Yes, Airbus has revealed its plans for the first flight of the A400M military transport.
In fact they are anticipating that the the first flight will be sometime this week.
That’s one humongous sh%$ load of fairy dust.
I didn’t expect them to make it to serious taxi trials before January.
He makes a very good argument against organized religion in general, and against the Catholic Church while supporting individual faith.
It’s a good point, though I find it a bit jarring, as my previous experience with him was in his roles on Blackadder, where he played the role of British pratt to perfection.
It’s well worth a listen.
Part (9:95)
Phil Hartman, back when SNL was still good.
H/t AMERICAblog
Tweety, aka Chris Matthews, describes West Point as an “enemy camp” for Barack Obama.
Let me add Tareq and Michaele Salahi, aka the “White House gate crashers” to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, but it now appears that I must add a special exception: when Jon Stewart (top) or Stephen Colbert (bottom) get medieval on the asses of They Who Must Not Be Named, the posting of these videos shall be exempt.
The original rule, as applied to She Who Must Not Be Named, was, “Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or her attempting to assassinate someone, she will not be mentioned here.”
The rule now reads as follows:
Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), an attempt to assassinate someone, they will not be mentioned here, unless there is a wicked funny video making fun of them.
So, are we clear now?
In any case, we hit the trifecta, or is that the bifecta, with both Stewart (top, 7:57) and Colbert (bottom, 0:33) being….well Stewart and Colbert.
So, David Broder, the, “Dean of the Washington press corps”, goes after Harry Reid for having the temerity to challenge his august pronouncements on healthcare reform, and Howard Dean slams him, calling him a sanctimonious “gossip columnist.”
There was an inside the beltway columnist whose head explodes, and Dean handed him his head too, when the guy lies about the CBO iumbers.
Damn, I really that Howard Dean were in his 2nd term right not, rather than Barack Obama being in his 1st term.
So, in an attempt to make NASA look cool again, they have signed up “The Rock”, the wrestler turned actor who now goes by his given name, Dwayne Johnson, in order to make space travel look cool again:
Perhaps space travel has become old. Perhaps people have come to take it for granted. It’s been seen in so many movies. So many space shuttles have taken off and returned to Earth that we think little more of them than we do of jumbo jets.
NASA therefore has to use its imagination to persuade tomorrow’s generations that space travel continues to be a large step for man.
One small step in this process is a new public service announcement featuring that fearsome space creature, “The Rock.” Dwayne Johnson himself, a man who has appeared in so many scientifically concocted movies such as WWF SmackDown, WWE Backlash, and WWE Crush Hour, is now telling kids that NASA is cool.
You know, going into space is cool, the fact that you have to lose an actor to convince people that it is is more of an artifact of your incompetence in running the space program than it is the fundamental coolness of space.
Learning to find one’s own ass with one’s own hands would be a good start.
Video below.
It comes from Dana Perino:
We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.
Jeebus, she is being stupid enough to qualify as Sarah Palin’s running mate.
She also did not know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
Al Gore is hysterically funny.
The Bishop of Providence Rhode Island has banned Patrick Kennedy from taking communion in his diocese. Suzie Madrak has the scoop at Crooks and Liars (also, you can find it at CNN):
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin has banned Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving Communion, the central sacrament of the church, in Rhode Island because of the congressman’s support for abortion rights, Kennedy said in a newspaper interview published Sunday.
The decision by the outspoken prelate, reported on The Providence Journal’s Web site, significantly escalates a bitter dispute between Tobin, an ultra orthodox bishop, and Kennedy, a son of the nation’s most famous Roman Catholic family.
“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy told the paper in an interview conducted Friday.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him “that I am not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that I’ve taken as a public official,” particularly on abortion.
(emphasis original)
Seriously, if the Church wants to be this captured by the Republican party, perhaps the IRS should look at improper electioneering.
I would also note that the Republican party has been captured by nativist bigots, people who hate Hispanics, who are now over 2/3 of the Catholic Church, then perhaps Catholics of good conscience should find those few Bishops and Cardinals of good faith who spend their time on serving their flock, and leave those who spend their time on than lobbying on abortion and covering up for pedophile priests to their own devices.
Apologies for the poor audio quality of the vid, it’s from the Christo-Fascist CNSNews.
It’s only 7¼ minutes, just watch it.
Jon Stewart interviewing Lou Dobbs:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
In this case, it’s the liquid cooled 120° V-6 Adept aviation engine Adept 320T avgas/mogas engine.
I’m dubious on market success, given that it has to use gasoline, though it is automotive fuel (mogas) compatible.
The cost, and relative unavailability of the fuel is what is driving people toward small turbine and diesel engines.
I came across their web site in a strange way, they were mentioned in an ad for Autodesk® CAD products on the back cover of the ASME magazine, Mechanical Engineering, and looked at their technology.
The basic features of the engine are:
There is a relatively uneventful video of an engine run at the bottom of this post.
Sort of NSFW, there are nekked butts.
I will never think about the phrase, “Naked Furniture,” the same way again.
The band is Valley Lodge, the song, All of My Loving.
Video h/t Know Your Meme, and technically Caturday is Saturday, but I always do my cat blogging on Friday.
On Tuesday, we were getting reports from there was a conspiracy afoot to emasculate the bill in the dead of night, using an amendment put forward by Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) wherein the GAO could “audit” the Fed, but could not actually get detailed information. It actually made the Federal Reserve less transparent.
Yves Smith rather colorfully, and very accurately described the amendment as, “Tantamount to saying you are permitted to operate a strip club as long as the patrons are prohibited from looking at un or underclad bodies.” (heh)
What followed was a bit of theater, where the opponents of the audit, rolled out economists who argued that the audit proposal was destructive, but neglected to mention their own financial ties to the Federal Reserve:
But far from a broad cross-section, the “prominent economists” lobbying on behalf of the Watt bill are in fact deeply involved with the Federal Reserve. Seven of the eight are either currently on the Fed’s payroll or have been in the past.
The Fed connections are not outlined in the letter sent around to committee members on Wednesday, but are publicly discernible through a review of their resumes, which are all posted online.
It should also be noted that the publishing staff of almost every significant economic academic journal has similar conflicts of interest with regard to the Federal reserve.
Well, despite the best efforts of the Federal Reserve, and Barney Frank, and Mel Watt, the Paul/Grayson audit bill was passed by the House Finance Committee by a vote of 43-26, 15 Dems voted for it, in addition to all the Republicans.
Hopefully, this will progress further, but my guess is that the knives will be coming out on this.
Major props to Ryan Grim of HuffPo, he’s the author of the HuffPo links here, who has been on this like white on Rice.
When he says:
When you peel back the pretty, shooty layers of the Palin onion, there’s no onion. It’s just a conservative boiler plate mad lib: ‘Freedom is good and taxes are–ooh I need an adjective–how about, I don’t know, silly?’ And the worst part it’s a mad lib delivered as though it were the hard-earned wisdom of a life well lived.
It’s just magical, and it starts at 3:40, though the first part is amusing too.
It’s not as good as Stephen Colbert’s takedown of her (scroll down). But it is very good.
Brilliant
It appears that the Republicans are going to insist on having the whole healthcare bill read in the Senate.
The Dems have a team of speed readers standing by to do this, and there is a discussion on twitter as to whether we should give an hour to Christopher Walken or William Shatner to read the bill.
It’s a fascinating concept.
I have two vids after the break to give a compare and contrast Shatner and Walken.
Feel free to add your take in the comments.
[on edit] Yes, Jack Nicholson should be included too.
[on further edit]James Earl Jones as Darth Vader might be a bit much.
Walken reading Lady GaGa’s Poker Face
William Shatner’s seminal I am a Canadian.
Nicholson, 5 Easy Pieces