Pictures Of My Praying Mantis Babies

I know. I know. I have many mouths to feed. And lots of baby shoes to buy.

Baby praying mantises don’t need diapers, do they?

All attempts at humor aside, I’ve always been fascinated by praying (or preying) mantises. So I manufactured an excuse that I clearly needed to buy a few egg cases.

And what do you know, I was fortunate enough to capture the action as one of the eggs hatched!

If you have a lot of babies all at once, does that mean you get a lot of cigars?

This was an event that needed to be shared with the world, so like any proud “daddy” here are my new babies (you can click on it to see it larger):

A Former Sports Bike Guy’s Thoughts On V-Twin Motorcycle Engines And The Harleys That Made Them Famous

Are you considering buying a motorcycle, or considering switching from one type of street bike (e.g., sports bike, cruiser, touring bike, sports tourer) to another?

I found myself in that situation.

I’ve owned several sports bikes.  Never even would have CONSIDERED buying a Harley or for that matter ANY v-twin engined bike, as I frankly considered them to be mechanically inferior.

If sombody had suggested a Harley Davidson bike to me, I would have – with something of a sneer – stated that Harley bikes featured technology that was ancient when dinosaurs walked the earth with an engine that is still around only because for some bizarre reason people actually like the sound of uneven idling just as they like paying twice as much money for a massively heavy bike with inadequate power.  I also would have pointed out with that same sneer that Harleys were infamous for peeing oil and didn’t finally stop vibrating for half an hour after being shut down.

My first sport bike was a 1983 Suzuki GS 1100e that produced 104 bone stock hoursepower to propel its 500 lbs like a bat out of hell.  It won “Motorcycle of the Year” because it deserved to.  My best friend had the same year Harley Superglide (we’d both bought our bikes brand spanking new with our enlistment bonus checks) that was trying in vain to make it down the road with 68 horses while it weighed in at well over 600 lbs.

With all the power that Suzuki had, it apparently still wasn’t enough: I installed a big bore kit, a performance carburetor and a performance exhaust.  That sucker was putting out over 150 horseys and if you’d ask me to do a wheelie, I would have asked you which gear you wanted me to do it in.  I could get on the freeway and hit the 55 mph speed limit and THEN smoke the rear wheel.  The thing sounded like a fighter jet and I used to love riding home from the bars and setting off all the car alarms at 3 am (it was even more fun on the one-way roads where I could set off all the car alarms on either side of the street).

Suffice it to say I didn’t get the whole Harley thing.  At all.

I’ve had a few other sport bikes since that ’83 Suzuki, and never really seriously considered riding anything other than a bike that wasn’t in the class of “crotch rocket.”  The only thing I wanted more than a bike that went fast was a bike that went even faster.

A bad wreck and a head that got increasingly full of gray hair – possibly from worrying about getting in another bad wreck – changed my attitude.

Well, at least some.

I was looking for a bike that had a) saddlebags and b) a windshield or fairing that actually managed to deflect wind.

That already meant I was “getting old,” mind you.  There’s that line from the movie Big Trouble in Little China: “A brave man likes the feel of nature on his face.”  And the reply: “Yeah, and a wise man has enough sense to get in out of the rain!”

While one might argue that wise men don’t throw their legs over motorcycles, I would point out that I was at least trying to make strides from brave fool to wise man.  I wanted saddlebags because dang you can’t pack very much stuff in those little back packs you have to wear on a sport bike, and I wanted a shield because I was getting tired of freezing in the rain.

Sport bikes by definition don’t have saddle bags and they don’t have actual functioning wind shields – as you would learn for yourself were you to hug the gas tank behind those tiny little sport fairings during a rain the way a soldier hugs the deck during an incoming artillery barrage.

I was getting old enough to start having the beginnings of that rare state of mind otherwise known as common sense.  Maybe not enough common sense to look out of a car window with the AC blasting, but common sense as it relates to two wheels.

That left me with buying a sport tourer.  Because I sure wasn’t old enough to want a full dress touring bike.  And I still had enough of a pulse that I didn’t want to drag around on a Harley.

But as I looked at the sport tourers, I couldn’t help but notice the cruiser bikes that I’d largely ignored did in fact have the saddlebags and windshield that I wanted.

I don’t know how it happened, exactly.  But I kept looking at bikes, and those cruisers had all that beautiful chrome and those sport tourers had all that … plastic.

And, almost against my will, I began to appreciate that chrome.

I’ve always loved old cars, and one of the things I love about old cars is all that bright, shiny chrome and the styling that is absolutely nowhere to be found these days as cars all look like they came out of the same wind-tunnel research.

Do you know why you don’t see Harley engines being surrounded by a bunch of plastic?  Because v-twins are absolutely beautiful engines and it would be a crime to hide them under a plastic sport bike fairing.

That’s the beginning of understanding the appeal of a v-twin engine: they are visual works of art.  Versus the sport bike engines that are usually covered up because frankly nobody really gives a damn what they look like as long as they’re fast.  The bottom line is that sport bike engines aren’t beautiful – apart from the sheer beauty of function – and they were never intended to be beautiful.

Harley guys accuse the so-called “metric twins” built in Japan of being soulless clones.  What is interesting is that over the past few years, it has been Harley following the Japanese more than vice versa.  The Japanese saw the market for performance v-twins and built bikes with more grunt: it was Harley that followed suit as they scrambled to build bikes with bigger engines while trying to keep their patented exhaust sound.

Harleys DO sound beautiful; and unlike any other make of motorcycle, it doesn’t take an expert to be able to tell that a bike is a Harley from the exhaust note alone.  That said, it turns out that the issue is more about complying with federal regulations limiting decibels than it is about make and model.  Harleys sound like “Harleys” largely because virtually all Harley owners have their stock federal-complying exhausts removed and replaced with different aftermarket Harley exhausts.  Which many metric cruiser owners do as well (you listen to a couple of aftermarket pipes for Roadliners here and here).

When it came time to pull the trigger and buy a bike, I bought a Yamaha Stratoliner.  That is, I bought an 1854 cc (as in nearly 1.9 liter!) engine.  In Harley speak, that’s 113 cubic inches, which for the record is ten cubic inches bigger than the biggest Hog.  On a bike that weighs a good sixty pounds less than a Hog due to its having an aluminum frame.  That aluminum frame consists of a total of eight pieces, versus 40-60 separate components for a typical tubular steel frame.  That means a lot less weight shift, which means a lot more stability.

As for the stock factory sound of the exhaust, one reviewer for Motorcycle.com stated that the Roadliner/Stratoliner had “the best exhaust note of any OEM cruiser” in a comparison that included a Harley-Davidson bike.  An aftermarket system will make it sound a lot louder by eliminating the federal-mandated baffling, but it won’t make it sound sweeter.

Harley owners as well as the metric v-twin guys who modified their exhausts justify themselves by claiming that the louder they are, the safer they are.  They claim, “They might not be able to see me, but they’ll damn sure be able to hear me.”  But the actual studies have demonstrated pretty conclusively that bikes with loud exhausts aren’t one iota less likely to avoid collisions with cars than bikes with quieter exhausts.  So it’s really about being loud rather than being safe.  And the bottom line is that they like being loud.

I like my ears the way God intended them to be able to hear something else besides my own exhaust.  But that’s just me.

The Yamaha Stratoliner features the second largest v-twin engine on the road (behind the 2000 cc Kawasaki Vulcan 2000).  And in the world of v-twins, it features the 3rd fastest major production v-twin cruiser ever put on the road (behind only the Vulcan, the Suzuki M109 and Harley’s answer to the sport bikes, the V-Rod).  Still, in the shootout that considered the mega v-twin’s total performance, it was the Roadliner (the Strat’s twin wearing bags and windshield) that emerged as “Godzilla.”

Yamaha actually considered building the biggest mega v-twin on the planet – 2,400 cc.  But the prototype was so big and heavy that it was a buzz kill to ride around in the real world.

What they came up with instead was a great bike with a great engine.

I just wasn’t ready for a Harley-Davidson yet.  Not when the Road King (for example) crawled along from 0-60 mph in 8 seconds.  I mean, dang, I wanted to get to the next traffic light before civilization collapsed and mankind re-entered the stone age and humans started to look like, well, like a bunch of hairy, bearded bikers.

The 1854 cc Stratoliner/Roadliner engine does the 0-60 thing in less than half the time at 3.8 seconds.  Which is comparable to a Corvette Z06.  It’s got about the same 1/4 mile time, too.  And since not many people are driving their Corvettes around like bats out of hell, I don’t have to worry very much about whether I’m going to be able to get in the lane I want to get in out of a red light.

Granted, I’m not going to blow the wheels off a Suzuki Hayabusa that hits 60 mph a full second quicker (and in first gear, no less), but I’m too old and wise for a bike like that now, remember?

That Stratoliner is actually fast enough to widen the eyes of anybody who doesn’t have a Hayabusa or one of the very, very few highest of the high performance sport bikes that compete with it.  And I don’t have to curl myself up into a pretzel doing it, either.

V-twin cruisers and sport bikes make their power in different ways.  Sport bikes produce a horsepower-to-weight ratio that defies belief; cruisers produce gobs of torque.  The difference is an inline sport bike engine that was designed to be wound up to nearly 10,000 rpm before attaining max power versus a v-twin cruiser engine that produces its maximum power at (in the case of the Stratoliner) between 2,300 and 4,500 rpm.

In other words, the v-twin power is available immediately.  Everything is down low where you want it most.  More importantly, it’s available to where riders want it in real-world driving conditions as opposed to a racing track.

When I’m on the freeway doing 70 mph, I’m running at about 2,600 rpm whether the wind is in my face or at my back.  If I want to pass somebody, I’m right there in my max power range.  And I don’t have to wind up nothin’.  That’s how 124 ft-lbs of torque works.

V-twins are not bikes for guys who want to fly at triple digit mph.  Because they weren’t built with race tracks in mind.  But they do their job quite well under ridiculous speeds.  And they most certainly aren’t dogs out of a red light if a manufacturer doesn’t want them to be.

It’s a different concept.  It’s a luxury car versus a sports car.  Only my Strat is a performance luxury car.  It has a big, high compression engine with a giant 100mm x 118mm bore and stroke, a twin-bore fuel-injection system with 43mm throttle bodies and 12-hole injector nozzles, high performance spec twin, crankcase-mounted, high-lift cams, huge 100mm bore ceramic composite-plated cylinders and an exhaust system (borrowed from the sport bikes) featuring a valve that stays closed at lower rpm to maximize torque that opens at higher rpm to maximize horsepower.

The young bucks who race around on the sport bikes ARE out to impress; that’s just what young bucks do.  They’re like the actual young bucks in nature who run into each other with their horns at high speed.  I’m not knocking them; it’s what I did when I was a young buck, after all.  When I was 20 and some old turd tried to tell me what a “real” motorcycle was and then started droning on about Harleys, I’m sure my eyes glazed over and my brains jumped out of my ear about two seconds into the lecture.

Now, that young buck will eat my lunch on every curve on every curvy road on any sport bike.  But I’ll let him: I’ve been down and dang did it ever hurt.  When it comes to hairpin curves I’m just in a lot less of a hurry to injure myself than I used to be.  Where I live there’s a better than even chance that there will be sand or gravel at the intersections.  And strawberries are much tastier when eaten than they are when worn on your body.  I take my turns slow and stately these days.  On a bike that makes slow and stately look good.

I’m at that point in life where I’d rather get somewhere in style and comfort than race around like the brave fool.

I love my chrome.  I love my smooth ride.  I love my floor boards.  I love the heel shifter and the fact that every gear is “down” for me as opposed to first gear being down and the rest being up.  I love being able to put my boots up and lean back into my back rest and just cruise down the road all day long.  And if some kid goes flying by me at twice the legal limit in a body posture that would cause my lower back to miserably die in about half an hour, I just chuckle and say a biker’s prayer for that young buck and keep on enjoying the buzz of my ride.  I’m cruising down the road at 70 or 75 and I’m right in my power band and I’m getting 42 mpg, and I’m just as happy as a clam in its shell.

The seats on cruisers were designed around the concept of comfort, of being able to accommodate the butt of somebody who isn’t one of those incredibly gaunt fashion models.  The cruisers were designed around the concept of a comfortable riding position.  Not even the sport touring bikes match them for pure comfort.

Believe me, you start to care about stuff like that as you age out of being young and dumb.

I used to mock Harley guys for caring all about style and nothing about performance.  And preferring comfort to sheer omygod speed?  Heresy!!!  But I now realize that “performance” and speed for the most part are about bragging rights as much as they are about anything else.  My bike can go 180 mph, someone might tell me.  And I’m thinking, “And just where in the world do you plan to actually DO that?  And while we’re talking about it, WHY do you want to do that?  Were you tossed in the air and dropped on your head too many times as a baby or something?”  What I’m saying is Harley guys who love the way their bikes look and sound and feel don’t have to apologize to guys who boast about quarter-mile times and G-force turns.  And as you get a little older and a little wiser, you tend to care a lot more about the former and a lot less about the latter.

Whatever floats your boat.  Whatever rocks your world.  Knowhatimean?

Having ragged on Harleys a fair bit, let me say this about them: they do what they were intended to do every bit as well as the sport bikes do what they were intended to do.

Harley-Davidson has a long-term view of motorcycling.  They are engaged in all kinds of venues to just introduce people to motorcycles and get them to start riding, whether they’re riding Harleys or even whether they’re riding the competition.  And the reason they do that is that they believe that everybody who rides will ultimately choose to ride a Harley.

I now understand why they’re right.  You can’t beat Harleys for style, even if you can beat them in every other way.  There just comes a point when you’re drawn to the style and image of a beautiful machine.  Harleys are all about “the ride” when you have grown up enough to stop racing and start cruising.

My next bike probably won’t be a Harley (although it might be).  There’s still enough “kid” in me that I want that big bore performance.  But at some point – having finally personally experienced a v-twin motorcycle – I can easily imagine myself choosing a Harley.  I can (gasp!) even imagine myself choosing a full dress tourer.  My v-twin has opened up the entire world of motorcycling to me in a way that thinking in sport bike performance terms never would have done for me.

A few pictures of my Strat:

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The Yamaha team that designed the Stratoliner and Roadliner didn’t set out to “clone” Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  Rather, they went back to a previous era that was still uniquely American.  They went back to the pre-Harley 1920s/1930s “streamliner” art deco style that influenced art and found its way into both architectural and automotive designs.  The result is a long, streamlined, elongated stylized look found in the Roadliner’s 102″ (a full 7″ longer than similar class Harleys) length and its swooping stance.  At the same time, it most definitely DOES copy Harley in that it was an attempt to wed style and art with motorcycling function – which has always been the design philosophy at the core of Harley-Davidson’s appeal.

Motorcycles are just fun.  When you can look down and see the road rushing past beneath your feet, when you don’t have to roll down a window to experience real, actual air, when you feel the freedom and rush that only a bike can provide, you start to get it.  If it’s got two wheels, I’ll ride it and I’ll have a blast riding it.  And if I don’t have the soul of a Harley rider in me yet, suffice it to say I’m beginning to grow one.

An Ambassador And Three Americans Died, Obama Lied

There is simply no longer any question that Barack Obama personally and the entire Obama administration are DOCUMENTED LIARS over their cover-up attempt to hide their debacle at Benghazi.

The first three sentences alone prove that Barack Hussein Obama is a liar.  Two weeks AFTER the attack he was trying to claim that we didn’t know what happened and we’re investigating.  YOU KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED, YOU LIAR:

White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: emails
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

MISSIVES FROM LIBYA

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”

The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”

A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jim Loney)

It is now official testimony from the State Department: THERE WAS NO VIDEO PROTEST OUTSIDE THE CONSULATE PRIOR TO THE ATTACK.  And yet Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jay Carney and Susan Rice lied lied lied lied lied like the weasels they are for days and even for weeks.

You’ve got to understand: Republicans like Senator John McCain – and of course like MITT ROMNEY – were saying that this was a giant lie from about hour one of day one.

We also know that Obama was notified when he still very possibly had time to act to to save Ambassador Stevens’ and the other three Americans’ lives AND REFUSED TO DO ANYTHING.

Meanwhile the entire Obama administration foreign policy that was based on the utter foolish dumbass lie that killing one man (bin Laden) somehow won the war on terror is melting down all over the world.

It’s time to get a new president.  And then put the last one along with most of his entire damn administration in prison the way he tried to put the CIA heroes who successfully interrogated the al Qaeda terrorists.

Documents Continue To Prove What Lying Weasels Obama And His Toxic Administration Are In The Libya Attack

Barack Obama claimed that he referred to the Libya attack as an “act of terror” in a short speech he gave at the Rose Garden just before he flew off to do a fundraiser in Las Vegas.  It’s bullcrap, of course (and if memory serves, George W. Bush did NOT run off to do a fundraiser the day after the previous 9/11 attack), and as I document here, Obama HIMSELF - not to mention his entire administration – proves that he did NOT call the Libya attack a terrorist attack.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s say Obama DID call the worst terrorist attack on American soil since that last devastating 9/11 attack that the more recent one was timed to mock “an act of terror.”  You know, just before jetting off to do a fundraiser.  Let’s say that Obama DID call it an act of terror.  Then the jackass-in-chief instructed his Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice to go to all five major network political programs and repeatedly say the exact opposite.  And then Obama sent out his press secretary Jay Carney to say the exact opposite.  And then he sent out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say the exact opposite.  And then two weeks later after being asked on both The View and on Univision whether it was a terrorist attack Obama refused to answer the question that Obama now says he’d actually already answered and instead said, “We’re still investigating.”  As bizarre and as dishonest as that is, let’s say that Obama actually DID call the attack on sovereign US territory in Libya an “act of terror.”

How in the hell would that excuse him for his abject failure of leadership that resulted in the murder of the first United States ambassador since Jimmy Carter was screwing up the universe way back in 1979?  And just why the hell is it that two of the last three Democrat presidents have killed US ambassadors versus ZERO of the last three Republican presidents, anyway???

We now know for a fact that not only did murdered US Ambassador Chris Stevens ask for more security – only to have the inadequate security that he had CUT by Obama – but we now that in fact Ambassador Stevens was begging for more security at least forty days before his murder.  And in fact for SEVEN MONTHS prior to this attack security professionals were telling Obama there was a very big problem in Benghazi:

Documents show Stevens worried about Libya security threats, Al Qaeda before consulate attack
By James Rosen
Published October 19, 2012
FoxNews.com

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents — released Friday by  a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more  answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack – slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris  Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded  alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and  violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died.

On Sept. 11 — the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed — the  ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled “sensitive,” in which he noted  “growing problems with security” in Benghazi and “growing frustration” on the  part of local residents with Libyan police and security forces.  These  forces the ambassador characterized as “too weak to keep the country secure.”

In the document, Stevens also cited a meeting he had held two days earlier  with local militia commanders.  These men boasted to Stevens of exercising  “control” over the Libyan Armed Forces, and threatened that if the U.S.-backed  candidate for prime minister were to prevail in Libya’s internal political  jockeying, “they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi.”

Roughly a month earlier, Stevens had signed a two-page cable, also labeled  “sensitive,” that he entitled “The Guns of August: Security in Eastern Libya.”  Writing on Aug. 8, the ambassador noted that in just a few months’ time,  “Benghazi has moved from trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent  incidents has dominated the political landscape.” He added, “The individual  incidents have been organized,” a function of “the security vacuum that a  diverse group of independent actors are exploiting for their own purposes.”

“Islamist extremists are able to attack the Red Cross with relative  impunity,” Stevens cabled. “What we have seen are not random crimes of  opportunity, but rather targeted and discriminate attacks.” His final comment on  the two-page document was: “Attackers are unlikely to be deterred until  authorities are at least as capable.”

By Sept. 4, Stevens’ aides were reporting back to Washington on the “strong  Revolutionary and Islamist sentiment” in the city.

Scarcely more than two months had passed since Stevens had notified the  Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and other agencies  about a “recent increase in violent incidents,” including “attacks against  western interests.” “Until the GOL (Government of Libya) is able to effectively  deal with these key issues,” Stevens wrote on June 25, “the violence is likely  to continue and worsen.”

After the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi had been damaged by an improvised  explosive device, earlier that month, Stevens had reported to his superiors that  an Islamist group had claimed credit for the attack, and in so doing, had  “described the attack as targeting the Christians supervising the management of  the consulate.”

“Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya,” the  ambassador wrote, adding that “the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times  flying over government buildings and training facilities …”

The documents also contain evidence that the State Department’s denials of  requests for enhanced security in Benghazi in the months leading up to the  attack may have contributed to the ability of the attackers to plan their  assault on the consulate and annex grounds without being detected.

“I’ve been placed in a very difficult spot,” said Eric A. Nordstrom, the  regional security officer who testified before a House hearing last week, in a  Feb. 12 email to a colleague, “when the ambassador (Gene Cretz, at that time)  that I need to support Benghazi but can’t direct MSD (a mobile security  detachment) there and been advised that DS (Diplomatic Security) isn’t going to  provide more than 3 agents over the long term.”

“DS is hesitant to devout (sic) resources and as I indicated previously, this  has severely hampered operations in Benghazi,” wrote Karen Keshap, a State  Department manager, to main State in Washington the day before. “That often  means that DS agents are there guarding a compound with 2 other DOS (Department  of State) personnel present.  That often also means that outreach and  reporting is non-existent.”

Earlier that day, Feb. 11, a colleague of Keshap’s, Shawn P. Crowley, had  apologized to her and other officials in an email for “being a broken record” on  the subject of inadequate security in Benghazi.  Crowley added: “(T)omorrow  Benghazi will be down to two (DS) agents. … This will leave us unable to do  any outreach to Libyan nationals … and we will be extremely limited in the  ability to obtain any useful information for reporting.”

These exchanges followed a dire report to top DS officials a few days earlier  from Nordstom.  In a Feb. 1 memorandum, the officer warned that “Al-Qaida  affiliated groups, including Al-Qaida In the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), and other  violent extremist groups are likely to take advantage of the ongoing political  turmoil in Libya.  The U.S. Government remains concerned that such  individuals and groups … may use Libya as a platform from which to conduct  attacks in the region.”

By Feb. 20, Nordstrom was noting the easy access that neighborhood militias  enjoyed to “military grade weapons, such as RPGs and vehicle mounted,  crew-served machine guns or AA weapons (23mm),” as well as “AK-47s, heavy  weapons, and vehicle mounted weapons.”

In the days leading up to Sept. 11, warnings came even from people outside  the State Department.  A Libyan women’s rights activist, Wafa Bugaighis,  confided to the Americans in Benghazi in mid-August: “For the first time since  the revolution, I am scared.”

The documents were released by two lawmakers who have been active in probing  the Benghazi case, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the chairman of the House  Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.   In a letter to President Obama, dated Oct. 19 and accompanied by the  documents, the lawmakers faulted the administration both for providing  inadequate security before Sept. 11, and for allegedly obfuscating the nature of  the events on Sept. 11.

“Multiple warnings about security threats were contained in Ambassador  Stevens’ own words in multiple cables sent to Washington, D.C., and were  manifested by two prior bombings of the Benghazi compound and an assassination  attempt on the British ambassador,” the congressmen wrote.  “For this  administration to assume that terrorists were not involved in the 9/11  anniversary attack would have required a willing suspension of disbelief.”

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, in response to the latest  documents: “An independent board is conducting a thorough review of the assault  on our post in Benghazi. Once we have the board’s comprehensive account of what  happened, findings and recommendations, we can fully address these matters.”

At the State Department briefing Friday, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declined  to comment on published reports alleging that an official working for the  Central Intelligence Agency had informed the Obama administration on Sept. 12  that the Benghazi murders were an act of terrorism.

Oh, yeah, that statement from the CIA station chief in Libya WITHIN HOURS OF THE ATTACK ON THE CONSULATE that it was IN FACT A TERRORIST ATTACK.  Keep in mind that Obama had instructed his administration to blame US intelligence for his administration’s lying to the American people for more than two weeks.  Note that the VERY FIRST SENTENCE utterly refutes the White House lies that were told to the American people over and over and over again:

CIA Found Militant Links A Day After Libya Attack By Kimberly Dozier – Associated Press     Friday, October 19, 2012

WASHINGTON — The CIA  station chief  in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of  last  month’s deadly attack on the U.S.  Consulate that there was evidence it  was carried out by militants, not a  spontaneous mob upset about an  American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet  Muhammad, U.S. officials  have told The Associated Press.

It is unclear who, if anyone, saw  the cable outside the CIA  at that point and how high up in the agency  the information went. The Obama  administration maintained publicly for a  week that the attack on the diplomatic  mission in Benghazi that killed  U.S. Ambassador Chris  Stevens and three other Americans was a result of  the mobs that staged  less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around  the 11th anniversary of the  9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Those  statements have become highly charged political fodder as the   presidential election approaches. A Republican-led House  committee  questioned State  Department officials for hours about what GOP  lawmakers  said was lax security at the consulate, given the growth of extremist   Islamic militants in North Africa.

And in their debate on Tuesday,  President Barack Obama and Republican  challenger Mitt Romney argued  over when Obama first said it was a terror  attack. In his Rose Garden  address the morning after the killings, Obama said, “No acts of terror  will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that  character  or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

But  Republicans say he was speaking generally and didn’t specifically call   the Benghazi attack a terror attack until weeks later, with the  president and  other key members of his administration referring at first  to the anti-Muslim  movie circulating on the Internet as a precipitating  event.

Now congressional intelligence committees are demanding  documents to show  what the spy agencies knew and when, before, during  and after the attacks.

The White House now says the attack   probably was carried out by an al Qaida-linked  group, with no public  demonstration beforehand. Secretary of State Hillary  RodhamClinton blamed the “fog of  war” for the early conflicting accounts.

The  officials who told the AP about the CIA  cable spoke anonymously because  they were not authorized to release such  information publicly.

Congressional  aides say they expect to get the documents by the end of this  week to  build a timeline of what the intelligence community knew and compare   that to what the White House was telling the  public about the attack.  That could give Romney ammunition to use in his  foreign policy debate  with Obama on Monday night.

The two U.S. officials said the CIA  station chief in Libya compiled intelligence  reports from eyewitnesses  within 24 hours of the assault on the consulate  that indicated militants  launched the violence, using the pretext of  demonstrations against U.S.  facilities in Egypt  against the film to cover their intent. The report  from the station chief was  written late Wednesday, Sept. 12, and reached  intelligence agencies in  Washington the next day, intelligence  officials said.

Yet, on Saturday of that week, briefing points  sent by the CIA  to Congress said “demonstrations in Benghazi  were  spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S.  Embassy in Cairo and  evolved into a direct assault.”

The briefing points, obtained by  the AP, added: “There are indications that  extremists participated in  the violent demonstrations” but did not mention  eyewitness accounts that  blamed militants alone.

Such raw intelligence reports by the CIA  on the ground would normally be sent first to analysts at the  headquarters in  Langley, Va., for vetting and comparing against other  intelligence derived from  eavesdropping drones and satellite images.  Only then would such intelligence  generally be shared with the White  House and  later, Congress, a process that can take hours,  or days if the  intelligence is coming from only one or two sources who may or  may not  be trusted.

U.S. intelligence officials say in  this case the delay  was due in part to the time it took to analyze various  conflicting  accounts. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because  he  wasn’t authorized to discuss the incident publicly, explained that “it  was  clear a group of people gathered that evening” in Benghazi, but that  the early  question was “whether extremists took over a crowd or they  were the crowd,” and  it took until the following week to figure that  out.

But that explanation has been met with concern in Congress, from both political parties.

“I  think what happened was the director of intelligence, who is a very  good  individual, put out some speaking points on the initial  intelligence  assessment,” said Senate intelligence committee chair  Dianne Feinstein,  D-Calif., in an interview with local news channel CBS 5  in California this  week. “I think that was possibly a mistake.”

“The  early sense from the intelligence community differs from what we are   hearing now,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. “It ended up being  pretty far  afield, so we want to figure out why … though we don’t want  to deter the  intelligence community from sharing their best first  impressions” after such  events in the future.

“The intelligence  briefings we got a week to 10 days after were consistent  with what the  administration was saying,” said Rep. William Thornberry,  R-Texas, a  member of the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees.   Thornberry would not confirm the existence of the early CIA  report but  voiced skepticism over how sure intelligence officials, including CIA  Director David Petraeus, seemed of their original  account when they  briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“How could they be so certain  immediately after such events, I just don’t  know,” he said. “That raises  suspicions that there was political  motivation.”

National  Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declined comment. The  Office of  the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to requests for  comment.

Two officials who witnessed Petraeus‘ closed-door  testimony to lawmakers in the week after the attack said that  during  questioning he acknowledged that there were some intelligence analysts   who disagreed with the conclusion that a mob angry over the video had  initiated  the violence. But those officials said Petraeus did not  mention the CIA’s  early eyewitness reports. He did warn legislators that  the account could change  as more intelligence was uncovered, they said,  speaking on condition of  anonymity because the hearing was closed.

Beyond  the question of what was known immediately after the attack, it’s  also  proving difficult to pinpoint those who set the fire that apparently   killed Stevens and his communications aide  or launched the mortars that  killed two ex-Navy SEALs who were working as  contract security guards at  a fallback location. That delay is prompting  lawmakers to question  whether the intelligence community has the resources it  needs to  investigate this attack in particular or to wage the larger fight   against al-Qaida in Libya or across Africa.

Intelligence officials  say the leading suspected culprit is a local Benghazi  militia, Ansar  al-Shariah. The group denies responsibility for the attack but  is known  to have ties to a leading African terror group, al-Qaida  in the Islamic  Maghreb. Some of its leaders and fighters were spotted by Libyan  locals  at the consulate during the  violence, and intelligence intercepts show  the militants were in contact with  AQIM militants before and after the  attack, one U.S.  intelligence official said.

But U.S. intelligence  has not been  able to match those reported sightings with the faces of  attackers caught on  security camera recordings during the attack, since  many U.S.  intelligence agents were pulled out of Benghazi in the  aftermath of the  violence, the two U.S. intelligence  officials said.

Nor  have they found proof to back up their suspicion that the attack was   preplanned, as indicated by the military-style tactics the attackers  used,  setting up a perimeter of roadblocks around the consulate and the  backup compounds, then  attacking the main entrance to distract, while  sending a larger force to  assault the rear.

Clear-cut answers may  prove elusive because such an attack is not hard to  bring about  relatively swiftly with little preplanning or coordination in a   post-revolutionary country awash with weapons, where the government is  so new  it still relies on armed militants to keep the peace. Plus, the  location of  U.S. diplomat enclaves is an open secret for the locals.

You had to be a brain-dead dumbass (i.e., even DUMBER than a regular garden variety dumbass) not to immediately conclude that an murderous attack from three sides utilizing heavy weapons on the anniversary of 9/11 was NOT a planned terrorist attack.  And there is absolutely zero question that the White House did not want to acknowledge the disaster that they had just presided over, which is why they lied their asses off and are STILL lying their asses off.

The Watergate cover-up led to President Nixon resigning from office.  And this is so much worse than Watergate it isn’t even funny.

I am preserving here another report from ABC on the damning Stevens memos that indict and convict Barack Obama and his entire administration:

Oct 19, 2012 3:22pm
Documents Back Up Claims of Requests for Greater Security in Benghazi
By Jake Tapper

Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have released new documents backing up claims by security personnel previously station in Libya that there was a shortage of security personnel in Benghazi.

The documents contain previously unreleased cables from Ambassador Stevens and his staff reflecting concerns about safety in the country.

The U.S. State Department did not have an immediate comment.

One signed by Stevens and titled “LIBYA’S FRAGILE SECURITY DETERIORIATES AS TRIBAL RIVALRIES, POWER PLAYS AND EXTREMISM INTENSIFY,” dated June 25, 2012, assess the increase in violence. ”From April to June, Libya also witnesses an increase in attacks targeting international organizations and foreign interests,” Stevens wrote, describing attacks on a United Nations official in Benghazi, International Committee for the Red Cross buildings in Benghazi and Misrata, and IED at the mission in Benghazi, and RPG fired at the British Ambassador’s convoy, and an attack on the consulate of Tunisia.

A Libyan government national security official told Stevens “that the attacks were the work of extremists who are opposed to western influence in Libya. A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al-Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities in Derna,” a village to the east in Benghazi. Other contacts disagreed with that assessment, however.

Another cable from Stevens, titled “The Guns of August; security in eastern Libya” and dated August 8, 2012, states “Since the eve of the (July) elections, Benghazi has moved from trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape during the Ramadan holiday.” Stevens describes the incidents as “organized, but this is not an organized campaign.” The Supreme Security Council, the interim security force, he says, “has not coalesced into a stabilizing force and provides little deterrence.”

Stevens wrote that the people of Benghazi want a security apparatus but “inherently fear abuse by the same authorities. This debate, playing out daily in Benghazi, has created the security vacuum that a diverse group of independent actors are exploiting for their own purposes.”

A cable signed by Stevens on the day of his murder, September 11, described a meeting with the Acting Principal Officer of the Supreme Security Council in Benghazi, commander Fawzi Younis, who “expressed growing frustration with police and security forces (who were too weak to keep the country secure)…”

The documents also included an “ACTION MEMO” for Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy dated December 27, 2011, and written by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. With the subject line: “Future of Operations in Benghazi, Libya,” the memo states: “With the full complement of five Special Agents, our permanent presence would include eight U.S. direct hire employees.”

This would seem to suggest that Undersecretary Kennedy had approved a plan for five permanent security agents in Benghazi, but that never happened. It should be noted that there were ultimately a total of five Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi that night since there were two stationed at the Benghazi compound, and three escorted Ambassador Chris Stevens to the compound.

In a letter to President Obama, House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chair of the Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations, note the Obama administration response that “two extra DS agents would have made no difference. This misses the point. These agents would have provided the added cover to fully evacuate all personnel from the compound – not just those who survived.”

One of the key conversations in the documents begins on February 11, at 5:29 pm, when Shawn Crowley, a foreign service officer at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, writes: “Apologies for being a broken record, but beginning tomorrow Benghazi will be down to two agents…We have no drivers and new local guard contract employees have no experience driving armored vehicles…”

On February 11, 1:13 pm, Regional Security Officer of the Libyan Embassy Eric Nordstrom emails State Department officials, cc-ing then-Ambassador Gene Cretz, saying he’ll try to send personnel from the Security Support Team to Benghazi. “I’ll speak with our SST personnel to se if they can free up 1 or 2 bodies for Benghazi….While the status of Benghazi remains undefined, DS” – Diplomatic Security – “is hesitant to devout (sic) resources and as I indicated previously, this has severely hampered operations in Benghazi. That often means that DS agents are there guarding a compound with 2 other DOS personnel present. That often means that outreach and reporting is non-existent.”

Norstrom notes that the British have “a 5 person team assigned to just their head of mission, so they have made a commitment to maintain a larger presence in Benghazi than the USG,” the U.S. government.

At 8:53 pm. James Bacigalupo, the Regional Director Near East Asia Bureau of Diplomatic Security DSS for the State Department, emails Nordstrom, “Call me, I am surprised at your statement that ‘DS is hesitant to devote resources as I (you) have indicated previously that has severely limited operations in Benghazi.’”

Norstrom responds on Sunday, February 12: 8:58 pm “we have had multiple times previously had no movements in Benghazi because we had only 2 DS agents on the ground. Havingno movements for upwards for 10 days severely limits operations in Benghazi. I’ve been placed in a very difficult spot when the Ambassador tells me that I need to support Benghazi but can’t direct MSD” – Mobile Security Detachment – ” there and been advised that DS isn’t going to provide more than 3 DS agents over the long term.”

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com

Nordstrom adds at 9:00 pm: “the last time we had only 2 agents at post, suspending outside movements for approximately 10 days.”

Meanwhile, security on the ground became increasingly precarious.

A March 2012 memo (mistakenly cited as 2011) from the Research & Information Support Center titled “Progress Elusive in Libya,” based on open-source reporting, states that in late December 2011 “reports indicated that al-Qa’ida leadership in Pakistan had sent ‘experienced jihadists to Libya to build a new base of operations in the country. Between May and December 2011, one of these jihadists had recruited 200 fighters in the eastern part of the country. Documents seized in Iraq indicate that many foreign fighters who participated in the Iraqi insurgency hailed from eastern Libya. This small batch of fighters would have been dealt with quickly by a central authority, were it in place. Until a stronger national army or guard force is developed, rural Libya will remain fertile territory for terrorist groups such as al-Qai’da in the Islamic Maghreb.”

The committee also released some photographs of the Benghazi compound, before and after the attack.

Issa and Chaffetz say they’ve “been told repeatedly” that the Obama administration not only “repeatedly reject(ed) requests for increased security despite escalating violence, but it also systematically decreased existing security to dangerous and ineffective levels,” and did so “to effectuate a policy of ‘normalization’ in Libya after the conclusion of its civil war.”

This “normalization,” the GOP congressman write, “appeared to have been aimed at conveying the impression that the situation in Libya was getting better, not worse. The administration’s decision to normalize was the basis for systematically withdrawing security personnel and equipment – including a much-needed DC-3 aircraft – without taking into account the reality on the ground. In an interview with Mr. Nordstrom, he maintained that the State Department routinely made decisions about security in early 2012 without first consulting him.” The congressmen submit ten questions for the president to answer.

-Jake Tapper

.

As Obama’s Foreign Policy Completely Melts Down Two Months Before Election, Desperate Mainstream Media Propagandists Gang Up To Slander Romney Statement

The most blatant way the mainstream media engages in bias is their answer to the question, “What is news?”  Because their answer INVARIABLY undermines conservatives and strives to support liberals.

As an example, what was the story two days ago?  Was the story about a planned, coordinated attack on the US consulate in Libya that resulted in four Americans (including the United States Ambassador) being murdered?  Was the story about the fact that Obama had information about the attack plans on the US Consulate in Libya for 48 hours and did NOTHING? Was the story about a coordinated mob of AstroTurf Muslims overrunning the United States Embassy in Cairo, Egypt while Egyptian security forces conveniently vanished, with the United States flag torn down and desecrated and replaced with a flag that al Qaeda has flown?  Was the story about how on Obama’s watch and just two months before he comes up for reelection the name “Osama bin Laden” is now written on the United States Embassy entrance or how under Obama that entrance now states, “There is no God but Allah”?  Nope.  The media says that wasn’t the story.

Obama demagogued Mitt Romney for “shooting and then aiming.”  In an eery repeat of Jimmy Carter before the American people fired his incompetent ass.  Read this to see HOW eerily similar Obama is to the failed Jimmy Carter.

Do you know what they say the story was?

Let’s look at what all the journalists from all the various media outlets coordinated with one another to make sure that Mitt Romney would get attacked no matter who he picked (we know know the CBS reporter was Jan Crawford and she was sharpening knives with NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro):

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: …pointing out that the Republicans… *unintelligible* …Obama….

CBS REPORTER: That’s the question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: *unintelligible*

CBS REPORTER: Yeah that’s the question. I would just say do you regret your question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Your question? Your statement?

CBS REPORTER: I mean your statement. Not even the tone, because then he can go off on…

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And then if he does, if we can just follow up and say ‘but this morning your answer is continuing to sound…’ – *becomes unintelligble*

CBS REPORTER: You can’t say that..

**Later**

CBS REPORTER: I’m just trying to make sure that we’re just talking about, no matter who he calls on we’re covered on the one question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you stand by your statement or regret your statement?

And so, sure enough, the story, the “news”, was NOT about the meltdown of Obama’s entire foreign policy which had famously even been criticized by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden during the 2008 Democrat primary race.  The ”news” was NOT that for more than nine hours the ONLY official American statement coming from the United States government was this:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

 Now, that statement is so gutless, so cowardly, and frankly so un-American that it is beyond unreal.  And THAT was the ONLY official statement for half a damn day after it was issued.  Note that it literally agrees with the people who are attacking American soil by climbing over the walls of our embassy and tearing down our flag and burning it.  Note that it decries not the despicable ACT-OF-WAR actions of the Egyptians but rather an American who is practicing his constitutionally (at least up to now) right to free speech.

I note that that official statement from the US Embassy in Cairo was so despicable that it has since been taken down “like it never even happened.”  The Daily Caller, in citing the statement by the embassy, provides the official link.  The Obama cowards who run the government have now scrubbed that link so the statement is no longer officially available.  Nothin’ to see here, folks.  Because under Obama the 1984 “Ministry of Truth” is now itself a truth.  That’s how despicable that statement was.

The “news” was not about the fact that Obama denounced the same statement that had motivated Mitt Romney to come out as the White House finally – FINALLY!!! – issued a statement saying that the Embassy had not cleared the statement before issuing it.

I provide the timeline in an article here that itself has PLENTY to slam about Obama’s pathetic failure.  At the time Romney spoke the embassy statement above was the only official US government statement.  As you can see by looking at the timeline, the initial embassy statement came out around noon EST, and there had been no other statement other than a subsequent statement from the embassy confirming its initial gutless statement documented above.  Romney’s statement came out at 10:25 pm EST; Obama disavowed that embassy statement – 11 hours after it had been issued – at 11:04 pm EST.  And then at 12:11 AM EST the very same Obama who disavowed the statement that Romney attacked and the very same Obama who purged the despicable thing from the internet has the tiny little balls to demonize Mitt Romney for being the first man who wants to be president to repudiate it.

So Mitt Romney comes out and attacks a despicable, weak, pathologically gutless statement that had been the ONLY official statement for half a day while Obama continued to campaign.  And the mainstream media want to make the story – the “news” - about Mitt Romney being the only man to show any kind of presidential leadership whatsoever.  Particularly given that since Romney made the statement, his prescience has only been confirmed.  Because the disaster that he correctly saw on Tuesday is FAR, FAR worse than any of these insipid liberal turds thought it was.  We’ve got the murder of an American ambassador. 

Now, when you consider the fact that an AMERICAN AMBASSADOR WAS MURDERED IN A PLANNED ATTACK, does that statement from the United States Embassy in Cairo look strong or does it look WEAK????  Do you know that information and STILL think that we ought to be criticizing an American citizen for exercising his right to make a stupid Youtube video or do you think that maybe some outrage to be directed at the murderers of our ambassador???

As stated, we now know that the Youtube film had NOTHING to do with the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya where our ambassador and four other Americans were murdered.  We now know that what happened was a deliberate, planned, carefully coordinated attack timed to correspond with the 9/11 anniversary that employed the AstroTurf mob as a diversion.  And we now know that Libyan government officials were complicit in the murder of the US ambassador and literally told the murderers where to find him after he relocated to escape the compound.

Does that development make the embassy statement that Romney rightly attacked look bolder, or does that development make it look all the more gutless and cowardly???  Which one???

For the mainstream media to try to make the story about Mitt Romney – who again exercised LEADERSHIP – in attacking the utterly indefensible – is the most blatant and most snivelling and most desperate act of media propaganda that I have ever seen.  And you can search over my blog and see that I’ve documented a BUNCH of media propaganda.

This was Mitt Romney’s statement on a statement from the US Embassy in Cairo that became official Obama policy by his sheer failure to issue anything to replace it with:

“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

Now, who should have come out and issued a statement immediately denouncing that gutless, weak, frankly un-American statement from the US Embassy in Cairo?  It should have been the president.

But instead it was Mitt Romney who exercised presidential leadership.  But the media chose to attack him in a coordinated “gotcha” moment with the pretense and pretext that somehow unlike candidate Obama when HE was running for president Romney doesn’t have the right to criticize the president’s foreign policy.  THAT is what the media chose to focus on to make “the news.”

Did they make the news about the fact that Obama chose to continue campaigning as if nothing had happened?

Obama’s Going to Las Vegas
By Fred Lucas
September 12, 2012  

(Update: In a second schedule update issued around 10:42 a.m. on Wednesday, the White House indicated that President Obama would continue with his campaign trip to Las Vegas after issuing a statement on events in Libya and Egypt in the Rose Garden.

The only change in the updated schedule is this: “Shortly after (the Rose Garden statement), the President and Secretary Clinton will visit the State Department in Washington, DC. This visit is closed press.” The updated schedule still states that “In the afternoon, the President will depart the White House en route Las Vegas, Nevada.”)
 
(CNSNews.com) – On the day after the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi, the White House on Wednesday morning released a schedule showing that President Obama would continue with his planned campaign trip to Las Vegas.
 
Before he leaves, the schedule indicated, Obama will “deliver a statement” in the White House Rose Garden at 10:35 a.m., the White House said.

As bad as that is, even THAT story turns out to fail to reflect just how cynical and disinterested Obama is in the unfolding disaster involving our embassies/consulates in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and all across the Middle East.  Because it turns out that Obama chose to skp the intelligence briefing, too:

Unreal: On Day Following Libya Assassinations, Obama Skips Another Intel Briefing
Guy Benson, Political Editor, Townhall.com
Sep 13, 2012 03:11 PM EST

Is anyone surprised by this revelation? Our Commander Campaigner-in-Chief has made his priorities crystal clear:

How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States. According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 — a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department — as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.

On Monday the same Washington Post columnist, Marc Thiessen, reported that the president has missed 62 percent of his daily in-person intel briefings in 2011 and 2012. President Bush almost never missed a briefing after 9/11. I recognize that a president’s schedule is extremely demanding, especially in the teeth of a campaign, so passing on these meetings occasionally would be understandable. I cannot, however, fathom how the president could justify canceling and not re-scheduling his intelligence briefing the day after an active US Ambassador was murdered in the line of duty, and as an international crisis continues to spread. The White House offers a two-fold defense on this: First, make snide remarks about President Bush, then insist that Obama is so sophisticated that he doesn’t need experts to brief him:

As the article title says, this is positively UN-FREAKING-REAL. 

Why isn’t THAT the “news”???  Other than the fact that this is the most propagandistic media since Joseph Goebbels ran the “news” for his buddy Adolf???

Here are some MORE “Why isn’t THAT ‘news’” questions:

Why isn’t it “news” that NO Marines were guarding the United States Consulate in Libya where US Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT THERE WERE DOCUMENTED AND CREDIBLE THREATS??? 

Why isn’t it “news” that Obama’s and Hilary Clinton’s State Department had forbidden the Marines at the United States Embassy in Cairo, Egypt from carrying live ammunition – again, in spite of documented and credible threats???

Why isn’t it “news” that due to Obama’s pathetic failure to protect American assets in spite of documented and credible threats, a US Ambassador was raped BEFORE being murdered???

Why isn’t it “news” that the safe house that the ambassador fled to devoid of any Marine guard???  Not that it would have mattered if they couldn’t have live ammo.

Whyisn’t it “news” that Egypt warned Obama on September 4 of an attack against the US Embassy???

Why isn’t it “news” that Obama said that Egypt – a country that had been an ally for going on forty damn years before Obama toppled Mubarak – was no longer a US ally?

President Obama says the U.S. would no longer consider the Egyptian government an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.”

Why isn’t it “news” that the US State Department almost immediately issued a correction saying the president of the United States is an idiot fool and that yes, Egypt is in fact contrary to what the dumbass in chief said, an “ally.”

(CNSNews.com) – State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Egypt remains a U.S. ally, despite a statement from the White House that the country is not an ally.

“Yes,” Nuland said during a news conference Thursday, when asked if Egypt was still a U.S. ally.

Why isn’t it news that the Obama Administration frantically tried to put their idiot president’s babbling tongue back into his fool head by doing their own blathering and saying:

“‘Ally’ is a legal term of art.”

The distinction by the White House was so byzantine in trying to argue that Obama WAS TECHNICALLY NOT AN IDIOT that their own language would rule out ISRAEL as an ally:

As Politico’s Byron Tau points out, that would mean other designated major non-NATO allies — including Israel — aren’t technically “allies,” at least according to Obama’s “legal term of art” definition. Complicating matters further is the fact that the term “ally” is in the title of the designation.

Which makes the entire White House idiots.

Why isn’t the Obama acts of dhimmitude (his apologize for America tour, his bowing down before the King of Saudi Arabia, and his increasing the payment to Egypt to $2 billion a year AFTER that country elects the Muslim Brotherhood, and his refusing to cut off that aid even as they openly piss on America “news”???

The MSM had over ten minutes of “coverage” on the “wrongness” of Mitt Romney’s statement versus 20 seconds of “analysis” of Obama’s Middle East policy, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center reported last night on Hannity.  It is beyond amazing.

The US embassies in Egypt, in Libya, in Yemen, and in much of the Arab world were well-known to be particularly at risk during the period around the 9/11 anniversary.  But Obama was too damn busy campaigning to protect them.  He was too damn busy campaigning to bother to show up at critical intelligence briefings after they were attacked.  We find that Obama was instrumental in the undermining and overthrow of American ally Hosni Mubarak and that he stupidly declared first that the Muslim Brotherhood would not take over and later that it would not be a bad thing that they had.  Which is to say that the REAL “news” is that Obama should be wearing this ensuing disaster like an albatross around his skinny little weasel neck.

THAT would certainly be the story if George Bush or any Republican were president.  And it would be the story if the mainstream media hadn’t become a pathologically dishonest propaganda machine.

While all this is going on, Obama has refused to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu – and then lied about refusing to meet with him – during a period when Israel is just about to be forced to attack Iran because Obama failed to deal with their nuclear program in any way, shape or form.

I remember well when Obama was constantly demonizing Bush as “the bogeyman” on the one hand and constantly promising that under his messiahship there would be “a new beginning” on the other.  Obama was going to make our enemies love us with his lofty words by repudiating the Bush doctrine of confrontation through strength against America’s enemies.  It’s past time to ask as we look at the entire world erupt into flames how that messianic Obama doctrine is working.  It sure doesn’t seem like it to me.

Yes, Being A Democrat Pretty Much Means Being A Vicious Union Fascist Bully By Proxy

We’re hearing about just how vile the teachers union is in Chicago.  But it isn’t just there that unions and in particular teachers unions are evil; it is pretty much anywhere you can shake a stick.

Check out the action in Colorado.

Quote: “‘Our teachers spend lots of time on stopping bullying in schools,’ Stagr wrote. ‘Well, this group could have taught a class in HOW TO BULLY.’”

Quote: “One of the speakers escorted from the meeting reflected on the difficulty of finding a resolution going forward. ‘The tragedy is that most of the protesters never heard the board speak that night,” Hein said. “If we can’t have a dialogue, I’m not sure how we improve things for students.’”

Conclusion: They ARE bullies.  And what we are seeing all over the damn country is that they couldn’t care LESS about improving things for the students.

DeGROW: CO security officials protect parents from union protesters
By Watchdog Staff  /   September 11, 2012
By Ben DeGrow | Special to Colorado Watchdog

Last Wednesday’s Adams 12 School Board meeting packed the house with union protesters, while security officers escorted three residents from the boardroom to their vehicles to ensure their protection.

The offense? Two of the residents openly and respectfully took exception with the District Twelve Educators Association’s loudly projected point of view concerning the board’s proposal to balance the budget. Teacher pension contributions are being increased to align with other employee groups, resulting in a net pay reduction of 1.5 percent.

Adams 12 is Colorado’s fifth largest school district, with nearly 43,000 students enrolled last year. DTEA is one of the larger affiliates of the Colorado Education Association, which reports having lost roughly 8 percent of its membership in the past two years.

Nearly 400 teachers — including many from six other area school districts — showed up at Wednesday’s board meeting to protest the suburban Denver board’s decision. The school board made the move when adopting the new budget June 20. On Aug. 24, DTEA distributed a flier through its building representatives alerting members of the decision.

Several pro-union speakers provided public comments to applause from the crowd, claiming the board had violated the collective-bargaining agreement.

But two other attendees rose to offer a different view.

District taxpayer Joseph Hein, who has attended numerous board meetings this year, mentioned the extra burdens parents have taken from recent cuts made to transportation and middle school sports. He then gently urged the District 12 teachers in attendance to listen carefully to the board’s response. “You guys are part of the solution, as well,” he said, while union members waved signs from the crowd.

Sara Colburn, mother of three Adams 12 students, also pleaded with those in attendance. “You need to realize that you are not the only people hurting right now. I guarantee you that families have made many more sacrifices than you have,” she said, prompting most of the union members in the crowd to file out of the boardroom — some booing, many clapping rhythmically — as she concluded her remarks.

“We sat there and we listened to what they had to say,” Colburn later explained. “As soon as they heard something they didn’t like or didn’t agree with, I guess they felt like they didn’t owe me the same courtesy.”

Afterward, the school district’s head of security approached the speakers out of concern for their safety. “(He) told me he thought it probably would be a good idea if he took us to our cars,” said Colburn. “He said all those people that had cleared out were outside the front doors waiting for us.”

The security officer escorted Colburn and her husband through a separate exit to the back of the building, where he then drove them to their vehicle in the main parking lot. Plain-clothes security officers walked Hein to his car, out of the same concern.

“I was taken aback by the intensity of the protest,” Hein later said. “It was a bit disturbing to be escorted out of the building for my protection.”

Another Adams 12 parent, Patty Stagr, sent a note to the superintendent and school board after the meeting indicating she opted not to speak on behalf of taxpayers because she felt “intimidated by the aggressive nature of” union protesters making displays of “disrespect.” She refused to answer one teacher’s inquiry into where her children attend school.

“Our teachers spend lots of time on stopping bullying in schools,” Stagr wrote. “Well, this group could have taught a class in HOW TO BULLY.”

These accounts, many of which are directly supported by video evidence, contradict the report of one DTEA official quoted by local news reporter Darin Moriki:

“There was no anger or hostility among those people who came tonight,” said Missy Salter, a District 12 Educators’ Association executive board member and Shadow Ridge Middle School sixth-grade mathematics teacher.

Very few of the union protesters remained to hear the board’s response. Director Norm Jennings explained how state law required the adoption of a budget before June 30. He argued that the board’s actions did not violate the union contract, and that cutting teacher compensation was a difficult but necessary decision.

“We are not going to create further budget problems that impact our kids even further later on by taking the easy road now,” Jennings said.

Having reached an impasse in collective-bargaining negotiations, Adams 12 and DTEA await the report of a fact finder due out later this fall.

One of the speakers escorted from the meeting reflected on the difficulty of finding a resolution going forward. “The tragedy is that most of the protesters never heard the board speak that night,” Hein said. “If we can’t have a dialogue, I’m not sure how we improve things for students.”

It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the fascist Occupy Movement, the fascist unions, or the fascist Obama.  And of course the fascist Obama protects the fascist unions and the fascist Occupy Movement even as they break the law.  They’re thugs who will not and cannot listen to any competing idea.  And rank and file Democrats are part of the vicious machine.

Democrats keep idiotically voting for these fascist fools.  Which is why we’re on the verge of total, catastrophic collapse.

How To Remove The Gas Tank, Change The Air Filter And Change The Spark Plugs On A Yamaha Roadliner/Stratoliner

As I understand it, a dealership charges something very close to $500 to do an oil change, air filter change and spark plug change for a Roadliner/Stratoliner.  And I have no doubt that a lot of people who don’t consider themselves particularly mechanically inclined are simply stunned by the cost of maintenance that is supposed to be done twice a year.  And I also have no doubt that it isn’t the fear of doing the work that scares people about this job; it’s the fear of the unknown and the fear that you’ll start taking stuff off and get stuck somewhere and end up with a bike you can’t even ride to the stealership.  The purpose of this tutorial is to show Roadliner and Stratoliner owners what this critical maintenance job entails and hopefully encourage you to give it a go.

You do not need to drain the gas tank to do this job, whether you decide to completely remove the tank (because there are two fuel shut-off valves) or whether you decide to just swing the tank over to the left side (because you then leave the fuel lines hooked up).  I had less than a gallon of gas in the tank and was easily able to move the tank.  It was actually a lot less awkward than I had guessed when I actually picked the tank up.

There is a procedure for the complete Roadliner/Stratoliner gas tank removal (i.e., disconnecting the fuel lines) available on Youtube.  See parts 1 and 2 at the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXs_WpZv7HM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvK-4uNqWz8&feature=relmfu

The part number for the Yamaha air filter (“element, air cleaner”) is: 1D7-14461-00-00.  The final two zeroes are frequently omitted.  You will also need four spark plugs.  The stock plug is an NGK (5129) DPR7EA-9.  Amazon sells them for $2.60 each and they’re eligible for super saver shipping.

Here are all the tools I used to do this job:

You’ll need assorted pliers for removing various hose clamps and electrical connections (you don’t need the exact pliers I’ve got, just something reasonably similar); a socket wrench with a 10mm and 12mm socket, and extender bar, and a universal/wobble joint will be helpful; Allen wrenches or bits in 4mm and 5mm; a 17mm wrench (and I found my ratcheting 17mm wrench VERY helpful); a phillips and regular screwdriver; a spark plug gauge; a magnetic pick-up tool is helpful.  Hopefully you have the spark plug tool that came with the bike – if not you’ll need an 18mm deep socket.  I don’t have the little length of 3/8″ rubber hose shown (I’ve got a picture of it below), but that may have been the most useful tool of all.

Here’s the procedure to remove the tank, replace the air filter, and replace the spark plugs:

1) Remove the seat using the ignition key.

2) When you have the seat removed, you will see two 10mm nuts on the rear of the tank and under the seat that secure the tank to the frame.  Remove them.  I put my screws and bolts in small plastic cups, and will often have several cups for each series of nuts, bolts etc. so I don’t get them confused with other stuff as I keep taking more stuff off.

3) Remove the three chrome 5mm allen head bolts that secure the chrome gauge assembly that sits on top of the gas tank to the tank.  Turn your handlebars as needed to give yourself room for the two bolts on the front.

4) Now place one or more towels under the chrome gauge assembly between the chrome and the gas tank and slide the towels all the way to the top to protect your paint from accidental scratching or denting.  Place another towel on the handlebar neck for further protection (I tied it with string to keep it out of my way).

5) Now gently pull the chrome gauge assembly down a few inches to expose the four electrical connectors and disconnect all four of them (from left to right, you will see a small white, large black, large white, and small black wire connectors).  I inserted a small-bladed regular screwdriver into the tab and then used that screwdriver to somewhat help pry them off.

Btw, when you disconnect these leads, both of your trip meters will be set to zero and your clock will be disconnected.  If you need to note mileages, do so before you disconnect the leads.

6) Now you can remove the chrome gauge assembly and put it in a safe place.  Hopefully it won’t be a place that makes your wife yell at you for bringing your motorcycle parts into the house.

7) At this time you need to pull the other half of the connectors you just disconnected off the frame.  Use needlenose pliers to gently squeeze the tip together and pull off each of the four connectors.  You have to disconnect all four connectors from the frame in order to lift the gas tank:

8) Pull off the small hose that fastens to the gas tank near the connectors.

I tied all five of these things together with a rubber band to make sure nothing slipped down and that they would be out of the way when I re-installed the tank.

9) Remove the two 12mm bolts beneath the connectors that secures the front of the tank to the frame.  You may need to use a universal/wobble joint with your extender bar, but it seemed like a standard extender did the job as long as you are careful.

10) Remove the small plastic chrome gas tank trim located on either side tank.  There are two 4mm allen screws on each side holding them on.

11) You are now able to move your gas tank off to the side at this time.  You could go to some additional fairly great lengths and disconnect the fuel lines, OR you could simply get a couple of stools and lift the tank to the left side as I will show in a picture.  But…

If you are going to replace or check your spark plugs, I advise you  first replace the left rear plug at this time before you move your tank  (you can do it later, but what you will find is that you can’t access that plug if you’ve got the tank swung over to the side with the fuel hoses still connected).  I used the plug tool that is included in the tool kit and put a 17mm wrench on it.  And I was able to easily lift and manuever the tank enough to take off the old plug and put in the new one.  When I put on the new plug, I applied anti-seize compound and used about a 3″ length of rubber fuel hose (that I stuck onto the non-threaded end of the plug) to easily screw in the new plug.  The gap is .8 – .9mm (.031 – .035in).  You need an 18mm deep socket if you don’t use the Yamaha tool.  I’ve found that quite often the new plugs are pre-gapped, but check each one to make sure.

By the time you are finished replacing all four of your spark plugs, you will never look at a short piece of rubber hose the same way again.

12) Now lift the tank off the bike and swing it to the left side of the bike.  You want one or two short stools that are about the height of the tank to do this.  I used two 24″ high stools and they worked fine.  Your other option is to shut off the two fuel supply screws (by turning them IN or clockwise) and then disconnect the fuel lines so you can put the tank wherever you like (I KNOW you’ll get yelled at if you try to drag this into the house, though!).  You would then need to re-route the fuel lines when you’re done.  Good luck, but I didn’t go that route.

13) If you are only replacing the air filter, your life is now easy.  There are a total of seven phillips screws holding the air filter box cover in place.  unscrew them and there is you air filter. [Note: I accidentally stumbled across the Yamaha manual procedure for removing the air filter case detailed on page 4-13 and 4-14.  After I'd removed it, of course].

If you are replacing or checking your spark plugs, you’ve got a fair amount of work still ahead of you.

You will see a bracket near the handlebar neck that is held in place by three or four allen head bolts.  That’s the red arrow labeled ”1″.   Has to come off.  You’ll see two electrical connections (labeled “2″ and “3″ in the picture above; you have to disconnect them.  There are also two small hoses underneath the electrical connectors that have to be disconnected.  Then there are seven or eight phillips screws, including an annoying one at the very front bottom of the air filter case near the handlebar neck.  Just when you think the damn air filter case is finally off, you’ll be crushed to see that you’ve only taken off the top half of the damn thing.

There are a total of six hoses that must be disconnected (including the two mentioned in the paragraph above).   Four hoses are attached to the lower part of the air case (two larger hoses at either end and two small hoses located on the left side of the bike).  Oh, and seven or eight more phillips screws holding it to the bike.  Disconnect all four hoses and remove all the screws.  Finally you can remove the air filter case.  If you are like me, you will wonder at this point if you will be able to ever put the damn thing together the way the crazy fool who put this thing together at the factory intended.  For the record, it actually all went back in fairly easily.

The four arrows in the picture above of the bottom half of the air filter case show the locations of the four hoses that have to be disconnected to remove the air filter case.

14) Now you’ve finally removed your air filter case and exposed your spark plugs, and you can even see the two rear plugs now.  If you followed my advice, you’ve already done the left rear plug.  If you haven’t done that left rear plug yet, I now advise you to wait until you do the other three plugs, re-install the air filter case, and put the tank back on but BEFORE you start bolting the tank on.  The right rear plug is accessible inside the frame and easily accessible with that short piece of rubber hose as the pictures with step 11 show.  Replace each plug using anti-seize compound and verifying the correct gap (also described on step 11 above).

15) Before I replaced the rest of the plugs, I took the time to polish the valve covers – as I was finally able to reach all the stuff that had resisted my oversized ape fingers before.  Now it’s all shiny where only God will be able to see it:

God likes His chrome shiny.  There will be no dull, oxidized chrome in heaven.

16) With the tank off the bike (at least, mostly off), none of the plugs were that bad to reach.  Use a piece of rubber fuel hose as I described and you will find that you can start threading them very easily.  I used the spark plug tool from the Yamaha tool bag for all four plugs, and used a 17mm wrench to loosen/remove them and tighten/install them.  You could also use a socket wrench with a 17mm socket, obviously.  I used one of those fancy ratcheting socket wrenches that only need 5 degrees of angle to turn and had absolutely no problems.

I did some reading online looking for a procedure for all this stuff (never DID find one, btw!) and saw people complaining about not being able to get to plugs.  But that was because they either didn’t use the rubber hose like I showed you or they tried to replace the left rear plug with the tank swung off to the left side like I warned you about.  If you do it the way I describe, you won’t have any major problems.

Let me say more about that left rear plug.  I removed the tank and looked the job over, and I had decided to tackle that left rear one first because it clearly looked to be the hardest and what I didn’t want was to replace the first three and then not be able to get the last one.  But with the tank swung to the side, I found that simply could not reach that left side rear plug.  I was sitting there gloomily thinking that I would have to disconnect the fuel lines after all – which seemed like a major pain in terms of what would have to come off to get to them, in terms of re-routing those fuel lines back to where they belonged, etc.  So I put the tank back onto the bike and started to work out the disconnect of the fuel lines.  But the last time the tank had come off the original owner had not got my fuel lines rearranged back into the “this is how it should look” position, such that the bottom fuel shut off screw was virtually impossible to access to shut off the fuel supply.  So on the one hand I figured I had to take the tank completely off to get to the left rear spark plug, only I couldn’t shut the fuel off so I couldn’t take off the tank.  I was in a Catch-22.  I thought of crying, but I prayed instead.  And then it suddenly struck me, like an angel whispering in my ear, that with the tank on the bike but on loosely it just looked like there might well be enough room to get that plug off with the tank completely loosened as it was but positioned on the bike.  And sure enough the hardest plug was suddenly as easy as pie when I used the procedure I described above (step 11).

17) At this point, it was time to put it all back together again.  I actually decided to wait until after I had the spark plugs done and had the air box case all cleaned up and installed to install the new air filter.  I figured it would end up being cleaner that way, rather than having me screwing around with the components in pieces and having it lying around exposed.

Before I re-installed the air filter case, I cleaned it up and used my compressor to blow air through the tubes.  The rest is just doing what you’ve already done in reverse order.

And we’re back to beautiful again:

Nothing about this job was particularly “hard,” I’d say after having done it.  It was just that a lot more stuff had to come off or be disconnected than my sensibilities approved of.  There were a couple of times that I was glad I had taken these pictures, as I didn’t have to remember how and where everything went.

I had to EARN that spark plug change.  I had to prove I was WORTHY to replace that air filter.  There are two things that make this bike more of a challenge than any other vehicle I’ve ever owned: one is the newness of the bike and the second is the sheer size of it.  My 1983 Suzuki 1100e was so easy to maintain compared to this bike it is positively disgusting.  Maintenance is getting harder and harder on whatever you buy these days, but motorcycles have to have all the same things that a car has to have but packed into a lot more miniature of a package.  And when you’re trying to cram a 1.9 liter high performance engine that is literally the size of a car engine into that package, too, well, you end up with some crazy maintenance stuff.  That said, it turns out that our bikes aren’t that much different from the (also really big) Honda VTX 1800.  I came across this thread where a VTX guy starts pissing on the Stratoliner thinking that he’ll have a lot of agreement from his VTX pals.  But it turns out that most of the VTX guys who responded said he was a basically ignorant ass and that the Strat is a great bike and that the maintenance is actually about the same for these two behemoths.  I’ll return the favor and say that VTX 1800s are great bikes and there are about as many reasons why you should prefer one over a Roadliner as there are reasons why you should prefer a Roadliner over a VTX.  I was pleased to see so many VTX guys come to our bike’s defense.

Dachshund X Labrador = Dachsador!

Years back there was a car called the Chevy Vega.  It had a nice looking body, but was built with a gutless, underpowered, cheap engine.  What could have been a real nice car and even a bold step in the direction toward smaller and more fuel efficient cars that history shows that GM needed to go in was instead one of the worst cars in the history of GM.

Until the cars started ending up on the trash heap and kids started putting 350 V-8s under the hood.  What you ended up with was a subcompact car with muscle car oomph.

The same principle was carried out more professionally with the Shelby Cobra: you take a little car body and cram a 427 inch Corvette RAT engine in it and you get something special.

Heck, it works great with cars; why not try it with dogs?

There are all kinds of breeds of dogs out there, of course.  And then when you add in the fact that dogs have a way of ignoring the rules and creating their own breeds of “mutts,” well, it truly takes all kinds to make up a world.

I’m here to talk about what happens when you take a “big block Labrador” and put it into a “compact Dachshund body.”  You get this:

Aint she pretty?

I love dogs, and have always found them to be incredibly beautiful creatures to go along with the fact that they are world-class athletes.  If dogs were allowed to compete in the Olympics, they’d end up with pretty much all of the medals for pretty much all of the track and field and swimming events.

I’ve always particularly loved the big dog breeds, such as the Rottweilers that I’ve had.  There is simply nothing like watching a big dog running with the big dogs.

But this 42 lb Dachshund-Labrador mix has truly opened my eyes to the middleweight class of dogdom.  In the case of this one, she’s basically an “atomic Dachshund,” complete with webbed feet like a Lab, a weight that’s right near the middle between a 20 lb Dachshund and a 60 lb Labrador Retriever female, and legs that are about twice as long as a Dachshund’s but about 3/4s as long as a Labrador’s.

This is a dog that might have happened “by accident,” or might have been the result of “designer breeding.”  When I finally figured out what my little darling was, I discovered that “Dachsadors” are a designer breed.  You’ll have to “ask an expert” how you breed a Dachshund with a Labrador.  And if you find out, please tell me so I can finally have an answer for all the people who have asked me just that very question.

She is a high-speed, low-drag low-earth orbiting ballistic missile system when she’s in full-pursuit of a rabbit or squirrel.  And this is a dog that has now caught a jackrabbit – and believe me that aint exactly easy! – in addition to a few cottontails (it turns out neither rabbit species particularly like to be caught and literally SCREAM until I make her put them down).  She’s got a combination of speed and agility that has to be seen to be believed.  I call it torque; she’s got those powerful leg muscles and that short running stroke to get going fast REAL quick.  It is not unusual at all to see her run with both sets of legs parallel to the ground at the same time.  It’s almost like she’s flying, and all she needs is a little superdog cape:

She’s a very athletic thing that loves to jump as much as she loves to just plain flat-out haul ass:

I often just find myself simply admiring her exquisite musculature and shape:

I find her to be a beautifully muscled and beautifully proportioned dog.  I love watching her trot along so easily and gracefully with her beautiful wheaton coat gliding over her ribs and muscles:

And of course she has been since the day we brought her home as a little puppy:

She’s just been a tremendous little dog, and I love her dearly.

A few extra details about her:

She is without question the most joyful dog I have ever been around.  She will wag her tail if you just LOOK at her.  She loves to play and can keep herself quite entertained by throwing one of her toys into the air and catching it.  And frequently she’ll just get a little bee in her bonnet and start racing through the house at top speed with a happy-to-be-alive gleam in her eyes.  She’s got a few different courses to race on.  And the more I laugh the more she runs.  When I adopted her, she was a nearly 10 week-old puppy in a glass cage at a shelter, and had been in the cage for close to 2 weeks.  When she was introduced to her back yard she ran like a happy little fool and just never really got over her love of running.

She is also the most remarkable dog I’ve ever seen in remembering where things were and any kind of change.  If anything in the house gets moved for any reason, she KNOWS about it and zeroes right in on it.  If she’s out in the desert and something new got blown or placed or built or dumped anywhere near her domain, she is instantly aware of it.

And she likes to watch TV more than any dog I’ve ever heard of – especially if there are animals on.  I’ve had on the Westminster dog show and she has watched enraptured for a good half hour straight.  When one of her “shows” comes on in the form of a commercial, she recognizes it by the music jingle and looks up on cue just when the dogs appear.  She will wag her tail at certain times, perk her ears at certain moments, etc.  She loves to watch horses, but is quite interested in just about anything that has just about any kind of animal.

When I got her and figured out what she was (the shelter labeled her as “a red and white hound mix”), I discovered that people were intentionally breeding these “Dachsadors.”  You can easily understand why when you think about it.  Labradors are and have been THE most popular breed of dog by AKC registration because of their many fine qualities.  Dachshunds have been slipping, going from as high as the fourth most registered breed of dog in 2004 to the sixth most in 2006, to the eighth most in 2010 and the ninth most last year.  But obviously a lot of people see a lot of positive traits in both breeds of dog.

So why not put them together?  What you end up with is a medium-sized dog of excellent temperament and intelligence.  And if you really want a Labrador Retriever but can’t have a dog that large, well, why not shrink it down?

The people who know dogs that look at my little darling see a Labrador face from the front and a Dachshund face from the side.  And I always enjoy being around dog lovers who will come over and tell me they’ve never seen anything like her, and how beautiful she is and what a great shape she has.

I’m glad she’s female because while my Rottweilers were “macho dogs,” this one is definitely “daddy’s little girl.”

P.S. I mentioned that I’m a Rottweiler lover.  It’s amazing how different dogs can be and how wonderful they are at being the incredible things they were bred to be.  My last Rottweiler was HUGE by Rottweiler standards – standing nearly 32″ at the shoulder (in the realm of Great Dane height!), weighing in at nearly 200 lbs, and standing about 6’6″ on his hind legs (I’m 6’2″ and he could jump up with his front paws over my shoulder and look me right in the eye – and he was leaning at an angle).  He was the product of very large parents which led to a 3-puppy litter that allowed him to get as big as the genes from already large parents would allow him to get.  He was incredibly smart and impossibly strong.  That dog could easily knock a big, strong man down and that man wouldn’t get up unless and until that Rott wanted to let him get up.  Before him, we had two brothers who were what we called “muttweilers” being the result of a purebred female and the neighbor’s 3/4 Rott-1/4 German Shepherd who jumped the fence.  I used to go backpacking in the Willamette National Forest and reuglarly went on 3 day outings.  I would hike from 10-15 miles a day, depending on the leg, while the dogs chased each other off the leash.  I kid you not, those dogs would run at least 150 miles a day each of the three days.  No human being who ever lived could have begun to do what those dogs did EASILY.  One year I took one of them to visit my parents and my father and I went hiking.  That dog loved to walk ahead, but he didn’t know which way we would go at one point where the trail split.  And when my dad took the uphill path, the only way the dog could get ahead of him was to jump up a rocky outcropping that we figured was easily 8′ high.  That Rottweiler mix took one step back and MADE that jump; at the very top he had to pull himself up with his front legs with an effort my dad found as amazing as the jump itself.

Dogs are just amazing, aren’t they?  And the only thing they do better than their many amazing feats of speed, agility, leaping, strength, endurance, etc., etc., is be the best companions in the world.

Hope you enjoyed my show-and-tell about my dog!

Self Defense Combat Cane (AKA Predator Beater)

I’ve always loved wood.  And I think I love a good piece of wood the most when I can use it to smack some predator upside the skull.

I take a 5 mile walk every single day.  It’s probably better described as a “hike” because I take my walks out in the California desert along the southwestern base of the Little San Bernardino mountains.  I walk up hills and I walk down washes.  I stick to trails, but it’s fairly rough country.

I hike with my dog.  My last couple of dogs were Rottweilers, and they were the kings of the food chain pretty much wherever they went.  Now I’ve got a medium-sized Dachschund-Labrador mix – but apparently all hound inside - who chases everything that runs from her (rabbits, squirrels, lizards, butterflies) and runs from everything that chases her.  Thank God she runs like this:

She is high speed, low drag.

Last year we had very few problems.  This year she has repeatedly been on the menu for coyotes and we’ve also had to deal with several rattlesnakes.

The second picture documents the fact that while coyotes are relatively small, they’ve got fangs that are a good two times the size of an average dog’s.  Add to that the fact that they are basically small killers and they can be quite a threat to your dog.  In the Palm Springs area, two women in their 60s were recently attacked by coyotes.  They might be kind of cute; but they aren’t funny.

I was out on the golf course and looked up to see a bighorn sheep not far away from where I was playing.  And after thinking, “How beautiful!” I found myself thinking, “Bighorn sheep equals mountain lion range.”

“Mountain lion range” equals bad.

It was time to beef up on the defenses.

I’ve got bad knees.  To put it more clearly, if I were a horse they would shoot me.  So I’ve always liked to have hiking aids.  I started with hiking poles, but if you’ve got bad knees you tend to use them like canes, and using hiking poles as canes puts an unnatural strain on your wrists.

So I started using a pair of canes on my hikes.  They’ve been nice.  If you’re walking at night, for example, you’ve got four legs rather than two, making tripping over a rock a lot safer.  You’ve also got an advance warning system as well as more stability for the numerous burrows that are all too likely to cave in as you’re walking if you’re off the trail.  They also help me go up hills and come down them.  When you’ve got bad knees, you don’t like to descend sideways the way normal people do; you tend to just go down with your shoulders square to the slope to avoid the chance of a lateral shearing injury (bye-bye, ligament!).  The person with healthy knees going down sideways can lean his torso back to counterbalance himself; but if you’re going down a slope head first there’s just no way to do that.  Having two canes to stabilize you often means the difference between ending up on your ass and not ending up on your ass.  And I would imagine that even healthy-kneed people could benefit from using canes in this kind of terrain.

I’ll get to the canes I just purchased in a moment.  But first allow me to make a point about canes as a general self-defense weapon.

There are a few people who are allowed to carry a gun.  Obviously, as they say, a Smith & Wesson beats four Aces.  But let’s say you aren’t one of those people.  What kind of weapons can the average person carry around on them that won’t get them in trouble?

Canes are allowed EVERYWHERE.  And what you’ve got is a three foot-long club.  Which is why a martial art fighting style has been developed around them.

For the record, I will not be releasing a YouTube video of me trying to emulate Bruce Lee with my canes.  I’m sorry about that, as it would have been every bit as hilarious as it would have been pathetic.  But I have very little dignity left, and I wouldn’t want to squander the last shreds of what I have by showing you my “kane kung-fu” moves.

If somebody pulls a gun on you, you can’t outrun a bullet, but you might be able to dodge one.  Throw your “combat cane” down and run for your life.  If someone pulls a knife on you, well, if you’ve got a cane, they’ve got to get close enough to you to stab you without getting their noggin bashed.  Which is to say that a cane can beat four Aces, too, if you really want it to.

That said, I set about looking for a pair of hard-core canes for my usually quite heavenly hikes out in the desert.

The two that I had were steel tubes that were essentially in three pieces – two for the shaft and one more for the handle.  I was afraid that if I really had to start swinging something would break that I didn’t want to get broke right when I needed it.  What I wanted was something that was one solid piece, and I wanted it good and strong and solid and hard.

This is what I found:

They’re called “Stockmens canes,” and I guess they’re used primarily for dealing with cattle.  As in I said MOVE, you big stupid beast.  Actually, I’m not sure how the heck they’re used, but I got them from an outfit that sells equipment to farmers and ranchers.

The ones I’m showing are called the “Elephant 1-1/8″ Dia. Octagon Cane,” product number C07434N available here at Enasco.com.  The “octagon” refers to the eight-sided shape of the cane, versus a completely rounded shaft.  If anything, the octagon shape might be more comfortable on the hand and provide a surer grip.

For the record, 1-1/8″ diameter is THICK.  If you’re tall like me, and don’t have to cut the 36″ predator whumper down to size, the tip is tapered for a 1″ cane or crutch tip (otherwise you’d need a 1-1/8″ tip).  Here is one of my new canes surrounded by a pair of typical walking canes so you can see the difference:

The canes are made out of AA-grade white oak or hickory, which are both extremely hard, dense, heavy and durable hardwoods.  Very good wood for smoting pinheads.

I found a wood hardness chart available as a PDF file.  Hickory (harder at 1820 on the scale) and white oak (1320) are both on the highest range of hardness in the commonly available woods.  It’s not easy to find a pair of 1-1/8″ thick curupy or Brazilian tiger mahogany or ironwood walking canes (and I’m guessing they would have been pretty spendy for canes I was going to haul out into the desert every day); so what I’ve got will have to do.

The shipping weight is listed as 1.5lbs.  But I weighed them in at 1.25 lbs.  Which is a fair amount heavier than the half pound of an ordinary walking cane that takes a 3/4″ cane tip.  To put the weight of these canes into a different perspective, 1.25 lbs is 20 ounces; an average major league baseball bat weighs between 31 and 33 ounces and average.  And few major league bats exceed 36″ in length.  So these solid oak or hickory canes are basically two-thirds of a baseball bat combined with a convenient carrying handle.

That should give you an idea of what one of these canes could do to the head of whatever predator – human animal or just garden variety animal – wants to fool with you.

Good luck beating the price: $$12.35 per cane plus shipping (which was just over $11 for the two I purchased).  I bought the tips on eBay for the deal of 8 of them for $8.99 out the door.  And they look quite a bit more durable than the 3/4″ tips that I spend more money on at Wal-Mart.

The two canes I purchased were unfinished, but sanded and smooth.  I purchased two products for less than $13 with my 10% veterans discount at Home Depot:

To varnish the canes (Tung oil beats Linseed oil because Tung oil has UV protectant and provides a barrier against insects and mildew), I lightly scuffed them with the fine steel wool and then rubbed a coat of Tung oil on with a lint-free cloth and then hung them to dry.  Twelve hours later I did it again.  And then twelve hours after that I added a third coat, each time lightly scuffing with the steel wool to give the new coat of varnish a better surface to adhere to.  And the next day after that I was a walking fool.

Oh, I would recommend you use a pair of disposable rubber gloves each time you apply the varnish (I also wore them during sanding to avoid getting fingerprint oils on the wood).  Unless you like having sticky fingers for two days.

And walking in style, I might add.  With the Tung oil varnish, the wood is gorgeous.  For fifty bucks I have a lovely set of walking weaponry.

I’m not lamenting, “Oh, for a head to pound!”, but if anything comes around me that wants its head pounded, I will provide the service free of charge.  Especially if its trying to eat my dog.

P.S. I also purchased an air horn from Wal-Mart (a 1.5 oz container made by Attwood) for $8.16.  It fits easily into a pocket.  I also now wear my old teacher’s playground whistle around my neck.

From A Guy Who Just Found Out He’s Into ‘Fat’ Women (Kate Upton ‘Fat’)?!?!

I’m into fat women.

I didn’t know it, had absolutely no idea till now (see more of that here).  But apparently I’m one of the very few weirdos out there who find women like Kate Upton very - and I mean VERY – attractive.

But I don’t feel weird at all for panting like a cartoon character when I see a girl with Kate Upton’s face and figure wearing a bikini.

I think that I happen to be fairly representative of most men.  And what I mean by that is that I see beauty in the female form and I see it across several female body types.

I have seen petite, even skinny women who turned my crank.  But I’ve seen voluptuous, let’s say “more than pleasantly plump” women that were VERY pleasing to my eye.  I’ve looked twice at women with small breasts and women with large breasts.  I’ve seen women who didn’t make it to 5′ that were utterly stunning.  And I’ve seen 6′ “Amazons” that made me want to be Tarzan.  And if you don’t mind my talking “race,” I’ve seen knockout gorgeous girls from every race, ethnic background and hair color.  Black women, Asian women, Hispanic women, you name it, I like it.

I honestly couldn’t tell you which woman’s body-style is the most attractive to me.  Because it just “depends”; a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman.  Period.  And there are plenty of beautiful women who carry a lot of weight a lot better than some other women carry “thin.”

Again, I think I’m like an awful lot of men.  If I see a woman with a pretty face, well, I tend to think that woman is pretty.  And if there are a pair of pretty eyes on that pretty face?  Well Whoo-ha. 

Believe me, I’m not a Muslim and I’m not into burqas, but I’m telling you I could see a woman in a burqa with just her eyes showing and I could still know most of what I needed to know about whether a woman wearing one of those things was attractive.  Having said that, please don’t put me down as wanting women to wear burqas; because I really don’t mind the bikinis so much.

 Too many girls and young women are letting themselves be stigmatized by the same damn media culture that keeps pumping liberalism down our throats.  Ever think about that?  The same damn people who are creating these incredibly unrealistic and phony images of women are the same people telling us to vote for liberals like Obama because they’re the “pro-woman” people.  It’s the same damned elite Hollywood media culture.

Hey, girls.  A little advice.  You should try to be the most beautiful “you” that you can be and get yourself out of the comparison racket.  If you’ve got a particular body type, whatever it is, I guarantee you that your body-style will never be the thing that gets in the way of your being beautiful.  And if a man thinks you should have a nicer body, what you really need to have most is a nicer man.

Kate Upton says, “I’m not going to starve just to be thin.”  Well, you go, girl.  You could eat crackers in my bed any time you want looking like you do.  In fact, looking like you do, you don’t even have to share the box with me.  And 99.9-plus-percent of men would be very thrilled indeed to be sitting across the table watching you enjoy that patty melt.

I mean, geez, when a woman who looks like that is mocked for her weight and the person who mocks her isn’t locked away for life in an insane asylum, something is just very warped.

I’m not trying to say that nobody ever needs to go on a diet. Heck, I need to go on a stupid diet. But damn. When you see incredibly beautiful women being ridiculed for their appearance – which seems to happen all the time these days – and you know that millions of young women have insecurity over their “ugliness,” it leaves me feeling sad.  When somebody calls a woman who is as obviously gorgeous as Kate Upton a “plus-sized cow,” just what the hell are all the women who weren’t lucky enough to look like Kate Upton supposed to think about themselves???

Ultimately what we all ought to be looking for is that somebody that YOU think is beautiful who miraculously thinks YOU aren’t half bad, either.  And then we ought to stick to that person like glue.  And to hell with Hollywood.