Check out the below video with regard to the amazing Girandoni air rifle (ca 1779), carried by Lewis & Clark’s Corps of Discovery (1803 to 1806). This rifle could (with 1,500 pumps creating 800 psi) shoot up to forty consecutive .46 caliber round balls before loss of muzzle velocity and pressure. The tubular magazine held 22 balls.
Additionally, an excellent book on their journey is Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.
BZ
The House voted on Friday (2-18) to block funding for ObamaKare.
Specifically, the House voted to prohibit any funds be used by the Internal Revenue Service to carry out the law’s mandate that Americans buy health insurance. The individual mandate, one of the law’s key tenets, has been struck down by federal courts.
The House also adopted an amendment by Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., to bar the Labor and Health and Human Services Departments from spending any money for the rest of fiscal year 2011 on the health care law. Still another provision adopted today would ban the government from paying the salaries of any federal employee involved in implementing the health care law.
Further, one day prior (Thursday, 2-17), the House stopped any funding for the FCC’s application of so-called “net neutrality“:
The amendment, approved on a 244-181 vote, was offered by Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., to legislation that would fund government agencies for the rest of fiscal year 2011.
Walden and other critics of the FCC’s net-neutrality order argue it will stifle innovation and investment in broadband. The order aims to bar broadband providers from discriminating against Internet content, services, or applications.
“If left unchallenged, this claim of authority would allow the FCC to regulate any matter it discussed in the national broadband plan,” Walden said.
Mr Obama also, as you recall, wants to create an “OFF” switch for the US internet under the guise of Pulling The Big Red Handle only when the hacking is dangerous and the government is threatened. Instead, I posit, think: Egypt.
Mr Obama and the Leftists seem to forget that their administration isn’t permanent and that, under a different administration, Handles can be pulled “whenever.”
Anyone here doubt that a Leftist government wouldn’t sever the internet if the internet were flying with the various Truths about oppression of freedom?
Me neither.
Gerald Celente makes an interesting observation which tends to tie many things together:
Celente believes the government will use this increased defense allowance to amass weapons and apparatuses that will control any dissent among the people. Citing a Feb. 15 article in the USA Today titled, Kill Switch Bill Alarms Privacy Experts, Jones says the government has already begun taking steps to control an uprising. They’ve openly stated that they want to be able to shut down the Internet and they’re getting ready to launch a false flag using either a terrorist alert or the threat of war as an excuse to flip the kill switch.
Moves are being made, ladies and gentlemen, internationally and locally. Forewarned is forearmed. Literally.
BZ
First, view the below video (from May 5th, 2009) in which Rep Alan Grayson (D-Orlando — a man who has sufficient problems himself but, in this instance, is dead-spot-on) asks questions of Elizabeth Coleman, whose job title is Inspector General of the Federal Reserve. The job title itself would, I can only assume, proffer the largest clue possible as to the specific job attached:
Yes, that’s correct, we really still have no damned idea where billions and billions and billions of our dollars went. We assume they went to good causes, like banks — where the assumption was that the “stimulus” would result in an uncorking of loans for those who can actually pay, etc. But still, in February of 2011, no one really knows where all this money went. I submit that perhaps we know more about the sex life of the average silverfish than the various resting places of that staggering amount of cash.
And, oh, yes: cash that YOU labored for, taken out of YOUR pockets by way of federal taxes. You were FORCED to give that money to the government so that IT could not have ANY idea where the money really went.
As I said a few years back, the banks that were “too big to fail”? Let them fail. Car manufacturers that were in that same category? Let them fail. Hell, GM fell anyway — and then wanted MORE of your tax dollars. And got them!
Further, by shuttering many dealerships when the Fed took control of GM and Chrysler, your GOVERNMENT was responsible for the loss of tens of thousands of private sector jobs. I’m sure dealerships closed in your area as they did in mine.
Lord knows the stimulus money has been highly beneficial: the Northern Mariana Islands is applying for federal stimulus money that would go to foreign welfare recipients. The money would pay for food stamps and job training. You stimulus dollars ($823 million) also went to a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.
In an unprecedented move, the number of investors fearing a catastrophic stock market crash is rising even with the stock market at 2 ½ year highs.
The unusual dislocation comes from two distinct reasons: a lack of trust in the U.S. financial markets following the so-called Flash Crash last May and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2007.
Once again: precious metals.
BZ
P.S.
And let us not forget: Mr Obama wants to spend even MORE of your taxpayer dollars and — concurrently — print more money backed only by the sheerest of wafting air currents.
For some, this post about the Monterey Bay Aquarium may be pedestrian; I apologize in advance. For those who have not yet attended, I proffer a few photographs illustrating a brief overview. Though I’ve been many times, I can’t visit Monterey and not visit the aquarium; perhaps a gene askew or such.
Tuesday, my wife and I found ourselves one of only a documented three hundred visitors that day. The place appeared almost abandoned yet, on the other hand, it was wonderfully quiet. No yelling kids, squalling infants, no rude elbowing people — just a host of visitors, of all races and nationalities, enjoying themselves and availing themselves of the various exhibits, videos, pools, tours and tanks. The staff couldn’t wait to explain the various tanks and sites. Frankly, it was the finest time I’ve yet had at the aquarium. Ever. [Contrast this with the summer, when staff indicates the aquarium sees up to 10,000 people per day.]
Above, Toola the Otter poses pointedly (chin on paw) in a fashion heretofore undocumented. MacKenzie, our guide at the otter pool, said she’d never seen Toola in such a contemplative and yet coy and demure mood.
In the kelp forest, all sorts of Big Fish (and some smaller ones too) laze about in the ebb and flow of the recreated ocean environment — one of the tallest tanks (at 24+ feet) in the world. Kelp in Monterey Bay, by the by, grows up to four inches — per day. Looking up, you’d think you’re in the bay itself. Simply spectacular.
It’s 4 pm and that means: feeding time in the kelp forest. A lemon shark attempting to go vertical “nut-nibbling”?
Alphonso the Diver explains the feeding regimen for the various fish — including sharks — in the kelp forest. Wearing a full-face mask and connected by a single air line to the surface some twenty feet above, Alphonso alternately sounds like Darth Vader and himself. He and every diver in the facility are volunteers. These positions are so coveted that divers wait for three or more years to be able to clean the tanks, much less feed the fish in public.
Big shrimp. Massive-antenna’d shrimp. Scowling shrimp. You want a piece’a me? Go ahead buddy, stick your finger down here! Heh-heh.
Beautiful, wafting anemones.
A delicate Pacific Seahorse. These creatures seem like little audio animatronic entities or CGI 3D projections. In fact, male seahorses become pregnant and give birth, just like my former Governator.
The wonder of the Monterey Bay Aquarium is that the creatures are brought to life before your eyes — and, though they live just behind incredibly- and-deceptively-thick acrylic sheets (you’ll bonk your noggin or your hand at least once, being fooled by the perspective), the creatures seem as real and as near as if you were diving amongst them.
Outside, the Pacific waves continue to batter Monterey’s rocky shores. Monterey Bay sits on the precipice of one of the most sheer and deepest canyons in the Pacific — transitioning from a few hundred feet and then straight down to roughly 6,000 feet.
Excellent overview of the Monterey Canyon here. And one of the very few places in the world where, should you choose to visit, you will see seals and sea otters and whales and feathered friends in most every shade and stripe. And likely they’ll be no more than twenty feet in front of you.
Does the above view look familiar? Perhaps you should check out Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), wherein the Cetacean Institute was, in fact, the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Ah, memories.
Fair skies, calm seas, cascading swells, azure caps, hissing waves, the Pacific is just that.
BZ
[Click on each photo to enlarge markedly.]