Nuclear winter. Worldwide economic collapse. Zombie takeover. We all have a favorite apocalyptic situation that we occasionally find ourselves pondering. One very important question: What vehicle do you want as your trusty steed?

Sure, the Hummer-dwarfing Marauder starts at around half a million dollars. But for your megabucks you get a fully functional roving fortress. With room for a crew of two up front, plus eight in the back (in standard configuration), the Marauder is designed to withstand impact from mines or IEDs. It even took a C4 charge to its undercarriage in an infamous TV segment, so it’s tough enough to survive the end of days. The Marauder is the perfect choice for those who fear coming under attack by the armies of the undead, as it can be fitted with a turret up top and has options for extra armor or provision capacity. The thing drinks gasoline, but if you can afford the Marauder, you can afford to keep it in gas in a dystopian wasteland.

Get them all HERE.

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Stunning Art Pieces Carved Out of Books: Recycling at its Best!

here would be a shelf kept in the corner of your house compiled with many old and untouched books that would have collected dust over them and you would not have even bothered to read them at least once in a blue moon. This is a case with almost everybody. But thanks to some artists who thought out of the box and instead of keeping them on the shelves for years or throwing them in the bins, they carved beautiful pieces of art out of it. With a bit of creative and innovative thinking, and of course by recycling, you can create wonderful art pieces out of these unused and untouched books. Surely you would be thinking that books are meant to be read and gain knowledge out of it, but what knowledge is it providing you by sticking to that dusty shelf since years? We often hear about recycling paper, plastic and many more, then why not books? Just by doing such creative art works you can take a step further in erasing the line between objects, sculptures and photography. Moreover with the increasing use of E-Books now days, you would definitely be losing interest in these hard bound books. So, we are left with the last option of recycling- ‘Think Big, Think Innovative’. With the pictures shown below, we are sure you would definitely gain interest in creating one such beautiful art piece:

GALLERY.

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Obama raising fuel standard to average 54.5 mpg by 2025

Fuel efficiency of U.S. cars and light trucks will nearly double by 2025 under a standard finalized by the Obama administration Tuesday.

New American vehicles will need to get an average 54.5 miles per gallon under the updated Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards that aim to save consumers money at the fuel pump and cut dependency on foreign oil imports.

The rule, strongly opposed by Republicans and some automakers, builds on the standard for vehicles for model years 2011-2016, which requires automakers to raise average fuel efficiency to 35.5 mpg. For decades, the standard was about 21 mpg for cars and light trucks combined.

The new standard is the result of over a year of negotiations among the administration, automakers and environmental groups.

Read HERE.

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Sterilization for 15 Yr Olds Needs No Parental Consent Under ObamaCare – Effective 8-1-12

UPDATE: 8-28-12 12:15 am: A reader asked where to find this in ObamaCare:

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act–a.k.a. Obamacare–was enacted in March 2010 it included (in Section 2713) a non-specific requirement that health care plans must provide “additional preventive services” to women….

In developing the regulation to define these “additional preventive services,” HHS commissioned a federally funded committee at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to recommend what they should to be.

In July 2011, this committee issued a report that said: “The committee recommends for consideration as a preventive service for women: the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity.”

The committee report said that “with reproductive capacity” meant “from the time of menarche to menopause.” Menarche is the beginning of menstruation–again, on average, about the age of 12 for American women.

On Aug. 1, 2011, HHS announced that it was adopting the IOM committee’s recommendation almost verbatim. In fact, it added just one word–placing “all” in front of “women with reproductive capacity.”

Thus, the regulation issued by the Health Resources and Services Administration said: “Non-grandfathered plans and issuers are required to provide coverage without cost-sharing consistent with these guidelines in the first plan year (in the individual market, policy year) that begins on or after August 1, 2012. … All Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity.”

HHS said nothing about restricting the provision of these free “preventive services” to women who were 18 or older, or 21 or older, or even 15 or older. The regulation simply said “all women with reproductive capacity.” Source CNS News

Read the entire article HERE

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Entitlement Reforms

It is the young, not the old, who will bear the brunt if we don’t reform Medicare.

By Thomas Sowell

For those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational, trying to explain what happens in politics can be a real challenge.

For example, that segment of the population that has the least to fear from a reform of Medicare or Social Security is the most fearful — namely, those already receiving Medicare or Social Security benefits.

It is understandable that people heavily dependent on these programs would fear losing their benefits, especially after a lifetime of paying into these programs. But nobody in his right mind has even proposed taking away the benefits of those who are already receiving them.

Yet opponents of reforming these programs have managed repeatedly to scare the daylights out of seniors with wild claims and television ads such as one showing someone — who looks somewhat like Paul Ryan — pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair toward a cliff and then dumping her over.

There are people who take seriously such statements as those by President Barack Obama that Republicans want to “end Medicare as we know it.”

Let’s stop and think, if only for the novelty of it. If you make any change in anything, you are ending it “as we know it.” Does that mean that everything in the status quo should be considered to be set in concrete forever?

If there were not a single Republican, or none who got elected to any office, arithmetic would still end “Medicare as we know it,” for the simple reason that the money in the till is not enough to keep paying for it. The same is true of Social Security.

The same has been true of welfare-state programs in European countries that are currently struggling with both financial crises and riots in the streets from people who feel betrayed by their governments. They have in fact been betrayed by their politicians, who have promised them things that there was not enough money to pay for. That is the basic problem in the United States as well.

We are not yet Greece, but we are not exempt from the same rules of arithmetic that eventually caught up with Greece. We just have a little more time. The only question is whether we will use that time to make politically difficult changes or whether we will just kick the can down the road, and keep pretending that “Medicare as we know it” would continue on indefinitely if it were not for people who just want to be mean to the elderly.

In both Europe and America, there are many people who get angry at those who tell them the truth that the money is just not there to sustain huge welfare-state programs indefinitely. But that anger might be better directed at those who lied to them by promising them benefits that were inherently unsustainable.

Neither Social Security nor Medicare has ever had enough assets to cover its liabilities. Very simply, there has never been enough money put aside to do what the government promised to do.

These systems operate on what their advocates like to call a “pay as you go” basis. That is, the younger generation pays in money that is used to cover the cost of benefits for the older generation. This is the kind of financial pyramid scheme that got Charles Ponzi put in prison in the 1920s and got Bernie Madoff put in prison in our time.

A private annuity cannot play these financial games without its executives risking the fate of Ponzi and Madoff. That is why proposed Social Security and Medicare reforms would allow young people to put their money somewhere where the money they pay in would be put aside specifically for them, not used as at present to pay older people’s pensions, with anything left over being used for whatever else politicians feel like spending the money on.

It is today’s young people who are going to be left holding the bag when they reach retirement age and discover that all the money they paid in is long gone. It is today’s young people who are going to be dumped over a cliff when they reach retirement age if nothing is done to reform entitlements.

Yet the young seem not to be nearly as alarmed as the elderly, who have no real reason to fear. Try reconciling that with the belief that human beings are rational.

From HERE.

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Congressional Black Caucus Slams New Republican Artur Davis Ahead of RNC Speech

Former Alabama Rep. Artur Davis recently changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. He is a strong supporter of Voter I.D. laws and has expressed his disdain toward comments made by Democrats like Joe Biden about slavery. Davis also co-chaired President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and spoke at the DNC convention. Tonight, he’s speaking at the RNC convention in Tampa and the Congressional Black Caucus isn’t happy about. The CDC sent the following to Davis ahead of his speech:

We are writing to express our disdain over several recent comments you have made about the important issues facing voters in November, your total distortion of President Barack Obama’s record, and your complete flip-flop on certain core principles you once held dear. Given the magnitude of your recent transformation, we can only conclude that, rather than a true conversion, your actions are the result of a nakedly personal and political calculation or simmering anguish after failing to secure the Democratic nomination for governor of the State of Alabama in 2010.

It’s unconscionable that you now claim Voter ID laws do not violate civil rights or suppress minority voter turnout. Yet in 2007 while still representing Alabama’s 7th congressional district, you joined then-Senator Obama in calling for the resignation of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights chief after he claimed that Voter ID laws did not hurt minorities, saying, “you can’t argue that voter ID laws don’t disfranchise African-Americans.”

As a refresher, here are some quotes from Davis at the True the Vote Summit in Houston earlier this year:

“This is not a billy club,” “This is not a fire hose,” “This is not Jim Crow, though some people say it is.” (all said while holding up his driver’s license.)

“How is it that this tiny [I.D] little thing that I can hold in my hand is causing such a stir?”

“Rights don’t mean that you don’t have responsibilities, you’re not auto-enrolled to vote.”

“Where is this notion that if I have a right that I don’t have to be bothered with responsibility?”

“We have to be one country, but the way you become one country is you stop acting like a country that’s divided into different buckets and baskets of people.

From HERE.

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No wonder california is hurting. Paying out such pensions? And the unions are pissed that they may not see those kinds of pensions in the future?

SF Gate:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced a  compromise with Democratic legislative leaders on changes to pension benefits  for new public employees Tuesday, an agreement that includes legislation to cap  pensions, curb pension spiking, increase to 50 percent the amount employees  contribute to their retirement benefits and raise the retirement age.

Instead, Democrats  and the governor agreed to put a hard cap on the amount of compensation that can  be used when calculating someone’s retirement pay. Currently, there is no limit  on the pay by which a public employee’s pension is calculated and some pensions  run as high as $500,000 a year.

For public employees participating in Social  Security, the proposed cap would be based on the Social Security wage limit,  which is currently $110,100 a year. Public workers not paying into Social  Security would have pensions based on a salary of up to 120 percent of the  Social Security wage limit, or $132,000 a year

Public employee unions, as expected, expressed anger at the proposed changes. Dave  Low, chairman of a coalition that represents 1.5 million public employees  and retirees, said the proposal will hurt “all Californians” by making it harder  to attract and keep teachers, police officers and firefighters at work .

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Bit funny.

Smoking Gun:

An Army veteran who painted “Obama Fuk Off” in large letters on the side of his truck was questioned by Wisconsin cops after police dispatchers received acomplaint that the profane message was inappropriate “for kids in the area

Hamm contends that he did not misspell the word “fuck” on his truck. Instead, “Fuk,” he notes, is actually an acronym for “Fundamentally Useless Kenyan.”

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