D.B.Cooper alive and well?

D.B. Cooper's parachute possibly found

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 4 minutes ago

The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said.

Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said Tuesday. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors.

The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery — and they urged their dad to call the agency.

"When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we were hoping for."

A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb.

When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border.

Agents doubt he survived because conditions were poor and the terrain was rough, but few signs of his fate have been found.

Carr spoke with the children's father, whom he declined to identify, early this month and learned the chute was white, the same color as Cooper's.

And when Carr overlaid the family's address onto a map investigators made in the early days of the investigation, he learned another encouraging fact: They lived right in Cooper's most probable landing zone, between Green and Bald mountains.

Carr hopped in his car and drove down. He dug around the property for about 45 minutes, unsuccessfully looking for a harness or other remains from the parachute, but the children weren't home, and the father wasn't sure exactly where they found it.

There are no obvious markings on the parachute to indicate whether it's the type Cooper used, a Navy Backpack 6 with a 26-foot canopy, Carr said. He's hoping a member of the public who has expertise in the parachutes will come forward and confirm whether it's the right kind before the FBI bothers to excavate the property. Barring that, the agency could turn to scientific analysis of the fabric.

"We've got to be pretty darn sure we're not wasting time and money here," he said.

If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery — where he apparently landed — but it will raise another, Carr said.

In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.

"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole theory is out the window.

(editor note: I've been fascinated by the D.B.Cooper saga since it first happened and wondered if he made it.....over the years, a new installment like the above appears...what if? )

Ole Ted and political deals....

Mencken on the New Deal

This alert came from a listener. He was reading "The Bad Boy of Baltimore" a biography of H.L. Mencken by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. On page 409 of that book he finds the following"

"By the mid-1930's, thanks to the New Deal, all that self-reliance had changed, prompting Mencken to declare: 'There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them.' Despite the billions spent on an individual, 'he can be lifted transiently but always slips back again.' Thus, the New Deal had been 'the most stupendous digenetic enterprise ever undertaken by man.... We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time. The effects of that doctrine are bound to be disastrous soon or late.'

When someone asked, "And what, Mr. Mencken, would you do about the unemployed?" He looked up with a bland expression. "We could start by taking away their vote," he said, deadpan. Mencken was not surprised when the majority disagreed. "There can be nothing even remotely approaching a rational solution of the fundamental national problems until we face them in a realistic spirit," he later reflected, and that was impossible so long as educated Americans remained responsive "to the Roosevelt buncombe."

"Buncombe," by the way, means a county in North Carolina, a city in Illinois or another word for "nonsense."

(from boortz.com)

Just for the art of it....

Sneaky little bastard Dept.

Short story: Dwarves in suitcases rifling bus travelers' bags

From London's Telegraph comes this nominee for the Annals of Weird Crime:

Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.

The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months. Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage. Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime. ...

This sounds too weird to be true, but there are multiple sources with much the same story, including a Spiegel report that quotes a spokeswoman for the bus line. "We think it is a short, young person," Ingvar Ryggasjo, sales manager for Swebus, tells Spiegel. "We are taking extra security measures and are thinking of installing video surveillance cameras."

The Local, a Swedish publication, quotes a victim. "It is not known whether the thief in this case was a bantam adult or a child," The Local reports.

Posted by Michael Winter at 04:56 PM/ET, January 31, 2008 in Crime, Europe, Offbeat | Permalink

(
Afterthought: What if all the bags are piled on top of him and he can't get out)

And now from the Iowa Legislature......

I guess we're just not a serious people anymore

Because we let the enemy denounce us and call for our deaths in our heartland

The Iowa Legislature started just over a week ago and some people were upset before the first issue was every addressed.

When the session began, a Muslim Imam began the prayer in the Iowa Legislature. This is where the controversy begins. The prayer asked for “victory over those who disbelieve,” and “protection from the great Satan” among other things.

Pastor Steve Smith of the Evangelical Free Church in Albert City is among those concerned about the Muslim prayer. Rev. Smith admits that he doesn’t know about all the levels of Muslim but knows that the Jihadists believe those in the U.S. are the great Satan.

No, I’m not saying all Muslims are our enemies, just the ones who want us dead.

But here’s the icing on the cake.

When asked about the prayer, Senator Steve Kettering replied in an e-mail that he had not heard the prayer, which did not take place in the Senate chambers.
“I cannot tell you what was said. I have received e-mail regarding this, but since it did not occur on the Senate side I do not have much information,” Kettering said. “ I should point out that the senate had a Catholic priest for their opening."

Oh, I get it, just having a Catholic Priest speak (*cough*Crusades*cough*) is completely the same thing as allowing a muslim to openly call for violent Jihad in the State House.

Scorpius
01/24 at 02:33 PM •
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...thanks to http://www.sondrak.com/index.php/

You ain't gonna like losing.

One of the best points of view that I have heard on the current political situation concerning the war on terror.

"You ain't gonna like losing." Unfortunately, Author unknown

President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WW2. It is not.

Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not.

And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WW2 than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WW2 and worked together to win that war.

Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort.

Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap, to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted!

And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies.

A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning.

There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve.

It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the Land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would actually require some sacrifices.

We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that about one-third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.

So...we either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing.

America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the Mall.

.....Eva Tympalska, PLLC