There are two kinds of people. There are people who go to the Out-of-Doors to hunt and fish and to enjoy Nature as an active participant, and there are citified wussy wimp nincompoops who hike or bike or ski or climb in the Out-of-Doors wearing expensive synthetic getups in the same kinds of colors as lifesavers.
Outside Magazine is a publication for exactly those kind of tree-hugging, Obama-voting sodomites. If you want a laugh at just how far up his own posterior one of these eco-snowflakes can insert his head, read this, Wes Siler’s pious screed explaining that campfires are “a dangerous, polluting, wasteful relic of the past,” way too hazardous and unsafe for ordinary Americans to safely enjoy.
[T]he campfire has had its day. With massive wildfires raging all summer long and exhausting state budgets, and with participation in outdoor recreation booming to record numbers, maybe the the negative impacts of the campfire now outweigh tradition and comfort.
Last weekend, an emergency exit was built near Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ office as a security measure against potential protesters. The door, which cost $9,000, is located outside a short hallway between his conference room and his office in California Hall. Campus spokesperson Claire Holmes said in an email that the exit in California Hall was installed as a security measure to “provide egress to leave the building.†Construction of the door was requested about a year ago in response to a protest in April 2015 when protesters stormed the chancellor’s suite.”
Last weekend, an emergency exit was built near Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ office as a security measure against potential protesters.
The door, which cost $9,000, is located outside a short hallway between his conference room and his office in California Hall.
Campus spokesperson Claire Holmes said in an email that the exit in California Hall was installed as a security measure to “provide egress to leave the building.â€
Construction of the door was requested about a year ago in response to a protest in April 2015 when protesters stormed the chancellor’s suite.
The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,†President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,†State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.â€
But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.â€
“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures†of Americans, he said.
Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
The New York Daily News’ House Ballestician Gersh Kuntzman’s recent death-defying test-firing of the AR-15 has already become famous as an Internet meme.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A journalist from the New York Daily News has been awarded the National Defense Service Medal in recognition of his honorable service during a time of crisis, a Pentagon spokesperson announced today.
The recipient will also be eligible to receive disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs within the next decade.
Gersh Kuntzman, a veteran journalist of 30 years, put down the pen to take up the sword on Wednesday, traveling from New York to Philadelphia to experience the thrill of firing a military-grade weapon similar to the one used in the Orlando terror attack.
Kuntzman’s battle-weary, critically-acclaimed memoir, “What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very, very loud,†quickly gained widespread acclaim, including the notice of many active-duty service members, who lauded his steadfast heroics.
“We here in the Department of Defense are in awe of Mr. Kuntzman’s martial prowess and noble sacrifice to this nation,†said Lt. Col. Patricia Green, a Pentagon spokesperson. “Shooting an AR-15 is exactly the same as being in combat, as evidenced by Mr. Kuntzman’s self-diagnosed PTSD.â€
The AR-15 assault bazooka is the civilian counterpart to the military’s M4A1 bazooka. The shoulder-fired weapon is renowned for its crippling recoil and deafening boom, leading many bazooka enthusiasts to train their children from an early age to develop the tolerance required to handle such a mighty instrument of destruction.
Gersh Kuntzman, reporting for the hoplophobic New York Daily News, wound up psychically-scarred with a bruised shoulder and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome after test-firing an AR-15.
What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud.
It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style assault weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified. …
I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).
The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
I will grant Mr. Kuntzman that ARs are noisy, but Goodness Gracious, Mercy Me! they shoot the .223 cartridge, a minutely-modified version of the old .222 Remington, a center-fire cartridge introduced in 1950 as a less noisy groundhog shooting cartridge offered as a less-powerful alternative to the .220 Swift and the .22-250 Remington.
Kuntzman ought to try shooting an African big game rifle sometime, or one of those super-handguns custom-made by John Linebaugh that fires the equivalent of an elephant round from a standard-size revolver. The last time I fired my .500 Linebaugh I found a large lump had developed at the base of my thumb. I wondered at the time if it was going to be a permanent souvenir, but it gradually went away.
Back in the old days, when men were men and not metrosexual bed-wetters, Sir Samuel Baker was renowned for using a black-powder 2-bore rifle on dangerous game. The 2-bore designation means that the gun fired a ball weighing a half pound of lead.
Kuntzman (2016) shot an Ar-15 firing a 63 grain .223″ diameter bullet at 900+ feet-per-second.
Samuel Baker (1866) used to shoot a two-bore firing an 8 ounce, 3500 grain 1.326″ diameter bullet at 1500 feet per second. So much has humanity declined in a century and a half.
In the old days, people would die for their convictions. Protestants and Catholics alike suffered themselves to be racked, torn with irons, and burned alive to uphold the truth as they perceived it. You can still see scorch marks on the door of Balliol College from the burning of Latimer, Cranmer, and Ridley.
Brendan O’Neill, in National Review, describes how the confrontation between Heresy and Orthodoxy plays out in our own time. No scorch marks for Ian McEwan!
For a worldview that claims to be all about freedom and choice and “being oneself,†transgenderism sure is tetchy and intolerant. Consider what has just happened to the celebrated British novelist Ian McEwan. Last week, during a speech at the Royal Institution in London, McEwan took a genteel swipe at the politics of identity. He said identity politics is becoming increasingly consumerist, where we now pluck a ready-made “self†from “the shelves of a personal-identity supermarket.†The making up of one’s identity has gone so far that “some men in full possession of a penis are identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges,†he said. Then came his killer line: “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.â€
Can you guess what happened next? Yes, McEwan was subjected to a Twitch hunt, to that 21st-century bloodsport in which anyone who expresses an unpopular view or makes a less than PC utterance or simply misspeaks a little will be “called out†(shamed) by the bedroom-bound, Twitter-living, self-styled guardians of correct thinking. Twits went berserk over his apparently perverse linking of penises with maleness. They branded him a bigot, weird, a transphobe. Trans-rights activists put the boot in, too. Stonewall, the LGBT activist group, slammed McEwan for being “uninformed†and said his weird worldview doesn’t only “denigrate the trans experience, it denies its very existence.†Paris Lees, a trans woman and journalist, scolded McEwan, telling him his “ideas about penises are outdated.†He should apologize, the mob said.
And he did. All the virtual tomato-throwing at this heretic who dared to say that people with penises are men had the desired effect. It elicited a public backtrack. In an open letter in the Guardian, McEwan accused some of his critics of being “righteous and cross,†yet he then bowed and scraped before the trans religion. Transgenderism “should be respected,†he said. Then, most strikingly, he obediently expressed the key tenet of the trans ideology: “Biology is not always destiny.†Remarkable. In the space of a few days, he went from raising interesting, awkward questions about trans identity to repeating in a national newspaper the trans mantra that “biology is not destiny.†For those of us who believe in freedom of thought, it was an ugly sight, reminiscent of those poor souls dragged before the Inquisition and set free only when they dutifully bought into their inquisitors’ belief system and publicly declared: “I believe in Jesus Christ.â€
In the police van, we can see a nifty Bren gun, a kukri, several swords, a few rifles, some pistols, a bolt-action with a barrel bent 90 degrees, and… (everyone lick his lips) yes, there is a German MG42.
Poor Martin Johnson of Penistone, Yorkshire died young at only 51. He seems to have led a quiet and harmless life, but despite his misfortune of residing in the pussified and socialized Britain of today, he was clearly a sound chap with a keen interest in WWII weapons, who had successfully over the course of a lifetime (despite living under a hoplophobic tyranny) amassed a pretty nice collection.
Not very long after the unlucky fellow’s toes turned up his busybody neighbors were summoning the local constabulary to check in on him. The rozzers inevitably stumbled upon the old boy’s collection, and this being today’s Britain, they all had panic attacks and wet their pants. 100 houses were evacuated, because Yorkshire’s finest somehow convinced themselves that Mr. Johnson’s collection had WMDs. His stash (of doubtless long emptied and defused) WWII mortar rounds were assumed to be loaded with mustard gas!
The Daily Mail shrieked aloud over the “terrifying cache” of “potentially dangerous” trinkets.
Who knows? Certainly not Yorkshire cops or Limey reporters. Mr. Johnson may very possibly have had a completely legal collection of totally deactivated pieces. The odds certainly favor that likelihood.
If any of those rifles or pistols were functional, he would, if caught, have been jugged longer than a Muslim terrorist for mere possession. If those machine guns were not deactivated, why! the government would probably have also fallen.
Despite grudging ackowledgements by officialdom that Johnson’s cache of shells was found to be unloaded, the bomb squad evidently could not resist eliminating some WWII collectibles with a “controlled explosion.”
Note that the Bren gun has been carefully labelled with a red tag reading “CAUTION FIREARM.” After all, someone might have mistaken it for a bicycle!
Republican turncoat Jim Webb, who despite his Marine Corps and redneck backgrounds, who despite serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Adminstration, changed sides and ran for the Senate as a democrat opposing the War in Iraq, then in the Senate voted for Obamacare and everything else, all the rest of the way down the line with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, could be observed paying painfully for his treachery last night.
At last night’s “democrat”, read: Socialist Party Presidential Debate, Webb found himself largely ignored by moderator Anderson Cooper. Webb additionally had to pay the price for his infidelity by being obliged to publicly affirm all the sniveling left-wing poppycock that was meat-and-drink to his rivals.
Webb managed to equivocate on Gun Control simultaneously agreeing that we have not done a good job of keeping people “who should be kept from having guns” from obtaining firearms, while also defending the right of ordinary Americans to own guns to defend their families.
But equivocation could only go so far.
I admired Webb’s grit as he ate one very major toad, standing right up and faithfully saluting Affirmative Action and assuring America, right out loud, that African Americans were entitled to a specially-privileged national status on the basis of their history including Slavery and Jim Crow.
Webb is smart enough to know better, but he again carefully followed the Party line on Climate Change, declining to defend coal, citing his Senatorial support for alternative energy and proposing greater reliance on nuclear power.
Inevitably, in certain areas, especially on questions related to foreign policy and defense, Webb sounded like the only adult in the room, and he undoubtedly did himself some good with his answers in those areas.
But Webb finally really paid the price on one particular question.
The British newspaper Independent described the moment from the other side’s perspective.
Jim Webb was responsible for one of the most uncomfortable moments of the Democratic debate on Tuesday evening when his dark sense of humour failed to translate.
Webb served in the Marine infantry as a rifle platoon and company commander during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, and other military honours for bravery.
The former Virginia senator was asked to name the enemy he was most proud of making in his political career during the debate.
“I’d have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he’s not around right now to talk to,†he said slowly after the other four candidates gave their answers, his mouth gradually breaking into a grin.
A few members of the audience managed an uneasy chuckle, but Moderator Anderson Cooper was keen to move on from his answer and quickly redirected the debate towards closing statements.
How exquisitely painful it must have been to former US Marine Officer James Webb to deliver the kind of line which would have his rivals at a Republican debate laughing appreciatively and the audience leaping to their feet applauding him, yet which, at a democrat party debate, lands on the floor like a dead fish, embarrassing his interlocutors and simply making his intended audience uncomfortable.
Poor Webb! The real price he is obliged to pay for stabbing his own kind in the back, and joining with the enemy, is having to pretend to be one of them and having to endure associating with them.
Andrew McCarthy, in NR, explains that, not only can the Republican majority in Congress stop Barack Obama’s Iran Treaty, on the basis of the terms of last April’s Constitution-reversing Corker Bill, Congress is obliged to.
While maddening, the Corker bill is not an abject congressional surrender to Obama and Tehran. It is a conditional surrender. It would grant Obama grudging congressional endorsement of the deal in the absence of a now unattainable veto-proof resolution of disapproval, but only if Obama fulfills certain basic terms. Obama has not complied with the most basic one: the mandate that he provide the complete Iran deal for Congress’s consideration. Therefore, notwithstanding Washington’s frenzied assumption that the 60-day period for a congressional vote is winding down, the clock has never actually started to run. Congress’s obligations under Corker have never been triggered; the Corker process is moot. …
The Corker legislation — formally known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 — is crystal clear. In its very first section, the act requires the president to transmit to Congress “the agreement. . . . including all related materials and annexes.†It is too late to do that now: the act dictates that it was to have been done “not later than five days after reaching the agreement†— meaning July 19, since the agreement was finalized on July 14. Underscoring the mandate that all relevant understandings in the Iran deal — including, of course, the essential understandings — must be provided to lawmakers, the act explicitly spells out a definition of the “Agreement†in subsection (h)(1). Under it, this is what the administration was required to give Congress over six weeks ago in order to trigger the afore-described Corker review process:
The term ‘agreement’ means an agreement related to the nuclear program of Iran . . . regardless of the form it takes, . . . including any joint comprehensive plan of action entered into or made between Iran and any other parties, and any additional materials related thereto, including annexes, appendices, codicils, side agreements, implementing materials, documents, and guidance, technical or other understandings, and any related agreements, whether entered into or implemented prior to the agreement or to be entered into or implemented in the future.
The act could not be more emphatic: To get the advantage of the favorable Corker formula that allows him to lift the anti-nuclear sanctions with only one-third congressional support, the president was required to supply Congress with every scintilla of information regarding verification. …
It is not enough to say that Congress has no obligation to proceed with the Corker review process. It would, under the act, be impermissible for Congress to do so.
Of course, the sad reality is the Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are conscious that democrats are wilier and more determined than they are, and have, in everything, the backing of the national media. They have a majority of both houses of Congress and polls show that two thirds of the public opposes the Iran Deal, and they still won’t fight.
Well, it’s happened. The wet ends at the BBC (who obviously think they are administrators at some American college) have declined to renew the contract of Jeremy Clarkson, the principal host of the BBC’s hit automotive program Top Gear.
The BBC’s Director General Tony Hall has confirmed Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson’s contract will not be renewed after a physical altercation with a producer. The controversial presenter was suspended on March 10, following a “fracas†with Oisin Tymon — believed to be over catering — in a Yorkshire hotel.
“It is with great regret that I have told Jeremy Clarkson today that the BBC will not be renewing his contract. It is not a decision I have taken lightly. I have done so only after a very careful consideration of the facts and after personally meeting both Jeremy and Oisin Tymon,†said Hall in a statement.
Clarkson was fired because he got into a fracas with his producer on March 4th while filming in chilly Yorkshire. The Top Gear star became angry at learning that no hot meal was being provided, and socked producer Oisin Tymon in the mouth after calling him “a lazy Irish c*nt.”
Following the announcement, Top Gear co-host James May, whose contract is also up at the end of the month, told reporters outside his home, “It’s a tragedy. I’m sorry that what ought to have been a small incident, sorted out easily, turned into something big… I have only known for the past few minutes and if you’ll excuse me, I very desperately have to write the eBay listing for my Ferrari.â€
The lazy Irish c*nt with the swollen lip and his reptilian lawyer were also heard from (Yahoo News):
“I respect Lord Hall’s detailed findings and I am grateful to the BBC for their thorough and swift investigation into this very regrettable incident, against a background of intense media interest and speculation.
“I’ve worked on Top Gear for almost a decade, a programme I love.
“Over that time Jeremy and I had a positive and successful working relationship, making some landmark projects together. He is a unique talent and I am well aware that many will be sorry his involvement in the show should end in this way.â€
Statement from his lawyer Paul Daniels in full:
“This last month has been a nightmare for Oisin, his friends and his family. Through absolutely no fault of his own he found himself at the centre of a massive news story, but despite that he has conducted himself with dignity, restraint and balance.
“He now simply wishes to return to the job he loves at the BBC. He does not intend to make any further media comment and kindly asks that his privacy is respected.
“More generally, this is an important reminder that UK law protects all staff who face bullying, discrimination or violence at work, and all employers are required to protect their staff from such behaviour.â€
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Obviously, British television resembles the American education system more than it does Hollywood. Its top priority is preventing bullying or discrimination against the inactive, the Hibernian, and those incapable of defending themselves. In America, the talent, I expect, tends to get hot meals and lots of sucking up from the help.
Personally, I think justice would be done by having the American Fox Network dash in and sign up all three British hosts for a new, and more luxurious, version of an automotive program, combining fast car testing, humor, and political satire.
And, every couple of months, Jeremy Clarkson should punch out some deserving left-wing commentator while his audience in the millions applauds.
Only two weeks after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a strongly worded #JeSuisCharlie statement on the importance of free speech, Facebook has agreed to censor images of the prophet Muhammad in Turkey — including the very type of image that precipitated the Charlie Hebdo attack.
It’s an illustration, perhaps, of how extremely complicated and nuanced issues of online speech really are. It’s also conclusive proof of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg’s free-speech declaration at the time: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook’s record doesn’t entirely back it up.
Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators. (It is a sign, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum wrote from Moscow, of “new limits on Facebook’s ability to serve as a platform for political opposition movements.â€) Critics have previously accused the site of taking down pages tied to dissidents in Syria and China; the International Campaign for Tibet is currently circulating a petition against alleged Facebook censorship, which has been signed more than 20,000 times.
While Facebook doesn’t technically operate in China, it has made several recent overtures to Chinese politicians and Internet regulators — overtures that signal, if tacitly, an interest in bringing a (highly censored) Facebook to China’s 648 million Internet-users.
