110mpg engine to enter production

lookout... here it comes... and about goddam time too...!

The man who drove his 20-year-old Mustang from Napoleon, Ohio, to Las Vegas and back last year on 39 gallons of fuel will open his first manufacturing facility Monday to allow others to get 110 miles per gallon.

Doug Pelmear, owner of Horse Power Sales.net Inc. and Hp2G LLC, will hold an open house Monday morning in the idle 100,000-square-foot factory he has leased in Wauseon [Ohio] to begin manufacturing his revolutionary engine.

The factory, on the Fulton Industries Inc. campus in Wauseon, will be tooled to initially turn out 20 of Mr. Pelmear's custom engines per day with one shift of 25 workers.

A Decatur, Ind., specialty car company, Revenge Designs Inc., has contracted with Mr. Pelmear to purchase 2,000 engines for use in a new vehicle it plans to unveil at the end of this year at the Los Angeles International Auto Show. The vehicle is to be called the Revenge Verde Super Car, which will use Mr. Pelmear's 400-horsepower engine and its 500 foot-pounds of torque to travel up to 200 mph and get 110 mpg - though admittedly not at the same time.

"The engine is going to be a really great partnership with the car," explained Emily Levault, a spokesman for Revenge Design. "The idea behind this was to give people what they want while putting people back in their jobs."

Ms. Levault said the Verde will be introduced as both a left and right-hand drive, so that it can be marketed around the world. She said details of its pricing have not been released.

woo-hoo...

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It's always interesting to see how people REALLY behave in unguarded moments

from haaretz via information clearing house...

As someone who lives on and off in the American bubble in Tel Aviv and came to Israel on a Birthright tour like some of the kids in the video, this is embarrassing, shocking, bizarre, but familiar. And as someone who spent many nights grimacing at similar overheard conversations from American Jews in town for the week from Long Island, the booze-fueled hubris and uber-Zionism is not so strange at all. In the Jewish homeland for the first time, on a free trip, fleetingly experiencing a place gripped by a visceral realism and powerful sense of purpose, it's easy to let the beer overtake you.

While documentary filmmaker Max Blumenthal rejects this argument ("No amount of alcohol could make me express opinions that were not authentically mine," he says. "If anything, alcohol is a crude form of truth serum that lubricates the release of closely held opinions and encourages confessional talk."), many American Jews understand how hubris and chutzpah can flow much freer in Israel. Spared the political correctness, decorum and social morays of America (or Britain, South Africa or Australia), many find that they walk taller, step louder, and even sprinkle their speech with words they'd never say back home.

Not to excuse the behavior of those in the video, I don't believe this idiocy reflects the values of young American Jews or their opinions on Obama, but rather the way that Israel, in particular Jerusalem, can radicalize the young to the left or the right. It also proves (once again), that fools and alcohol and camcorders do not make a good match.

Coincidentally, the video comes about a week after Haaretz reported on the campaign launched by far-right Israelis called "No, you can't," meant to persuade their countrymen of the dangers of the "anti-Semitic" Barack Hussein Obama - with the emphasis on "Hussein." So far, the campaign appears to consist of sparsely attended rallies and posters of Obama in a kaffiyeh, much like those of Yitzhak Rabin before his 1995 assassination.

For many, the video is shocking because they think Jews aren't supposed to be racist. Especially not nice Jewish boys like those in the video, showing off the hip hop gear bought on the mean streets of Great Neck, their hats cocked sideways as they survey the city they profess to own after five days.

There are really only two types of young American Jews in Israel: the ones who head for Jerusalem, and the ones who go to Tel Aviv. I hope Blumenthal films his next segment in Tel Aviv, though the results would probably be far less salacious. On a balcony in Florentin, he would ask the drum circle what they think of Obama and through the purple haze would hear only praise for the president, before being forced to listen to a 30-minute account of a recent trip to Nepal.

This video either proves that drunk Americans are starting to resemble Kahanists, or Israeli far-rightists have achieved the rhetorical brilliance of drunk American Jewish yahoos in town for a week. Talking to drunken Birthrighters to gauge Israeli opinion on Obama is like using Mormons to measure American public opinion on gay marriage. You're speaking to the wrong crowd and at the wrong time of night, only in a country where there is no closing time or public drinking ordinances. One can only imagine what would be caught on film in an American college town under these circumstances.

youtube...

See Max Blumenthal's shocking footage of the reaction by some Israelis and American Jews in Jerusalem to Obama's speech to the Muslim world. Co-produced by Joseph Dana, aka Ibn Ezra: ibnezra.wordpress.com and Mondoweiss, a blog that covers the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Middle East from a progressive Jewish perspective.

well, we know for damn sure that this kind of deplorable behavior coming from people who think they're in their zone of safety ain't at all unusual... you can bet your boots there's plenty of it right here in the u.s. of a. from coast to coast being dispensed by bigots, intolerant bastards, skinheads, hate-mongers, and extremists of every stripe be they christian, muslim OR jewish... what i want to know is when we can dispense with this hateful shit and get on with living together and treating each other like genuine human beings...

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Here's a story presented as a "gee-whiz" technology piece that should make your blood run cold

Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times

imagine looking up and seeing one of these circling your neighborhood... imagine knowing what it can do... imagine living with that kind of terror day in and day out...

this article reminds me of the public-service ads praising the brave men and women who proudly defend our country using only the very latest technology selflessly dished up by our glorious defense establishment that you'd see on tv in the late 50s and early 60s... what it really is, of course, is a continuing glorification of death and destruction, only rendered more horrifyingly anonymous with the shift to hapless paid assassins raining death from the skies as they sit comfortably in barcaloungers in the nevada desert many thousands of miles from their victims... then, after a hard day at the "office," they go home to the wife and kids for dinner and a night in front of the tv...

The Pentagon is preparing to graduate its first pilots of unmanned drones from the elite U.S. Air Force Weapons School -- a version of the Navy's Top Gun program -- in a bid to elevate the skills and status of the officers who fly Predators, one of the military's fastest growing aircraft programs.

The elite flight schools of the Air Force and Navy are most closely associated with smart, tough fighter jocks. But over the course of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MQ-1 Predator and more heavily armed MQ-9 Reaper craft have become, to many in the Pentagon, the most important aircraft the U.S. has deployed.

[...]

The Predator and Reaper pilots do their debriefings and classroom work at Nellis with weapons school students specializing in other aircraft. They fly the drones from nearby Creech Air Force Base, the control station used to fly drones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

since we're so hot on this new method of killing and destroying, how about using those new teeny-tiny robot drones to film what happens on the ground and then making that required viewing at the conclusion of each pilot's mission...? maybe watching children screaming and dying, bodies being blasted into raw, bloody bits, and buildings collapsing on and crushing their occupants would bring a better sense of reality to the whole affair...

while we're at it, why not include a slaughter-house photo gallery with each neat, shrink-wrapped package of meat in the supermarket butcher case as a reminder of how it came to be there...?

just sayin'...

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Hark...! Is that the faint, half-strangled, rarely heard, but unmistakable whisper of accountability...? From the somnolent SEC...? Yikeys...!

could it be...?

S.E.C. Accuses Countrywide’s Ex-Chief of Fraud

Angelo R. Mozilo, the Bronx-born businessman who built Countrywide Financial into the nation’s largest mortgage lender before it was knocked down by the credit crisis, has been charged with securities fraud and insider trading in a civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citing e-mail messages in which Mr. Mozilo referred to Countrywide loan products as “toxic” and “poison,” S.E.C. officials said he misled investors about growing risks in the company’s lending practices from 2005 through 2007. During this time, he also profited by selling stock in the company, gaining $140 million.

“This is the tale of two companies,” said Robert Khuzami, enforcement director at the S.E.C. “Countrywide portrayed itself as underwriting mainly prime quality mortgages using high underwriting standards. But concealed from shareholders was the true Countrywide, an increasingly reckless lender assuming greater and greater risk.”

The suit also said David Sambol, former president of Countrywide, and Eric Sieracki, its former chief financial officer, concealed from investors the high-risk nature of the subprime loans that the company was making. Countrywide needed to maintain its position as the leading lender in a hot mortgage market, the S.E.C. said, and underwrote increasingly dangerous loans; all the while assuring investors that its loans were top quality.

now, let's nail us some more fraudsters...

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A call for reconciliation that's desperately overdue

but better late than never...

Obama Calls for New Beginning Between U.S., Muslims

In Cairo, president says no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, adding that America and Islam share common principles of justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

it's worth pointing out that, no matter how disappointed i am in much of what obama hasn't done and apparently isn't GOING to do, i simply can't imagine john mccain extending a hand like this... and george bush...? yeah, when pigs fly out of my butt...

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More on the domestic terrorism of the anti-choice movement

meanwhile, there's a flock of folks locked up in guantánamo who haven't been charged, have spent over seven years there, and have no prospect of being released... why...? "suspicion" of terrorism... what about these other folks...? aren't they to be "suspected" of terrorism too...? not that i recommend putting one more person into the perpetual detainee netherworld, but aren't we incredibly vulnerable to accusations of gross hypocrisy...?

jill filipovic in the guardian...

Not surprisingly, [George Tiller's] killer is strongly suspected to be affiliated with the "pro-life" movement. If that's the case, it makes Tiller the 10th person in the United States to be murdered by anti-choice terrorists.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Since 1977, there have been at least 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery and three kidnappings [PDF] committed against abortion providers in North America. Tiller himself survived an assassination attempt in 1993.

Some pro-life groups are issuing statements of condemnation and attempting to paint this murder as the work of an extremist. But this latest act of terrorism is, sadly, not an anomaly. It is part of a clearly-established pattern of harassment, intimidation and violence against abortion providers and pro-choice individuals. And mainstream pro-life groups shoulder much of the blame.

Pro-life organisations routinely refer to abortion as "murder", a "genocide" and a "holocaust". They post the full names abortion providers on their websites, along with their addresses, their license plate numbers, their photos, the names of children and the schools those children attend (sometimes with helpful Wild-West-style "Wanted" posters offering $5,000 rewards).

When you convince your followers that abortion providers are the equivalent of SS officers slaughtering innocents by the millions, tell them that "it's all-out WAR" against pro-choicers and then provide the home addresses and personal information of the "monster" "late-term baby-killer" abortion providers you're supposedly at war against, you can't act surprised when those followers conclude that it's morally justified to use the information to kill doctors.

These are not fringe groups. Conservative television personality Bill O'Reilly called Tiller's clinic a "death mill", referred to Tiller as a "baby killer" who was "executing babies about to be born" and said Tiller was doing "Nazi stuff" for which he "had blood on his hands."

[...]

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who had this to say about Tiller's assassination:

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name: murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches.

That's some definition of "peacefully protesting."

[...]

While individuals who self-identify as pro-life may be well-meaning and against violence, mainstream pro-life groups and the people who run them do not care about life, before or after birth. And while today anti-choice groups are half-heartedly condemning Tiller's murder, they continue to use the same outlandish and inflammatory rhetoric that inspired and enabled it.

Words mean things. Anti-choicers should certainly have every right to express their views, but they must also realise that actions have consequences and their rhetoric is not harmless. If you yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, it's reasonably foreseeable that people will panic and someone will be injured. And if you yell "Murderer!" "Baby-Killer!" and "Holocaust!" long enough, it's reasonably foreseeable that someone will take it upon themselves to make sure that vigilante justice is done (especially if you provide the name and address of the person who you claim is committing "genocide").

This was not the act of a lone extremist. It is one more act of violence to add to a long, long list of crimes committed by anti-choice terrorists, and it is the logical outcome of years of increasingly violent, dehumanising and threatening rhetoric and action on the part of supposedly mainstream pro-life groups.

why isn't action being taken against groups that incite to violence...? why isn't action being taken against bill o'reilly...?

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Domestic terrorism

and i dare you to tell me it's not...

Abortion Provider Shot Dead In Church

George R. Tiller, the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of his Lutheran church in Wichita, where he was serving as an usher.

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Waking up on Monday morning and checking out the headlines

hmmmmmm...

Filing Marks the End of Financial Independence for Industrial Icon

U.S. would own 60 percent of the new automaker under administration's restructuring plan, which company investors say unfairly favors the UAW.

Judge Approves Chrysler Sale

Approval of sale of assets to Fiat clears way for U.S. automaker to exit bankruptcy protection.

Air France Flight Missing

Jet, flying from Brazil to Paris with 228 people on board, hit strong turbulence, the airline says.

so, lemme see...

as taxpayers, we now own yet another major automobile manufacturer, in the not too distant future we'll be able to buy fiats in the u.s., and the air france flight from rio to paris is the same flight i took two years ago...

ok, so much for monday morning...

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