Fred Fry International

Monday, March 23

Maritime Monday 154 Posted at gCaptain

This week's edition of Maritime Monday has been posted at gCaptain.

Maritime Monday 154

You can find last week’s edition here.

You can find Maritime Monday 104 here. (Published 31 March 2008).

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Previous Editions:
As linked below or click on the label ‘MaritimeMonday’:

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gCaptain editions: 99 - 100 - 101 - 102 - 103 - 104 - 105 - 106 - 107 - 108 - 109 - 110 - 111 - 112 - 113 - 114 - 115 - 116 - 117 - 118 - 119 - 120 - 121 - 122 - 123 - 123a - 124 - 125 - 126 - 127 - 128 - 129 - 130 - 131 - 132 - 133 - 134 - 135 - 136 - 137 - 138 - 139 - 140 - 141 - 142 - 143 - 144 - 145 - 146 - 147 - 148 - 149 - 150 - 151 - 152 - 153 - 154 - 155

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Saturday, March 21

AIG Bonus - Presidential/Democrat Stupidity

This AIG outrage is getting a little old. Lets look at the basic facts:

- AIG made stupid decisions which resulted in losing a huge amount of money.

- The Government gives AIG a huge amount of money

- AIG makes more stupid decisions (say some) which resulted in losing more money.

Did they honestly think that AIG was going to get lots smarter simply because they were all of a sudden spending other people's money?

As some really dense Democrat Congressmen said recently 'It looks like we are rewarding incompetency.' Well, the bonuses were not the reward for incompetency. The Government bailout of the company was the reward. (And as far as I am concerned, the employees should be able to keep the bonuses. The company used the money as it thought it needed to. As I just said, the bonuses were not the mistake. Giving the money to the company was.)

In a fair world this company would have failed. That would have rewarded the other companies that did not much such bad mistakes. Now these stronger companies have to put up with this subsidized competitor which threatens to now weaken the their position in the market.

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Friday, March 20

Back From Vacation

For those (two of you) wondering why there has been no posting lately, it is because I had taken the family on vacation to Finland for two weeks. We are now back, but now I have two kids who think that 0430 is when they should be getting up. So posting might still be a little light for the next couple days until we all get settled in.

Thanks for stopping by. I have lots I want to write about. It seems that the Obama Administration is going to provide no end of material to write about!

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Thursday, March 12

A Cold Day in... (Finland)

I spotted this gravestone while walking through the graveyard in Nokia, Finland.

As you can see, lots of snow still about and it snowed again later today.

I am still on vacation. I would apologize for not posting but the vacation is from blogging as well;)

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Wednesday, March 4

Symbolic Move from US in Protest of President Obama

In protest of President Obama's actions to bankrupt the US, I have moved to Finland, at least until the end of March when I move back to continue fighting our President's insane spending on the behalf of deadbeats and political favorites.

Unfortunately, I picked this last Monday to fly out so this turned into a little bit of an 'Escape from New York' as the state, and airports, were buried in a huge amount of snow. But thanks to lots of snow removal on behalf of the local governments and thanks to Finnair for sending the plane from Helsinki to fetch us. Many flights were canceled but our flight left just a little late. We left an hour earlier to get to the airport and despite going slower because of the snow, we made up time as there was no traffic at all on the way there.

As for my trip being part of a protest against President Obama, don't take this as an empty protest as we are looking to buy a machine shop in Finland. Sure we can buy one in the US, but at least it is easy to figure out how badly we are going to be screwed as business owners in Finland unlike in the US where who knows how badly owners there are going to get screwed. So I will take my business here, provided I find something worth buying and suitable for the plans that I have in growing such a business.

Also, I have spent more time out of the country than many of those moonbats who promised to move out of the US if Bush got re-elected in 2004 and then reneged on that promise.

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Tuesday, February 24

Maritime Monday 150 Posted at gCaptain

This week's edition of Maritime Monday has been posted at gCaptain.

Maritime Monday 150

You can find last week’s edition here.

You can find Maritime Monday 100 here. (Published 02 March 2008).

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Previous Editions:
As linked below or click on the label ‘MaritimeMonday’:

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Sunday, February 22

$198 Million in 'Stimulus' Money to be Distributed in the Philippines

Don't get me wrong, the people that are going to get this money certainly deserve to be recognized and compensated. However, this should never have been done through a bill that was intended to stimulate the US Economy.

Senators say their goal is to stimulate the U.S. economy, but the Senate's economic recovery package spends up to $198 million in lump-sum payments to aging Filipino veterans of World War II -- two-thirds of whom don't live in the U.S. and are unlikely to be pumping much money into the economy.

The money, long-sought by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, would go to about 15,000 living veterans who served in World War II as a part of U.S.-led forces and who were promised postwar benefits, including U.S. citizenship. - Washington Times

This is something that should have been done decades ago. But guess what, Congress blocked it. And odds favor that it would have been a Democrat-Controlled Congress that reneged on the promise.

Those promises were revoked by Congress soon after the war, and Filipino veterans have spent the years since pressing for compensation. Mr. Inouye said the payments are long overdue, and are urgent. - Washington Times

Anyway, here is a good-sized chunk of 'stimulus' money that will stimulate nothing more than printing machines at the US Treasury. This money should have been passed in a simple bill that specifically honored their service instead of treating this payoff like it was a secret. (Because it was intended to be a secret. One costing us $198 Million.)

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Thursday, February 19

Ammunition - "A year's worth of inventory was sold in two months"

I was talking with an ammunition manufacturer at the Nation's Gun Show over this past weekend. I was looking for some ammo for my M1 Carbine and figured that I would just pick some up at the show instead of ordering it over the internet.

Short story, they did not have any ammo and they didn't know when they would be able to make more. He then clarified that they don't know when they will have more .30 cal. carbine ammo because they cannot source the parts to make more. He said that there are all sorts of shortages because a year's supply of ammunition was sold in a period of two months. This caught the industry by surprise and they have been unable to adjust fast enough to meet the increased demand.

Seems that I need to do an inventory of what I have.
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Monday, February 16

Maritime Monday 149 Posted at gCaptain

This week's edition of Maritime Monday has been posted at gCaptain.

Maritime Monday 149

You can find last week’s edition here.

You can find Maritime Monday 99 here. (Published 25 February 2008).

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LNG Carrier ARCTIC DISCOVERER

Click on the image below for more details about LNG:

Also, be sure to check out Maritime Monday 36 which has photos of the Statoil LNG carrier ARCTIC PRINCESS, a tank diagram and Statoil’s presentation ‘The Long Road to LNG’ which gives an overview of an LNG plant.

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Previous Editions:
As linked below or click on the label ‘MaritimeMonday’:

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Saturday, February 14

SS UNITED STATES going up for Sale/Scrap

The classic American oceanliner, SS UNITED STATES appears to be going up for sale:

The SS United States Conservancy has learned that the SS UNITED STATES will soon be listed for sale. The SS UNITED STATES was purchased by Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) in 2003, and ownership of the vessel was recently transferred to a holding company controlled by NCL’s parent company, Hong Kong-based Star Cruises. In light of current economic conditions, the SS UNITED STATES is now in grave danger of being sold for scrap. The Conservancy’s press release related to the impending sale of the ship is available here. - SS United States Conservancy

Looks like the clock is ticking. Unfortunately, I can’t see this ending well. After all, the ship has been out of service since 1969.

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Friday, February 13

"Failed - house.gov"

I attempted to download the latest Stimulus Bill mess this morning with no luck. The download failed each time a couple minutes into each attempt.

I guess this is par for the course with this new Congress. Word is that it is not possible to do a word search on the document. I was trying to download the document so that I could convert it back using text recognition so that the document could be searched. I can't see how the document could have been created that way (turning the text into unsearchable images) other than on purpose. This is a pretty nasty thing to do to people who are interested in reading this legislation, worse so given that it is over 1,000 pages long. So shame on the Democrats for this. Not that it matters, given that their behavior is so poor to begin with.

Not for anything but I suspect that this very bill will come back to bite President Obama and a number of other Democrats, eventually. This is provided people start caring a little bit more.

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Thursday, February 12

Bank Inside European Parliament Building Robbed at Gunpoint

You just have to love how bold the person who did this was, especially considering that he got away with it. I would think that this would be like robbing someone inside the US Capital Building:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A lone robber attacked a bank located inside the European Parliament building in Brussels on Thursday (12 February) afternoon, causing major disruption.

The attack occurred at around 4pm local time at a branch of the ING bank inside the parliament's Paul Henri Spaak (PHS) building in the heart of the European quarter.

"The man showed a gun, or something that like looked like a gun, the staff were afraid so they gave him the cash in the drawer and he escaped," European Parliament head spokesman Jaume Duch told this website. - EUobserver

He managed to rob the bank with something that looks like a gun? I guess when you disarm the population, anything that remotely looks like a gun is all you're going to need to pull off your robbery.

"It is not known whether the gun involved was real or fake," said the parliament spokesman. "Of course if it was a fake, it would be very difficult to prevent this sort of thing." - EUobserver

What, security doesn't look for fake guns? In the end it would not have mattered if it was real or fake, because in this incident all he needed was a fake gun. As a bonus, if he got caught, a fake gun probably would earn him gun crime charges as well. This is a good example of why the acts need to be punished not the gun. Guess they will have to outlaw fake guns as well. Maybe they should make robbing banks illegal as well...

How long before we see fake gun copycat crimes across the EU?

UPDATE (13 Feb): "European Parliament robber got €50,000"

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The bank heist at the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday scooped €50,000, with police still looking for the robber on Friday. - Link

Not bad for a couple minutes work.

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"Good News" from the United Nations, Nigeria

You have all seen dozens of variations of the Nigeria money scam. Here is a new one you probably have not seen, yet.

According to the email, the whole world is getting bailed out...

From: United Nations [mailto:mailer@un.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 8:07 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: GOOD NEWS.

Attn:Sir/ma.

How are you today and hope all is well with you and family?You may not understand why this mail came to you,but i will implore you to take your time to carefully go through this mail.

We have been having a meeting for the pass 7 months which ended 4 days ago at our office head quarters New York(UNITED NATIONS). This email is to all the people that feel they have been scammed in any part of the world,the UNITED NATION have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 100,000.

This includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you,this have been agreed upon and has been signed. You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/International Bank Draft of USD$ 100,000. This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose OK? so he will send it to you and you can clear it at any bank of your choice.

Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you.

Contact:Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Cheque:
Person to Contact Mr. Jim Ovia
Email: mrjimovia1968@gmail.com

Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Bank Draft.

Making the world a better place.

Regards,
Mr. Kofi Anann
Former Secretary (UNITED NATIONS).

Good luck with that!

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