 the most significant modifications it has ever received in its 30-year history, making it a more capable and survivable attack fighter, according to Maj. Dan Walls, 355th Training Squadron director of conversion training unit operations.

"Precision Engagement increases the lethality, survivability and standoff of one of the most respected and recognized attack aircraft in the world and ushers in a new era in the A-10 story," Major Walls said.

Under this program, the A-10 will receive numerous enhancements including the full integration of sensors, including data link and a targeting pod, allowing the A-10C to identify and strike targets from higher altitudes and greater distances without sacrificing accuracy. This integration also will enhance the aircraft's communication capabilities.

The cockpit will undergo modifications under the program with the introduction of two new multi-functional color displays and a new hands-on-throttle-and-stick interface. These enhancements translate into increased situational awareness for the pilot and the ability to perform most tasks without removing his or her hands from the throttle or stick.

As a result of this upgrade, the A-10C is projected to remain operational into the end of the 2020s, well beyond its initial expected lifespan, Major Walls said.

Via Pajamas Media, oddly, the hat tip goes to The Anchoress, even though she had nothing whatsoever about this item. I just followed another link over and found this item.

Oh sure, people just keep calling the authorities on us here at Blue Crab Boulevard. The visits from the health department folks are becoming tedious, even if they are showing us those stylish white sport coats. We have been warning about the newest attacks by deranged, yacht tipping seals but people keep laughing and pointing at us, then calling the health department. But they won't be calling now, we bet! Because the Animal Uprising's land seal invasion has begun in England!

Animal welfare experts are baffled after a seal pup was discovered in a country lane, miles inland.

The animal, a male common seal, was spotted by farmer's wife Mary Woods, 45, and her daughter, Joanne, as they drove near the village of Capernwray in Lancashire on Tuesday morning. The village is about a mile from the nearest river and four miles from the sea.

Joanne, 20, said: "As we were driving back home from Lancaster, my mum said 'What's that by the side of the road?'

"We reversed and looked out of the window and I said 'It's a seal' and we both jumped out of the car. It was right on the roadside near a verge and a hedge.

"He started coming towards us and we just stared at it in amazement. We couldn't understand what it was doing there -the nearest sea is at Morecambe about 25 minutes' drive away.

"We didn't want to touch him because he is a wild animal with sharp teeth, but there is quite a lot of traffic on the road so we didn't want to leave him there either.

"We wanted to call the RSPCA but we didn't have their number. I rang my dad on the farm and said 'You'll never guess what we've found!' but he didn't believe me.

"We decided to pick it up. My mum took off her coat to wrap him in because she knew he'd have sharp teeth.

"He was too heavy to lift, so I reversed the car right up to him and we managed to get him in the boot. He was a bit grumpy and scared once we started to lift him."

Grumpy, hell. He was mad as all get out that they had stymied his plan to attack them by using one of those long-sleeved jackets on him! Hey! Wait a minute! I don't think I want one of those white sport coats any more. I'll tell the nice man the next time he comes around.

It appears increasingly likely that a coup will occur in Fiji. The military has given a deadline for the government to meet demands. The government has apparently declined to do any more concessions than they already have.

FIJI'S capital Suva is bracing for an imminent takeover by the military with no signs that the Government will capitulate to a series of demands by the military.

All was quiet in the capital, however, as a  noon deadline for a threatened military coup passed.

Fiji's renegade military chief Frank Bainimarama last night warned he would remove the government if Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase did not meet a list of demands by noon (11am AEDT) today.

As the noon deadline passed, Commodore Bainimarama was at Suva sports stadium watching a soccer match between army and police teams.

He left before the game finished.

Mr Qarase said this morning  that he was uncertain of exactly what the military wanted after giving into most of their demands yesterday.

This morning Commodore Bainimarama briefed the country's president Ratu Josefa Iloilo on his plans.

Commodore Bainimarama's meeting with Mr Iloilo lasted about 30 minutes and he left without commenting.

It is understood that if the Government fails to make further concessions Commodore Bainimarama may ask for a state of emergency to be declared, allowing the military to begin securing the city.

The Fiji government's official website is now reporting that the differences between the Prime Minister and the rebellious military leader have been settled, however. But the date stamps are a bit confused as to what came first, so it may or may not still be in question. Here's the CIA factbook entry on Fiji. Here's the Wikipedia entry.

Mark in Mexico is reporting a series of attacks and kidnappings in the Mexican city of Oaxaca. This really sounds very, very bad indeed. There are all the signs of a secret "dirty war" being conducted back and forth between the government forces and the leftists. This is getting very ugly indeed.

There have been some strange occurrences in the past couple of days, all very close to my office. Either yesterday or Tuesday, the date is unclear, a full busload of passengers (35-50 people) was stopped just 3 blocks from my office in broad daylight, at 10:30 am. A car with 6-8 men inside pulled over in front of the bus and blocked it. Three or four of them got out and forced their way onto the bus. The driver pulled a revolver, a very rare event. In fact, I have never seen nor heard of an armed bus driver before.

He failed to get off a shot however, and was dragged out of his seat and thrown to the floor. Then, in full view of the horrified passengers, he was shot twice in the back. Some passengers forced the rear door of the bus open and fled. Others crouched down in their seats and hoped for the best. One lady said that she witnessed the first shot, then just covered her face with her hands and prayed.

The men then dragged the wounded and bleeding driver out of the bus, threw him in the car, and off they sped. Passengers reported that a woman with a cellphone and riding a motorcycle was also involved. When the men fled with the wounded driver, one of them hopped on the motorcycle with the woman and they rode off together.

There are also well know leftist thugs being grabbed in broad daylight and whisked away. I think Oaxaca is going to be closed for business for quite a while.

Curt over at Flopping Aces has been an absolute bulldog on this phony police captain that the AP has quoted repeatedly. Despite the Iraqi government itself telling the world that this captain does not work for the police and has no authorization to speak for the government or police, the AP refuses to correct their story. (Curt also got mentioned in the New York Times blog, BTW).

At the end of the day, we have AP journalists with reporting and images from the actual neighborhood versus official spokesmen saying the story cannot be true because it is damaging and because one of the sources is not on a list of people approved to talk to the press. Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.

We stand behind our reporting.

Typically they ignore the bigger point here. There is absolutely NO proof that this incident occurred. They first told the world that four mosques were burnt to the ground and six men were burned alive. Then when they discovered (via Centcom and us bloggers) that four mosques were not burned, only one was and that one slightly, they changed the original story. They relied 3 sources who will not go on record, two that will. One of those has retracted his statement and the other (Jamil Hussein) has been shown to have lied about his employment.

The AP has no other evidence that this event occurred.

They, in fact, have a blown source for the original story. Their followup several days later is meaningless since people have had time to rehearse answers. The longer you wait to interview, the less reliable the sources are. The fact that the witnesses all refused to be named also casts a great deal of doubt. Curt's quite right, the AP story stinks and they are not addressing the real issues with their statements. They are sidestepping and shifting focus.

UPDATE: Confederate Yankee has the issue boiled down: it is not just this one incident. It is a pattern, a systemic failure.

John Stossel wrote an article talking about a certain former president named Carter and some celebrity type folks who think America is cheap because the government gave away only $20 billion in aid last year. Of course, Americans gave away $260 billion to charity. But since it was redistributed by government, that apparently doesn't count to Carter and Bono. Today Stossel takes a look at just who is giving that money. The answers will surprise you. Well, in some ways, maybe not so much in others.

To test what types of people give more, "20/20" went to two very different parts of the country, with contrasting populations: Sioux Falls, S.D. and San Francisco, Calif. The Salvation Army set up buckets at the busiest locations in each city — Macy's in San Francisco and Wal-Mart in Sioux Falls. Which bucket collected more money?

Sioux Falls is rural and religious; half of the population goes to church every week. People in San Francisco make much more money, are predominantly liberal, and just 14 percent of people in San Francisco attend church every week. Liberals are said to care more about helping the poor; so did people in San Francisco give more?

It turns out that this idea that liberals give more…is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election.

I guess that doesn't surprise me. When you think about it, many on the left thinks it is government's job to give money. They care about the poor, they just don't actually want to give them anything personally. They want the government to take care of all that.

Arthur Brooks, the author of "Who Really Cares," says that "when you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more." He adds, "And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money."

And he says the differences in giving goes beyond money, pointing out that conservatives are 18 percent more likely to donate blood. He says this difference is not about politics, but about the different way conservatives and liberals view government.

"You find that people who believe it's the government's job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away," Brooks says. In fact, people who disagree with the statement, "The government has a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can't take care of themselves," are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

Read the whole thing. There are some very interesting things about giving patterns. But who you calling cheap, Jimmy?

US and coalition forces in Iraq have captured weapons bearing Iranian markings and with manufacture dates in 2006. These are not weapons that have found their way onto the international arms market. These had to have come directly from Iran. There is not even a pretense at plausible deniability here.

 WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2006 —  U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.

Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

Two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed to ABC News earlier reports that fighters from the Mahdi army have traveled to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah.

These are the folks the "realists" want to chat with. These are acts of war against the US.

UPDATE: Others: Hot Air, INDCJournal, Forward Movement, Instapundit, Riehl World View, Wake up America, Hyscience, Iowa Voice, The Sundries Shack, Decision '08, Macsmind, PrairiePundit, Ed Driscoll, This Blog is Full of Crap, Power Line,

A small village in Western Canada has had it up to here, so to speak, with what are reported to be truly world class potholes in their main road. So they have taken matters into their own hands, so to speak. They have decided to embarrass the provincial government into fixing their road, by embarrassing themselves. They posed in the potholes in the nude and made a calendar.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - People in a small town in Western Canada are so fed up with the rotten state of their main road that they came up with an unusual form of protest — a calendar that shows them posing nude in the potholes.

One inhabitant of Leader, Saskatchewan, is shown sitting in a canoe that is perched in a pothole. Another has his dignity preserved by a well-placed camera while a third man covers up with a strategic hubcap.

"The initial impression when people open the calendar for the first time is 'Oh my God!' It's pretty dramatic," said Wayne Elhard, the local member of the provincial legislature.

Leader, a town of just 1,000 in a largely farming area of southwest Saskatchewan, says it can't afford to fix all its roads.

"The potholes are not small, one-foot diameter potholes. They are many feet across and sometimes they're as deep as a foot deep and sometimes they will stretch for yards (meters)," Elhard told CBC television on Wednesday.

The man posed in a canoe IN the pothole. Now that is one big pothole.

In other news, Britney Spears hasn't been getting enough news coverage lately, so she has taken to flashing back at the photographers using their flashes. Now, I have no idea why anyone would care, but this is supposed to be a real traffic booster, so here's a link showing Britney Spears' beaver. 

The New York Times has picked up the story of the "police captain" that the AP quotes rather often, who appears to be a fake (the information appears in the Lede, one of the Times' blogs). The Iraqi government has formally stated that Jamil Hussein is not employed by the Iraqi police, nor is he a spokesman for anything.

Yesterday, the wire service moved a lengthy story in which they went back to the Hurriyah neighborhood in Baghdad where the immolation incident reportedly took place, and interviewed other witnesses, who corroborated the story.

(The piece also took a swipe at the military’s continuing dealings with message-massaging firms like the Lincoln Group.)

And so things stand today.

The one thing that remains unclear, though, is this: The Associated Press said in its story yesterday that Mr. Hussein “has been a regular source of police information for two years and had been visited by the AP reporter in his office at the police station on several occasions.” The military, meanwhile, seems to suggest that Mr. Hussein is not a police officer, nor a civil servant in the employ of any Iraqi agency.

So who IS Mr. Hussein?

Now, as one commenter said earlier, the AP may have already fulfilled its mission here by planting the false information. But if this continues to circulate, they will have damaged the only thing a news wire service must have - credibility. they could have actually done themselves real harm this time. One can but hope.

A British home improvement store has a red face just in time for Christmas. It seems they played a jolly little Christmas carol over the store's PA system. The song upset the kids.

Christmas Time In Hell by Satan and the Damned was a bit much.

Instead of the usual festive hits ringing through the aisles, shoppers were subjected to a foul-mouthed song from the television cartoon series "South Park".

Due to an "oversight" at the store in Stockport, northwest England, bungling staff put on "Christmas Time in Hell" from the album "Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics".

The offending track contains references to sex, torture and US cannibal serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Shopper Grant Sullivan, 42, from Stockport, was in the store's Christmas grotto with his daughter, Deonne, aged four.

"I couldn't believe my ears," he told The Sun newspaper.

"We were buying a tree and Deonne was looking for the star for the top of it. I was speechless.

"Christmas should be a wonderful time for kids — they shouldn't have to listen to filth."

Well, I suppose we could try to look at the bright side here. At least it was a Christmas song, not a "happy non-denominational, generic seasonal greetings unless you're offended by that, too" song.