Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Mr. Pathetic! Several heads of state called Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, NOT Obama though- The US did have a hero on site!

Absolutely pathetic! Several heads of state called Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, NOT Obama though : Fire Andrea Mitchell!

Absolutely pathetic! Several heads of state called Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, NOT Obama though

How pathetic! Even Hugo Chavez called Chilean President Sebastian Pinera during the Chiliean miner rescue to offer his support. All the Latin-American countries heads of state called Pinera. Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron called Pinera, and even that “evil” Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu called the Chilean President. Not Obama though.Watch the following video as Chilean President Sebastian Pinera thanked the various Heads of State for calling him and offering support. One “head of state” is missing. Barack Hussein Obama. Somehow, I don’t think Obama’s name or the United States just skippedPinera’s name either. The video is over 10 minutes long. If you want to skip forward to the part where Pinera is thanking the heads of state, start at about 6 minutes, 20 seconds.


Driller from Denver becomes Chile mine rescue hero - Yahoo! News

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile – Jeff Hart was drilling water wells for the U.S. Army's forward operating bases in Afghanistan when he got the call to fly to Chile.

He spent the next 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners.

"You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it's a vibration you get so that you know what's happening," explained Hart, a contractor from Denver, Colorado.

A muscular, taciturn man with callused hands and a sunburned face, Hart normally pounds rock for oil or water.

He's used to extreme conditions while he works the hydraulic levers that guide the drills' hammers.

But this was something different — 33 lives were depending on him.

"I was nervous today," said Hart, 40.

He joked that he thought it was his heart stopping when he felt an unexplained "pop" just before the drill broke through into a chamber far underground. "I didn't want anything to go wrong."

Within hours after the gold and copper mine collapsed Aug. 5, Chile's government realized the mine's owners were ill-equipped to handle the rescue and asked the state-owned Codelco mining company to take the lead.

Codelco turned to Geotec Boyles Bros., a U.S.-Chilean company, to handle the "Plan B" escape shaft, one of three simultaneous drilling efforts that raced to reach the miners.

Geotec operations manager James Stefanic said he quickly assembled "a top of the line team" of drillers who are intimately familiar with the key equipment, including engineers from two Pennsylvania companies — Schramm Inc., which makes the T130 drill, and Center Rock Inc., which makes the drill bits.

Hart was called in from Afghanistan, "simply because he's the best" at drilling larger holes with the T130's wide-diameter drill bits, Stefanic said.

Standing before the levers, pressure meters and gauges on the T130's control panel, Hart and the rest of the team faced many challenges in drilling the shaft. At one point, the drill struck a metal support beam in the poorly mapped mine, shattering its hammers. Fresh equipment had to be flown in from the United States and progress was delayed for days as powerful magnets were lowered to pull out the pieces.

The mine's veins of gold and copper ran through quartzite with a high level of abrasive silica, rock so tough that it took all their expertise to keep the drill's hammers from curving off in unwanted directions. "It was horrible," said Center Rock President Brandon Fisher, exhausted after hardly sleeping during the effort.

Fisher, Stefanic and Hart called it the most difficult hole they had ever drilled, because of the lives at stake.

"If you're drilling for oil and you lose the hole, it's different. This time there's people down below," Stefanic said.

"We ruined some bits, worked through the problems as a team, and broke through," Hart said. "I'm very happy now."

Miners' relatives crowded around Hart on Saturday, hugging and posing for pictures with him as he walked down from the rescue operation into the tent camp where families had anxiously followed his work.

"He's become the hero of the day," said Dayana Olivares, whose friend Carlos Bugueno is one of the miners stuck below.

Champagne sprayed all around him after Hart guided the drill into the miners' chamber. He pulled the last punch so that the drill extended just over two feet (65 centimeters) beyond the ceiling. A less experienced hand might have broken through with too much power, endangering the miners and even jamming the shaft with broken equipment.

"We got the job done," Hart said simply.

Hart has a home in Denver but works for long periods abroad as a contractor for the Layne Christensen company based in Mission Woods, Kansas.

"We spend most of our time away from our families, but we don't have the what-ifs they have down there," he said of the miners. "Now they have an avenue to come out."

___

Associated Press Writer Vivian Sequera contributed to this report.

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