In Iraq, the United States and Iran Align Against the Islamic State... Strange bedfellows!

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In Iraq, the United States and Iran Align Against the Islamic State Since June, a great deal of international focus has been on Iraq, where the transnational jihadist movement Islamic State took over large swaths of the country's Sunni-majority areas and declared the re-establishment of the caliphate. Despite the global attention on the country, especially given U.S. military operations against the Islamic State, U.S.-Iranian cooperation against the jihadist group -- a significant dynamic -- has gone largely unnoticed. A convergence of interests, particularly concerning the Iraqi central and Kurdish regional governments, has made it necessary for Washington and Tehran to at least coordinate their actions. However, mistrust and domestic opposition will continue hampering this cooperation. Their 35-year-old mutual enmity notwithstanding, the United States and Iran have cooperated against a common jihadist enemy in the past, such as when they worked together to topple the Taliban regime following the 9/11 attacks. Relations quickly soured again when U.S. President George W. Bush's administration declared the Islamic republic a part of the "axis of evil" and when controversy over Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons program broke out in 2002. However, these tensions did not prevent the two sides from cooperating again in the U.S. move to effect regime change in Iraq in 2003. For Iran, Washington's decision to topple Iraq's Baathist government was a godsend; it turned Tehran's biggest national security threat into a major geopolitical opportunity. Read more »

"Cartoon" is worth a thousand words! This would be funny if it weren't TRUE! Pray for US!

IF YOU HAVE THE INTESTINAL FORTITUDE TO SEND  THIS TO YOUR ADDRESS LIST, FEEL FREE.  LET THEM KNOW THAT IT IS TIME FOR THIS  ADMINISTRATION TO LEAVE WHILE WE STILL HAVE SOMETHING  LEFT! Live simply.  Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God   In God We  Trust! "I love this country, it's the current government I'm  afraid of"

WOW, Incredible Story!!!!

Maybe you have seen this before, but if not -- check it out. 

Thought you might find this interesting. 

747 Pilot comments about carrying the Shuttle

 

 

This was circulated in email at work, from United Technologies corporate.

A quick "trip report" from the pilot of the 747 that flew the shuttle back to Florida after the Hubble repair flight.

A humorous and interesting inside look at what it's like to fly two aircraft at once . .. .

(I have decided to adopt one of "Triple Nickel's" phrases :  "That was too close for MY laundry!")

Walt and all,

Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the                     experience.  I have to say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal as I type this email.  The experience was surreal.   Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind.  The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever done.  It was like a dream... someone else's dream.  

We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used 11,999 1/2  feet to get the wheels off the ground.  We were at 3,500 feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise.  I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early.  If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway.  So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude.  The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16.  All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls.  I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet!  I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me".  Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry.  As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is that a skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled and said "Tires"!  I said "TIRES???  OURS???"  They smiled and shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was.  The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit.  My mind could not get over, from                      this point on, that this was something I had never experienced.  Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?

The flight down to Florida was an eternity.  We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000'  The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at MACH .94.  We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage.  The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board.  I felt like if I had plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening.  The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll                     completely over on our back"..not a good thing I kept telling myself.  SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster. 

Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way.  We dodged what was in reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with.  We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with that fuel.  I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon.  So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water.  Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people of Titusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked like.  We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots.  We could see traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look.  We heard later that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning stretch.  Oh say can you see...

After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF).  There was not one person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving!   "What a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing.  All this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land.   They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing.  However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality.  I was pumped up!  We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing traffic that day.   So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking on!  One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit.  But the engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem.  "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!"  So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself.  The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun.  There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the "normal" point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!!  So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing.  Bob's video supports this!  :8-)

Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be watching and cheering us on!  What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough.  For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking.  They checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).  Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area.  Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.

I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what had happened.  It was a thrill of a lifetime.  Again I want to thank everyone for your interest and support.  It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.

Triple Nickel

NASA Pilot

=

Mx Goverment puts Arturo Beltran Leyva's 2009 "Posada" House on the market ...

Borderland Beat

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Posted: 20 Aug 2014 12:34 AM PDT Chivis Martínez for Borderland Beat The Mexican government Treasury department, has placed for sale one of the seized properties belonging to the late Sinaloa capo Arturo Beltran Leyva, aka "El Barbas' or 'Jefe de Jefes". The property has some notoriety, because in December 2009, the house was used for  a lavish "posada" (Christmas party) that ended abruptly due to  the arrival of an operation by the Mexican Navy.  The navy operation was to capture the Capo, but he managed to escape. At the home  was singer Ray Ayala, politicians, various guests, 40 prostitutes and 11 party organizers. "El Barbas",   escaped arrest after a violent pursuit on the road from Cuernavaca to Acapulco, where his safety shield was led by at least 12  ex-military,  using  assault rifles, a grenade launchers and thousands of rounds to leave a trail of wrecked vehicles and resulted in the death of two federal agents. SCHP determined that the federation should receive for the property at least  13 million 989 thousand pesos or roughly 1,070,360 USD.  The  property is over 5 thousand 500 square meters, of which  are mostly gardens and open spaces and only 892 square meters in construction.  The property's address is  124 del Fraccionamiento Paseo de las Mandarinas, in the subdivision of  Los Limoneros in the town of  poblado de Ahucatepec, located in  upscale Cuernavaca. Six days after the party, Beltran Leyva was killed in a confrontation with the Navy in the Altitude complex near the center of Cuernavaca. The sale property is not currently accessible to the public, and  administrators have installed three guard houses to prevent onlookers from entering the street where the house sits.   . The SAEB placed the property on sale,  as well as two other properties seized by the Attorney General's Office  (PGR)  that were offered for sale through Banrural and Fiderca, in Morelos. Below is at the party house and  below a video of the shootout that ended his life

Drug Trafficker Fugitive on Canada's 10 Most Wanted List, Captured in Guadalajara Posted: 19 Aug 2014 02:09 PM PDT Chivis Martinez for Borderland Beat The fugitive was on Canada's 10 most wanted list, captured in Mexico where he was known to have criminal ties, after 4 years on the lam Backstory: Cory Vallee is a member of the United Nations Gang.  He is wanted on a Canada-Wide Warrant for the slaying of rival gang member Kevin LeClair and the slaying of an innocent party, Jonathan Barber.  Vallee is also wanted for the Conspiracy to Murder the Bacon Brothers and/or their associates.   He grew up in Florida.  Vallee is also associated to a drug trafficking network in Mexico.  Before his arrest he was last seen in Canada in October 2009. Twenty-six-year-old Kevin LeClair,(at left) who police say was a high-ranking member of the Red Scorpion gang, was gunned down outside the Thunderbird Shopping Centre in Langley as he sat in his truck in February 2009.  After his death it was disclosed that LeClair had "cooperated" with police on a case.   The Red Scorpions are a British Columbia based organized crime group and nemesis of  the UN gang. Barber was killed in hail of gunfire in May 2008 as he drove a Porche  owned by one of the Bacon brothers through Burnaby B.C.  Barber, 24, was shot by mistaken identity, just after he picked up the vehicle belonging to one of the Red-Scorpion-affiliated Bacon brothers to install a stereo.  and LeClair died the following February during a daytime shooting at a shopping centre. The UN gang was founded by a group of high school friends, from  middle class suburbia, who formed the group in the late 1990s.  The gang  linked with an Asian organized criminal group and later, with  Mexican cartels.  They group experienced rapid growth,  running an enterprise involving helicopters flying across the US-Canada border trading much sought after British Columbia cannabis for  Mexican cocaine to be sold in Canada.  The group has ties to The Hells Angels.  Monday's Capture in Guadalajara  Cory Vallee — (above)  a man police claim played a major role in the Lower Mainland's 2008/09 bloody gang feud — was arrested in Mexico on Aug. 13 and appeared briefly in a Vancouver court Monday. Vallee, 37; who has evaded police for four years, had been charged in absentia with two counts of first degree murder, one of attempted murder, and one of conspiracy to commit murder Arrested in Guadalajara, carrying a fake ID, Vallee's identity was quickly confirmed and he was transported back to B.C., according to a statement from the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT). In the statement, Kevin Hackett, Chief Officer for the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of British Columbia, said Vallee's arrest was a testament to the dedication B.C. officers have to the victims and families of gang violenc; "as a result of tremendous cooperation between IHIT, CFSEU-BC, Mexican authorities, and others, we were able to track down and arrest one of Canada’s most wanted men who had managed to elude us for four years," said the statement. Vallee is accused of being part of the United Nations gang plot against rival organized crime group, the Red Scorpions, led by the notorious Bacon brothers. In 2008, 24-year-old Jonathan Barber was gunned down in Burnaby, in what police say was a case of mistaken identity —  Barber was installing a stereo in a car that was owned by one of the Bacon brothers. The following year, Red Scorpion member Kevin LeClair was gunned down outside a grocery store in Langley. Vallee is also accused of being part of a United Nations gang plot to kill Jonathan, Jarrod and Jamie Bacon. Police are still hunting for the final suspect in the conspiracy, Conor D'Monte, who hasn't been seen since 2009 For further information on these and other Canadian organized crime gangs there is a 5 part documentary, below is part 1 of the 5.  "The Gangster Next Door"   Source: Interpol News-The real Scoop-Royal Mounted Police Website-

GAS - Be Forewarned. No, not your spouse.

> 
> Good advice below...
> 
> Only two states in the U.S. do not let customers pump their own gas.
> 
> Got this from a email friend today she says . . .  I ALWAYS check the first gallon before pumping more - simply to 'Match the Price'  (advertised) against the 'One' gallon pumped into my car. - I "caught" a SHELL station (here in Mesa, Arizona) that had the price 12 cents per gallon 'Higher' than the advertised price on the pump AND the sign out front. - I called the local Department of Agriculture (weights and measures division) from my cell phone immediately - waiting for them to show up. They did, some 20 minutes later. The Department taped all the pumps - stopping ALL traffic from using the pumps. They (two men)
> checked all 6 pumps, finding them all "rigged" at a higher price (by 12 cents) per gallon than advertised.
> 
> This is especially prevalent at places owned by foreign born entities.
> 
> In some case, they even have counterfeit Department of Agriculture stickers to put on the pumps when they re-calibrate. The State seldom physically inspects the pumps as it is very labor intensive, so it often goes overlooked for months or years. I usually buy all my gas at Sam's Club, but always get receipts wherever I have to get fuel.  Often, I will pump exactly 'ONE' Gallon and Check the pump pricing before continuing the fill up, and even then, I am aware of how much fuel I should get within a couple of tenths of a gallon from experience.
> 
> This is true. It happened to them three weeks ago somewhere in Pomona on our way to Penchant. The pump should have totaled @ $68.00 (and change). When the receipt was printed, and she checked it was $77.00 (and change). She got mad, went inside the store, asked for a calculator and let them do the math.
> 
> They refunded her, she told them that if they cheat, they had better make it right. Normally, her husband would skip printing the receipt. Not her. We saw on the news the other night that this is happening everywhere.
> 
> Brian pumped exactly one gallon of gas. The price did not match the cost of one gallon. It was higher. He went inside and complained, got a refund.
> 
> There is also a number on each pump that you can call and complain. This is a true story, so read it carefully.
> 
> I stopped at a BP gas station in GA. My truck's gas gauge was on 1/4 of a tank. I use the mid-grade, which was priced at $3.71 per gallon. When my tank is at this point, it takes somewhere around 14 gallons to fill When the pump showed 14 gallons had been pumped, I began to slow it down. Then, to my surprise, it went to 15, then 16. I even looked under my truck to see if it was being spilled. It was not.
> 
> Then it showed 17 gallons on the pump. It stopped at 18 gallons. This was very strange to me, since my truck has only an 18 gallon tank. I went on my way a little confused, then on the evening news I heard a report that 1 out of 4 gas stations had calibrated their pumps to show more gas had been pumped than a person actually got.
> 
> Here is how to check a pump to see if you are getting the right amount:
> 
> Whichever grade you are using, put EXACTLY 1 (One) GALLON in your tank, then look at the dollar amount. If the dollar amount is not 'Exactly' the price of the fuel "PRICE ADVERTISED", then the pumps are rigged.
> 
> In my case, as I said, the mid-grade was $3..71 per gallon; my dollar amount or 1 gallons should have been $3.71.
> 
> I wish I had checked the pump. It doesn't matter where you pump gas, please check the 1 gallon price. If you do find a station that is cheating, contact the state Agriculture Department, and direct your comments to the Commissioner, the info is on the gas pumps.
> 
> Please don't delete this until you have sent it to all people in your
> address book. We need to put a stop to this outrageous cheating of customers. The gas companies are making enough profits at honest rates.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU 7-1-2014?

>>   >> Here is what happened on July 1st 2014: >>

Top Income Tax bracket went from 35% to 39.6% >>

Top Income Payroll Tax went from 37.4% to 52.2% >>

Capital Gains Tax went from 15 % to 28% >>

Dividend Tax went from 15% to 39.6% >>

 Estate Tax went from 0% to 55% >>

These taxes were all passed under the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. >>  

All these taxes were passed with only Democrat votes. >>   >>

Not one Republican voted to do these taxes. >>

Remember this come election time.

FWC News Release: Lionfish-reporting app successful, plus 250 users sporting new lionfish shirts

FWC News Release: Lionfish-reporting app successful, plus 250 users sporting new lionfish shirts