The Cult of Sol Invictus

The Cult of Sol Invictus

by D.J. Love, Minister, TSN, SBC

(Upgraded 3-4-2002)

The Roman Empire began their official recognition of sun worship during the time of Aurelian when he instituted the cult of “Sol Invictus“. There is virtually no difference between the cult of Sol Invictus and that of Mithraism or for that matter catholicism.

In the year 307 A.D. Emperor Diocletian, a Sun Worshipper, was involved in the dedication of a temple to Mithra, and was responsible for the burning of Holy Scripture (which made it possible for later emperors to formulate Christianity, and thus began the Roman version of the “Universal Christo-pagan Mystery Religion.”) After the rein of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was an early Christo-pagan (Christian) maintained the title “Pontifus Maximus” the high priest of paganism, and remained a worshipper of Apollo. His coins were inscribed: “SOL INVICTO COMITI“, which is interpreted as “Committed to the Invincible Sun”. During his reign pagan Sun worship was blended with the worship of the True Creator (syncretism), and officially titled “Christianity” by the (less than holy) Roman Empire and its’ official church the (less than holy) catholic (universal) church.

Cybele, the Phrygian goddess, known to her followers as “the mother of god“, was closely related to the worship of Mithra. Just as Mithraism was a man’s religion, the worship of Cybele was practiced by women. The priests of Mithra were known as “Fathers” and the Priestesses of Cybele as “Mothers”. After baptism into the Mysteries of Mithra, the initiate was marked on the forehead. The sign of the cross formed by the elliptic and the celestial equator was one of the signs of Mithra. Sunday (Deis Solis), the day of the Sun, was considered by Mithraist a sacred day of rest. December 25th (the birthday of Mithra) was celebrated as the birth of the Sun, given birth by the “Queen of Heaven” – “Mother of god.” The Mithraists celebrated a mithraic love feast. This feast consisted of loaves of bread decorated with crosses with wine, over which the priest pronounced a mystic formula. Mithra was considered mediator between god and man (does this sound like Jesus?).

Note: In 46 BC, when the Roman “Julian Calendar” was adopted, December 24th was the shortest day of the year. Therefore, December 25th was the first annual day that daylight began to increase. Thus, the origin of the REBIRTH or Annual Birthday of the Invincible SUN.

In accordance with the Roman “Julian calendar,” the “Saturnalia” festival appears to have taken place on or about December 17th; it was preceded by the “Consualia” near December 15th, and followed by the “Opalia” on December 19th. These pagan celebrations typically lasted for at least a week, ending just before the late Roman Imperial Festival for “Sol Invictus” (Invincible Sun) on December 25th.

In 1582 AD. Roman Catholic Pope Gregory the XIII caused the current “Gregorian Calendar” to be adopted, in order to eliminate the solar time shift error introduced by the “Julian Calendar.“

By December 1582 AD the shortest day of the year had shifted 12 days on the Roman “Julian Calendar” to Wednesday, December 12, 1582.

However, the Original December 25th ‘Birth Date’ was retained for all pagan Sun gods by the Roman “Saturnalia” and “Sol Invictus” traditions; which were now called the “Twelve Days Christ Mass.“

On the new Roman Catholic Gregorian calendar the shortest annual day was numerically shifted back 10 days to the 22nd of December, where it remains to this day; while the original order of the days of the week remained unchanged.

Therefore, Wednesday, December 12th, 1582 AD, became Wednesday, December 22nd, 1582 AD, and the True Sabbath Day remained unchanged.

Yahweh, the Only True Yahweh, would never have allowed The True Messiah to be born on or near the December 25th birthday period of the pagan Sun gods; during the time in which virgins were sacrificed, murder was commonplace, and orgies the norm. This would be an entirely unacceptable association.

Mithraists, also, believed in eternal life in heaven, and in the torture of the wicked after death. Many of these beliefs and rituals were exclusive to Mithraism and up until the fourth century were not an official part of the Christo-pagan faith. In the 4th century, through confusion and deliberate manipulation by the Roman Empire and its’ official universal (catholic) church, rituals of “Sun Worship” were legitimized, under the guise of the “Authority of the Church” (Yahweh Never Granted Any Such Authority) to be “Christian” in nature. There is no Biblical support for the inclusion of Mithraic rituals (pagan Worship) into the worship of the Yahweh of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Only Duty of the True Church is one of Obedience To The Authority of Yahweh. It is a Satanic scheme of deception to disguise the transgression of Yahweh’s laws under the title of “Christianity” (Christo-pagan syncretism). This same system, characterized by the shrouding of truth in secrecy and the manipulation of the truth in order to achieve its ends, has been working for two millennia to perfect the Christo-pagan religion of Christianity. The mystery of iniquity is at work and it only takes a little leaven to leaven the whole lump. The next step is the actual forced taking of the “Mark of the Beast,” however, millions have already taken the “Mark of the Beast” voluntarily.

US free speech lawyer defends satire of Glenn Beck

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Massachusetts-based First Amendment rights lawyer Marc Randazza is defending a controversial parody website which satirizes American political commentator Glenn Beck. The website was created in September by a man from Florida named Isaac Eiland-Hall, and it asserts Beck uses questionable tactics “to spread lies and misinformation”.

Glenn Beck in 2009
Image: Mark87.

The website created by Eiland-Hall is located at the domain name “www.GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com”. Its premise is derived from a joke statement made by Gilbert Gottfried about fellow comedian Bob Saget. The joke was first applied to Beck on the Internet discussion community Fark. It then became popular on Internet social media sites including Reddit and Digg, and was the subject of a Google bomb, a technique where individuals link phrases in order to artificially change Google search results.

Eiland-Hall saw the discussion on Fark, and created a website about it. The website asserts it does not believe the rumors to be true, and states: “But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.” In an interview with Ars Technica, he said the website was “using Beck’s tactics against him”. The website was created on September 1, and by September 3 attorneys for Beck’s company Mercury Radio Arts took action. Beck’s lawyers sent letters to the domain name registrar where they referred to the domain name itself as “defamatory”, but they failed to get the site removed.

	Even an imbecile would look at this Web site and know that it’s a parody.
—Marc Randazza, attorney for the website

Beck filed a formal complaint with the Switzerland-based agency of the United Nations, the World Intellectual Property Organization. Beck alleged that the website’s usage is libelous, bad faith, and could befuddle potential consumers. Beck’s complaint was filed under the process called the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. The policy allows trademark owners to begin an administrative action by complaining that a certain domain registration is in “bad faith”. A lawyer for Beck declined to provide a comment to the Boston Herald, however a source told the newspaper that Beck’s complaint with the site is primarily a “trademark issue”.

Randazza established an attorney-client relationship with Eiland-Hall after his client received threatening letters from attorneys representing Beck. He then sent an email to Beck’s attorneys, and pointed out inconsistencies between their client’s recent actions and his prior public statements in support of the First Amendment. Randazza wrote a reply to the World Intellectual Property Organization, and contends that the website is “protected political speech”, because it is “satirical political humor”. Randazza stated that “Even an imbecile would look at this Web site and know that it’s a parody.” In his legal brief, Randazza compared the website to other Internet memes, such as “All your base are belong to us” and video parodies of the German film Downfall.

	It’s not often that I would recommend reading a World Intellectual Property Organization legal brief for its entertainment value, but today is going to be an exception.
—Andy Carvin, National Public Radio

“We are here because Mr. Beck wants Respondent’s website shut down. He wants it shut down because Respondent’s website makes a poignant and accurate satirical critique of Mr. Beck by parodying Beck’s very rhetorical style,” wrote Randazza in the brief. The brief also commented on Beck’s style of reporting, and pointed out a controversial statement made by Beck when he interviewed a Muslim member of the United States Congress. Beck said to Representative Keith Ellison: “I like Muslims, I’ve been to mosques. … And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” According to the Citizen Media Law Project, the website’s joke premise takes advantage of “a perceived similarity between Beck’s rhetorical style and the Gottfried routine”.

Public interest attorney Paul Levy told Ars Technica that if a statement in a website’s domain name were both false and “stated with actual malice”, it is possible it could be considered defamatory. The First Post reported that Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Corynne McSherry gave an analysis asserting that though the domain name of the website is “pretty dramatic”, it constituted “pure political criticism and there’s nothing wrong with that”. McSherry and Levy both agreed that the action of Beck to take the matter to the World Intellectual Property Organization was probably a tactic to determine the identity of the website’s owner.

Andy Carvin of National Public Radio wrote that Randazza’s legal brief was amusing, commenting: “It’s not often that I would recommend reading a World Intellectual Property Organization legal brief for its entertainment value, but today is going to be an exception.” Nate Anderson of Ars Technica commented “In any event, the WIPO battle promises to be entertaining, and there’s even a bit of serious purpose mixed in with the frivolity. Just how far can WIPO go in using its domain dispute system to address Internet spats?”. Domain Name Wire wrote that “…when someone who has created a bitingly satirical web site works with his lawyer to put pen to the paper, the end result can be quite amusing.”

Writing for Adweek, Eriq Gardner pointed out the comparison made by Randazza’s legal brief between the website’s parody nature itself and the statement made by Beck to Congressman Ellison, noting: “this case also makes a political point”. Jack Bremer wrote in The First Post that the attempts by Beck’s lawyers to argue that the website’s domain name is itself defamatory “looks like a first in cyber law”. Rick Sawyer of Bostonist characterized Randazza’s legal brief as “Hillarious!”, and called the attorney “among the North Shore’s most hilarious legal writers”.

	[Glenn Beck] did the one thing guaranteed to garner the greatest amount of publicity for the site…
—Politics Daily

The FOX News-critical site FoxNewsBoycott.com likened the legal conflict between Beck and the site to the Streisand effect, a phenomenon where an individual’s attempt to censor material on the Internet in turn proves to make the material itself more public. “Glenn Beck is experiencing the Streisand Effect first hand,” wrote FoxNewsBoycott.com. John Cook of Gawker.com also compared Beck’s actions to the Streisand effect: “Now Glenn Beck’s trying to shut down their web site, ensuring that people will write about it.” Jeffrey Weiss of Politics Daily wrote that by taking legal action, Beck “did the one thing guaranteed to garner the greatest amount of publicity for the site”. Techdirt described Beck’s legal action as “not particularly smart”, and noted: “Beck would have been better off just ignoring it. Instead, in legitimizing it by trying to take it down, many more people become aware of the meme — and may start calling attention to situations where Beck (and others) make use of such tactics.” The blog Hot Air noted the issue could gain attention if it becomes a test case for the First Amendment: “If this becomes a First Amendment test case, the smear’s going to be covered far and wide…”

What I like about a long war in Afghanistan, or why America desperately needs a quaqmire

October 28, 2009, 12:14PM

 

Possibly the world’s most valuable political analyst?

We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.(…) The locals sense they have us over a barrel, so they exploit our naïve goodwill and presence to loot their countries and to defeat their internal foes. Thomas L. Friedman – NY Times

My dad once told me about an interesting fellow he worked with in a large rug company. When the CEO was choosing new rug lines this guy’s input was vital because… he was always wrong:  not sometimes, always.

If this man saw some new prototype just in from the design department and showed any enthusiasm for it, experience had taught the top management that nobody anywhere would ever buy it and conversely if he thought the proposed product was a dog, they would go into  night shifts to flood the market with the rug.

My father considered his colleague to be a veritable phenomenon of nature and one of the most valuable men in his organization.

My father assured me that to be always wrong is as rare and wonderful as to be always right. His wise words have stayed with me.

Among political analysts, Thomas L. Friedman is that man.

Just to refresh my reader’s memory, lets have a little peek at his record on Iraq:

During the lead up to the war he said,

“The way you get that compliance out of a thug like Saddam is not by tripling the inspectors, but by tripling the threat that if he does not comply he will be faced with a U.N.-approved war.”

After no WMD were found he said,

“The stated reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction that posed a long-term threat to America. I never bought this argument… The WMD argument was hyped by George Bush and Tony Blair to try to turn a war of choice into a war of necessity.”

AND

“The right reason for this war, as I argued before it started, was to oust Saddam’s regime and partner with the Iraqi people to try to implement the Arab Human Development report’s prescriptions in the heart of the Arab world. That report said the Arab world is falling off the globe because of a lack of freedom, women’s empowerment, and modern education. The right reason for this war was to partner with Arab moderates in a long-term strategy of dehumiliation and redignification.”

Finally in August of 2006 he wrote,

“Whether for Bush reasons or Arab reasons, democracy is not emerging in Iraq, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives”

His scrambling to maintain some reputation as an analyst and pundit led him to a series of statements that have come to be known as the “Friedman Unit”, a period of six months, where if his suggestions were followed, everything would turn out fine. Here is a sample of Friedman units ripped from Wikipedia:

“The next six months in Iraq… are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time” November 30, 2003.

“What we’re gonna find out… in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.” October 3, 2004.

“I think we’re in the end game now…. I think we’re in a six-month window here where it’s going to become very clear” September 25, 2005.

“I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse” December 18, 2005.

“I think that we’re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding” January 23, 2006

“I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq.” March 2, 2006

“we’re going to find out… in the next year to six months – probably sooner – whether a decent outcome is possible” May 11, 2006.

Today his message is:

Let’s finish Iraq, because a decent outcome there really could positively impact the whole Arab-Muslim world, and limit our exposure elsewhere. Iraq matters.

His reason seems to be because:

My last guiding principle: We are the world. A strong, healthy and self-confident America is what holds the world together and on a decent path. A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world.

So now from

“democracy is not emerging in Iraq, and we can’t throw more good lives after good lives”·

We arrive at “we can’t throw more good lives after good lives in Afghanistan” because…

“Iraq matters”.

In my opinion this is all shorthand for, “if the US armed forces are tied down in Afghanistan, we wont be able to use them anywhere else”.

Where might that “anywhere” be?

My bet would be against Iran.

A lot of perspicacious analysts have always thought that in invading Iraq the real object was Iran. That is why Afghanistan was considered such a boring distraction. You probably remember how all the neocons  in those euphoric days were talking up, “real men go to Tehran”.

All the neocons have ever really cared about is Iran because it is Israel’s bête noire and Thomas L. Friedman is the smiling face of neoconnerie.

With the United States armed forces enmeshed  and maxed out in  Afghanistan, a full scale war with Iran? … fuggedaboutit.

The Russians know it, the Chinese know it, the Iranians know it,  and  most of all the Israelis know it.

So the bright side of the war in Afghanistan  is that a war with Iran would be a total disaster with hundreds of thousands of dead and might cause a worldwide depression as oil prices skyrocket and would only serve Israel’s and a few corrupt sheik’s interests, certainly not America’s. And as Friedman says,

“We simply don’t have the surplus we had when we started the war on terrorism”

So, if a low intensity endless quagmire-nightmare is the only thing standing between the USA and the abyss of war with Iran, the only excuse we can hand AIPAC for not going to war with Iran, then the president is right, Afghanistan is the “good” war.

Thomas Friedman, like my dad’s colleague, is  the most reliable bellwether that America is on the right track in Afghanistan.

So Mr. President, send the troops, the more the merrier: Afghanistan is the best excuse we’ll ever have for blowing off the Israelis and hey, we are still fighting terrorism, aren’t we?

Ordering executive pay cuts: It’s about time!

by: Tony Pecinovsky

October 22 2009

The Treasury Department’s expected plan to cut executive pay by up to 90 percent - at the seven companies that received the most in bailout money - is not only good news. It’s great news!

It’s about time! The corporate elite, the rich of the rich, have been feeding at the public trough for far too long. For them to expect tens of millions in executive pay less than a year after being bailed out – with our tax dollars – is like rubbing salt in a fresh wound.

Not only did they cause of the current economic meltdown, in some cases they benefited from it. While they got golden parachutes, lavish perks, bonuses and stock options, the average working- class American got pink slips, foreclosure notices and the humiliation of having to ask a family member, relative, friend or charity for a little help during tough times.

It’s ironic how the lords of industry and the captains of finance cry foul when we ask them to sacrifice a little, maybe have a little modesty and think about ordinary folks.

They destroy families. They lay off 10,000 here, 20,000 there. They force draconian wage and health care cuts down our throats. They do it all with the stroke of a pen.

And then they cry foul!

For example, the Wall Street Journal is calling the proposed executive pay cuts “a seismic shift.” Not only will executives get paid less at AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM and the other bailed out companies, but the broader impact will be on corporate governance generally, they fear.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Charles Elson, head of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware: The proposed changes “dramatically injects the government into pay practices at private companies … It diminishes the authority of the board and the other investors…”

Additionally, Elson who sits on the board of HealthSouth Corp., says, “… the approach is atrocious because of the meddling.”

The Journal continues: Mr. Espen Eckbo, the director of Center for Corporate Governance at Dartmouth College, “anticipates increased shareholder pressure on companies without federal bailouts to create board risk committees and split the roles of chairman and CEO. There likely will be more non-binding stockholder resolutions next year calling for such changes.”

The Journal quotes a management attorney: “It seems very unprecedented for the government to be so dramatically realigning corporate structure on pay and governance.” Additionally, they fear that government intervention will “run a risk of driving out an important tier of management…”

Ominously, J.W. Verret, a corporate law expert at George Mason University School of Law, said, “There’s definitely never been anything like this where a government sets pay for a company that’s publicly traded.”

Oh, well pardon me if I don’t shed crocodile tears for the corporate elite.

It’s unmistakable though. They seem a little worried. Could it be that their days of riding rough-shod, smoking pistol in one hand and a big bag of cash in the other, are numbered. Could it be that the federal government might play a pro-active role and reign in corporate abuse. Could it be that the top executives will actually have to think about workers and their communities. Could it be that they may be held accountable for the piss-poor job they’ve done so far. Could it be?

If we do, in fact, begin to see a “seismic shift” - a dramatic injection of government regulation and a realigning of corporate structure on pay and governance -  then we may have turned a corner. We may have joined the rest of the modern world in capping executive pay.

Death of the Category Killers

By Stacey Mitchell

Borders Books is on “death watch,” according to one industry observer.  Virgin shut down its last US record store this month. Office Depot and Staples are struggling. Circuit City is gone. Best Buy has launched a desperate ad campaign.

The specialty chains that grew so aggressively in the 1990s and early 2000s — the so-called “category killers” that bankrupted thousands of independent businesses — are now themselves rapidly losing ground to a handful of giant mass merchandisers, namely Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target, and Costco.

While the decline of independent businesses has leveled off and many are finding ways to survive and even thrive by building local business alliances and emphasizing their community roots, the rest of the retail sector is undergoing dramatic consolidation as a small number of massive companies become ever more dominant. This is an ominous trend for manufacturers and consumers, and it exposes serious flaws in US antitrust policy.

Books as Loss Leaders

“For much of 2008, the industry focused its attention on the viability of the struggling Borders, but Barnes & Noble faces many of the very same issues,” wrote Peter Olson, the former CEO of Random House, earlier this year in Publishers Weekly. Olson predicts that the two chains will continue to lose ground, struggle to finance their inventories, and be forced to close outlets.

Big-box mass merchandisers, like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, have taken over 30% of the book market. These chains are now selling as many books as Barnes & Noble and Borders.

Mass merchandisers, especially Wal-Mart, can turn a book into a best-seller just by adding it to their shelves — a power that publishers have found irresistible. Many now devote considerable resources to supporting the big boxes.

But Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information and editor of the Book Publishing Report, believes publishers are making a deal with the devil. “Publishers don’t realize it, but they are backing themselves into a corner if more bookstores continue to close,” he contends. “If the balance of power shifts to a couple of big retailers … publishers are going to find they have no relevance or power.”

The big boxes stock only a small number of titles. They treat books as loss leaders (i.e., they sell them below cost) to draw people into their stores. This undercuts bookstores and sharply narrows the range of books produced and sold. While a customer picking up Oprah’s latest pick at a bookstore will have an opportunity to browse publishers’ back-lists and check out books by new writers, at Wal-Mart or Costco, shoppers see only a small number of titles. Rather than another book, their impulse purchases are far more likely to be socks or steaks.

So, while the big boxes can sell truckloads of a particular book, their growing dominance in the industry is actually shrinking the overall book market. “These are not encouraging developments for an industry that has had an admirable track record to date in discovering new talent and fostering a diversity of expression,” notes Olson.

What’s more, mass merchandisers are the least profitable retail channel for publishers, because they systematically over-buy and often end up returning over 40% of their inventory. (That compares to a return-rate of about 10% at independent bookstores.)

Most dangerous of all, the big boxes may suddenly decide to reduce or even eliminate the space they devote to books. “Big-box stores like Wal-Mart wouldn’t hesitate to rid their stores of books if it meant replacing them with higher margin items,” said Norris. “They have no stake in the future of print titles. In a bookstore, the future of the store depends on books. In a non-bookstore, the future of the book depends on the store.”

The other company taking market share from chain bookstores is, of course, Amazon, which now captures about 15% of book sales.  No one knows exactly what Amazon is up to these days, but its recent acquisitions and the fact that it lists publishers as competitors in its SEC filings is making many nervous. Boris Kachka, who covers the book industry for New York Magazine, explains, “Editors and retailers alike fear that it’s bent on building a vertical publishing business — from acquisition to your doorstep — with not a single middleman in sight. No HarperCollins, no Borders, no printing press.”

Wal-Mart Refashions Toys, Music and Electronics

Similar dynamics are playing out in category after category as mass merchandisers undercut specialty chains to become the dominant sellers, gaining unprecedented power over manufacturers and the ability to refashion entire product categories to suit their own needs, not those of producers or customers.

In 2003, Wal-Mart set its sights on the toy market.  It sold toys at a loss for an entire holiday season, sending Toys R Us, KB Toys, and FAO Schwartz into a tail spin. Wal-Mart emerged as the nation’s top toy seller, capturing more than 25% of the market. The needs and interests of Wal-Mart’s buyers soon became the primary consideration in the design and production of toys.

Last month, as part of a nationwide remodeling project, Wal-Mart began cutting the shelf space devoted to toys in its supercenters by half.  The loss of some 400 feet of aisles could crush a number of manufacturers that depend on Wal-Mart for a sizable share of their business and now have fewer competing retailers to turn to.

Much the same has happened with music. Although the decline of record stores is often blamed entirely on online downloading, even in 2009 CDs still account for more than 75% of album sales. The downfall of record stores really began with big-box retailers.

Starting in the 1990s, Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy sold popular CDs below cost in order to bring people into their stores and sell more refrigerators and toasters. It was a strategy that many specialty music stores, chain and independent, were unable to counter, despite their vastly larger selections.

Mass merchandisers soon grew from minor players in the music business to major gatekeepers, controlling more than two-thirds of the market, dictating terms to record companies, and blacklisting albums they found objectionable.

Today, the big music chains, Tower Records and Virgin Megastores, are gone and so too are thousands of independent record stores.  Meanwhile, big-box retailers — who calculate their interest in music the same way they do toothpaste, in dollars per square foot — have shifted strategy and are slashing the amount of space devoted to CDs. Next on the agenda are office supplies and electronics. Sales at Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples have plummeted, as Wal-Mart and Costco have expanded their line-up and dropped prices.

In electronics, Best Buy was initially viewed as the likely beneficiary of Circuit City’s demise, but many analysts now expect Wal-Mart, which recently redesigned and enlarged its selection of televisions and computers, and Amazon, which is also expanding its electronics offerings, to split much of the market share up for grabs. Meanwhile, Best Buy has launched a new ad campaign that makes a direct appeal to shoppers not to defect to Wal-Mart.

Restoring Competition

Selling goods below cost in order to drive competitors out of business — a strategy Wal-Mart first employed against small-town drugstores in the Midwest in the 1980s and now uses for nationwide assaults on entire product categories — is technically illegal. But US antitrust enforcers have taken a very lax attitude toward predatory pricing and other antitrust violations ever since the Reagan administration.

The consequence is an economy where power is so concentrated that it undermines the free market itself and threatens our individual liberty within it. Bullied and financially squeezed by mega-retailers, manufacturers have little choice but to focus on producing a narrow range of products that suit these companies’ needs, while cutting support for competing retailers and eliminating investment in new products, writers, and artists.

The wave of chain store consolidation now underway adds new urgency to calls for a reinvigorated antitrust policy and a return to the idea that a competitive economy is one made up of lots of competitors, many of them small and independent.

It also adds new significance to the growing grassroots movement to revive and expand independent businesses. Local business alliances have formed in more than 120 cities and now include about 30,000 independent businesses.

There are signs that these initiatives are making a difference.  Market research, surveys, and anecdotal reports from small business owners suggest that “buy local” has become a priority for more people.  In many sectors, the market share of independent retailers has been holding steady for the last few years. Most encouraging, there are more new independent businesses opening, including, most notably, neighborhood greengrocers and food co-ops, hardware stores, and some 350 new bookstores over the last four years.

Another sign that a genuine shift might be underway came on Saturday, April 18, when music fans mobbed more than 1,000 independent record stores in the US and abroad as part of Record Store Day. “It was the best sales day we’ve ever had in our 18-year history,” said Eric Levin, owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta and one of the organizers of the event.

Now in its second year, Record Store Day is an annual celebration of independent music stores. This year’s event was huge and included more than 600 in-store performances and over 80 exclusive releases produced specifically for Record Store Day. Neilson SoundScan reported a 16% upswing in album sales. The event made the top 5 news stories on Google and was the 35th most searched item on the web.

Among the top sellers were vinyl releases put out by Green Day, Radiohead, and other bands. Sales of vinyl records, many of which include a code that buyers can use to also download the album online, have surged in the last year, up 89%. “It’s a back-to-real movement akin to the farm-to-table movement,” explains Levin, whose store hosted 14 concerts on Record Store Day, including a performance by Manchester Orchestra that drew a crowd of 650.

“The hurdles of corporate power have been almost insurmountable,” Levin observed. “Fortunately, we’ve been surmounting them.”

Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project (newrules.org/retail), where this appeared and a free monthly email newsletter is available. She is author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses.

us code laws

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/

Murphy’s military police laws

• Your brassard and your badge won’t stop bullets.
• If it’s stupid but works, it isn’t stupid.
• Don’t look conspicuous – it antagonizes officers.
• When in doubt, empty your shotgun.
• Never share a patrol car with anyone braver than you.
• Not wearing body armor attracts bullets and knives.
• If your response goes well, you’re at the wrong barracks.
• Your Patrol Supervisor will show up when you’re doing something really stupid.
• The time it takes to respond to an emergency is inversely proportional to the importance of the call.
• The warrant you don’t read is the one you’ll serve at the wrong quarters.
• No matter how you write it, the Desk Sergeant will want it changed.
• If you charge in all alone, you’ll be shot by your own officers.
• The diversion you’re ignoring is the actual crime.
• The important things are always simple.
• The simple things are always hard.
• The easy ways are always blocked.
• The short cuts are always under construction by the post engineers.
• Anything you do can get you in trouble – including doing nothing.
• When you’ve secured a crime scene, don’t forget to tell the brass.
• Using the siren and light to clear traffic – attracts traffic.
• It only becomes a riot right after you show up.
• If you take out the newest patrol car, you’ll have an accident.
• No street-wise unit ever passed inspection.
• No inspection-ready unit ever makes it on the streets.
• The thing you really need, will be left back at the MP Station.
• Radios will fail as soon as you need back-up desperately.
• Flashlight batteries always die out, just when you really need light.
• Military working dogs attack anything that moves – including you.
• The helicopter will always be low on fuel, as soon as you need it.
• You’ll find the suspect you want, when you’re off-duty and unarmed.
• If you respond to more than your fair share of calls, you’ll have more than your fair share of calls to respond to.
• The suspect will escape, just before you set up a good perimeter.
• The dependent who screams loudly when you don’t show up quickly, also screams loudly when you do.
• The weight of the dead body you’ll have to carry is proportional to the amount of stairs you’ll have to climb.
• Fatalities always occur at the end of shift – or when it rains and snows.
• Your weapon was made by the lowest bidder.
• Contrary to popular belief – general officers don’t get tickets.
• You won’t get called to a court martial – unless it’s your day off.
• Take off your hat and the MP Duty Officer shows up.
• Empty guns – aren’t.
• Your two minute “back-up” is always actually ten minutes away.
• The alley you sprint down, is the wrong alley.
• Tasting suspected drugs works – but only on TV or in the movies.
• Suspects always hide in the last place you look.
• Better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six.
• Professional criminals are predictable, but the world is full of amateurs.
• Admit nothing, deny everything, demand proof – then blame a Private.
• Don’t stand, if you can sit – don’t sit, if you can lay down – if you can lay down, you might as well take a nap.

High School 1957 vs 2009

by Dan Nickerson on 08/29/2009

When I posted this chain email I received in August..  I had no idea that it would generate this level of attention.

Posting non-original content is not something I teach or normally do.  At the time I thought it was interesting, my list might appreciate it and it would make a good tweet.

I didn’t expect it to generate 100’s of comments and initiate debates on race, religion, sex and drugs… but it has…

I’ll keep this post up for now, but if it really digresses I’ll probably remove it..

The original author of this article created 8 extreme scenarios to highlight some differences between 1957 and 2009.

Obviously there are 1000’s of scenarios that could be created to highlight the good and bad of both generations, but this particular post was written to favor 1957.

I guess the real question is… Would you rather grow up in 1957 or 2009 and why?

Scenario 1:

Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack.

1957 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.

2009 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2:

Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins.. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009 - Police called and SWAT team arrives — they arrest both Johnny and Mark. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3:

Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2009 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4:

Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt..

1957 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5:

Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 – Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.

2009 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6:

Pedro fails high school English.

1957 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 - Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7:

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.

1957 – Ants die.

2009 – ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents — and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny’s dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

Scenario 8:

Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2009 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison… Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

‘Political Slush Funds’: The Last Loophole

‘Political Slush Funds’: The Last Loophole

Leadership PACs Let Politicians Spend Money Freely on Leisure Outings

By MARCUS STERN and JENNIFER LAFLEUR of ProPublica, BRIAN ROSS, AVNI PATEL and ASA ESLOCKER of ABC News
Sept. 25, 2009

For people who love golf, the chance to play at the five-star Greenbrier resort in West Virginia is a dream come true. Especially if someone else pays for it.

House Minority Leader John Boehner’s PAC spent $550,000 on travel and entertainment expenses around the country, more than any other lawmaker, according to a ABC News/ProPublica analysis of disclosure data. In the past three years, Boehner has travelled to Palm Springs, CA; Boca Raton, FL; and Scottsdale, AZ to raise money for his PAC.

(ABC News)

That was the case this summer for two powerful members of Congress, House Republican Minority leader John Boehner of Ohio and Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.

Accompanied by top corporate lobbyists , the two golf-loving Republicans spent a luxurious weekend at the Greenbrier, the kinds of cozy gatherings new ethics reform laws were supposed to curb.

“You’re seeing the quintessential Washington insider pay-to-play game,” said Meredith McGehee, Policy Director at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Many people assumed these types of outings were ended when Congress passed reforms in 2007. But those reforms didn’t mention what has come to be an important source of funding for politicians: leadership political action committees, or PACs, whose money can be spent for almost any purpose, including golf.

Members of Congress are supposed to use their leadership PAC funds to support other politicians. But in the 2008 election cycle, Chambliss spent more money from his PAC on golf outings, $225,000, than on donations to other political campaigns, $204,000. On Capitol Hill, his leadership PAC is known to some as a golf PAC.

Chambliss declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement he said he holds the golf outings only to raise money. Top of Form

A spokesman for Boehner’s PAC, The Freedom Project, also defended the spending as legitimate and said that through his PAC, he contributed “more than any other Republican in the House.”

McGehee and others call leadership PACs modern-day slush funds. Some members of Congress use them for pretty much whatever they want, including subsidizing their lifestyles and hobbies.

In a joint report with the investigative journalism group ProPublica, ABC News found that members of Congress used leadership PAC money to pay for visits to ski resorts, casinos, Disney World and the Super Bowl. Senate Majority Harry Reid of Nevada used leadership PAC money to throw a $39,000 inaugural party. New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel ordered a $64,000 oil portrait of himself.

Reid spent 53 percent of his PAC money on campaigns he was supporting. That’s $1.1 million.

Federal Election Laws even allow members of the Congress to spend the money on themselves or their friends and families. Senate rules do not even mention leadership PACs, although hundreds of millions of dollars pour into these funds every election cycle.

Lobbyist Jim Ervin might bristle at McGehee’s use of the phrase slush fund, but he seems to agree in spirit.

“I think that it’s more than appropriate for Senator Chambliss to do whatever he wants with the leadership PAC money. Certainly I think golf is completely acceptable,” he said. Ervin and two of his clients – defense contractors Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics — put $30,000 into Chambliss’ leadership PAC in the last election cycle. Top of Form

Leadership PACs give incumbents an unfair advantage because challengers typically can’t raise the maximum amount of money allowed for their campaign committees, much less for a leadership PAC, said former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith.”For the most part it’s really kind of an incumbent racket,” he said.

The FEC disclosure forms that leadership PACs file are so cursory that lawmakers don’t have to disclose who participated or contributed at a PAC fund-raiser, the day the event was held or how much money was raised.

When Chambliss’ leadership PAC ran up a $50,394 bill at the Ritz-Carlton Naples on Jan. 25, 2008, the only stated purpose was, “PAC EVENT/LODGING/BANQUET/GOLF.”

Chambliss’ love of golf is so legendary in Washington political circles that he has been teased for letting golf interfere with his political and legislative business.

In 2003, then-President Bush told a crowd at a golf fund-raiser for Chambliss that the senator had intercepted him on his way to the dais and said, “If you keep it short, we might be able to get a round of golf in.”

Chambliss also took heat for skipping a sensitive closed-door Iraq war intelligence briefing in 2005 to golf with Tiger Woods.

Lawmakers who leave Congress sometimes keep their PACs — or they hand them down like valuable heirlooms to their successors, with the same tight circle of lobbyists and fund-raising professionals often continuing as the core of the organization.

Chambliss’ Republican Majority Fund has been around for decades. Former Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee controlled the PAC when he was the Senate Republican leader until 1985. He handed it off to then-Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma. When Nickles retired from the Senate in 2005, he handed it off to Chambliss.

Laura Rizzo, who ran the leadership PAC for Nickles, now runs it for Chambliss. More than one-third of the PAC’s expenditures during the 2008 campaign cycle — $237,536 – was paid to Rizzo for “PAC FUNDRAISING CONSULTING.”

Nickles, whose passion for golf is as legendary as Chambliss’, now has a successful lobbying practice. Nickles Group and its clients contributed $37,500 to Chambliss’ Republican Majority Fund during the 2008 campaign cycle.

Neither Nickles nor Rizzo returned calls seeking comments about their long associations with the Republican Majority Fund.

In March, the FEC’s six commissioners, three Democrats and three Republicans, sent Congress a list of legislative recommendations, including one to prohibit personal use of leadership PAC funds. Their letter went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden, in his capacity as president of the Senate. It also was sent to members of the House and Senate committees that oversee the FEC.

So far, the FEC has gotten no response. ProPublica left messages at the offices of the speaker, majority leader and chairmen of the two committees seeking comment, but got no replies.

This was a joint investigation by ABC News and ProPublica – an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. ProPublica Director of Research Lisa Schwartz and Justin Grant, ABC News, contributed to this report.

The GOP’s Misplaced Rage

by Bruce Bartlett

Bruce Bartlett helped develop supply-side economics while on the staff of Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1980s. In 2006 he was fire

d by a conservative think tank for writing a book critical of George W. Bush from a conservative point of view, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. His new book, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, will be published in October.

AP Photo; Getty Images

Leading conservative economist Bruce Bartlett writes that the Obama-hating town-hall mobs have it wrong—the person they should be angry with left the White House seven months ago.

Where is the evidence that everything would be better if Republicans were in charge? Does anyone believe the economy would be growing faster or that unemployment would be lower today if John McCain had won the election? I know of no economist who holds that view. The economy is like an ocean liner that turns only very slowly. The gross domestic product and the level of employment would be pretty much the same today under any conceivable set of policies enacted since Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit this year of $1.2 trillion before Obama took office, with no estimate for actions he might take. To a large extent, the CBO’s estimate simply represented the $482 billion deficit projected by the Bush administration in last summer’s budget review, plus the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which George W. Bush rammed through Congress in September over strenuous conservative objections. Thus the vast bulk of this year’s currently estimated $1.8 trillion deficit was determined by Bush’s policies, not Obama’s.

I think conservative anger is misplaced. To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat. If he had done half as good a job as most Republicans have talked themselves into believing he did, McCain would have won easily.

Conservative protesters should remember that the recession, which led to so many of the policies they oppose, is almost entirely the result of Bush’s policies. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession began in December 2007—long before Obama was even nominated. And the previous recession ended in November 2001, so the current recession cannot be blamed on cyclical forces that Bush inherited.

Indeed, Bush’s responsibility for the recession is implicit in every conservative analysis of its origins. The most thorough has been done by John Taylor, a respected economist from Stanford University who served during most of the Bush administration as the No. 3 official at the Treasury Department. In his book, Getting Off Track, he puts most of the blame on the Federal Reserve for holding interest rates down too low for too long.

While the Fed does bear much responsibility for sowing the seeds of recession, it’s commonly treated as an institution independent of politics and even the government itself. But the Federal Reserve Board consists of governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Because the president appoints the board, he has primary influence over its policies. This is especially the case for chairmen of the Fed appointed by Republicans because they often have ties to Republican administrations. Chairman Ben Bernanke was originally appointed as a member of the Fed in 2002, serving until 2005, when he became chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House, a position that made him Bush’s chief economic adviser.

As early as 2002, a majority of the seven-member Federal Reserve Board was Bush appointees, and by 2006 every member was a Bush appointee. While many critical decisions about monetary policy are made by the Federal Open Market Committee, the board’s position always prevails.

The Treasury secretary also has had breakfast with the Fed chairman on a weekly basis for decades. Consequently, most economists generally believe that every administration ultimately gets the Fed policy it wants. Therefore, one must conclude that if there were errors in Fed policy that caused the current downturn, it must be because the Fed was doing what the Bush administration wanted it to do.

To the extent that there were mistakes in housing policy that contributed to the recession, those were necessarily committed by Bush political appointees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other agencies. To the extent that banks and other financial institutions made mistakes or engaged in fraudulent activity, it was either overlooked or sanctioned by Bush appointees at the Securities & Exchange Commission, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and elsewhere.

But in a larger sense, the extremely poor economic performance of the Bush years really set the stage for the current recession. This is apparent when we compare Bush’s two terms to Bill Clinton’s eight years. Since both took office close to a business cycle trough and left office close to a cyclical peak, this is a reasonable comparison.

Throughout the Bush years, many conservative economists, including CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, extravagantly extolled Bush’s economic policies. As late as December 21, 2007, after the recession already began, he wrote in National Review: “the Goldilocks economy is outperforming all expectations.” In a column on May 2, 2008, almost six months into the recession, Kudlow praised Bush for having prevented a recession.

But the truth was always that the economy performed very, very badly under Bush, and the best efforts of his cheerleaders cannot change that fact because the data don’t lie. Consider these comparisons between Bush and Clinton:

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real GDP grew 34.7 percent. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the fourth quarter of 2008, it grew 15.9 percent, less than half as much.

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real gross private domestic investment almost doubled. By the fourth quarter of 2008, real investment was 6.5 percent lower than it was when Bush was elected.

• Between December 1992 and December 2000, payroll employment increased by more than 23 million jobs, an increase of 21.1 percent. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it rose by a little more than 2.5 million, an increase of 1.9 percent. In short, about 10 percent as many jobs were created on Bush’s watch as were created on Clinton’s.

• During the Bush years, conservative economists often dismissed the dismal performance of the economy by pointing to a rising stock market. But the stock market was lackluster during the Bush years, especially compared to the previous eight. Between December 1992 and December 2000, the S&P 500 Index more than doubled. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it fell 34 percent. People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.

• Finally, conservatives have an absurdly unjustified view that Republicans have a better record on federal finances. It is well-known that Clinton left office with a budget surplus and Bush left with the largest deficit in history. Less well-known is Clinton’s cutting of spending on his watch, reducing federal outlays from 22.1 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent of GDP. Bush, by contrast, increased spending to 20.9 percent of GDP. Clinton abolished a federal entitlement program, Welfare, for the first time in American history, while Bush established a new one for prescription drugs.

Conservatives delude themselves that the Bush tax cuts worked and that the best medicine for America’s economic woes is more tax cuts; at a minimum, any tax increase would be economic poison. They forget that Ronald Reagan worked hard to pass one of the largest tax increases in American history in September 1982, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, even though the nation was still in a recession that didn’t end until November of that year. Indeed, one could easily argue that the enactment of that legislation was a critical prerequisite to recovery because it led to a decline in interest rates. The same could be said of Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, which many conservatives predicted would cause a recession but led to one of the biggest economic booms in history.

According to the CBO, federal taxes will amount to just 15.5 percent of GDP this year. That’s 2.2 percent of GDP less than last year, 3.3 percent less than in 2007, and 1.8 percent less than the lowest percentage recorded during the Reagan years. If conservatives really believe their own rhetoric, they should be congratulating Obama for being one of the greatest tax cutters in history.

Conservatives will respond that some tax cuts are good while others are not. Determining which is which is based on something called supply-side economics. Because I was among those who developed it, I think I can speak authoritatively on the subject. According to the supply-side view, temporary tax cuts and tax credits are economically valueless. Only permanent cuts in marginal tax rates will significantly raise growth.

On this basis, we see that Bush’s tax cuts were pretty much the opposite of what supply-side economics would recommend. The vast bulk of his tax cuts involved tax rebates—which failed in 2001 and again in 2008, because the vast bulk of the money was saved—or tax credits that had no incentive effects. While marginal rates were cut slightly—the top rate fell from 39.6 percent to 35 percent—it was phased in slowly and never made permanent. Neither were Bush’s cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes.

I could go on to discuss other Bush mistakes that had negative economic consequences, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed a massive regulatory burden on corporations without doing anything to prevent corporate misconduct, and starting unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will burden the economy for decades to come in the form of veterans’ benefits.

But there is yet another dimension to Bush’s failures—the things he didn’t do. In this category I would put a health-care overhaul. Budget experts have known for years that Medicare was on an unsustainable financial path. It is impossible to pay all the benefits that have been promised because spending has been rising faster than GDP.

In 2003, the Bush administration repeatedly lied about the cost of the drug benefit to get it passed, and Bush himself heavily pressured reluctant conservatives to vote for the program.

Because reforming Medicare is an important part of getting health costs under control generally, Bush could have used the opportunity to develop a comprehensive health-reform plan. By not doing so, he left his party with nothing to offer as an alternative to the Obama plan. Instead, Republicans have opposed Obama’s initiative while proposing nothing themselves.

In my opinion, conservative activists, who seem to believe that the louder they shout the more correct their beliefs must be, are less angry about Obama’s policies than they are about having lost the White House in 2008. They are primarily Republican Party hacks trying to overturn the election results, not representatives of a true grassroots revolt against liberal policies. If that were the case they would have been out demonstrating against the Medicare drug benefit, the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, and all the pork-barrel spending that Bush refused to veto.

Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect. They can start building some by admitting to themselves that Bush caused many of the problems they are protesting.

Bruce Bartlett was one of the original supply-siders, helping draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was a leading Republican economist. He now considers himself to be a political independent. He is the author of Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy . His latest book, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in October.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

January 1 is the 1st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year (365 in leap years). The preceding day is December 31 of the previous year.

Ancient Greeks and Romans celebrated New Year on the winter solstice . However, many ancient cultures including the Phoenicians, Persians and Egyptians celebrated the New Year with the autumn equinox . The ancient Romans celebrated their first New Year on January 1 in 153 BC.

During the Middle Ages under the influence of the Christian Church, many countries moved the start of the year to one of several important Christian festivals — December 25 (the Nativity of Jesus), March 1, March 25 (the Annunciation), or even Easter. Eastern European countries (most of them with populations showing allegiance to the Orthodox Church) began their numbered year on September 1 from about 988.

In England January 1 was celebrated as the New Year festival, but from the 12th century to 1752 the year in England began on March 25 (Lady Day). So, for example, the Parliamentary record records the execution of Charles I occurring in 1648 (as the year did not end until March 24), although modern histories adjust the start of the year to January 1 and record the execution as occurring in 1649.

Most western European countries changed the start of the year to January 1 before they adopted the Gregorian calendar. For example, Scotland changed the start of the Scottish New Year to January 1 in 1600. England, Ireland and the British colonies changed the start of the year to January 1 in 1752. Later that year in September, the Gregorian calendar was introduced throughout Britain and the British colonies. These two reforms were implemented by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.

In the 9th century, March 25 (the Feast of the Annunciation) was used in parts of southern Europe as the start of the new year. The practice became more widespread in Europe from the 11th century and in England from the late 12th century. January 1 became the official start of the year as follows:

• 1522 Venice
• 1529 Sweden
• 1544 Holy Roman Empire (Germany)
• 1556 Spain, Portugal
• 1559 Prussia, Denmark
• 1564 France
• 1576 Southern Netherlands
• 1579 Lorraine
• 1583 United Provinces of the Netherlands (northern)
• 1600 Scotland
• 1700 Russia
• 1721 Tuscany
• 1752 Britain and its colonies

1934 – Alcatraz Island becomes a United States federal prison.

Alcatraz Island, sometimes informally referred to as simply Alcatraz or locally as the Rock, is a small island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California, United States. It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison followed by a federal prison until 1963. It became a national recreation area in 1972 and received landmarking designations in 1976 and 1986.

Today, the island is a historic site operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

History

The first Spaniard to discover the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named the island “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” which translates as “The Island of the Pelicans,^“ from the archaic Spanish alcatraz, “pelican” (from Arabic al-ġaṭṭās, sea eagle).

The United States Census Bureau defines the island as Block 1067, Block Group 1, Census Tract 179.02 of San Francisco County, California. There was no population on the island as of the 2000 census.

It is home to the now-abandoned prison, the site of the oldest operating lighthouse on the west coast of the United States, early military fortifications, and natural features such as rock pools, a seabird colony (mostly Western Gulls, cormorants, and egrets), and unique views of the coastline.

Military history

A model of Military Point Alcatraz, 1866-1868, now on display on Alcatraz Island

The earliest recorded owner of the island of Alcatraz is one Julian Workman, to whom it was given by Mexican governor Pio Pico in June 1846 with the understanding that the former would build a lighthouse on it. Julian Workman is the baptismal name of William Workman, co-owner of Rancho La Puente and personal friend of Pio Pico. Later that same year John C. Fremont bought the island for $5000 in the name of the United States government, who subsequently wrested control from Fremont after a legal battle.

Following the acquisition of California by the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) which ended the Mexican-American War, and the onset of the California Gold Rush the following year, the U.S. Army began studying the suitability of Alcatraz Island for the positioning of coastal batteries to protect the approaches to San Francisco Bay. In 1853, under the direction of Zealous B. Tower, the Corps of Engineers began fortifying the island, work which continued until 1858. The island’s first garrison, numbering about 200 soldiers, arrived at the end of that year. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 the island mounted 85 cannons (increased to 105 cannons by 1866) in casemates around its perimeter, though the small size of the garrison meant only a fraction of the guns could be used at one time. Alcatraz never fired its guns in anger, though during the war it was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers on the west coast.

Following the war in 1866 the army determined that the fortifications and guns were being rapidly rendered obsolete by advances in military technology. Modernization efforts, including an ambitious plan to level the entire island and construct shell-proof underground magazines and tunnels, were undertaken between 1870 and 1876 but never completed (the so called “parade ground” on the southern tip of the island represents the extent of the flattening effort). Instead the army switched the focus of its plans for Alcatraz from coastal defense to detention, a task for which it was well suited because of its isolation. In 1867 a brick jailhouse was built (previously inmates had been kept in the basement of the guardhouse), and in 1868 Alcatraz was officially designated a long-term detention facility for military prisoners. Among those incarcerated at Alcatraz were some Hopi Native American men in the 1870s.

On March 21, 1907, Alcatraz was officially designated as the Western US Military Prison. In 1909 construction began on the huge concrete main cell block, designed by Major Reuben Turner, which remains the island’s dominant feature. It was completed in 1912. In order to accommodate the new cell block, the Citadel, a three-story barracks, was demolished down to the first floor, which was actually below ground level. The building had been constructed in an excavated pit (creating a dry “moat”) to enhance its defensive potential. The first floor was then incorporated as a basement to the new cell block, giving rise to the popular legend of “dungeons” below the main cell block.

During World War I the prison held conscientious objectors, including Philip Grosser, who wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island’ about his experiences.

Prison history

Military prison

Alcatraz Island, 1895

Due to its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, hazardous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house Civil War prisoners as early as 1861. In 1898, the Spanish-American war would increase the prison population from 26 to over 450. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, civilian prisoners were transferred to Alcatraz for safe confinement. By 1912 there was a large cellhouse, and in the 1920s a large 3-story structure was nearly at full capacity.

Federal prison

The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice on October 12, 1933, and the island became a federal prison in August 1934. During the 29 years it was in use, the jail held such notable criminals as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), Jose Sierra , James “Whitey” Bulger and Alvin Karpis, who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate. It also provided housing for the Bureau of Prison staff and their families.

United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island
Location:	San Francisco Bay, California
Coordinates:	37°49′36″N 122°25′24″W / 37.82667, -122.42333
Status:	Closed (Museum)
Security class:	Maximum
Capacity:	312
Opened:	January 1, 1934
Closed:	March 21, 1963
Managed by:	Department of Justice

Escape attempts

View of San Francisco from Alcatraz Island

During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed no prisoners as having ever successfully escaped. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice; seven were shot and killed, and two drowned. The most violent occurred on 2 May 1946 when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the so-called “Battle of Alcatraz“.

On June 11, 1962 Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin successfully carried out one of the most intricate escapes ever devised. Behind the prisoners’ cells in Cell Block B (where the escapees were interned) was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the moisture-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and their progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.

The interior of a regular cell in the row known as Broadway.

The escape route then led up through a fan vent; the fan and motor had been removed and replaced with a steel grille, leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to climb through. Stealing a carborundum cord from the prison workshop, the prisoners had removed the rivets from the grille and substituted dummy rivets made of soap. The escapees also stole several raincoats to use as a raft for the trip to the mainland. Leaving papier-mâché dummies in their cells with paint brush bristles as hair, they escaped. The prisoners are estimated to have entered San Francisco Bay at 10 p.m.

The official investigation by the FBI was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who also was part of the escapees’ group but was left behind (West’s false wall kept slipping so he held it into place with cement, which set; when the Anglin brothers (John & Clarence) accelerated the schedule, West desperately chipped away at the wall but by the time he did his companions were gone). Articles belonging to the prisoners (including plywood paddles and parts of the raincoat raft) were located on nearby Angel Island, and the official report on the escape says the prisoners drowned while trying to reach the mainland in the cold waters of the bay.

Alcatraz, as viewed from San Francisco

Famous inmates

Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. He spent the next seventeen years on “the Rock” — six years in segregation in D Block, and eleven years in the prison hospital. In 1959 he was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri (MCFP Springfield).

When Al Capone arrived on Alcatraz in 1934, prison officials made it clear that he would not be receiving any preferential treatment. While serving his time in Atlanta, Capone, a master manipulator, had continued running his rackets from behind bars by buying off guards. “Big Al” generated incredible media attention while on Alcatraz though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there before developing symptoms of tertiary syphilis and being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles.

George “Machine Gun” Kelly arrived on September 4, 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed. Although this was said to be an apparent point of frustration for several fellow prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.

James ‘Whitey’ Bulger spent 3 years on Alcatraz (1959-1962) while serving a sentence for bank robbery. While there, he became close to Clarence Carnes, also known as the Choctaw Kid.

Post prison years

Alcatraz
U.S. National Historic Landmark
Flowers on Alcatraz. In the background is the Social Hall, destroyed by fire during the Native American occupation.
Location:	San Francisco, California
Built/Founded:	1847
Architect:	U.S. Army,Bureau of Prisons; U.S. Army
Architectural style(s):	Mission/Spanish Revival
Designated as NHL:	January 17, 1986
Added to NRHP:	June 23, 1976
NRHP Reference#:	76000209
Governing body:	NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

By decision of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the penitentiary was closed on March 21, 1963. It was closed because it was far more expensive to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta), half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings, and the bay was being badly polluted by the sewage from the approximately 250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island. The United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, a new, traditional land-bound prison opened that same year to serve as a replacement for Alcatraz.

Native American occupation

A lingering sign of the 1969-71 Native American occupation (2006 Photograph).

Beginning on November 20, 1969, a group of Native Americans from many different tribes (many individual Native Americans relocated to the Bay Area under the Federal Indian Reorganization Act of 1934), occupied the island, and proposed an education center, ecology center and cultural center. According to the occupants, the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the U.S. and the Sioux returned all retired, abandoned or out-of-use federal land to the Native people from whom it was acquired.

During the eighteen months of occupation, several buildings were damaged or destroyed by fires, including the recreation hall, the Coast Guard quarters and the Warden’s home. The origins of the fires are unknown. A number of other buildings (mostly apartments) were destroyed by the U.S. Government after the occupation had ended. Graffiti from the period of Native American occupation are still visible at many locations on the island.

During the occupation, the Indian termination policy, designed to end federal recognition of tribes, was rescinded by President Richard Nixon, and the new policy of self-determination was established, in part as a result of the publicity and awareness created by the occupiers. The occupation ended on June 11, 1971.

Landmarking and development

The entire Alcatraz Island was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and was further declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

In 1993, the National Park Service published a plan entitled Alcatraz Development Concept and Environmental Assessment. This plan, approved in 1980, doubled the amount of Alcatraz accessible to the public to enable visitors to enjoy its scenery and bird, marine, and animal life, such as the California slender salamander.

Today American Indian groups, the International Indian Treaty Council, for example, hold ceremonies on the island. The most notable of these are on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day when they hold a “Sunrise Gathering.”

In 2006, the Park Service awarded the ferry contract to Hornblower Yachts ferry operator Alcatraz Cruises. Because Hornblower does not employ union labor, there have been protests for several months and several demonstrations with nearly 1,000 participants.

Man made features

The parade grounds. Carved from the hillside during the late 19th century and covered with rubble since the government demolished guard housing in 1971, the area has become a habitat and breeding ground for black-crowned night herons, western gulls, slender salamanders and deer mice.

The Agave Path, a trail named for its dense growth of agave. Located atop a shoreline bulkhead on the south side, it provides a nesting habitat for night herons.

Natural features

Brandt’s Cormorant nesting on Alcatraz Island

Western Gulls on Alcatraz

California slender salamander

Habitats

Cisterns. A bluff that, because of its moist crevices, is believed to be an important site for California slender salamanders.

Cliff tops at the island’s north end. Containing a onetime manufacturing building and a plaza, the area is listed as important to nesting and roosting birds.

The powerhouse area. A steep embankment where native grassland and creeping wild rye support a habitat for deer mice.

Tide pools. A series of them, created by long-ago quarrying activities, contains still-unidentified invertebrate species and marine algae.

They form one of the few tide-pool complexes in the Bay, according to the report.

Western cliffs and cliff tops. Rising to heights of nearly 100 feet (30 m), they provide nesting and roosting sites for sea birds including pigeon guillemots, cormorants, Heermann’s gulls and Western Gulls. Harbor seals can occasionally be seen on a small beach at the base.

A panorama of Alcatraz as viewed from San Francisco Bay, facing east. Sather Tower and UC Berkeley are visible in the background on the right.

Vegetation

Historic gardens. Planted by families of the original Army post, and later by families of the prison guards, they fell into neglect after the prison closure in 1963. After 40 years they are being restored by a paid staff member and many volunteers, thanks to funding by the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The untended gardens had become severely overgrown and had developed into a nesting habitat and sanctuary for numerous birds. Now, areas of bird habitat are being preserved and protected, while many of the gardens are being fully restored to their original glory.

1735 – Paul Revere, American patriot (d. 1818)

Paul Revere (bap. December 22, 1734 (OS) / January 1, 1735 (NS) – May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution.

Because he was glorified after his death for his role as a messenger in the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere’s name and his “midnight ride” are well-known in the United States as a patriotic symbol. In his lifetime, Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston craftsman, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military.

Revere later served as an officer in one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, a role for which he was later exonerated. After the war, he was early to recognize the potential for large-scale manufacturing of metal.

Myths and Legends of the Midnight Ride

Paul Revere’s house in Boston.

In his poem, Longfellow took many liberties with the events of the evening, most especially giving sole credit to Revere for the collective achievements of the three riders (as well as the other riders whose names do not survive to history). Longfellow also depicts the lantern signal in the Old North Church as meant for Revere and not from him, as was actually the case. Other inaccuracies include claiming that Revere rode triumphantly into Concord instead of Lexington, and a general lengthening of the time frame of the night’s events. For a long time, though, historians of the American Revolution as well as textbook writers relied almost entirely on Longfellow’s poem as historical evidence – creating substantial misconceptions in the minds of the American people. In re-examining the episode, some historians in the 20th century have attempted to demythologize Paul Revere almost to the point of marginalization. While it is true that Revere was not the only rider that night, that does not refute the fact that Revere was riding and successfully completed the first phase of his mission to warn Adams and Hancock. Other historians have since stressed his importance, including David Hackett Fischer in his book Paul Revere’s Ride (1995), an important scholarly study of Revere’s role in the opening of the Revolution.

Popular myths and urban legends have persisted, though, concerning Revere’s ride, mainly due to the tendency in the past to take Longfellow’s poem as truth. Other riders such as Israel Bissell and Sybil Ludington are often suggested as having completed much more impressive rides than Revere’s; however, the circumstances behind the others’ rides were entirely different (Bissell was a news-carrier riding from Boston to Philadelphia with news of the battle at Lexington; Revere had made similar rides with the news in the years preceding the war. The only evidence for Ludington’s ride is an oral tradition.) Longfellow’s poem was never designed to be history and there are few serious historians today who would maintain that Revere was anything like the lone-wolf rider portrayed in the poem.

Betsy Ross (January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836) was an American woman said to have sewn the first American flag which incorporated stars representing the first thirteen colonies, although “many details (about her life) are conjecture based on research.”

This image depicts what is presumed to be Betsy Ross and two children presenting the “Betsy Ross flag” to George Washington and three other men

Early years

Ross was born Elizabeth Griscom to parents Sam and Rebecca in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 1, 1752, the eighth of 17 children. She “grew up in a household where the plain dress and strict discipline of the Society of Friends dominated her life.” She learned to sew from her great-aunt Sarah Griscom.

After she finished her schooling at a Quaker public school, her father apprenticed her to an upholsterer named William Webster. At this job, she fell in love with fellow apprentice John Ross, son of an assistant rector Aeneas Ross (Sarah Leach) at (Episcopal) Christ Church.

As interdenominational marriages typically led to being read out of their Quaker meeting, the couple eloped in 1773 when she was 21, and married at Hugg’s Tavern in Gloucester, New Jersey.^[4] The marriage caused a split from her family and meant her “expulsion from the Quaker congregation.” The young couple soon started their own upholstery business and joined Christ Church.

The Revolutionary War

The Rosses were financially stressed by the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The fabrics they depended on grew scarce, and business slowed considerably. John joined the Pennsylvania militia and was killed in January 1776 when ammunition in a storehouse he was guarding exploded.

After her first husband’s death, Ross joined the “Fighting Quakers” which, unlike traditional Quakers, supported the war effort. In June 1777, she married sea captain Joseph Ashburn at Old Swedes’ Church in Philadelphia. British soldiers forcibly occupied their house when they controlled the city in 1777. Following the Battle of Germantown, she nursed both American and British soldiers.

Betsy Ross is best remembered, however, as a flag maker during the Revolution. Family oral history, supported only by 19th century affidavits, recounts the widowed Ross meeting with George Washington, George Ross, and Robert Morris at her upholstery business in Philadelphia, a meeting said to have resulted in the sewing of the first U.S. “stars and stripes” flag. According to the story, it was at this meeting, to “silence the men’s protests that these new five-pointed stars would be unfamiliar and difficult for seamstresses to make, she folded a piece of paper, made a single scissor snip, and revealed a perfect five-pointed star.”

Evidence that Ross did in fact make flags for the government includes a receipt for her making “ship’s colours” for the Pennsylvania Navy in May 1777, as well as a folded star pattern with her name found in a Philadelphia Quaker Society safe. Whether or not Ross made the “first” stars and stripes has never been proven, however. According to the family legend, many women were making flags when Betsy received her first order. Francis Hopkinson also took credit for the design of the stars and stripes, which was partially acknowledged by Congress.

Post-War

In May 1783, Ross married John Claypoole, an old friend who had told her of Ashburn’s death in a British prison where he and Ashburn had been confined. The couple had five daughters together. He died in 1817 after twenty years of ill health. She continued working in her upholstery business, including making flags for the United States of America, until 1827. After her retirement, she moved in with her married daughter, Susannah Satterthwaite, who continued to operate the business. Ross died in Philadelphia on January 30, 1836, at age 84.

Although it is one of the most visited tourist sites in Philadelphia, the claim that Ross once lived at the Betsy Ross House is a matter of dispute.

Interment, re-interment and re-re-interment

Ross’s body was first buried at the Free Quaker burial ground on South 5th Street. Twenty years later, her remains were exhumed and reburied in the Mt. Moriah Cemetery in the Cobbs Creek Park section of Philadelphia. In preparation for the United States Bicentennial, the city ordered the remains moved to the courtyard of the Betsy Ross House in 1975; however, workers found no remains under her tombstone. Bones found elsewhere in the family plot were deemed to be hers and were re-interred in the current grave visited by tourists at the Betsy Ross House.

Betsy Ross Postage Stamp

Elin Maria Pernilla Nordegren Woods (born January 1, 1980, in Stockholm, Sweden) is a former Swedish model, and is married to the professional golfer Tiger Woods.

Early life

Nordegren’s mother, Barbro Holmberg, is a politician and former migration and asylum policy minister of Sweden, while her father, Thomas, is a radio journalist who has served as bureau chief in Washington, D.C. for the Swedish Broadcasting media. She has one older brother, Axel, and a twin sister, Josefin.

Relationship with Tiger Woods

Nordegren and her twin sister Josefin had been working as au pairs for Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik when he introduced her to Woods during the 2001 British Open. In November 2003, Woods and Nordegren attended the Presidents Cup tournament in South Africa and became officially engaged when Woods proposed at the luxury Shamwari Game Reserve. On October 5, 2004, they were married by the 19th hole at the exclusive Sandy Lane resort in Barbados. The ceremony reportedly cost over $1.5 million. Privacy was achieved by buying out the island’s sole helicopter charter company and by booking the entire hotel – 200 rooms ranging in price from $700 to $8,000 per night.

On June 18, 2007, Woods announced the birth of their daughter, Sam Alexis Woods, early that morning, just a day after Woods finished second in the 2007 U.S. Open.

On September 2, 2008, Woods announced on his website they were expecting another child in late winter.

Nude photographs hoax

Shortly after Nordegren’s relationship with Woods became public, nude photographs of a woman resembling Nordegren began circulating on the internet, with text claiming it was, in fact, her. Nordegren, whose modeling work did include bikini photo shoots, vehemently denied that she has ever posed nude. The nude photographs claimed to be of Nordegren actually depict Playboy magazine model Kim Hiott, and most are derived from the 2000 edition of Playboy’s “Nudes” special edition. Despite this identification and repeated denials from Nordegren and Woods, in September 2006 (immediately prior to the 2006 Ryder Cup) Irish magazine The Dubliner published an article “Ryder Cup Filth for Ireland,” which displayed the nude photographs of Hiott and again claimed they were of Nordegren. Woods described the story as “unacceptable,” and his agent Mark Steinberg said, “Everyone knew it wasn’t her. It’s plain as day.” Steinberg also said the couple was considering legal recourse against the magazine. The Dubliner issued an apology for the story, saying that they had printed the photos as a “satire of tabloid publishing.”

Nordegren won the lawsuit and as part of the settlement accepted by a Dublin court, The Dubliner must publish its lengthy apology in a variety of venues, including in its next issue. If the magazine fails to meet the conditions the award will be increased to $366,500 and the publishers will have to pay Nordegren Woods’ legal costs.

 

Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Santa?

    

    

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.

Burglar scared off by man dressed as Thor

Friday, January 2, 2009

Torvald Alexander, the Norse god of thunder!

A builder scared off a house-breaker by running at him dressed as the Norse god Thor.

The terrified intruder leapt from a first floor window to escape Torvald Alexander, who was dressed as the Norse god of thunder in a red cape and silver helmet and breastplate.

Mr Alexander had just returned from a New Year’s Eve fancy dress party when he discovered the man in his home in Inverleith, Edinburgh.

He said he acted instinctively to chase the intruder away, and believed his costume may have added impact.

Mr Alexander, 39, said: “We were both startled but then the instant reaction was that I ran at him and he just jumped straight out of the window.

“I think I would be quite scared if someone looking almost like a gladiator ran at them.

“He might have thought the property was empty.

“He probably would not have expected to meet a strong builder, especially dressed in tinfoil and silver.”

The house-breaker did not steal anything but left behind his shoes and the garden fork he used to break in.

He landed on a pitched roof outside the window which broke his fall, and made his escape. Mr Alexander, whose name has Norwegian roots, was inspired to dress as Thor by the Marvel comics series.

He made his costume himself, using large quantities of tinfoil.

The Norse believed that Thor rode through the heavens during thunderstorms on his chariot, which was pulled by two goats.

Lightning flashed whenever he threw his hammer Mjollnir, which magically returned to him. He was usually depicted as a big, powerful man with eyes of lightning and a red beard.

Mr Alexander, who runs building firm Alexander & Summers, said he will report the incident to police.

Lothian and Borders Police said they have not yet received a report.

 

Balloon priest wins Darwin Award for stupidity

Friday, January 2, 2009

There he goes: Di Carli, the balloon priest

A daredevil Catholic priest who was killed after floating out to sea suspended by 1,000 helium-filled party balloons has been honoured for his idiocy.

Reverend Adelir Antonio di Carli had been trying to break a record for the longest time in-flight with party balloons when he disappeared.

Three months later his body was discovered off the south-eastern coast of Brazil.

But now he has won the 2008 Darwin Awards which commemorates people who die in a stupid fashion.

 

 

Di Carli: blowing in the wind

 

Rev di Carli planned to use the money raised in his attempt to break the 19-hour record to fund a “spiritual” rest-stop for truckers in Paranagua, home to Brazil’s largest grain port.

Second place went to Italian Ivece Plattner, 68, who got trapped in between a level crossing in his beloved Porsche.

It took Plattner a while to realise he was stuck, according to witnesses. Finally, he jumped from the car and started to run – towards the oncoming train, waving his arms in an attempt to save his car.

The attempt was successful. The car received less damage than its owner

1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces under the command of George Washington repulsed a British attack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.

The Battle of the Assunpink Creek also known as The Second Battle of Trenton was an American Victory in a battle that took place on January 2, 1777, during the American Revolutionary War.

Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis had left 1,400 British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood in Princeton, New Jersey. Following a surprise victory at the Battle of Trenton early in the morning of December 26, 1776, General George Washington of the Continental Army and his council of war expected a strong British counter-attack. Washington and his council decided to meet this attack in Trenton.

Washington established a defensive position south of the Assunpink Creek, just south of Trenton. Cornwallis’ moved from Princeton to Trenton on January 2, but his army was delayed by riflemen under the command of Edward Hand, and the advanced guard did not even reach Trenton until twilight. After assaulting the American positions three times, and being repulsed each time, Cornwallis decided to wait and finish the battle the next day. Washington moved his army and attacked Mawhood at Princeton the next day, forcing the British to evacuate New Jersey.

Background

On December 25, 1776, George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army crossed the Delaware River with his army, and attacked the Hessian Garrison at Trenton.  The Hessian garrison was surrounded and quickly defeated. Washington crossed the river again and went back to his camp in Pennsylvania.  On December 30, Washington moved his army to Trenton and stationed his men on the south side of the Assunpink Creek.

Prelude

Washington’s Appeal

At Trenton Washington faced a dilemma. All but a handful of men’s enlistments would be up on December 31, and he knew that the army would collapse unless he convinced them to stay. So, on the 30th, Washington appealed to his men to stay one month longer for a bounty of ten dollars. He asked any men who wanted to volunteer to poise their firelocks, but not a man turned out. Washington then wheeled his horse around and rode in front of the troops, saying “My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay only one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country which you probably never can do under any other circumstances.” At first, still, no one stepped forward, but then one soldier stepped forward, and he was followed by most of the others, leaving only a few in the original line.

Preparations

On January 1, money from Congress arrived in Trenton and the men were paid. Washington also received a series of resolves from Congress including one that gave Washington the power of a Military Dictator. Washington decided that he would stand and fight at Trenton, and ordered General John Cadwalader, who was at Crosswicks with 1,800 Militia, to join him in Trenton. On the 31, Washington had learned that an army of 8,000 men under the command of General Lord Cornwallis was going to attack him at Trenton.

Washington ordered his men to build earthworks that were parallel to the south bank of the Assunpink Creek. The lines extended about three miles down the south end of the stream. However, one of Washington’s aides, Joseph Reed, pointed out that there were fords up stream that the British could cross, and then they would be in position to drive in Washington’s right flank. Washington could not escape across the Delaware because all of his boats were a few miles up stream. Washington told his officers than he planned to move the army and that their current position was only temporary.

British Movement

Cornwallis, who had been planning to return to Britain, had his leave canceled. Cornwallis rode to Princeton to catch up with General James Grant, who had moved with 1,000 troops to reinforce Princeton. Cornwallis arrived, and was convinced by Grant and Carl von Donop to attack Trenton with their combined forces.

Cornwallis left Princeton to march 11 miles to Trenton before dawn on January 2, 1777. He left Colonel Charles Mawhood in Princeton with the 17th, 40th and 55th regiments with some cannon as the rear guard, and Cornwallis instructed Mawhood to join him in Trenton the next day. Cornwallis’s army had 28 cannon and marched in three columns. When Cornwallis reached Maidenhead he detached Colonel Alexander Leslie with 1,500 men and ordered them to remain there until the following morning.

The Battle

Delaying Actions

Out in front of his army, Cornwallis placed a skirmish line of Hessian Jagers and British light infantry. Two days before, Washington had placed an outer defensive line halfway between Trenton, in order to delay the British advance. As the British approached, Fermoy returned to Trenton, drunk. Colonel Edward Hand took his place.

As the British came within range, the American riflemen opened fire. The American riflemen took cover in the woods, ravines and even in bends in the road, and each time the British would line up in a battle line, the riflemen would fall back and fire from cover. After Hand was forced to abandon the American position along Five Mile Run, he took up a new position, a heavily wooded area on the south bank of Shabbakonk Creek. Hand deployed his men in the trees and they were so well protected from view that the British could not see them as they crossed the bridge over the stream, and the riflemen fired at them from point-blank range. The intense fire confused the British into thinking that the entire American army was up against them and they formed into battle lines, bringing up their cannon. The British searched the woods for a half an hour looking for the Americans, but Hand had already withdrawn to a new position.

By three in the afternoon, the British had reached a ravine known as Stockton Hollow, about a half a mile from Trenton where the Americans were forming another line of defense. Washington wanted to hold the British off until nightfall, when darkness would prevent the British from attacking his defenses on the south side of Assunpink Creek. The British, with artillery in position, attacked Hand’s new position, and he gave way, slowly falling back into Trenton. Along the way, Hand had his troops fire from behind houses. As Hand’s troops came to the creek, the Hessian charged at them with bayonets fixed, causing chaos among the Americans. Washington, seeing the chaos, rode out through the crowd of men crossing the bridge, and shouted that Hand’s rear guard pull back and regroup under the cover of the American artillery.

British Assault

As the British prepared to attack the American defenses, cannon and musket fire was exchanged between the opposing sides. The British moved across the bridge, advancing in solid columns, and the Americans all fired together. The British fell back, but only for a moment. The British charged the bridge again, but the cannon fire drove them back. The British charged one final time, but the Americans fired with canister this time, and the British lines were raked with fire. One soldier said “the bridge looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and their red coats.

American withdrawal

Cornwallis’ Decision

When Cornwallis arrived in Trenton with the main army, he called a council of war as to whether or not he should continue to attack. Cornwallis’ quartermaster general, William Erskine, urged Cornwallis to strike right away and said that “If Washington is the General I take him to be, his army will not be found there in the morning.” But James Grant disagreed, and argued that there was no way for the Americans to retreat, and that the British troops were worn out and it would be better for them to attack in the morning when they were rested. Cornwallis did not want to wait until morning, but he decided that it would be better than sending his troops out to attack in the dark. Cornwallis said “We’ve got the old fox safe now. We’ll go over and bag him in the morning.” Cornwallis then moved his army, for the night, to a hill north of Trenton.

Washington’s Decision

During the night, the American artillery, under the command of Henry Knox, occasionally fired shells into Trenton to keep the British on edge. As Cornwallis had, Washington also called for a council of war. Washington knew that there was a road that would lead to Princeton, and his council of war agreed to move to, and take Princeton. By 2am the army was on its way to Princeton. Washington left behind 500 men and two cannon to keep the fires burning and to make noise with picks and shovels to make the British think they were digging in. By morning, these men too had evacuated, and when the British came to attack, all of the American troops were gone.

Aftermath

By morning, Washington had reached Princeton. After a brief battle, the British were decisively defeated and most of the garrison under command of Mawhood captured. With their third defeat in ten days, Howe evacuated the army from New Jersey and pulled it into New York.

1788 – Georgia becomes the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

                                

The State of Georgia is a state in the United States and was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution. It was the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be established, in 1733. It was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788. It seceded from the Union on January 21, 1861 and was one of the original seven Confederate states. It was the last state to be readmitted to the Union, on July 15, 1870. Georgia is the ninth-largest state in the nation by population, with an estimated 9,544,750 residents as of July 1, 2007. It is also the fourth fastest growing state in terms of numeric gain and ninth in terms of percent gain, adding 162,447 residents at a rate of 1.7 percent. From 2006 to 2007, Georgia had 18 counties among the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties, the most of any state. Georgia is also known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South. Atlanta is the most populous city, and the capital.

Georgia is bordered on the south by Florida; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina; on the west by Alabama and by Florida in the extreme southwest; and on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina. The northern part of the state is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mountain range in the vast mountain system of the Appalachians. The central piedmont extends from the foothills to the fall line, where the rivers cascade down in elevation to the continental coastal plain of the southern part of the state. The highest point in Georgia is Brasstown Bald, 4,784 feet (1,458 m); the lowest point is sea level.

With an area of 59,424 square miles (153,909 km²), Georgia is ranked 24th in size among the 50 U.S. states. Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi River in terms of land area, although it is the fourth largest (after Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin) in total area, a term which includes expanses of water claimed as state territory

Early history

The local moundbuilder culture, described by Hernando de Soto in 1540, completely disappeared by 1560. Early on, in the course of European exploration of the area, a number of Spanish explorers visited the inland region of Georgia.

The conflict between Spain and England over control of Georgia began in earnest in about 1670, when the English founded the Carolina colony in present-day South Carolina. Nearly a century earlier, the Spanish of Spanish Florida had established the missionary provinces of Guale and Mocama on the coast and Sea Islands of present-day Georgia. After decades of fighting, the Carolinians and allied Indians permanently destroyed the Spanish mission system during the invasions of 1702 and 1704. After 1704, Spanish control was limited to St. Augustine and Pensacola, both in nowadays Florida. The Florida peninsula was subjected to raids as far as the Florida Keys. The coast of Georgia was occupied by now British-allied Indians such as the Yamasee until the Yamasee War of 1715-1717, after which the region was depopulated, opening up the possibility of a new British colony. In 1724, it was first suggested the British colony there be called Province of Georgia in honor of King George II.

British interest in establishing a colony below South Carolina came from varied sources. Spanish Florida was a threat to South Carolina and a haven for runaway slaves. The French in the 1720s established a fort near present-day Montgomery, Alabama, also a threat to British interests in the region. Traders from Charleston, South Carolina, had established trading posts as far west as the Ocmulgee River, near present-day Macon, Georgia. The British trading network kept the Creek Indians allied with them; the French move threatened to wrest these Indians’ trade away from the British. These strategic interests made the British government interested in establishing a new colony that would reinforce the British influence in the border country that had been open to Spanish and French penetration.

Meanwhile, many members of the British Parliament had become concerned about the plight of England’s debtors. A parliamentary committee investigated and reported on conditions in Britain’s debtor prisons. A group of philanthropists organized themselves to establish a colony where the “worthy poor” of England could reestablish themselves as productive citizens. This goal was seen as both philanthropic, helping these distressed people, and patriotic, simultaneously relieving Britain of the burden of the imprisoned debtors and augmenting Britain’s vital mercantile empire by planting new, industrious subjects to strengthen her trade. This goal went unfulfilled as Georgia was ultimately not settled by debtors or convicts.

In 1732, a group of these philanthropists were granted a royal charter as the Trustees of the Province of Georgia. They carefully selected the first group of colonists to send to the new colony. On 12 February 1733, 113 settlers aboard the Anne landed at what was to become the city of Savannah. This day is now known as Georgia Day, which is not a public holiday but is observed in schools and by some local civic groups. James Edward Oglethorpe, one of the trustees of the colony, traveled with the first group of colonists, laid out the design of the town of Savannah, and acted as governor of the colony, although technically under the trustees there was no “governor.” Oglethorpe acted as the only trustee present in the colony. When he returned to Britain, a series of disputes ended his tenure governing the colony; Georgia was then led by a series of presidents named by the trustees.

At the time Georgia was founded in 1732, the number of non-English immigrants to the colonies was at an all time high. Although religious toleration was not valued in itself, the pragmatic need to attract settlers led to broad religious freedoms. South Carolina wanted German Lutherans, Scottish Presbyterians, Moravians, French Huguenots and Jews, whom they valued as a counter to the French and Spanish Catholic and absolutist presence to the south. When the Moravians turned out to be pacifists who refused to serve in the colonial defense, they were expelled in 1738. Catholics were denied the right to own property. Jewish immigrants fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, which was being carried out by the Spanish colonies in the New World, were allowed in after some debate, owing to the leadership of James Oglethorpe. In 1733, over forty Jews fleeing persecution arrived in Savannah, the largest such group to enter an American colony up to that time. Among them was Dr. Samuel Nunez, who was the first doctor in Georgia. He immediately showed his value as a citizen by playing an invaluable role in curbing an epidemic that had already killed scores of settlers, and was credited with saving the colony by General Oglethorpe.

In 1752, after the government failed to renew subsidies that had helped support the colony, the Trustees turned over control to the crown. Georgia became a crown colony, with a governor appointed by the British king. However, even after Georgia eventually became a royal colony (1752), there were so many dissenters (Protestants of minority denominations, that is, non-Anglican) that the establishment of the Church of England was successfully resisted until 1752. These dissenting churches were the mainstay of the Revolutionary movement, culminating in the War for Independence from Britain, through the patriotic and anti-authoritarian sermons of their ministers, and the use of the churches to organize rebellion. Whereas the Anglican Church tended to preach stability and loyalty to the Crown, other Protestant sects preached heavily from the Old Testament and emphasized freedom and equality of all men before God, as well as the moral responsibility to rebel against tyrants.

Georgia was one of the thirteen colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution by signing the 1776 Declaration of Independence, despite a large population of people loyal to the crown. Since Georgia was a relatively new colony at the time compared to the other twelve colonies, Georgia was not as active in the war. Also, the Georgian militia was not fully developed, which led to the capture of Savannah by British forces in December of 1778. American forces under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln combined with French forces under the command of Charles Henri Comte d’Estaing to lay siege to Savannah in 1779. The attempt was incredibly unsuccessful, and Savannah remained in British hands until the end of the war. During the war, nearly one-third of the slaves, more than 5,000 enslaved African Americans, exercised their desire for independence by escaping and joining British forces, where they were promised freedom. Some went to Great Britain or the Caribbean; others were resettled in Canada provinces. Other estimates show an even greater impact from the war, when slaves escaped during the disruption. “The sharp decline between 1770 and 1790 in the proportion of the population made up of blacks (almost all of whom were slaves) [went] from 45.2 percent to 36.1 percent in Georgia.”

Following the war, Georgia became the fourth state of the United States of America after ratifying the United States Constitution on 2 January 1788. Georgia established its first state constitution in 1777. The state established new constitutions in 1788, 1799, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1877, 1945, 1976, and 1983, for a total of 10 — more constitutions than any other state, except for Louisiana, which has had 11.

2008 – Massachusetts decriminalizes the recreational use of marijuana.

Heather O’Reilly

Heather Ann O’Reilly (born January 2, 1985 in New Brunswick, New Jersey and a graduate of both Saint Bartholomew’s School and East Brunswick High School), is an American women’s soccer player. Her father is an assistant track coach at St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, New Jersey. She also has three other brothers, one of which ran track and cross country at the Air Force Academy. She was a striker at the University of North Carolina, where she majored in education, and the New Jersey Wildcats, a W-League team. O’Reilly was allocated to Sky Blue FC of Women’s Professional Soccer in 2008.

International

O’Reilly made her first appearance with the US Women’s National Team, on March 1, 2002 against Sweden.

On August 23, 2004, O’Reilly scored the game-winning goal in the Olympics quarterfinal match against Germany, propelling the United States into the final, in which they defeated Brazil for the gold medal.

In the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, O’Reilly made a critical score against North Korea in the 69th minute, tying the game at 2-2 and saving the Americans from a devastating opening-round loss. USA ended up taking the bronze medal, where O’Reilly scored a goal during the 4-1 win against Norway. As of November 2007, she has 15 career international goals. O’Reilly now wears the No. 9 jersey for the national team, a number made famous by Mia Hamm.

Club

On 16 September 2008 the initial WPS player allocation was conducted; O’Reilly was allocated to Sky Blue FC with fellow US Women’s National Team players Natasha Kai and Christie Rampone.

Personal

O’Reilly was nominated as Sports Illustrated‘s 2007 Sportsman of the year.

On February 24 of 2008, had her jersey, # 20, retired from UNC’s women’s soccer team

I hear voices in my head and they don’t like you.Edward Cullen

 

This is an ancient hallow, and ere the kings failed or the Tree withered in the court, a fruit must have been set here. For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. ~ Gandalf in The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

1777 – American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.

The Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was a battle in which General Washington‘s revolutionary forces defeated British forces near Princeton, New Jersey. The site is administered as a state park operated and maintained by the New Jersey Division of Parks and Forestry.

Background

On the night of December 25, 1776 General George Washington, Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, led 2,400 men across the Delaware River. After a nine mile march, they seized the town of Trenton, killing or wounding over 1000 Hessians and capturing 900 more. Soon after capturing the town, Washington led the army back across the Delaware into Pennsylvania. On the 29th, Washington once again led the army across the river, and established a defensive position at Trenton. On the 31st, Washington appealed to his men to stay for just six more weeks for an extra bounty of ten dollars. His appeal worked, and most of the men agreed to stay. Also, that day, Washington learned that Congress had voted to give him dictatorial powers for six months.

On the morning of January 2, General Lord Cornwallis left Princeton in command of 8,000 men who were sent to attack Washington’s army of 6,000 troops. Washington sent troops to skirmish with the approaching British and delay their advance. Indeed, it was almost nightfall by the time the British reached Trenton. After three failed attempts to cross the bridge over the Assunpink Creek, beyond which were the American defenses, Cornwallis called off the attack until the next day.

The night after the Battle of the Assunpink Creek (also known as the Second Battle of Trenton), General Washington stealthily led the roughly 6,500-man main body of his army away from Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis and his troops. To disguise the departure of the American soldiers, Washington left a detachment of 500 Pennsylvania militia behind to tend to large campfires and periodically fire volleys from two cannons.

During the night, Washington’s army marched over a back road toward Princeton and reached the Quaker Bridge over Stony Brook, about a mile and a half south of the town. The Quaker Bridge was not strong enough to support the army’s cannon and ammunition carts, so another bridge had to be hastily built. While it was being constructed, Washington divided his army into two groups: a large right wing under General John Sullivan, and a smaller left wing with 2,300 men under General Nathanael Greene. Washington had intended to attack Princeton before dawn, but the sun was rising.

Greene’s assignment was to advance to the Princeton-Trenton highway to block traffic there and destroy the highway bridge over Stony Brook. Sullivan’s division, the main attack force, moved toward the rear of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). The British were known to have outposts on the roads leading north, east, and west, so Sullivan took an abandoned road that went into town from the east.

Before Greene’s wing could reach the highway, its leading brigade, made up of 350 men under General Hugh Mercer of Virginia, met up with 800 men of the British 4th Brigade, armed with 2 light guns, under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mawhood. The British group had been marching from Princeton to Trenton to reinforce General Leslie’s 2nd Brigade. The remaining unit of the 4th Brigade had been left to hold Princeton along with another 400 men.

The Battle

Upon sighting the American force, Mawhood formed up his men in a defensive position across the edge of an orchard, which Mercer’s troops were passing through. A violent firefight ensued, and Mawhood launched an assault which largely cleared the orchard of Mercer’s troops, who began to retreat in confusion. General Mercer was wounded but refused to surrender. When he tried to attack the enemy with his sword, he was bayoneted and presumed dead; he died of his wounds nine days later. Colonel John Haslet of Delaware replaced General Mercer and was killed by a shot to the head.

The death of Mercer. Washington is the background.

During the confusion, General Washington rode up to rally Mercer’s men, while a fresh brigade of 2,100 troops under General John Cadwalader arrived with an artillery battery. Washington then rode straight into the British fire, personally leading the attack. As Washington charged towards the British lines, he was heard yelling

“Parade with me my brave fellows, we will have them soon!”

 Legend has it that Washington was obscured by smoke, but when it cleared, he was still there.

With Cadwalader’s reinforcements and Washington’s successful rallying of Mercer’s men, the larger American force was able to attack the British flanks and retake most of the orchard, until fire from Mawhood’s guns halted the American advance.

A second British assault cleared the orchard, and seemed about to win the day until Sullivan led up another 1,300 troops. Now outnumbered nearly 6 to 1, Mawhood led a final charge to break through the American lines. A number of British soldiers broke through the Americans in a desperate bayonet charge, continuing down the road to Trenton. Washington led some of his force in pursuit of Mawhood, then abandoned the pursuit and turned around when some of Leslie’s 2nd Brigade troops were sighted. The remainder of the British force fell back to Princeton, where, along with the troops already present, they defended the town against Sullivan’s force before retreating to New Brunswick. A number of British troops left behind in Princeton, facing overwhelming numbers and artillery fire, surrendered. The British casualty list stated 86 killed and wounded, and 200 captured. The Americans suffered 40 killed and wounded.

Washington rallying the army

In Trenton, Cornwallis and his men awoke to the sounds of cannon fire coming from behind their position. Cornwallis and his army began to race towards Princeton. However, Washington’s rear guard had managed to damage the bridge over the Stony Brook, and American snipers further delayed Cornwallis’ advance. The exhausted American Army slipped away, marching to Somerset County Courthouse (now Millstone), where they spent the night. When the main British force finally reached Princeton late in the day, they did not stay but quickly continued on toward New Brunswick.

Aftermath

The Princeton Battle Monument in Princeton Borough, NJ

Princeton Battlefield State Park

After the battle, Cornwallis abandoned many of his posts in New Jersey, and ordered his army to retreat to New Brunswick. The battle at Princeton cost the British some 276 men killed, wounded or captured and greatly boosted the morale of the Continental troops, leading 8,000 new recruits to join the Continental Army.

American historians often consider the Battle of Princeton a great victory, on par with the battle of Trenton, due to the subsequent loss of control of most of New Jersey by the Crown forces, as well as the important political implications of the battle across the Atlantic in France and Spain, both of which would expand their military aid to the Continental forces after the battle. Fredrick the Great is said to have pronounced Washington’s achievements in those few weeks “the most brilliant in military history”.

The site of the battlefield is south of Princeton and has become the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The mortally wounded General Mercer reportedly rested under an oak tree on the battlefield. The surrounding Mercer County is now named after him; the Mercer Oak is pictured on its seal. The tree died in 2000 and a replacement grown from its acorns was planted on the site.

The 3rd Battalion/112th Field Artillery Regiment claims lineage from the Eastern Artillery Company of New Jersey assigned to Thomas Procter’s 4th Continental Artillery Regiment, which took part in battle of Princeton.

Princeton Battlefield State Park

The State of New Jersey preserves 100 acres (0.40 km²) of the site as the Princeton Battlefield State Park. The park is located on Mercer Road (Princeton Pike), about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south of Princeton University and 3.8 miles (6.1 km) north of Interstate 295/95

1959 – Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. State.

            

Alaska  is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. As of 2007, the population was 683,478 with approximately 50% residing along the Anchorage metropolitan areas.

The area that became Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire after Western Union discontinued construction of its first electric telegraph line which ran from California, up the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, continuing to Moscow and into the European telegraph network. Despite $3 million in U.S. investment for the Russian-American telegraph expedition, work ceased upon the completion of the competing Transatlantic telegraph cable. The U.S. realized the potential of continuing the line to Moscow and sent Secretary of State William H. Seward to negotiate with the Russian Ambassador to fund the remaining phases of the telegraph line. Russia didn’t see the potential in funding so Alaska was offered in exchange for the value of the Russian-American telegraph. The Russians feared that if they did not sell Russian North America, it would be taken from them by the westward expansion of the United States and Canada. They tried to play one potential purchaser off against the other to start a bidding war, but this was largely unsuccessful.

The U.S. Senate approved the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million at 2 cents per acre, about 5 cents per hectare. When adjusted for inflation, the total sum paid equates to approximately $111 million in today’s dollars.The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912 and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959. The name “Alaska” was already introduced in the Russian colonial time, when it was only used for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning “the mainland”, or more literally, “the object towards which the action of the sea is directed.” It is also known as Alyeska, the “great land”, an Aleut word derived from the same root.

The first European contact with Alaska occurred in the year 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia bearing sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia towards the Aleutian islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784, and the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early to mid-1800s. New Archangel on Kodiak Island was Alaska’s first capital, but for a century under both Russia and the U.S. Sitka was the capital. The Russians never fully colonized Alaska, and the colony was never very profitable. William H. Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State, negotiated the Alaskan purchase in 1867 for $7.2 million. Alaska was loosely governed by the military for years, and was unofficially a territory of the United States from 1884 on.

In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted official territorial status in 1912. At this time the capital was moved to Juneau.

During World War II, the Aleutian Islands Campaign focused on the three outer Aleutian Islands — Attu, Agattu and Kiska – that were invaded by Japanese troops and occupied between June 1942 and August 1943. Unalaska/Dutch Harbor became a significant base for the U.S. Army Air Corps and Navy submariners.

The U.S. Lend-Lease program involved flying American warplanes through Canada to Fairbanks and thence Nome; Russian pilots took possession of these aircraft, ferrying them to fight the German invasion of Russia. The construction of military bases contributed to the population growth of some Alaskan cities.

Statehood was approved in 1958. Alaska was officially proclaimed a state on January 3, 1959.

In 1964, the massive “Good Friday Earthquake” killed 131 people and destroyed several villages, many by the resultant tsunamis. It was the second or third most powerful earthquake in the recorded history of the world, with a magnitude of 9.2. It was 100 times more powerful than the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Luckily, the epicenter was in an unpopulated area or thousands more would have been killed.

The 1968 discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the 1977 completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline led to an oil boom. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling over 11 million US gallons of crude oil over 1,100 miles (1,600 km) of coastline. Today, the battle between philosophies of development and conservation is seen in the contentious debate over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I have fond memories of grade six; it was the best three years of my life.Paul Raynes

Inventor of the Hawaiian shirt dies

Monday, January 5, 2009

Alfred Shaheen, who was credited with inventing the Hawaiian shirt, has died

You’d be forgiven for never hearing of designer Alfred Shaheen.

Yet he inspired one of the most colourful, amusing and unforgettable styles of fashion ever known – the Hawaiian shirt.

Sadly the pioneering textile manufacturer has died at age 86, his family have confirmed.

 

As tourists from the US to Hawaii after World War II, many began to bring home colorful but cheesy looking shirts and sundresses that would be cause for much amusement among friends.

Shaheen began to change that in 1948 when he opened Shaheen’s of Honolulu and began designing, printing and producing “aloha” shirts, dresses and other ready-to-wear clothing of better quality.

Among those seen in Shaheen-designed shirts of that era was Elvis Presley, who wore one for the cover of his 1961 soundtrack album “Blue Hawaii.”

Such Shaheen originals now sell for more than £500

“Before Shaheen came along, there was no Hawaii garment industry. There were mom and pop stores but no real modern industry,” Linda Arthur, a professor of textiles and clothing at Washington State University said.

By 1959, the year Hawaii became a state, he had more than 400 employees working for him and was grossing more than $4 million a year as the major player in the islands’ garment industry.

1759 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis

Martha Custis Washington (née Dandridge) (June 2, 1731–May 22, 1802) was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington is considered to be the first First Lady of the United States. During her lifetime, she was known as “Lady Washington.”

Biography

Born on her parents’ Chestnut Grove Plantation on June 2, 1731, at 10:29 a.m., she was the oldest daughter of Virginia planter John Dandridge (1700–1756) and Frances Jones (1710–1785). Martha was a rather small, pleasant-looking woman, practical with good common sense. At the age of 18, she married Daniel Parke Custis, a rich planter two decades her senior. They lived at White House Plantation on the south shore of the Pamunkey River, a few miles upriver from Chestnut Grove. She had four children by Custis. A son and a daughter, Daniel (1751–1754) and Frances (1753–1757), died in childhood, but two other children, John (Jacky) Parke Custis (1754–1781) and Martha (“Patsy”) Parke Custis (1756–1773) survived to young adulthood. Daniel Custis’ death in 1757 left Martha a rich widow, with independent control over a dower inheritance for her lifetime and trustee control over the inheritance of her minor children.

Martha Dandridge Custis in 1757.

Martha Dandridge Custis, aged 27, and George Washington, aged nearly 27, married on January 6, 1759 at her estate, known as the White House, on the Pamunkey River northwest of Williamsburg. It seems likely that Washington had known Martha and her husband for some time. In March 1758 he visited her at White House twice; the second time he came away with either an engagement of marriage or at least her promise to think about his proposal.

Their wedding was a grand affair. The groom appeared in a suit of blue and silver with red trimming and gold knee buckles. After the Reverend Peter Mossum pronounced them man and wife, the couple honeymooned at White House for several weeks before setting up housekeeping at Washington’s Mount Vernon. Their marriage appears to have been a solid one, untroubled by infidelity or clash of temperament.

Martha and George Washington had no children together, but they raised Martha’s two surviving children. Martha’s teenaged daughter, also named Martha, died during an epileptic seizure, which led John to return home from college to comfort his mother. John later served as an aide to Washington during the siege of Yorktown in 1781. John died during this military service, probably of typhus. After his death, the Washingtons raised two of John’s children, Martha’s youngest grandchildren, Eleanor Parke Custis (March 31, 1779 – July 15, 1852), and George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857). They also provided personal and financial support to nieces, nephews and other family members in both the Dandridge and Washington families.

Content to live a private life at Mount Vernon and her homes from the Custis estate, Martha Washington nevertheless followed Washington into the battlefield when he served as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. She spent the infamous winter at Valley Forge with the General, and was instrumental in maintaining some level of morale among officers and enlisted troops. She opposed his election as President of the newly formed United States of America, and refused to attend his inauguration (April 30, 1789. As the First Lady, Mrs. Washington hosted many affairs of state at New York and Philadelphia (the capital was moved to Washington D. C. in 1800 under the Adams administration).

Martha Washington and her husband both died at Mount Vernon, with Martha dying on May 22, 1802, slightly over two years after her husband. In 1831, her remains were moved from their original burial site a few hundred feet to a brick tomb that overlooks the Potomac River.

Martha Washington and Slavery

Martha Washington was raised in a time when chattel slavery was legal in all the American colonies. No record exists of her questioning the ethical or moral foundations of the “peculiar institution.” While George Washington set a national example by freeing his slaves following his death, Martha did not.

Following the 1757 death of Martha’s first husband, the widow received a “dower share,” the lifetime use of (and income from) one third of his estate, with the other two-thirds held in trust for their minor children. The full Custis Estate contained plantations and farms totaling about 27 square miles (70 km²), and 285 enslaved men, women, and children attached to those holdings. In 1759 Martha’s dower share included at least 85 slaves.

Upon his 1759 marriage to Martha, George Washington became the legal manager of the Custis Estate, under court oversight. In actuality, estate records indicate that Martha Washington continued to purchase supplies, manage paid staff, and make many other decisions. Although the Washingtons wielded managerial control over the whole estate, they received income only from Martha’s “dower” third.

Washington used his wife’s great wealth to buy land, more than tripling the size of Mount Vernon (2,650 acres in 1757, 8,251 acres (33.39 km²) in 1787). For more than 40 years her “dower” slaves farmed the plantation alongside his own. The Washingtons could not sell Custis land or slaves, which were held in trust for Martha’s only surviving child, John.

“Washington’s Family” by Edward Savage, painted between 1789 and 1796, shows (from left to right): George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington, Eleanor Parke Custis, Martha, and an enslaved servant: probably William Lee or Christopher Sheels.

Seven of the 9 slaves that President Washington brought to Philadelphia (the national capital, 1790-1800) to work in the executive mansion were “dowers.” Pennsylvania had begun an abolition of slavery in 1780, but non-residents were allowed to hold slaves in the state for up to 6 months. The Washingtons rotated the President’s House slaves in and out of the state before the 6-month deadline to prevent their establishing residency (and legally qualifying for manumission). Washington reasoned that should the “dowers” attain their freedom due to his negligence, he might be liable to the Custis Estate for the value of those slaves.

Martha Washington was personally upset when her lady’s maid Oney Judge, a “dower” slave, fled the Philadelphia household during Washington’s second term. According to interviews with Oney in the 1840s, the First Lady had promised the young woman as a wedding gift to granddaughter Eliza Custis. Oney hid with free-black friends in the city, and then traveled to the north. Patricia Brady, in her 2005 biography of Martha Washington, writes:

“Martha felt a responsibility for the unsophisticated girl under her care, especially since her mother and sister were expecting to see her back at Mount Vernon. What she could never understand was that (Oney had)…a simple desire to be free. Ona, as she preferred to call herself, wanted to live where she pleased, do what work she pleased, and learn to read and write . . . Ona Judge professed a great regard for Martha and the way she had been treated, but she couldn’t face a future as a slave for herself and her children.” (Brady, p. 209)

In March 1797, during the Washington family’s last week in Philadelphia, their chief cook Hercules also fled slavery, leaving a daughter at Mount Vernon who told a visitor that she was glad her father was free.

By 1799 the number of “dower” slaves was 153, the number of Washington slaves was 124, and at least a dozen couples had intermarried. In Washington’s will^[2] he resolved to free his own slaves following his death, but his hope of purchasing the “dowers” from the Custis Estate and freeing them too, or of setting up a system by which the “dowers” would be rented out and gradually work themselves out of slavery came to nought. To spare Martha the spectacle of witnessing slave families torn apart, Washington directed in his will that his slaves not be freed until after her death.

Martha freed Washington’s slaves on January 1, 1801. Abigail Adams visited Mount Vernon two weeks earlier, and wrote: “Many of those who are liberated have married with what are called the dower Negroes, so that they all quit their [family] connections, yet what could she do?” Adams cited a sinister motive for Martha freeing Washington’s slaves early: “In the state in which they were left by the General, to be free at her death, she did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands, many of whom would be told that it was [in] their interest to get rid of her–She therefore was advised to set them all free at the close of the year.–” (A.A. to Mary Cranch, 21 December 1800)

Following Martha’s 1802 death, the “dower” slaves were inherited by her four grandchildren (the children of Jacky Custis). She bequeathed the one slave she owned outright, Elisha, to her grandson George Washington Parke Custis.

An 1878 portrait by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews.

Author Henry Wiencek, in his 2003 book “An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America“, writes that Martha Washington owned her own mulatto half-sister, a slave named Ann Dandridge, who had a child by Martha’s son (and therefore Ann’s nephew), John Parke “Jack” Custis. He bases his assertion on original documents he discovered in the files of Mount Vernon and the Virginia Historical Society, and states that previous historians ignored the documentary evidence that this sister existed. According to Wiencek, this incident was among several that led George Washington to call slavery repugnant, and probably influenced Washington’s decision late in life to free all his slaves. The existence of a slave named Ann Dandridge is recognized in Helen Bryan’s 2001 “Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty.” However this book draws upon Wiencek’s research. Bryan stated that the “shadow sister” was close to Martha’s age and had been with her since they were children.

Brady, in a brief bibliographical note at the end of her book (page 256), denies the existence of Martha Washington’s half sister and asserts that Wiencek and Bryan accepted “family mythology” and “lore” as fact. Brady does not offer a review of the documentary evidence discovered by Wiencek in the Virginia Historical Society and in the Washington, D.C., archives where Ann Dandridge’s manumission is recorded–Land Records, Liber H., #8, p. 382; Liber R, #17, p. 288. In assessing the documents that have survived on this question, Wiencek notes that Ann Dandridge was omitted from the Custis estate records and the records of slaves at Mt. Vernon. Having studied plantation families for many years, Wiencek observes that family ties between slaves and slave owners were often kept hidden.

USS Lady Washington

Mrs. Washington had a row galley named in her honor, the USS Lady Washington. It holds the distinction of being the first U.S. military ship to be named in honor of a woman and for a vessel named while the person was still alive (see also List of U.S. military vessels named after living Americans). It has a number of other distinctions as well, as the first ship named after a (future) First Lady and one of the few active vessels in the U.S. Navy named in honor of a woman (see also USS Hopper (DDG-70)).

U.S. Postage Stamp

In 1902 Martha Washington became the first American woman to be commemorated by a U.S. postage stamp. It was an 8 cent stamp. In 1923, a second stamp was issued in her honor, a 4 cent. The third Martha Washington stamp, of 1½¢ denomination, was issued in 1938.

Appearance on U.S. Currency

Paper currency

Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on the face of a U.S. currency note. It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896. An 1856 national banknote carried The baptism of Pocahontas on its reverse face.

First Spouse Coin

The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins and bronze medal duplicates to honor the first spouses of the United States. Martha Washington’s coin was released on June 19, 2007, and was sold out in just hours.

Obverse

Reverse

Obverse (bronze medal)

Reverse (bronze medal)

1984 – Amanda Hearst, American heiress

Amanda Randolph Hearst (born January 5, 1984) is an American socialite, fashion model, and heiress to William Randolph Hearst‘s media empire, which reports $5 billion a year in annual revenue USD.

She is the child of Anne Hearst, a niece of kidnap victim Patty Hearst, and a great-granddaughter of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Her father is Richard McChesney, who separated from her mother before Hearst’s birth.

Hearst attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. She graduated in 2002, enrolled at Boston College, and later transferred to Fordham University where she studies Art History.

Modeling

Hearst is a model signed to IMG Models agency.

What luck for rulers that men do not think. – Adolf Hitler

                    

Wheelchair criminal flees on foot

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Police say a woman who begged from a wheelchair was caught running from a crime scene on foot in Monterrey, Mexico.

Police spokeswoman Sidlayin Robles says 30-year-old Ana Victoria Perez fled on foot after she and her husband allegedly threw a stone through the front window of a furniture store.

Perez was a regular fixture along a main Monterrey road, asking for change from motorists as she sat in a wheelchair pushed by her husband.

Robles said Monday that the couple apparently planned to rob the furniture store but were scared off by a security guard. They have been charged with vandalism.

Police arrested the couple when they returned for the wheelchair.

1912 – New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state.

New Mexico  is a U. S. State located in the southwestern region It has been inhabited by American Indian populations and has been part of the Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain, part of Mexico, and a U.S. territory. Among U.S. States, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics at 43%, comprising both recent immigrants and descendants of Spanish colonists. It also has the third-highest percentage of American Indians after Alaska and Oklahoma, and the fifth-highest total number of American Indians after California, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Texas. The tribes represented in the state consist of mostly Navajo and Pueblo peoples. As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Spanish, Mexican, and American Indian cultural influences. The climate of the state is highly arid and its territory is mostly covered by mountains and desert. At a population density of 15 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth most sparsely inhabited U.S. State.

History

Pueblo Ruins at Aztec Ruins National Monument

The first known inhabitants of New Mexico were members of the Clovis culture of Paleo-Indians. Later inhabitants include Native Americans of the Mogollon and the Anasazi cultures. By the time of European contact in the 1500s, the region was settled by the villages of the Pueblo peoples and groups of Navajo, Apache and Ute.

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado assembled an enormous expedition at Compostela in 1540–1542 to explore and find the mystical Seven Golden Cities of Cibola as described by Fray Marcos de Niza. The name Nuevo México was first used by a seeker of gold mines named Francisco de Ibarra who explored far to the north of Mexico in 1563 and reported his findings as being in “a New Mexico”. Juan de Oñate officially established the name when was appointed the first governor of the new Province of New Mexico in 1598. In 1598 he founded the San Juan de los Caballeros colony, the first permanent European settlement in the future state of New Mexico, on the Rio Grande near Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. Oñate extended El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, “Royal Road of the Interior,” by 700 miles (1,100 km) from Santa Bárbara, Chihuahua to his remote colony.

The settlement of Santa Fe was established at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains around 1608.  The city, along with most of the settled areas of the state, was abandoned by the Spanish for 12 years (1680–1692) as a result of the successful Pueblo Revolt. After the death of the Pueblo leader Popé, Diego de Vargas restored the area to Spanish rule. While developing Santa Fe as a trade center, the returning settlers founded Albuquerque in 1706 from existing surrounding communities, naming it for the viceroy of New Spain, Francisco Fernández de La Cueva Enríquez, 10th Duke of Alburquerque.

Wagon in the mechanics corral of Fort Union National Monument

As a part of New Spain, the claims for the province of New Mexico passed to independent Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. The Republic of Texas claimed the mostly vacant territory north and east of the Rio Grande when it successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836. Texas was never able to establish a presence or control of any kind in the claimed territory and it remained under the control of New Mexico until the occupation by the Americans. The extreme northeastern part of New Mexico was originally ruled by France, and sold to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Following the Mexican-American War, from 1846-1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico ceded its mostly unsettled northern holdings, today known as the American Southwest and California, to the United States of America. In the Compromise of 1850 Texas ceded its claims to the area lying east of the Rio Grande in exchange for ten million dollars. The United States acquired the southwestern boot heel of the state and southern Arizona below the Gila river in the mostly desert Gadsden Purchase of 1853.

Congress admitted New Mexico as the 47th state in the Union on January 6, 1912.

During World War II, the first atomic bombs were designed and manufactured at Los Alamos and the first was tested at Trinity site in the desert on the White Sands Proving Grounds between Socorro and Alamogordo.

New Mexico has benefited from federal government spending. It is home to three Air Force bases, White Sands Missile Range, and the federal research laboratories Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The state’s population grew rapidly after World War II, going from 531,818 in 1940 to 1,819,046 in 2000. Employment growth areas in New Mexico include microelectronics, call centers, and Indian casinos

1941 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivers his Four Freedoms Speech in the State of the Union Address.
The Declarations

The speech delivered by President Roosevelt incorporated the following

“	In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want–which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.	”
	— Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941

1994	Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg by an assailant in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, were later sentenced to prison.
2001	With the vanquished Vice President Al Gore presiding, Congress certified Republican George W. Bush the winner of the close and bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. ~Aldous Huxley~

240,000 dollars awarded to man forced to cover Arab T-shirt

Mon Jan 5, 7:22 pm ET

AFP/HO/File – Tail of a JetBlue airliner. An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic …

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.

Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York’s JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

“The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling,” said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU.

Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: “We will not be silent.”

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like “wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,’” the ACLU said.

Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security.

Although the passengers, eight of them US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight.

Security has been at a high level in US airports since the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

However, rights groups and representatives of the Muslim community say the security measures have led to frequent discrimination and harassment.

OK I AM COVERED UP!

CSI Hunley: Historic Sub’s Fate a Cold Case File

Monday, January 05, 2009

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. —  It could be one of the nation’s oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?

Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.

Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the Hunley was raised back in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.

“She was a mystery when she was built. She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years and she is still a mystery as to why she didn’t come home,” said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.

Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.

McConnell, who watched the sub being raised more than eight years ago, thought at the time the mystery would be easily solved.

“We thought it would be very simple … something must have happened at the time of the attack,” he said. “We would just put those pieces together and know everything about it.”

But what seemed so clear then seems as murky now as the sandy bottom where the Hunley rested for 136 years. When the Hunley was raised, the design was different from what scientists expected and there were only eight, not nine, crewmen, as originally thought.

The first phase of work on the Hunley consisted of photographing and studying the outside of the hull. Then several iron hull plates were removed allowing scientists to enter the crew compartment to remove sediment, human remains and a cache of artifacts.

Thousands of people, many re-enactors in period dress, turned out in April 2004 when the crew was buried in what has been called the last Confederate funeral.

With the inside excavated, the outside of the hull will now be cleaned before the sub is put in a chemical bath to remove salts left by years on the ocean floor. The Hunley will eventually be displayed in a new museum in North Charleston.

Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen said the Hunley is like a crime scene except that, unlike on television shows, there is no smoking gun.

“If we compare this crime site investigation with, say, a tragic plane crash in the mountains, that investigation would be a lot easier,” she said. “You can go to the crash you can see the metal pieces and they have the fingerprints of the crash site.”

In the case of the Hunley, some of those fingerprints may be covered with the encrusted sediment on the hull that scientists refer to as concretion.

When the sub was found there was no window in the front conning tower, suggesting it had been shot out, perhaps by Union sharpshooters.

But no glass was found inside the sub and the remains of the captain, Lt. George Dixon, showed no injuries to his skull or body consistent with being shot while looking through the window, McConnell said.

The crew’s bodies were found at their duty stations, suggesting there was no emergency resulting in a scramble to get out of the sub. And the controls on the bilge pump were not set to pump water from the crew compartment, suggesting there was no water flooding in.

After the attack both Confederates on shore and Union ships reported seeing a blue light, believed to be the Hunley signaling it had completed its mission.

A lantern with a thick lens that would have shifted the light spectrum and appeared blue from a distance was found in the wreck.

But after the attack, the USS Canandaigua rushed to the aide of the Housatonic and there is speculation that the light could have come from that ship instead.

Could the Canandaigua have grazed the Hunley, disabling her so the sub couldn’t surface? A good look at the hull in the coming months may provide the answer.

Historians also know the Hunley needed to wait for the incoming tide to return to shore.

“Were they waiting down there and miscalculated their oxygen and blacked out?” said McConnell.

He said a grappling hook, believed to serve as an anchor of the Hunley, was found near the wreck. Cleaning the hull may produce evidence of a rope showing the sub was anchored, perhaps waiting for the tide to change.

Then there is the mystery of Dixon’s watch, which stopped at 8:23 p.m. Although times were far from uniform in the Civil War era, the Housatonic was attacked about 20 minutes later, according to federal time, McConnell said.

One theory is the concussion of the attack stopped the watch and knocked out the sailors on the sub. Or the watch simply might have run down and was not noticed in the excitement of the attack. That could have led to a miscalculation of the time they were under water.

Union troops reported seeing the Hunley approaching and the light through the tower window “like dinosaur eyes or a giant porpoise in the water,” McConnell said.

If the Hunley crew miscalculated and surfaced too close to the Housatonic on their final approach they would not have had enough time to replenish their oxygen before the attack, he said.

The clues now seem to indicate the crew died of anoxia, a lack of oxygen, and didn’t drown. “Whatever happened, happened unexpectedly, with no warning,” McConnell said.

Running out of oxygen can quickly cause unconsciousness.

“One you reach that critical stage, it’s like you flick a switch,” he said. “It’s that fast, like on an airplane.”

Never tell anyone that you’re writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They’ll encourage you to death~Lynn Johnston~

                                                                     

                                

Schoolboy defeats hedgehog ban

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A hedgehog: no longer banned in Lawrence

A schoolboy in Kansas has emerged victorious in his battle to change the law of his city – so that could have a pet hedgehog.

11-year-old Judson King triumphed after campaigning against local laws that banned the animals from the city of Lawrence.

Inspired by a love of Sonic the Hedgehog, and determined to own a real-life version, King spent three years researching how to change the law before presenting his case to city commissioners.

 

 

The commissioners were impressed by his prepared speech, and the dossier he had prepared with information about hedgehogs.

And, despite some initial concerns that hedgehogs – which are not native to North America – might harbour foot-and-mouth disease, the commissioners could find no reason to continue banning hedgehogs from the city limits.

‘I think he ought to run for City Commission in April,’ said impressed City Commissioner Sue Hack said after King’s presentation.

At the same meeting, a proposed ban on chickens in the city was turned down.

Preliminary approval for lifting the hedgehog ban was given on December 2, and the prohibition was officially lifted on December 30. By that time, Judson had already reaped the reward for his efforts – he was given a hedgehog called Little Luke for Christmas.

Doctors get to bottom of hairspray x-ray

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

It’s a medical mystery that surgeons never got to the bottom of in a hospital casualty room – how a woman patient ended up with a can of hairspray up her backside.

Mirela Gradinaru, 37, turned up at the clinic in Arad, western Romania, in agony begging doctors to help her.

 

Doctors had to remove the giant can of hairspray

 

But she refused to say just how the can came to be there even after a successful, delicate operation to remove the aerosol.

 

Doctor Mirandolina Prisca explained: “We had X-rays done to localise the object and then we carried out the operation. The patient was fine after it.”

 

This was a massive can of hairspray

 

“She was very embarrassed. She was clearly in a lot of pain, however it got there.

“This was not just a little can of deodorant, this was a massive can of hairspray,” said one hospital worker.

 

Church removes Jesus after he scares kids

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Jesus: a non-scary version

A sculpture of Christ has been removed from a church following concerns that it was scaring young children, a vicar said today.

The Rev Ewen Souter said the 10ft-high resin figure also failed to convey the message of hope of the resurrection of Christ.

The sculpture was installed in St John’s Church in Broadbridge Heath, West Sussex, in the Sixties after being designed by former Royal Society of British Sculptors president Edward Bainbridge Copnall.

 

It was removed from the side of the church just before Christmas and delivered to Horsham Museum, where it will be mounted on a large wall in its grounds.

In the meantime, artist Angela Godfrey has been commissioned to design a new cross for the church expressing the joy of the Christian faith.

Mr Souter, who has been vicar at St John’s since 2001, said: ‘It was felt that the crucifix was unsettling for young children, that it was off-putting to people outside the church and conveyed nothing of the hope of the resurrection of Christ.

‘As part of a local community survey done by my predecessor, all the comments about the cross were negative and we wanted something that communicated the hope and joy of the Christian faith.’

A museum spokesman told the West Sussex County Times: ‘Thanks to the generosity of St John’s, the remarkable sculpture of Jesus on the cross by Edward Bainbridge Copnall has in effect been given to Horsham Museum.

‘The museum was keen to have the figure because it is not only a stunning example of Edward’s ability and skill as a sculptor, but also being made out of coal dust and resin it represents the cutting edge of materials as well as being a dramatic interpretation of a well known image.’

 

Wackiest home insurance claims revealed

Claims made for missing sex toys

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

A man accidentally shot his TV set while cleaning an antique gun.

Well, it’s one way to turn off your TV… permanently. A man accidentally shot his set while cleaning an antique gun.

The case tops the list of wackiest home insurance claims received by Lloyds TSB last year.

Other quirky cases include the shameless policyholder who claimed for a new bed because he had worn out his old one by having too much sex.

 

One claimant whose home was burgled supplied the receipts for a collection of sex toys that had gone missing.

Another claimed for loss of his glasses – after a magpie flew in through the bedroom window and pinched them from a bedside cabinet.

And there were many claims for damage to electronics such as players and mobiles from people who admitted putting them in the dishwasher to clean.

Others had been operating their device in the bath and then wondered why it wouldn’t work after falling in.

Phil Loney, of Lloyds, said: ‘I never cease to be intrigued by the variety of claims we receive. It’s impossible to predict what’s around the corner.’

 

Skier stripped half naked and shows off bum after mountain lift mishap

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The skier was stuck upside down after his pants were ripped off

Falling off the chair lift skiing is an amateur faux-pas.

But slipping through and tearing your pants in front of hundreds of elitist Vail skiers is unforgivable.

This unidentified man boarded the chair but the seat wasn’t lowered and he slipped through the gap.

He was saved by his right ski, which jammed in the lift but his pants got stuck, ripped off and displayed his bottom to the world.

 

He was stuck in the undignified position for about 15 minutes before Vail staff were able to back the lift up and rescue him – plenty of time for pictures to be taken and sent around the world.

Happy New Year.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to – Dorothy Parker

Obama to warn it may soon be too late to save economy

Good morning. If you’re coming to The Oval for the first time, welcome. There’s a post here that explains this blog’s mission.

Now, let’s get right to it.

President-elect Barack Obama this morning will warn that unless “dramatic action” is taken quickly, it may be too late to pull the economy out of a recession that could last for years.

His staff just released excerpts from a speech the president-elect is due to give at 11 a.m. ET. Among those excerpts:

• “I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world.

“In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.”

• “There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable. It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence in our economy. It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy –- where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.”

• “It is time to set a new course for this economy, and that change must begin now. We should have an open and honest discussion about this recovery plan in the days ahead, but I urge Congress to move as quickly as possible on behalf of the American people. For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.”

We’re planning to live-blog the president-elect’s speech, which he’ll give at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Check back here at The Oval as 11 a.m. ET approaches.

Speaking of the economy and unemployment in particular, USA TODAY’s Barbara Hagenbaugh and Sue Kirchhoff write this morning that some experts believe that employment news could get “truly gruesome” in coming months.

Arrested woman fakes giving birth

Thursday, January 8, 2009

You must be at least this pregnant to fake labour pains

A woman in America has discovered the hard way that faking going into labour doesn’t help you escape arrest for shoplifting.

The woman was arrested in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after police were called to a mall over a report of a woman stealing a keychain. They also found pain medication without a prescription in her purse, and so also arrested her on drug charges.

But while being arrested, the woman complained of birth pains and said she was going into labour. She was taken to a local hospital by ambulance.

 

But when doctors examined her at the hospital, they found that she wasn’t going into labour at all. In fact, in what might have a been a slight flaw in her otherwise perfect scheme, it turned out she wasn’t even pregnant.

Not only did she remain under arrest, but she’s now facing a bill for the ambulance ride and hospital visit.

George Washington’s handwritten notes for the first State of the Union Address, January 8, 1790.

1835 – The United States national debt is 0 for the only time.

The United States has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly reported value of $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. Over the following 45 years, the debt grew, briefly contracted to zero on January 8, 1835 under President Andrew Jackson but then quickly grew into the millions again

1877 – Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry at Wolf Mountain (Montana Territory).

 

Crazy Horse (Lakota: Thašuŋka Witko, literally “His-Horse-is-Crazy”) (ca. 1840 – September 5, 1877) was a respected war leader of the Oglala Lakota, who fought against the U.S. federal government in an effort to preserve the traditions and values of the Lakota way of life. He is most generally known for his participation in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June, 1876.

The Battle of Wolf Mountain (also known the Battle of the Wolf Mountains, Miles’s Battle on the Tongue River, and the Battle of the Butte) occurred January 8, 1877 in the Montana Territory between the United States Army and a force of Lakota Native Americans and Northern Cheyennes during the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. The Northern Cheyennes called it the Battle of Belly Butte.

Background

Following the defeat of George Armstrong Custer in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, by autumn, only a few bands of the warring Sioux and Cheyenne tribes had begun filtering back into their reservations and agencies to acquire food and annuity goods in preparation for winter. The United States Congress had angered many Indians by demanding that they cede the Black Hills to the government in exchange for these promised goods. The army had replaced civilian contractors in charge of the agencies, further convincing many war bands to stay away from them. General Nelson Miles led a mixed force of infantry, artillery and cavalry after Sitting Bull‘s band, and had effectively defeated them by December. Ranald S. Mackenzie had similarly defeated Dull Knife‘s Cheyennes, who trekked through snow and icy conditions to join up with the camp of Crazy Horse in the Tongue River Valley. Concerned with the approaching winter and the destitute condition of Dull Knife’s band, Crazy Horse decided to negotiate peace with the army. However, when a group of U.S. Army Crow scouts murdered Crazy Horse’s delegation, the war chief demanded revenge. He led a series of small raids in an effort to draw out Miles from his post.

The battle

Miles marched out to the foothills of the Wolf Mountains, then set up a defensive perimeter on a ridge line. At 7:00 a.m., on January 8, Crazy Horse and Two Moons began a series of attacks on the U.S. soldiers. Frustrated by army firepower, they regrouped several times and tried again. Attempts to flank Miles’ line also proved to be futile when Miles shifted his reserves to fill critical positions. Finally, Miles ordered an advance, which secured a vital ridge as artillery shells rained among the Indian positions. Crazy Horse withdrew as weather conditions deteriorated.

Results

Although a draw in many aspects, in effect the battle was a strategic victory for the U.S. Army, as it demonstrated that the Indians were not safe from the army even in winter and harsh conditions. Many individuals began slipping away and returning to their reservations. By May, Crazy Horse had led his surviving band into Camp Robinson to surrender.

Rachel Emily Nichols (born January 8, 1980) is an American actress, currently known for her film work and for her portrayal of CIA officer Rachel Gibson on the ABC television series Alias.

1642	Astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy.

1982	American Telephone & Telegraph settled the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence – H. L. Mencken

Obama: stimulus plan can add, save up to 4 million jobs

Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:07am EST

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect
By Deborah Charles

Barack Obama said on Saturday an analysis of his stimulus proposals shows that between 3 million and 4 million U.S. jobs could be saved or created by 2010, nearly 90 percent of them in the private sector. Joe Biden‘s chief economic adviser, Jared Bernstein.

The analysis of Obama’s estimated $800 billion plan to lift the country out of a year-long recession was submitted by the chair of his council of economic advisers, Christina Romer, and by Vice President-elect

Obama announced the report on his weekly radio and Internet address. He had previously said his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan would create or save 3 million jobs, but said the analysis from his advisers showed that number would range between 3 million and 4 million.

“The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries,” Obama said. “And they’ll be the kind of jobs that don’t just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long-term.”

His radio address comes just after official figures showed U.S. employers slashed more than half a million jobs from their payrolls in December, pushing the unemployment rate to 7.2 percent and bringing the total number of jobs lost last year to 2.6 million — the most since 1945.

Obama said his plan would create nearly 500,000 jobs by investing in clean energy, by committing to double the production of alternative energy in the next three years and by improving the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes.

“These made-in-America jobs building solar panels and wind turbines, developing fuel-efficient cars and new energy technologies pay well, and they can’t be outsourced,” he said.

REPAIRING INFRASTRUCTURE

Obama also said the report showed the recovery plan — which analysts have estimated will cost about $800 billion — will also put nearly 400,000 people back to work repairing infrastructure like crumbling roads, bridges and school and laying down miles of broadband lines.

“Finally, we won’t just create jobs, we’ll also provide help for those who’ve lost theirs, and for states and families who’ve been hardest-hit by this recession,” he said.

“That means bipartisan extensions of unemployment insurance and health care coverage; a $1,000 tax cut for 95 percent of working families; and assistance to help states avoid harmful budget cuts in essential services like police, fire, education and health care.”

Obama, who has faced tough opposition from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers over his recovery plan especially regarding tax cuts, repeated a warning that recovery will not come overnight and the situation could likely get worse before it gets better.

“But we have come through moments like this before,” he said. “I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.”

Though Obama did not mention it in the radio address, the report suggested that tax cuts, especially temporary ones, and fiscal relief to the states are likely to create fewer jobs than direct increases in government purchases.

“However, because there is a limit on how much government investment can be carried out efficiently in a short time frame, and because tax cuts and state relief can be implemented quickly, they are crucial elements of any package aimed at easing economic distress quickly,” the report said.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Somali pirates free tanker after ransom

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) — Pirates holding a Saudi-owned oil supertanker off the coast of Somalia have set the vessel free after receiving a ransom payment, a piracy monitor in neighboring Kenya and the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet said Saturday.

A small aircraft drops a ransom payment during a flight over the Sirius Star on Friday.

“The supertanker VLCC Sirius Star is currently under way to safe waters,” Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya Seafarers Association said in an e-mail.Pirates seized the supertanker November 15. The tanker was carrying two million barrels of crude oil worth about $100 million.Somalia in recent months. 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes . Common Sense

Mwangura said all 23 crew members of the Sirius Star, the largest ship ever hijacked by pirates, are safe and in good health. They are citizens of Croatia, Great Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

“Anytime a ship is released, it is positive news,” said Commander Jane Campbell of the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet. “But too many people see it as a ship and its cargo being released. When merchant mariners are released, it is always good news.”

The ship is a VLCC, or “very large crude carrier.” According to the Fifth Fleet, the tanker is more than three times that of a U.S. navy aircraft carrier.

 

Mwangura said it would have been a “disaster” if the pirates had fired guns aboard the ship, harming the cargo or igniting a fire.

“The capture of the Sirius Star raised the specter of an environmental disaster should the hijackers decide to turn the ship into a weapon or foreign navies attempt to release it by force,” he said.

The pirates had been expected to release the supertanker after receiving the ransom payment Friday, but four pirates drowned after their skiff capsized in rough seas while they were leaving the Sirius Star, according to a journalist who spoke to one of the pirates on board.

There were five pirates in the skiff and one survived, the journalist said. The bodies of the other four were recovered, he said.

The pirates told another journalist they received $3 million in ransom money but lost part of it when the skiff capsized.

“Initially, the gunmen were demanding $25 million for its release but the latest reports indicate that the demand had been lowered to below $3.5 million,” Mwangura said.

Hijackings off East Africa are a cause of growing international concern, spurring a number of international navies to patrol the pirate-wracked Gulf of Aden. Dozens of ships have been attacked in the gulf by pirates based in a largely lawless

Campbell said the number of attacks may have gone up in recent months, but the number of successful hijackings has gone down. She attributed that to measures taken by merchant ships, such as vigilant keeping of watch and evasive ship maneuvers, and the increased naval presence in the at-risk areas.

Campbell stressed, however, that they are only preventive measures. “Piracy is a problem that starts on the shore,” she said. “The international community needs to address the situation on the ground in Somalia

 

Title page of Common Sense by Thomas Paine (Philadelphia, 1776)

Common Sense was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for independence from British rule at a time when the question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people. Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as, “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.”

Publication history

Thomas Paine began work on Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. With the help of Benjamin Rush, who suggested the title Common Sense and helped edit and publish, Paine developed his ideas into a forty-eight page pamphlet. Paine published Common Sense anonymously because of its treasonous content. Printed and sold by R. Bell, Third Street, Philadelphia, it sold as many as 120,000 copies in the first three months, 500,000 in the first year, and went through twenty-five editions in the first year alone. Paine donated his royalties from Common Sense to George Washington’s Continental Army, saying:

As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author.

Sections

Four sections are noted on the title page, which quotes James Thomson‘s poem “Liberty” (1735-36):

Man knows no master save creating Heaven,
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.

 I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in general, with concise Remarks on the English Constitution.

Paine begins this section by making a distinction between society and government. Society is a “patron,” “produced by our wants”, that promotes happiness. Government is a “punisher,” “produced by wickedness,” that restrains vices. Paine then goes on to consider the relationship between government and society in a state of “natural liberty.” Paine tells a story of a few isolated people living in nature without government. The people find it easier to live together rather than apart and thereby create a society. As the society grows problems arise, so all the people meet to make regulations to mitigate the problems. As the society continues to grow government becomes necessary to enforce the regulations, which over time, turn into laws. Soon there are so many people that they cannot all be gathered in one place to make the laws, so they begin holding elections. This, Paine argues, is the best balance between government and society. Having created this model of what the balance should be, Paine goes on to consider the Constitution of the United Kingdom.

Paine finds two tyrannies in the English constitution; monarchical and aristocratic tyranny, in the king and peers, who rule by heredity and contribute nothing to the people. Paine goes on to criticize the English constitution by examining the relationship between the king, the peers, and the commons.

 II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession.

In the second section Paine considers monarchy first from a biblical perspective, then from a historical perspective. He begins by arguing that all men are equal at creation and therefore the distinction between kings and subjects is a false one. Several bible verses are posed to support this claim. Paine then examines some of the problems that kings and monarchies have caused in the past and concludes they are evil and unnecessary because these systems of government do not work for the good of all men.

III. Thoughts on the present State of American Affairs.

Constitution of the United States as proposed by Thomas Paine in Common Sense

In the third section Paine examines the hostilities between England and the American colonies and argues that best course of action is independence. Paine proposes a Continental Charter (or Charter of the United Colonies) that would be an American Magna Carta. Paine writes that a Continental Charter “should come from some intermediate body between the Congress and the people” and outlines a Continental Conference that could draft a Continental Charter. Each colony would hold elections for five representatives; these five would be accompanied by two members of the colonies assembly, for a total of seven representatives from each colony in the Continental Conference. The Continental Conference would then meet and draft a Continental Charter that would secure “freedom and property to all men, and… the free exercise of religion.” The Continental Charter would also outline a new national government, which Paine thought would take the form of a Congress.

Thomas Paine suggested that a Congress may be created in the following way, each colony should be divided in districts; each district would “send a proper number of delegates to Congress.” Paine thought that each state should send at least 30 delegates to Congress, and that the total number of delegates in Congress should be at least 390. The Congress would meet annually, and elect a President. Each colony would be put into a lottery; the President would be elected, by the whole Congress, from the delegation of the colony that was selected in the lottery. After a colony was selected it would be removed from subsequent lotteries until all of the colonies had been selected, at that point the lottery would start anew. Electing a President or passing a law would require 3/5 of the Congress. The diagram on the left provides a visual representation of the proposed system

 IV. Of the present Ability of America, with some miscellaneous Reflections.

The fourth section of the pamphlet includes Paine’s over-optimistic view of America’s military potential at the time of the Revolution. For example, he spends pages describing how colonial shipyards, by using the large amounts of lumber available in the country, could quickly create a navy that could rival the Royal Navy.

Paine’s arguments against British rule

• It was ridiculous for an island to rule a continent.

• America was not a “British nation”; it was composed of influences and peoples from all of Europe.

• Even if Britain was the “mother country” of America, that made her actions all the more horrendous, for no mother would harm her children so brutally.

• Being a part of Britain would drag America into unnecessary European wars, and keep it from the international commerce at which America excelled.

• The distance between the two nations made governing the colonies from England unwieldy. If some wrong were to be petitioned to Parliament, it would take a year before the colonies received a response.

• The New World was discovered shortly before the Reformation. The Puritans believed that God wanted to give them a safe haven from the persecution of British rule.

• Britain ruled the colonies for its own benefit, and did not consider the best interests of the colonists in governing them.

Quotations

• “There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required.”

• Hereditary succession has no claim. “For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and thought himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.”

• “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.” (Opening Line)

• “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense . . .”

• “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

• “Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.”

• Uses Bible as reference. “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequences of which there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”

• “Time makes more converts than reason.” (the Introduction)

• “Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘tis time to part.”

• “Government by Kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry.”

• “But where says some is the king of America? I’ll tell you friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain…. so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.”

• “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her–Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”

• “… have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.”

• “Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God’s sake, let us come to a final separation.”

• “Small islands not capable of protecting themselves are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”

Even though Paine, like many of the Deistic Founding Fathers, was exceptionally hostile towards organized religion as a political force, Common Sense used many Biblical references to support its assertions, playing to the strong influence of personal religion in colonial America. His views on organized religion would be later clarified in his work The Age of Reason.

2001 – A large piece of the chalk cliff at Beachy Head collapses into the sea.

     

  How the Beachy Head Lighthouse was built. Photo shows a temporary cable car and iron ocean platform transporting workers and stones to the lighthouse site.

Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m (530 ft) above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast from Dungeness to the east, to Selsey Bill in the west. Its height has also made it a notorious suicide spot.

Geology

The chalk was formed in the Cretaceous period when the area was under the sea, 65 million years ago and earlier. During the Cenozoic Era the chalk was uplifted, and was later eroded to form the dramatic cliffs of the Sussex coast

The cliffs are constantly being eroded by the sea; a particularly dramatic collapse came in 2001 when, after a winter of heavy rains, a chalk pinnacle known as the Devil’s Chimney collapsed into the sea.

History

The name Beachy Head appears as ‘Beauchef’ in 1274, and was Beaucheif in 1317, becoming consistently Beachy Head by 1724, and has nothing to do with beach. Instead it is a corruption of the original French words meaning Beautiful Headland.

In 1929 Eastbourne bought 4,000 acres (16 km²) of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development, costing the town around £100,000.

The prominence of Beachy Head has made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel. It is noted as such in the sea shanty Spanish Ladies :

The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,

Next Rame Head off Plymouth, off Portsmouth the Wight;

We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover,

And then we bore up for the South Foreland light.

The ashes of German communist writer and philosopher, Friedrich Engels were scattered off the Beachy Head cliffs down the English Channel waters, in 1895.

Lighthouses

The headland was also a danger to shipping. In 1831 the construction of Belle Tout lighthouse was started on the next headland west from Beachy Head, but it did not become operational until 1834. Because its light could not be seen in mist and low cloud, it was superseded by a newer lighthouse, 43 m in height, built in the sea below Beachy Head and operational from October 1902. Until the lighthouse was fully automated in 1983, the red and white striped tower was manned by three lighthouse keepers. Their job was to maintain the light that rotated two white flashes every 20 seconds, visible 26 miles (42 km) out to sea. Belle Tout lighthouse was moved more than 50 feet (15 m) further inland in March 1999 due to cliff erosion.

Beachy Head at war

The third day of fighting in the Battle of Portland, 1653, took place off Beachy Head during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Battle of Beachy Head, 1690, was a naval engagement during the Nine Years’ War. During World War II, the RAF established a forward relay station at Beachy Head to improve radio communications with aircraft. In 1942, signals were picked up at Beachy Head which were identified as TV transmissions from the Eiffel Tower. The Germans had reactivated the pre-war TV transmitter and instituted a Franco-German service for military hospitals and VIPs in the Paris region. The RAF monitored these programmes hoping (in vain) to gather intelligence from newsreels. There was also an important wartime radar station in the area and, during the Cold War, a radar control centre was operational in an underground bunker from 1953 to 1957.

Tourism

West from Belle Tout, the cliffs drop down to Birling Gap, and beyond that the Seven Sisters. The whole area is a popular tourist attraction, and Birling Gap has a restaurant and, in the summer, multiple ice cream vans.

Suicide

Since the 1600s Beachy Head has been notorious as a location for people to attempt suicide, estimated at 20 each year. There are regular day and evening patrols by the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team, and a special telephone box with a direct line to The Samaritans. After a steady increase in deaths between 2002 and 2005, there was a marked decrease in 2006 with only seven fatalities, a reduction attributed by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to the actions of the Chaplaincy Team and local media. During a recovery effort in 2008, a British coastguard crew were nearly crushed by a second suicide in progress when someone drove off the cliff and narrowly missed rescuers

1949 – Linda Lovelace, American pornographic actress (d. 2002)

Linda Susan Boreman (January 10, 1949 – April 22, 2002), better known by her stage name “Linda Lovelace“, was a porn actress who was famous for her performance of deep throat fellatio in the enormously successful 1972 hardcore porn film Deep Throat. She later denounced her pornography career, claimed that she had been forced into it by her sadistic first husband and for a while became a spokeswoman for the anti-pornography movement.

Biography

Childhood and teenage years

Boreman was born in The Bronx, New York City, the daughter of a policeman and a mother she claimed was very strict. Her parents were Roman Catholic, and Boreman attended Catholic schools, including St. John the Baptist in Yonkers, New York, and Maria Regina High School, in Hartsdale, New York. She was nicknamed “Miss Holy Holy” in high school because she kept her dates at a safe distance. When Boreman was 16, her family moved to Florida.

Unwanted pregnancy

In her 1980 autobiography, “Ordeal,” she said she gave birth to a son in 1969 when she was 20, and her mother put the child up for adoption. Boreman said she had been told the child was only being put in foster care until she was ready to care for him, and was heartbroken to learn she would never see him again. Boreman moved back to New York in 1970. She was involved in a violent car crash, requiring her to undergo a blood transfusion which would lead to later health problems. She returned to home to recover.

Pornography career

While recovering at her parents’ home, Boreman became involved with Chuck Traynor. According to Boreman, Traynor was violent and controlling. She said he forced her to move to New York, where he became her manager, pimp and husband.

Boreman was soon performing as Linda Lovelace in hardcore short movies. She starred in a 1971 bestiality film (titled Dog Fucker or Dogarama), and later denied appearing in the film until several of the original 8 mm “loops” proved otherwise.

In 1972, Boreman starred in Deep Throat, the most financially successful pornographic movie ever made.

Media career after Deep Throat

After Deep Throat, Boreman appeared in only two films, both of which were softcore: Deep Throat II (1974), an R-rated sequel to the hardcore original, and an erotic comedy, Linda Lovelace for President (1975). In her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, Lovelace maintained that those films used leftover footage from Deep Throat. She also appeared in Playboy, Bachelor and Esquire between 1973 and 1974.

In January 1974, Boreman was arrested for possession of cocaine and amphetamines. The same year she published two “pro-porn” biographies, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace.

In about 1976, she was chosen to play the title role in a big-budget erotic movie, Laure. However, according to the producer Ovidio Assonitis, Lovelace was, “very much on drugs” at the time. She had already signed for the part, when she decided that “God had changed her life,” refused to do any nudity, and even objected to a statue of the Venus de Milo on the set because of its exposed breasts. She was replaced by French actress Annie Belle.

Charges against Chuck Traynor

In her suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that he had forced her into pornography at gunpoint, and that in Deep Throat itself bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. Boreman claimed in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution and private pornography. Some of her assertions have been challenged, but others have been verified by witnesses. Traynor would later marry and guide the career of Marilyn Chambers, another major porn star. Traynor himself told Vanity Fair magazine (in Marilyn Chambers’ interview, with Chambers on the cover) that he thought nothing of slapping “his woman” if she said something he did not like. Lovelace wrote:

When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, [Traynor] beat me up physically and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I was beaten physically and suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer. My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn’t go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed…The lives of my family were threatened.

On the second commentator’s track of the DVD of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, “Deep Throat 2″ co-star Andrea True said that Chuck Traynor was a sadist and was disliked by the Deep Throat 2 cast. Similarly, a Deep Throat staff member who roomed next door to Boreman and Traynor during the filming of Deep Throat said Traynor beat Boreman viciously after hours and sexually tortured her into obeying him in public.

In The Other Hollywood, by Legs McNeil, witnesses, including Gerard Damiano, the film’s director, confirm that Traynor beat Boreman behind closed doors, but they also question her credibility. Adult film actress Gloria Leonard is quoted as saying, “This was a woman who never took responsibility for her own [...] choices—but instead blamed everything that happened to her in her life on porn.”

Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that had occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint. In The Other Hollywood, Eric Edwards, Boreman’s co-star in the bestiality film, disputes this claim.

Boreman maintained she received no money for Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor. In 1979 she retained Victor Yannacone, a controversial attorney more frequently associated with environmental lawsuits, to sue for a share of the several hundred million dollars the film had earned. The suit was dismissed without trial by the Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola, New York and was never appealed.

Marchiano marriage

In 1974, Boreman married Larry Marchiano. They had two children, Dominic, in 1977, and Lindsey, in 1980. In The Other Hollywood, Boreman painted an unflattering picture of Marchiano, claiming he drank to excess, verbally abused her children, and was violent with her. They divorced in 1996.

Family and friends reaction

Boreman’s immediate family was said to have been outraged by her involvement in porn. But her sister, Barbara Boreman, suggested that the family later forgave and supported her.

Anti-pornography activism

With the publication of Ordeal in 1980, Boreman joined the feminist anti-pornography movement. At a press conference announcing Ordeal, she leveled many accusations against Traynor in public for the first time. She was joined by supporters Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and members of Women Against Pornography. She spoke out against pornography, stating that she had been abused and coerced. She spoke before feminist groups, at colleges, and before government hearings on pornography.

There was controversy over her allegations, and her objections to the pornography industry as a whole. Pornographer and writer Hart Williams coined the term “Linda Syndrome” to refer to women who leave pornography and repudiate their past career by condemning the industry.

In 1986, Boreman published Out of Bondage, a memoir focusing on her life after 1974. She testified before the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography in New York City, stating “When you see the movie Deep Throat, you are watching me being raped. It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time.” Following Boreman’s testimony for the Meese Commission, she gave lectures on college campuses, decrying what she described as callous and exploitative practices in the pornography industry.

In The Other Hollywood, Boreman said she felt “used” by the anti-pornography movement. “Between Andrea Dworkin and Kitty MacKinnon, they’ve written so many books, and they mention my name and all that, but financially they’ve never helped me out. [...] They made a few bucks off me, just like everybody else.”

Last years

Boreman contracted hepatitis from the blood transfusion she received after her 1970 car accident. She underwent a liver transplant in 1987. In 1996, Boreman divorced Larry Marchiano. In 2000, she was featured on the E! Entertainment Network’s E! True Hollywood Story. The following year, she did a pictorial as Linda Lovelace for the magazine Leg Show. She said she did not object to this, because “there’s nothing wrong with looking sexy as long as it’s done with taste.” In response, Hustler named her the “Asshole of the Month” for March 2001.

On April 3, 2002, Boreman lost control of her car, which rolled twice. She suffered massive trauma and internal injuries. On April 22, 2002 she was taken off life support and died in Denver, Colorado at the age of 53. Her ex-husband, Larry Marchiano, and their two children were present when she died. Boreman was interred at Parker Cemetery in Parker, Colorado.

Despite starring in the most profitable porn film ever, “Linda Lovelace” died poor.

Lasting influence

Boreman was the focus of a 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat.

Plans for a biopic entitled “Lovelace” and starring Courtney Love were never completed. Comedian Anna Faris was rumored to have been involved in the a similar movie titled “Inferno” in 2007, but this has failed to materialize.

In 2008, “Lovelace: A Rock Opera”, based on two of Boreman’s four autobiographies, debuted at the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles. The score and libretto were written by Anna Waronker of the 1990s rock group that dog. and Charlotte Caffey of the ’80s girl group, the Go-Go’s.

Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi  10 January 1883 — February 23, 1945), nicknamed the Comrade Count, was a Russian writer who wrote in many genres but specialized in science fiction and historical novels.

Early life

He was born in Nikolaevsk (now Pugachyov, Saratov Oblast) in 1883 into an impoverished branch of the Counts Tolstoi. His father was a retired hussar and landowner, Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoi, and his mother was a children’s writer Alexandra Leonievna Bostrom (born Turgeneva, also known as Alexandra Tolstoi). Aleksei was the fourth child in the Tolstoi’s family. When his mother was two months pregnant, she fled the family with her lover, Aleksei Apollonovich Bostrom. In accordance with the divorce law of the time, the guilty party (Alexandra) was forbidden to remarry, and the only way for her to keep her newborn son was to register him as a son of Bostrom. Thus, until the age of thirteen, Aleksei had lived under the name of Aleksei Bostrom and had not suspected that Aleksei Bostrom Sr. was not his biological parent. In 1896 both Tolstoi and Bostrom families went into bureaucratic pains to re-register Aleksei as count Tolstoi. Still, he considered Aleksei Bostrom his true father and had hardly ever seen Nikolai Tolstoi and his older siblings.

In 1900 Nikolai Tolstoi died, having left Aleksei with 30,000 rubles and a famous family name. Later, he assumed a rather humorous attitude towards the Tolstoi’s heritage. He was known for filling the walls of his apartment with darkened portraits and telling newcomers tales about his Tolstoi ancestors; then he would explain to his friends that all the portraits were purchased at random from a nearby secondhand store and that the stories were complete fiction.

Literary career

Tolstoi’s early short stories were panned by Alexander Blok and other leading critics of the time for their excessive naturalism, wanton eroticism, and general lack of taste in the manner of Mikhail Artsybashev. Some pornographic stories published under Tolstoy’s name in the early 1900s were purportedly penned by him; however, most critics remain sceptical as to whether Tolstoi is the real author.

Aleksei Tolstoi left Russia in 1917 during the Bolshevik October Revolution and emigrated first to Germany and later to France. In 1923, he repatriated and accepted the Soviet regime, having become one of its most popular writers. He became a staunch supporter of the Communist Party to the end, writing stories eulogizing Stalin and collaborating with Maxim Gorky on the infamous account of their trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal.

He published two lengthy historical novels, Peter the First (1929-45), in which he sought to liken Peter’s policies to those of Stalin, and The Road to Calvary (1922-41) tracking the period from 1914 to 1919 including the Russian Civil War. He also wrote several plays.

A 1927 Soviet poster advertising the 1924 movie Aelita: Queen of Mars, based on the novel by Aleksey Tolstoy.

Aleksei Tolstoi is usually credited with having produced some of the earliest science fiction in the Russian language. His novels Aelita (1923) about a journey to Mars and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1927) have gained immense public popularity, the former having spawned an pioneering sci-fi movie in 1924. Besides Aelita (1924), several other movies released in the USSR are based on Tolstoi’s novels.

Tolstoi also penned several books for children, starting with Nikita’s Childhood, a memorable account of his early years (the book is sometimes mistakenly believed to be about his son, Nikita; in truth, however, he only used the name because it was his favorite – and he would later give it to his eldest son). Most notably, in 1936, he created an adaptation of the famous Italian fairy tale about Pinocchio entitled the Adventures of Buratino or The Golden Key, whose main character, Buratino, quickly became hugely popular among the Soviet populace.

His supernatural short story Count Cagliostro inspired the 1984 film Formula of Love.

Tolstoi became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939. Writer Tatyana Tolstaya is his granddaughter.

 Legacy

A minor planet 3771 Alexejtolstoj, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1974 is named after him.

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

Police say masked man waited in line to rob bank

Fri Jan 9, 6:06 pm ET

AP – In this booking mug shot released by Stow (Ohio) Police Department, Feliks Goldshtein is shown, Thursday, …

STOW, Ohio – A man may have tipped his intentions when he stood in line at an Ohio bank wearing a ski mask before staging a holdup. Police in Stow near Akron said 24-year-old Feliks Goldshtein of Highland Heights was arrested minutes later on Thursday following a brief car chase.

Police said the teller asked the man to take off the mask before being served. At that point the man displayed what turned out to be a toy gun and told the teller to give him all the money.

Police Captain Rick Myers said it’s unusual for a masked robber to wait in line at a bank.

Goldshtein was being held at the Summit County Jail Friday on charges of aggravated robbery and failure to comply with a police order. He had an afternoon court appearance scheduled.

 

Oh Grandmother, what a rubbery face you have!

Thu Jan 8, 11:16 am ET

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A Chilean man tried to steal $80,000 from his 82-year-old grandmother by disguising his 21-year-old girlfriend as the elderly woman and having her withdraw money from the bank, but the plot was foiled.

The man falsified his grandmother’s identity card and his girlfriend wore a latex mask. They might have gotten away with it if it weren’t for a bank worker who called the grandmother’s home and learned she was visiting relatives in Venezuela.

“She acted like an elderly woman, was dressed as elderly woman and moved like one. It was a good impersonation,” Victor Mellado, head of client service at the Banco de Chile in the port city of Talcahuano in southern Chile told local television.

The pair have been arrested by the police for attempted fraud and falsification of documents and face a maximum of up to three years in jail if convicted, prosecutor Jose Orella said.

(Reporting by Monica Vargas; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

 

NYC eatery grants freedom to lobster centenarian

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer Verena Dobnik, Associated Press Writer – Sat Jan 10, 2:05 am ET

AP – In this photo released by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, ‘George,’ a live 20 pound …

NEW YORK – A 140-year-old lobster once destined for a dinner plate received the gift of life Friday from a Park Avenue seafood restaurant.

George, the 20-pound supercentenarian crustacean, was freed by City Crab and Seafood in New York City.

“We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace,” said Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said the group asked City Crab to return George to the Atlantic Ocean after a diner saw him at the restaurant, where steamed Maine lobster sells for $27 per pound. George had been caught off Newfoundland, Canada and lived in the tank for about 10 days before his release.

Some scientists estimate lobsters can live to be more than 100 years old. PETA and the restaurant guessed George’s age at about 140, using a rule of thumb based on the creature’s weight.

He was to be released Saturday near Kennebunkport, Maine, in an area where lobster trapping is forbidden.

Computer geeks learn to flirt

Fri Jan 9, 1:24 pm ET

BERLIN (Reuters) – Even the most quirky of computer nerds can learn to flirt with finesse thanks to a new “flirting course” being offered to budding IT engineers at Potsdam University south of Berlin.

The 440 students enrolled in the master’s degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection.

Philip von Senftleben, an author and radio presenter who will teach the course, summed up his job as teaching how to “get someone else’s heart beating fast while yours stays calm.”

The course, which starts next Monday, is part of the social skills section of the IT course and is designed to ease entry into the world of work. Students also learn body language, public-speaking, stress management and presentation skills.

“We want to prepare our students with the social skills needed to succeed both in their private life and their work life,” said Hans-Joachim Allgaier, a spokesman for the institute at Potsdam University where the course is being offered.

(Writing by Anna Brooke; Editing by Nick Vinocur)

Army recruiting at the mall with video games

By Jon Hurdle Jon Hurdle – Fri Jan 9, 1:23 pm ET

Reuters – Peter Reale plays a round of ‘Call of Duty 4′ in the computer area of the U.S. Army Experience center …

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – The U.S. Army, struggling to ensure it has enough manpower as it fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is wooing young Americans with video games, Google maps and simulated attacks on enemy positions from an Apache helicopter.

Departing from the recruiting environment of metal tables and uniformed soldiers in a drab military building, the Army has invested $12 million in a facility that looks like a cross between a hotel lobby and a video arcade.

The U.S. Army Experience Center at the Franklin Mills shopping mall in northeast Philadelphia has 60 personal computers loaded with military video games, 19 Xbox 360 video game controllers and a series of interactive screens describing military bases and career options in great detail.

Potential recruits can hang out on couches and listen to rock music that fills the space.

The center is the first of its kind and opened in August as part of a two-year experiment. So far, it has signed up 33 full-time soldiers and five reservists — roughly matching the performance of five traditional recruiting centers it replaced.

The U.S. military says it has been meeting or exceeding its recruiting and retention goals, with 185,000 men and women entering active-duty military service in the fiscal year that ended on September 30 — the highest number since 2003.

Defense officials say the recession and rising unemployment were likely to boost recruiting.

The Philadelphia center lures recruits with a separate room for prospective soldiers to “fire” from a real Humvee on enemy encampments projected on a 15-foot-high (4.5-meter-high) battleground scenario that also has deafening sound effects.

In another room, those inclined to attack from above can join helicopter raids in which enemy soldiers emerge from hide-outs to be felled by automatic gunfire rattling from a simulator modeled on an Apache or Blackhawk helicopter.

The Army is not simply looking for new recruits, said First Sgt. Randy Jennings, who runs the center. It also aims to dispel misperceptions about Army life.

“We want them to know that being in the Army isn’t just about carrying weapons and busting down doors,” said Jennings, who wears slacks and a polo shirt rather than a uniform. About 80 percent of soldiers are not involved in direct combat roles, he said.

GLAMORIZING WAR?

Jesse Hamilton, a former Army staff sergeant who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, said the use of video games glamorized war and misled potential recruits, calling it “very deceiving and very far from realistic.”

“You can’t simulate the loss when you see people getting killed,” said Hamilton, who left the Army after his Iraq tour and is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“It’s not very likely you are going to get into a firefight,” he said. “The only way to simulate the heat is holding a blow dryer to your face.”

The center is an experiment in boosting urban recruitment, which has traditionally lagged behind that of rural areas.

Eddie Abuali, 20, who was waiting to take an Army aptitude test, said he felt more comfortable in the center than he would in a traditional recruiting office. “It’s a more relaxed environment,” said Abuali, who plans to join the Army when he graduates from college. “You don’t feel like you are being pressured.”

Project manager Maj. Larry Dillard said recruitment was more difficult about two years ago when the United States was struggling in Iraq and jobs at home were easier to get.

“Now the news coming out of Iraq is better and we are in an economic downturn. It will be easier,” he said.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Daniel Trotta)

 

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London

Man takes 26 years to solve Rubik’s Cube

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Finally done: Graham Parker with his cube

It has taken most of his life – but, after 26 years, builder Graham Parker has finally solved the puzzle of the Rubik’s Cube.

When he bought the toy in 1983, Yuri Andropov was leader of the Soviet Union, breakfast TV was a novelty and music CDs were in the shops for the first time.

‘I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it,’ the 45-year-old from Portchester, Hampshire, said. ‘It has driven me mad over the years – it felt like it had taken over my life.

‘I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lie awake at night thinking about it.

‘I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it. When I clicked that last bit into place and each face was a solid colour, I wept.’

Wife Jean, 47, said it had felt like there had been three people in their marriage.

‘When I met Graham, he was already obsessed with the cube – spending hours on it every day,’ she said. ‘I have often thought about getting rid of it but I knew he would not rest until he had solved it.’

A spokesman for the governing body for competitions involving the puzzle, the World Cube Association, said it was ‘definitely the longest it has taken’ to finish the cube.

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects proposal to give women the right to vote.

On January 12, 1915, a suffrage bill was brought before the House of Representatives but was lost by a vote of 174 to 204. Again a bill was brought before the House, on January 10, 1918. On the evening before President Wilson made a strong and widely published appeal to the House to pass the bill. It was passed with one more vote than was needed to make the necessary two-thirds majority. The vote was then carried into the Senate. Again President Wilson made an appeal, and on September 30, 1918, the question was put to the vote, but two votes were lacking to make the two-thirds majority. On February 10, 1919, it was again voted upon, and then it was lost by only one vote.

There was considerable anxiety among politicians of both parties to have the amendment passed and made effective before the general elections of 1920, so the President called a special session of Congress, and a bill, introducing the amendment, was brought before the House again. On May 21, 1919, it was passed, 42 votes more than necessary being obtained. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate, and after a long discussion it was passed, with 56 ayes and 25 nays. It only remained that the necessary number of states should ratify the action of Congress. Within a few days Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, their legislatures being then in session, passed the ratifications. Other states then followed their examples, and Tennessee was the last of the needed 36 states to ratify, in the summer of 1920. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was an accomplished fact, and the Presidential election of November 1920, was therefore the first occasion on which women in all states were allowed to exercise their right of suffrage

Couple married in Taco Bell

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Going down the Taco Bell aisle

Wedding bells meant the Mexican fast food chain Taco Bell for Paul and Caragh Brooks.

Customers inside the fast-food restaurant continued to order tacos and burritos as the couple sat in an orange Taco Bell booth and exchanged vows.

“It’s appropriate,” groom Paul Brooks said. “It’s an offbeat relationship.”

 

Employees displayed hot sauce packets labeled with the words “Will you marry me?” They decorated the restaurant with streamers and balloons.

The bride wore a $15 hot pink dress and the entire wedding cost about $200. Several dozen guests looked on as the couple’s friend, Ryan Green of Normal, administered the vows while wearing a T-shirt. He was ordained online.

“This is the way to go – there’s no stress,” said the groom’s mother, Kathy Brooks.

Caragh Brooks, 21, of Australia, met Paul Brooks, 30, on an Internet dating Web site. They already had the same last name.

The couple wrote back and forth and talked on the phone for nine months before Caragh Brooks moved to the United States.

“We have the same brain, just in two bodies,” Paul Brooks said. “We think alike in virtually every manner. We have the same interests, viewpoints.”

He proposed on New Year’s Eve and, because they like to spend time at the local Taco Bell, they decided to wed there.

“I would never have expected in my life in working here there would be a wedding,” restaurant manager Carl Hamlow said.

If I want to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, I’ll put shoes on my cat.

You’re a real f***wit, drunk judge tells lawyer

by ROSS MCGUINNESS – Wednesday, January 14, 2009

District judge Esther Cunningham had drunk brandy before court

A drunk district judge was thrown out of a courtroom after she forcibly kissed a solicitor and swore at a prosecutor.

Esther Cunningham drank brandy before appearing as a solicitor to represent her cousin in a dangerous dog case.

She told an usher to ‘f*** off’ and called the CPS lawyer ‘a f***wit’, the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal heard.

Six months later, the 54-year-old was drunk when she taught students on a legal course, the tribunal heard.

Cunningham, of Grantham, Lincolnshire, accepted she had a drink problem and blamed it on personal problems.

She admitted bringing her profession into disrepute two years ago and was suspended for six months with £6,200 costs.

Judge axes trial as victim is ‘too honest’ to give evidence

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Denise Dawson

A robbery victim saw one of her alleged attackers cleared on Tuesday because the judge said she was too honest to give evidence.

Mother-of-two Denise Dawson was praised as ‘honest, utterly decent and brave’ and awarded a £250 payout by Judge Jamie Tabor after appearing in the witness box.

 

But the 36-year-old, who suffered a broken nose when a gang hurled a brick through her car windscreen, was told the trial was being halted.

Her evidence had been so impressive the jury would believe her rather than def­endant, Liam Perks, the judge said.

 

Last night, driving instructor Mrs Dawson said: ‘I feel very upset – what more do they want? I can’t sit there with a camera. How much more evidence can I get?’

Perks was accused of being part of a gang that surrounded Mrs Dawson’s Ford Focus as she gave 26-year-old Jodie Dickinson a driving lesson in Bristol in December 2007.

After smashing the windscreen, the gang stole her laptop and a bag containing £80. One of the gang punched her in the face before they all fled.

She identified Perks, 20, as one of the robbers last February, telling police: ‘That’s him, it’s number seven.’

She added: ‘I know that face. It made my stomach go over. That’s his face. He was really close to me as well.’

At Tuesday’s trial, Judge Tabor said: ‘Denise Dawson was a partic­ularly impressive witness because she showed courage, clarity of thought and was undoubtedly honest.’

But he told Bristol Crown Court it was her word against Perks’ and that was not enough to support a conviction.

He added: ‘The jury may lend more weight to her evidence than her facts allow. You cannot be sure she got it right.’

It then emerged that Perks had admitted conspiracy to burgle for his part in a gang stealing and selling motorbikes and vintage cars.

Mrs Dawson described the decision as ‘a kick in the teeth’.

Victim Support added: ‘Witnesses and victims expect the court to look after them.’

Last year, Judge Tabor handed battered wife Yvonne Godwin a 12-month suspended sentence after she admitting trying to poison her husband.

The ten strangest things sold on eBay

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

1 A man’s entire life
Ian Usher was fed up with his whole life – so he sold it on eBay. The winning bidder, who paid around £200,000, got Mr. Usher’s house, car, job and introductions to his friends in Perth, Australia.

2 A soul
To be honest, this never actually got sold – because eBay cracked down on musician Dante Knoxx after he put his soul up for auction, pulling the listing before it got any bids.

3 Michael Jackson’s underwear
A pair of Michael Jackson’s boxer shorts were sold, with a reserve price of $1million. The Calvin Klein undies had been seized as evidence during a 2003 child molestation investigation.

 

 4 A baby
A couple who put their baby on eBay for 1 euro as a joke briefly had the child removed from their custody, and were investigated for child trafficking. They got the kid back eventually.

5 A cornflake shaped like Illinois
Two sisters from Virginia were so shocked when they found a cornflake that was roughly the shape of Illinois that they put it up for sale. It attracted bids of over $1,000.

6 A town in Texas
The small town of Albert in Texas was sold on eBay, along with the title of Mayor of Albert. The ad boasted that the town was ‘known for its towering oaks, wildflowers, German heritage and laid-back attitude.’ It also had a beer garden.

7 Hi-tech toilets
Hi-tech toilets, originally bought by the city of Seattle for $5million, but subsequently scrapped after they became a haven for drug users, raised only $12,549 when they were later sold on eBay.

8 A vote in the 2008 US election
A University of Minnesota student discovered the hard way that selling his vote in the 2008 American elections was not the best plan, after he was charges with one count of bribery, treating and soliciting under a 1893 law banning the sale of votes.

9 Revenge knickers
A jilted wife got revenge on her husband by selling his mistresses over-sized knickers and a ‘small sized’ condom wrapper that she’d found in their bed.

10 Rhino dung
The International Rhino Foundation had the bright idea of flogging rhino poo as a way of raising funds. Um, yeah. Good idea.

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declares its independence.

                 

The term Vermont Republic has been used by 20th and 21st century writers to describe the period of the U.S. state of Vermont from July 1777, when delegates met and declared independence from jurisdictions and land claims of British colonies in New Hampshire and New York, until its admission to the United States in 1791 as the fourteenth state.

Vermont coin with the passage VERMONTIS. RES. PUBLICA. on the obverse, and the motto “STELLA QUARTA DECIMA“ on the reverse

While an independent state, Vermont assumed many of the functions of a nation, including issuing currency called Vermont coppers from a mint operated by Reuben Harmon in East Rupert (1785-1788),  and operating a postal system. While the Vermont coppers stated “Vermontis. Res. Publica” (Latin for Republic of Vermont), the state’s constitution and other official documents used the term “State of Vermont”. It referred to its chief executive as a “governor.”

Further, the Vermont Republic is sometimes referred to as a “reluctant republic” because many early citizens favored political union with the United States. Both popular opinion and the legal construction of the government were clear that the independent State of Vermont would eventually join the other thirteen colonies. The largest obstacle to Vermont joining its peers was New York. While the Continental Congress did not allow a seat for Vermont, William Samuel Johnson, representing Connecticut, was engaged by Vermont to promote its interests. (In 1785 Johnson was granted title to the former King’s College Tract by the Vermont General Assembly as a form of compensation for representing Vermont’s interests.) However, Madison’s Notes on the Federal Convention of 1789 make clear that there was an agreement by New York to allow for the admission of Vermont to the union, it was just a question of execution of the process which was delayed by larger federal questions. Article 4, Section 3 of the Constitution was designed with Vermont in mind. Note that the members of the Convention of 1789 assumed that Vermont was not yet separate from New York.

History

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, giving the area to the British. Parts of the region were controlled by the Province of New York and the Province of New Hampshire, with overlap due to controversy surrounding the New Hampshire Grants, and George III’s decision to make that part of New York.

Founding

Ethan Allen and his “Green Mountain Boys” became the militia, and fought against the British, particularly those associated with the crown colony of New York, and on January 15, 1777 the rebels declared the region independent as the Republic of New Connecticut, although it was sometimes known colloquially as the Republic of the Green Mountains. On July 8 of that same year, the name of the fledgling nation was officially changed to Vermont (from the French for Green Mountains, les Monts Verts) upon the suggestion of Dr. Thomas Young, a Boston Tea Party leader and mentor for Ethan Allen.

John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem The Song of the Vermonters, 1779 describes the period in ballad form. First published anonymously, the last stanza’s similarities with some of Ethan Allen’s prose caused the text to be attributed to Allen for nearly 60 years The last stanza reads:

Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors or knaves,
If ye rule o’er our land ye shall rule o’er our graves;
Our vow is recorded–our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!

Constitution and frame of government

The Constitution of Vermont was drafted and ratified at Elijah West’s Windsor Tavern in 1777, and was the first written constitution for an independent state in North America. This constitution was modeled after the radically democratic Pennsylvania one on the suggestion of Dr. Young, who worked with Thomas Paine and others on that 1776 document in Philadelphia. It was also the first constitution in the New World to outlaw slavery and allow all adult males to vote, regardless of property ownership. During the Vermont Republic, sometimes referred to as “the first republic”, a veiled suggestion of future independence, the government issued its own coinage and currency, and operated a postal service. The governor of Vermont, Thomas Chittenden, with consent of his council and the unicameral General Assembly, appointed ambassadors to France, the Netherlands, and the American government seated in Philadelphia. There is no evidence of a true exchange of ambassadors.

It took 15 years for New York and Vermont to negotiate a indemnity of several million dollars to be paid to New York to relinquish their claim to Vermont and thereby gain their support for Vermont to be admitted to the union. In the meantime, a group led by Ethan Allen participated in secret discussions to join Canada known as the Haldimand Negotiations.

Symbolism of fourteen

Much of the symbolism associated with Vermont in this period expressed a desire for political union with the United States. Vermont’s coins minted in 1785 and 1786 bore the inscription “STELLA QUARTA DECIMA“ translating from Latin to English as the fourteenth star, presumably fourteen following the original thirteen U.S. states. And the Great Seal of Vermont, designed by Ira Allen, centrally features a fourteen branched pine tree. Today the use of fourteen by early Vermonters might seem to come from the present number of counties (14), but before statehood Vermont never exceeded ten counties.

Union

Vermont’s independent status held until 1791, when Vermont joined the Union, in part as a non-slaveholding counterweight to the slaveholding Kentucky. The admission of Vermont was supported by the North, the smaller states, and states concerned about the impact of the sea-to-sea grants held by other states. Thomas Chittenden served as governor for Vermont for most of this period, and became its first governor as a member-state in the United States.

The 1793 Vermont state constitution made relatively few changes to the 1777 Vermont republic constitution, for example, retaining many original ideas, as noted above, and keeping the separation of powers. It remains in force with several amendments

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.

Christian refuses to drive athiest bus

Friday, January 16, 2009

A bus in London with the slogan

A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a vehicle which was plastered with an advert saying: “There’s probably no God.”

Ron Heather, 62, told his bosses he was horrified at the atheist vehicle, before walking out of his shift.

He told the Daily Mail: “I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face. My first reaction was horror.
“I’d heard about this silly campaign in London but I had no idea it was coming to Southampton.”

The First Bus vehicle was one of hundreds put on buses across the UK.

The £140,000 atheist advertising campaign features the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The fundraising drive was prompted by a suggestion from comedy writer Ariane Sherine, who received support from the British Humanist Association (BHA) and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins.

Ms Sherine had objected to a set of Christian advertisements running on London buses in a piece written for the Guardian’s The Comment is Free in June.

Boy George jailed for 15 months

LONDON, England (CNN) — Karma caught up with former Culture Club singer Boy George on Friday when a court sentenced the star to 15 months for falsely imprisoning a male escort, a court spokeswoman said.

George O’Dowd, also known as Boy George, arrives at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in east London.

 Full details of the sentence weren’t immediately clear.

A jury unanimously found the pop star and DJ, whose real name is George O’Dowd, guilty of the charge last month after a seven-day trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in northeast London.

The jury determined O’Dowd, 47, had chained male escort Audun Carlsen to a wall at his apartment in London’s hip Shoreditch neighborhood. Carlsen had also said the singer beat him with a metal chain.

O’Dowd, who maintained his innocence, came to court Friday sporting a multicolored tattoo on his bald head, none of his trademark makeup, and a black winter coat.

The star quit Culture Club in 1987 after a string of hits with the group, including “Karma Chameleon,” “Do you really want to hurt me?” and “Church of the Poison Mind.”

He has since become a DJ and revived his singing career, releasing a single last year called “Yes we can,” inspired by Barack Obama and featuring clips of the U.S. president-elect.

O’Dowd is no stranger to the law. In August 2006, he spent five days cleaning the streets of Manhattan as part of a community service sentence for falsely reporting a break-in at his New York City home.

He has also publicly battled drug addiction

Two Eastern Lubber grasshoppers (Romalea guttata) mating. Native to the southeastern and south central portion of the United States, it is well known both for its size and its unique coloration. During reproduction, the male grasshopper introduces sperm into the ovipositor through its aedeagus (reproductive organ), and inserts its spermatophore, a package containing the sperm, into the female’s ovipositor.

1780 – American Revolution: Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

Date	January 16, 1780
Location	Near Cabo de São Vicente, Portugal
Result	Decisive British victory

The moonlight Battle off Cape St Vincent, 16 January 1780 by Francis Holman, painted 1780 shows the Santo Domingo exploding, with Rodney‘s flagship SandwichTemplate:WP Ships HMS instances in the foreground

The naval Battle of Cape St Vincent, or Battle of Cape Santa Maria, took place off the coast of Portugal on 16 January 1780, during the American Revolutionary War and was a victory of a British fleet under Admiral Sir George Rodney over a Spanish squadron under Don Juan de Lángara. It is also known as the Moonlight Battle, because it was unusual for naval battles in the age of sail to take place at night.

Origins

Rodney’s fleet, on its way to relieve Gibraltar which was under siege by the Spanish, caught de Langara’s smaller squadron of nine ships of the line. De Langara’s squadron had comprised eleven ships until San Genaro 74 and San Justo 74 were separated from it two days earlier owing to a raging gale, off Cape St Vincent in southwestern Portugal.

Battle

Rodney formed his fleet of 18 ships of the line into line of battle abreast and bore down on the Spanish ships. de Langara initially ordered his ships to form line of battle ahead but, realizing that the British fleet outnumbered his own, ordered his ships to crowd on all sail to escape for their home port of Cádiz, 100 miles (160 km) to the south. At two o’clock, Rodney ordered a general chase, allowing his ships to chase at their best speed and engage as they came up to the Spanish ships. Thanks to their copper sheathed hulls (which reduced marine growths), the ships of the Royal Navy were faster and soon gained on the Spanish.

At around 4 p.m., after two hours of chasing, the British Defence, Bedford, Resolution and Edgar began the action. At 4:40 p.m., the Spanish Santo Domingo 70, blew up just as Bienfaisant came up to engage her; all hands were lost. Darkness fell soon afterwards. The chase continued through the dark and squally night until 2 a.m. the following morning, when all firing ceased after the headmost of the Spanish squadron surrendered. Four Spanish ships of the line and the two frigates escaped but six were taken including De Lángara‘s flagship Fénix, 80. By morning, Rodney’s own fleet was in shoal water. The necessity of getting the ships off shore prevented Rodney from continuing the chase.

Aftermath

Two of the prizes—San Julián and San Eugenio—were lost because of the ignorance on the shore line of the British officers who commanded them since they had to ask the Spanish captains to help them sail the taken ships through a gale. The captain of San Julian, who had remained on board, refused to help unless the ship was again under his command, to which the British officers agreed. Both Spanish sails were retaken by their crews. The San Julián and the San Eugenio then sailed for Gibraltar. The British casualties in the Battle of St. Vincent were 32 killed and 102 wounded.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. Socrates

 

Clara Cluck

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

Winston Churchill 

	On January 18, 1862, Harper’s Weekly featured a cartoon about New York City’s government. Image and text provided by HarpWeek.
	“The City’s Last Struggle With Its Ex-Rulers” “The Belt Railroad Ordinance, having Passed both Branches of the Outgoing Common Council, has been Signed by Mayor Wood, and the Corporators are now prepared to divide the Plunder.” – New York Daily Paper. Artist: Unknown (perhaps John McLenan) his Harper’s Weekly cartoon marks one juncture in the often-corrupt, decades-long battle of politicians and businessmen to construct a rapid transit system in New York City.The fate of commuter railroads in New York City was a perennially divisive issue in the 1850′s and 1860′s; it was, as Harper’s Weekly described it in 1866, an “annual and embarrassing contest for a railroad.” The issue involved competing partisan, factional, regional, and economic interests within the broader context of a bitter power struggle between the state legislature and the city government. Various plans were proposed, debated, accepted, rejected, and reconsidered over the years, many centering on establishing a commuter rail along Broadway. A major source of dispute was whether the city would construct its own rail system to keep fares low and profits in the city treasury, or award the franchises to private companies. Corruption in the city and state government had always existed, but the development of street railroads in the early 1850′s exacerbated the problem. In 1860, Harper’s Weekly criticized the “shameful” passage of the city railroad bills over the governor’s veto, and called the legislature the “most corrupt, unprincipled, and venal crew ever gathered together for legislative purposes in the State of New York.” The political tug of war did not end there. This Harper’s Weekly cartoon, unsigned but probably drawn by John McLenan, ridicules one episode in the continuing saga. In one of their last acts in office, the lame-duck city council granted commuter rail franchises to several favored businessmen. Democratic mayor Fernando Wood, recently defeated for reelection, approved the ordinance. Here, an Irishman, representing the influence of Irish Catholics on the outgoing council, wrenches a belt tightly around the feminine symbol of the city. The railroad owners who will benefit from the ordinance watch approvingly, and one thumbs his nose at their rival, George Law (far left), who has lost this round. George Law (1806-1881), nicknamed “Live-Oak George” by his workers, was one of the most prominent of the railroad magnates. The son of a farmer, he was a self-taught engineer who became a construction contractor for railroads and canals. In the 1840′s, he bought railroads, and built and purchased steamships, operating one of only four steamship lines to the Pacific. In the 1850′s, he constructed the Ninth Avenue Railroad and bought the Staten Island Ferry and the Grand and Roosevelt Street Ferry. The St. George ferry terminal on Staten Island is named after him. In addition to public transportation, he added to his millions through banking ventures and stock speculation. The rapid transit system in New York City would finally come to fruition in the 1870′s and 1880′s. Rob Kennedy 1778 English navigator Captain James Cook became the first European to reach the Hawaiian Islands, which he dubbed the Sandwich Islands. Captain James Cook FRS RN (7 November [O.S. 27 October] 1728 – 14 February 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years’ War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This allowed General Wolfe to make his famous stealth attack on the Plains of Abraham, and helped to bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment both in his personal career and in the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages. Cook charted many areas and recorded several islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. His achievements can be attributed to a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, courage in exploring dangerous locations to confirm the facts (for example dipping into the Antarctic circle repeatedly and exploring around the Great Barrier Reef), an ability to lead men in adverse conditions, and boldness both with regard to the extent of his explorations and his willingness to exceed the instructions given to him by the Admiralty. Cook died in Hawaii in a fight with Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779. The Sandwich Islands was the name given to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook on his discovery of the islands on January 18, 1778. The name was made in honor of one of his sponsors, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was at the time the First Lord of the Admiralty and Cook’s superior officer. During the late 19th century, the name fell into disuse, replaced by Hawaii. The Sandwich Islands should not be confused with the South Sandwich Islands, a mostly uninhabited British dependency in the southern Atlantic Ocean. 1782 Lawyer and statesman Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, N.H. Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was a leading American statesman during the nation’s Antebellum Period. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests. His increasingly nationalistic views and the effectiveness with which he articulated them led Webster to become one of the most famous orators and influential Whig leaders of the Second Party System. Daniel Webster was an attorney, and served as legal counsel in several cases that established important constitutional precedents that bolstered the authority of the Federal government. As Secretary of State, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that established the definitive eastern border between the United States and Canada. Primarily recognized for his Senate tenure, Webster was a key figure in the institution’s “Golden days”. So well-known was his skill as a Senator throughout this period that Webster became the northern member of a trio known as the “Great Triumvirate“, with his colleagues Henry Clay from the west and John C. Calhoun from the south. His “Reply to Hayne” in 1830 was generally regarded as “the most eloquent speech ever delivered in Congress.” As with Henry Clay, Webster’s desire to see the Union preserved and conflict averted led him to search out compromises designed to stave off the sectionalism that threatened war between the North and South. Webster tried three times to achieve the Presidency; all three bids failed, the final one in part because of his compromises. Similarly, Webster’s efforts to steer the nation away from civil war toward a definite peace ultimately proved futile. Despite this, Webster came to be esteemed for these efforts and was officially named by the U.S. Senate in 1957 as one of its five most outstanding members. 1788 The first English settlers arrived in Australia’s Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. Aerial photo of Sydney showing Botany Bay in the foreground Image of Sydney taken by NASA RS satellite. Botany Bay is the large inlet at bottom right. Botany Bay is a bay in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. Two runways of Sydney Airport extend into the bay. Botany Bay was the site of James Cook‘s first landing of HMS Endeavour on the continent of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony. Out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove. James Cook’s visit Bicentennial Monument at Botany Bay James Cook‘s landing marked the beginning of Britain‘s interest in Australia and in the eventual colonisation of this new Southern continent. Initially the name Sting Ray Harbour was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition, for the stingrays they caught. That name was recorded on an Admiralty chart too. Cook’s log for 6 May 1770 records “The great quantity of these sort of fish found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Stingrays Harbour”. However, in his journal (prepared later from his log), he changed to “The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the Name of Botany Bay”. Initially the name Botanist Bay was also sometimes used. First Fleet arrives Black-eyed Sue and Sweet Poll of Plymouth, England mourning their lovers who are soon to be transported to Botany Bay, 1792 Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the Armed Tender “Supply” into the bay on 18 January 1788. Two days later the remaining ships of the First Fleet had arrived to found the planned penal colony. Finding that the sandy infertile soil of the site in fact rendered it most unsuitable for settlement, Phillip decided instead to move to the excellent natural harbour of Port Jackson to the north. On 26 January, as the First Fleet was working out of the bay to move up to Port Jackson, the French exploratory expedition of Jean-François de La Pérouse “Laprouse” entered Botany Bay. On the afternoon of the 26th January 1788, the First Fleet were anchored in Sydney Cove and the British Flag “Queen Ann” was hoisted on shore. The good supply of fresh water in the area led to the expansion of its population in the 19th century. Sydney Airport and Port Botany Sydney Airport, Australia’s largest airport, sits on north-western side of the bay Botany Bay. Land was reclaimed from the bay to extend its first north-south runway and build a second one parallel to it. Port Botany, to the east of the airport, was built in 1930 and is the largest container terminal in Sydney. The land around the headlands of the bay is protected by the National Parks and Wildlife Service as Botany Bay National Park. On the northern side of the mouth of the bay is the historic site of La Perouse and to the south is Kurnell. On the southern side of the bay, a section of water has been fenced off under the authority of the National Parks and Wildlife Service at Towra Point for environmental conservation purposes. Marine Life The mouth of Botany Bay from the air Despite being such a busy port, Botany Bay has a diverse marine population and the area around its entrance is some of the best scuba diving in the Sydney Metropolitan Area. In recent times the Botany Bay Watch Project has begun with volunteers assisting to monitor and protect the Bay Catchment and its unique marine life. The world’s largest population of Weedy sea dragon ever surveyed is found at the ‘Steps’ dive site, on the southern side (Kurnell) of the Botany Bay National Park. Weedy Sea-Dragons are just one of hundreds of territorial marine creatures that are found within Botany Bay. The Eastern Blue Grouper is the state fish of New South Wales. They are commonly found following divers along the shore line of Botany Bay. Popular culture Despite the move to Sydney Cove, for many years the Australian penal colony would be referred to as “Botany Bay” in England – and in convict ballads such as Ireland‘s “The Fields of Athenry“. song named “Botany Bay” was performed in the 1890s, based on older tunes. A song entitled “The Shores of Botany Bay” was written by Brian Warfield and recorded by The Wolfe Tones in the early 1970s. This satirical song deals with a group of Irishmen volunteering for the transportation process in the hopes of finding wealth in Australia. Residences in Trinity College Dublin are named for Botany Bay as a tongue in cheek reference. In the Star Trek universe, the SS Botany Bay is the sleeper ship that Khan Noonien Singh and his genetically modified followers are discovered on by Captain James T. Kirk and crew. 1862 John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, died in Richmond, Va., at age 71. 1892 Oliver Hardy of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Georgia. 1904 Actor Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England. Archibald Alec Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was a British-born American actor. With his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming. He was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time of American cinema, after Humphrey Bogart, by the American Film Institute. He was well known for starring in classic films such as The Philadelphia Story, North by Northwest, Notorious, His Girl Friday, To Catch A Thief, Bringing Up Baby and The Bishop’s Wife.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. – George Bernard Shaw

Pooh

One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
- Oscar Wilde

Good morning. This is Martin Luther King Jr. Day — a day that President-elect Barack Obama is urging be set aside for community service. There is information at USAService.org on activities going on across the nation. The president-elect and his wife Michelle are planning to have lunch today with community service volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area. Inauguration Day, of course, is less than 24 hours away. Tonight, the Democratic president-elect is due at bipartisan dinners honoring Republican Sen. John McCain, former secretary of State Colin Powell (a Republican) and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Meanwhile, here are some of the stories making headlines:

USA TODAY – Obama’s first steps will include ordering plans for pullout from Iraq: “The incoming administration is signaling what steps Obama will take when the inaugural festivities are over. On his first full day in office, he will order military leaders to begin planning the pullout of most combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, as promised during the campaign, adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s This Week. During Obama’s first full week a

Obama seeks McCain’s advice; aides to get right to work

Good morning. This is Martin Luther King Jr. Day — a day that President-elect Barack Obama is urging be set aside for community service. There is information at USAService.org on activities going on across the nation. The president-elect and his wife Michelle are planning to have lunch today with community service volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area.

Inauguration Day, of course, is less than 24 hours away. Tonight, the Democratic president-elect is due at bipartisan dinners honoring Republican Sen. John McCain, former secretary of State Colin Powell (a Republican) and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, here are some of the stories making headlines:

USA TODAY — Obama’s first steps will include ordering plans for pullout from Iraq: “The incoming administration is signaling what steps Obama will take when the inaugural festivities are over. On his first full day in office, he will order military leaders to begin planning the pullout of most combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, as promised during the campaign, adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s This Week. During Obama’s first full week as president, he will issue executive orders to begin the process of closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and to tighten ethics rules for the new administration, press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Fox News Sunday.”

Related story by Politico — Key Obama aides will be heading right to work: “Vans will be poised at the Capitol to take a few top aides of Barack Obama’s to their new offices at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as soon as he is sworn in, transition aides told Politico. About 20 senior officials have had their paperwork cleared to enter the White House complex on Tuesday. Some will attend a traditional lunch with the new president in the Capitol, then get to work while the inaugural parade is under way. The quick start on Tuesday is indicative of the months of planning that Obama’s transition team has put into preparing for his opening days in office.”

The New York Times — Obama seeks McCain’s counsel: “Over the last three months, (President-elect Barack) Obama has quietly consulted (Republican presidential nominee Sen. John) McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested. Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues ‘that many of these appointments he would have made himself,’ said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend. Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: ‘I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.’ “

Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Senator John McCain has been courted by President-elect Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON — Not long after Senator John McCain returned last month from an official trip to Iraq and Pakistan, he received a phone call from President-elect Barack Obama.

As contenders for the presidency, the two had hammered each other for much of 2008 over their conflicting approaches to foreign policy, especially in Iraq. (He’d lose a war! He’d stay a hundred years!) Now, however, Mr. Obama said he wanted Mr. McCain’s advice, people in each camp briefed on the conversation said. What did he see on the trip? What did he learn?

It was just one step in a post-election courtship that historians say has few modern parallels, beginning with a private meeting in Mr. Obama’s transition office in Chicago just two weeks after the vote. On Monday night, Mr. McCain will be the guest of honor at a black-tie dinner celebrating Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

It is “trademark Obama,” Professor Greenstein said, noting that Mr. Obama’s impulse to win over even ideological opposites appeared to date at least to his friendships with conservatives on The Harvard Law Review when he was president.

For Mr. Obama, cooperation with his defeated opponent could also provide a useful ally in the Senate, where Mr. McCain has parlayed his national popularity and go-his-own-way reputation into a role as a pivotal dealmaker over the last eight years. But on the subject of Iraq, in particular, their collaboration could also raise questions among Mr. Obama’s liberal supporters, many of whom demonized Mr. McCain as a dangerous warmonger because of his staunch opposition to a pullout.

Mr. Obama arrived for their Chicago meeting on Nov. 16 with several well-researched proposals to collaborate on involving some of Mr. McCain’s favorite causes, including a commission to cut “corporate welfare,” curbing waste in military procurement and an overhaul of immigration rules.

“The corporate welfare commission and military acquisition reform are two things the president-elect wants to do very soon,” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff and a participant in the meeting, said in an interview. The new administration is already preparing to introduce legislation echoing a previous McCain bill on the commission idea, Mr. Emanuel said, adding, “We have been very respectful and solicitous of his ideas.”

Mr. Emanuel said he did not remember any discussion of Iraq. “Barack has been clear that he is going to stick to his responsible reduction in forces, and he hasn’t changed from that,” he said.

But Mr. Graham, who accompanied Mr. McCain to the meeting, said Mr. Obama took a notably different tone toward Iraq than he had during the campaign, emphasizing the common ground in their views.

“He said that he understands that we had differences but he wanted to let us know that he also understands that we have got to be responsible in how we leave Iraq,” Mr. Graham recalled. “What the Obama-Biden administration has talked about is not losing the gains we have achieved. ”

He added, “Obama does not want to be the guy who lost Iraq when it is close to being won.”

Mr. Emanuel, whose only previous contact with Mr. Graham was negotiating the terms of the presidential debates, began calling him more than once a week to follow up. “Constantly,” Mr. Emanuel said. “There has been a running dialogue.”

Mr. Graham, in turn, called his counterpart “a pleasure to do business with.”

Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., a friend since Mr. McCain was the Navy’s liaison to the Senate three decades ago, has also played intermediary. He called Mr. McCain to ask him to appear at the inaugural dinner, and he invited Mr. Graham on another recent trip to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I know the vice president-elect is very concerned about the end game in Iraq,” Mr. Graham said.

Some Senate Democrats have complained that Mr. Obama failed to seek their contributions about certain appointments — notably Leon E. Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the Obama transition team has consistently sought advice and feedback from Mr. McCain, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, on national security appointments, Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Graham both said.

Mr. Graham said Mr. McCain had enthusiastically supported those appointments: Gen. James L. Jones (an old McCain friend) as national security adviser; Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the retired Army chief of staff, as secretary of veterans affairs; Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state; and most of all, retaining Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

“Picking Gates is a good statement that they are not going to pull out of Iraq in a way that undercuts the gains achieved,” Mr. Graham said.

And when Mr. McCain raised “concerns” about the potential choice of Adm. Dennis C. Blair as director of national intelligence, Mr. Emanuel said, Mr. Obama’s advisers asked the admiral to provide answers to Mr. McCain’s questions to win his support. (Neither side would disclose the details of Mr. McCain’s concerns, but Admiral Blair has faced past questions about his relations with the military dictators of Indonesia when he was in the Navy, and a possible conflict of interest when he later worked with a nonprofit group evaluating weapons systems.)

“We gave McCain time to talk through it, made sure he was briefed,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Mr. Obama’s cultivation of Mr. McCain is a stark contrast with the practices of past presidents. After the 2004 election, President Bush did not talk to his defeated opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, until Mr. Kerry visited the White House in March 2005 as part of a large group to celebrate the Red Sox victory in the World Series. (“I like to see Senator Kerry,” Mr. Bush said, “except when we’re fixing to debate.”) And after Mr. Bush defeated Mr. McCain for the Republican nomination in 2000, the two had only perfunctory contact and often-adversarial relations for nearly two years.

Shortly before his second inauguration, former President Bill Clinton awarded his defeated opponent, Bob Dole, the Medal of Freedom. But it was an entirely ceremonial event. (Mr. Dole joked that had hoped to be at the White House picking up “the front door key” instead.)

A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain did not respond to several messages. But Mr. Graham said he and Mr. McCain were convinced that Mr. Obama was genuinely interested in working together with them on both domestic priorities and foreign policy.

“Not only is it good politics,” Mr. Graham said, “it gives you an insight into who we are dealing with.”

USA TODAY — Convergence of inauguration and King Day is one of those “grace notes of history:” “The pairing of King Day and Inauguration Day — when the nation’s first African-American president will look across the National Mall to where King in 1963 declared, ‘I have a dream!’ — raises a question: Is Obama the fulfillment of King’s dream? And what, exactly, was that dream? On Sunday, USA TODAY reporters visited four churches where King gave Sunday sermons in March 1968, during the last month of his life. … Preachers and congregants said King would be gratified by Obama’s inauguration — but not satisfied. ‘He’d say this is a great moment to celebrate, but we ought to hold the new president’s feet to the fire,’ said Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean of the National Cathedral.”

The Washington Post — First African-American president hopes to bridge differences: “Throughout his barrier-breaking presidential campaign, Barack Obama avoided calling direct attention to race, long a divisive force in electoral politics. But now, as he stands on the verge of becoming the nation’s first African American president, Obama is talking more about how his racial identity can unify and transform the country.” In an interview with the Post, Obama said that “he hopes to use his presidency as an example of how people can bridge differences — racial and otherwise. ‘What I hope to model is a way of interacting with people who aren’t like you and don’t agree with you that changes the temper of our politics,’ he said.”

ABC News — Rev. Wright says Obama is example of hope, then calls media “evil:” Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor who sparked campaign controversy over things he said about America in sermons at the church President-elect Barack Obama used to attend, delivered a sermon Sunday at Howard University in Washington during which he said Obama’s life underscores that the nation can build a better future. Then, in an interview with ABC, “Wright showed some … fire when he lashed out at the network for breaking the story of his inflammatory sermons, saying he was ‘not going to kiss anybody’s behind.’ “

USA TODAY — Big donors get great tickets to inauguration: ” President-elect Barack Obama, who has pledged to run a White House free of special-interest influence, is granting his biggest donors coveted tickets to his swearing-in Tuesday and other inaugural activities. Contributors who gave at least $10,000 to help underwrite the inauguration received two tickets to witness the Democrat take the oath of office, watch the Inaugural Parade and party at one of the 10 black-tie balls attended by Obama and his wife, Michelle. Those who gave $50,000 — or raised $300,000 from other contributors — received a total of four tickets to official inaugural activities. … Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Obama’s inaugural planning team, said donors will not have undue sway in the new administration. ‘The president-elect made it clear throughout his campaign that the people who have power in his campaign are the grass-roots,’ she said.”

Related story by The Wall Street Journal — Lobbyists find ways around rules: “Lobbyists and corporations have found an opening in the latest congressional-ethics law that allows them to pay for special access to lawmakers and members of the incoming Obama administration during next week’s … inaugural festivities. President-elect Barack Obama was a vocal champion of rules enacted last year that prohibit companies and lobbyists from buying anything worth more than $10 for lawmakers. But well-heeled interests have found a way to circumvent the ban by partnering with ‘state societies’ that are throwing parties to celebrate Mr. Obama’s inauguration.”

We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. – H. L. Mencken

The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates

Taliban warn Obama: Leave Afghanistan

Analysts say the war will be one of the new president’s toughest challenges.

By David Montero

posted January 21, 2009 at 10:15 am EST

 

As President Barack Obama steps into the White House and into history, the Taliban have a message for him: Leave Afghanistan.

“The insurgent Taliban said Wednesday that US President Barack Obama should learn from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and pull his troops out of the country to allow Afghans to decide their own fate,” reports The News, a popular English-language daily in Pakistan.

“We have no problem with Obama,” a spokesman for the extremist Islamist movement [said] after the inauguration of the new US president. However, “he must learn lessons from [former US president George W. Bush] and before that the Soviets,” Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone.

Their remarks come as militants in neighboring Pakistan widened a bloody campaign in the country’s North West Frontier Province, blowing up girls’ schools and engaging in pitched battles with Pakistani military forces.

As President Obama officially enters the White House, some analysts say the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be his toughest international challenge, reports ABC News.

Now the hard part begins, and there may be no harder spot on the planet for President Barack Obama than Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The unreliable border between those two countries will help determine whether some of the tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan will come home in body bags; whether al Qaeda can launch another attack; and whether the Taliban can continue to destabilize both countries economically and politically.

The Boston Globe adds that a “record 151 American forces died in Afghanistan in 2008, compared with 111 the previous year. It was the deadliest year yet in a seven-year war that military officials say is likely to get even bloodier this year, as thousands more American troops pour into the country.”

 

Responding to the challenge, the new Obama team has outlined a diplomatic as well as military approach to fighting the Taliban, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported yesterday.

Despite plans to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan to boost stability, the Obama administration seems to be heeding expert advice that no military solution is possible over the long term.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s pick for secretary of state, last week omitted mention of the idea of a military victory….

“We will use all the elements of our power — diplomacy, development, and defense — to work with those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who want to root out Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other violent extremists,” Clinton said.

The challenges Obama faces were crystallized in violence in neighboring Pakistan.

Pakistani forces have been fighting Taliban militants up and down the Afghan border, and claim to have killed more than 1,500 in the last 17 months, according to AFP.

Some 60 militants were killed in the latest round of fighting on Tuesday, reports The News.

Twenty-two militants, including several local commanders, and two civilians were killed and several others sustained injuries as fighter planes and gunship helicopters blitzed different areas of Pandyalai and Lakaro Tehsils of the troubled Mohmand Agency on Tuesday. A press release of the Frontier Corps, however, claimed killing 60 militants in the ongoing operation besides securing a number of militant-held areas.

In the neighboring Swat district, the Taliban blew up five schools for girls in a growing effort to stop female education, according to Dawn, a leading English-language daily based in Karachi, Pakistan. “Swat District Coordination Officer Shaukat Khan Yousafzai said 182 schools, most of them for girls, had been destroyed by militants, affecting over 100,000 primary- to college-level students,” it reported.

The violence comes as Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in the Middle East, wraps up meetings with Afghan and Pakistani leaders. In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari told General Petraeus that the US should halt the predator drone attacks it has increasingly used to target Al Qaeda and Taliban militants inside Pakistani territory, reports The News.

Pakistan on Tuesday stressed the need for halting the drone strikes and urged its key ally, the United States, to enhance intelligence-sharing with Islamabad….

President Zardari said the drone attacks in the tribal areas were weakening the writ of the government and destabilising the political process, according to sources.

The sources said the president was of the view that the ongoing war on terror had badly affected Pakistan’s economy and that the world should help Pakistan tackle the economic challenges.

Petraeus is scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday, where he will attend Obama’s first official meeting with military commanders, reports the Associated Press.

Obama will begin to put his imprint on the nation’s war strategy in his first full day in office, gathering his top military and national security advisers at the White House for what is expected to be the start of the new commander in chief’s shift in emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan.

According to officials, Obama will conduct a video teleconference late Wednesday afternoon with members of the National Security Council as well as the US military commanders in the two war zones.

THAT’S WHEN THE FIGHT STARTED

MAN & WIFE 

 

 

My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She
asked, ‘What’s on TV?’
I said, ‘Dust.’
And then the fight started…
———— ——— — ——- ——— ——— ——— ———
My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary. She
said, ‘I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 200 in about 3 seconds.’
I bought her a scale.
And then the fight started….
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———
When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace
expensive… so, I took her to a gas station.
And then the fight started…
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———
After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social
Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s license to
verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at
home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home
and come back later.
The woman said, ‘Unbutton your shirt’. So I opened my shirt revealing my
curly silver hair. She said, ‘That silver hair on your chest is proof
enough for me’ and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social
Security office.
She said, ‘You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten
disability, too.’
And then the fight started…
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———
My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept
staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby
table.
My wife asked, ‘Do you know her?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed, ‘She’s my old girlfriend. I understand she took to
drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she
hasn’t been sober since.’
‘My God!’ says my wife, ‘who would think a person could go on celebrating
that long?’
And then the fight started…
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ———
I took my wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took my order
first.
“I’ll have the strip steak, medium rare, please.”
He said, “Aren’t you worried about the mad cow?”"
Nah, she can order for herself.”
And then the fight started…
———— ——— ——— —
I tried to talk my wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95.
Instead, she bought a jar of cold ; cream for $207.95.
I told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold
cream.
And then the fight started….
———– ——— ——— ——— ——
A man and a woman were asleep like two innocent babies.
Suddenly, at 3 o’clock in the morning, a loud noise came from outside.
The woman, bewildered, jumped up from the bed and yelled at the man ‘Holy
crap. That must be my husband!’
So the man jumped out of the bed; scared and naked jumped out the window.
He smashed himself on the ground, ran through a thorn bush and to his car
as fast as he could go.
A few minutes later he returned and went up to the bedroom and screamed at
the woman, ‘I AM your husband!’
The woman yelled back, ‘Yeah, then why were you running?’
And then the fight started…..
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— —-
Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed
the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage.
I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a
torrential downpour.
The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on
the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.
I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed.
I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and
whispered, ‘The weather out there is terrible.’
My loving wife of 10 years replied, ‘Can you believe my stupid husband is
out fishing in that?’
And then the fight started …
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— —-
I asked my wife, “Where do you want to go for our anniversary? “
It warmed my heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. “Somewhere
I haven’t been in a long time!” she said.
So I suggested, “How about the kitchen?”
And that’s when the fight started….
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— —-
My wife and I are watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in
bed. I turned to her and said, “Do you want to have sex?”
“No,” she answered.
I then said, “Is that your final answer?”
She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying “Yes.”
So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”
And that’s when the fight started….

 

 

1908 – New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.

 

On January 21, 1865, Harper’s Weekly featured a cartoon about public safety. Image and text provided by HarpWeek.

“The Merry-Andrew of the Bergen Tunnel”

Artist: Unknown

---

his grim Harper’s Weekly cartoon reveals the existence in the 1860′s of serious concerns for public safety on the passenger railroads of the New York City region.After the presidential election of 1864 and as the Civil War drew to a close in April 1865, public health and safety concerns regained prominence in the pages of Harper’s Weekly . Editorials, news stories, illustrations, and cartoons reported the deaths caused by the alleged negligence of railroad and steamship management or workers, comparing the accidents to “murder,” “manslaughter,” and “slaughter.” Railroad travel, according to the newspaper, was becoming increasingly hazardous, particularly in the winter months.

Editor George William Curtis suggested a strategy to improve the situation. He encouraged newspapers to publicize poorly-run railroads and steamships, and for passengers to sue the companies for negligence. Furthermore, he called for the state legislatures to regulate them. In the case of New Jersey, however, Curtis endorsed congressional regulation because he believed that the New Jersey state legislature was too dominated by the railroad companies to pass effective safety laws.

This cartoon reminds readers of a recent accident in the train tunnel to Bergen, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. Every day, hundreds of passenger trains passed through the Bergen Tunnel, owned by the Erie Railroad Company. It was a 4400 foot-long, unlit cavern with no signalmen assigned to it. The accident which promoted this n occurred when a train broke down just before emerging from the tunnel. The only safety precautions taken were a colored lantern hung on the caboose and flares set on the track. Another train’s engineer, seeing or hearing nothing, barreled into the back of the disabled train.

In the cartoon, death is doubly emphasized by the skull-shaped tunnel and the skeleton which floats within it. The foolishness of the danger is communicated by using the term “Merry-Andrew,” which means clown or buffoon. The accident’s commonplace nature is announced by the sign over the tunnel, “Here We are Again!” The second editorial of this issue discusses the accident under the headline “More Railroad Murders,” referring to the passengers as “slaughtered sheep in that dark den.”

Rob Kennedy

 

1813 - John C. Frémont, American army officer, explorer and presidential candidate (d. 1890)

John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813 – July 13, 1890), was an American military officer, explorer, the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States, and the first presidential candidate of a major party to run on a platform in opposition to slavery. During the 1840s, that era’s penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder, which remains in use, sometimes as “The Great Pathfinder”.

Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (January 21, 1824– May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, and probably the most well-known Confederate commander after General Robert E. Lee. His military career includes the Valley Campaign of 1862 and his service as a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. Confederate pickets accidentally shot him at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, which the general survived, albeit with the loss of an arm to amputation. However, he died of complications of pneumonia eight days later.

Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in United States history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide even today as examples of innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well at the First Battle of Bull Run (where he received his famous nickname “Stonewall”), Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Jackson was not universally successful as a commander, however, as displayed by his weak and confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond in 1862. His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but the morale of its army and the general public; as Jackson lay dying, General Robert E. Lee sent a message to Jackson through Chaplain Lacy, saying “Give General Jackson my affectionate regards, and say to him: he has lost his left arm but I my right.”

 Karina Lombard (born January 21, 1969 in Tahiti) is an actress and singer.

    

Biography

Early life

Doña Karina Lombard’s mother, Nupuree Lightfoot, was an immigrant of Lakota Sioux ethnicity living in Tahiti. Her father, Henry Lombard, was a European aristocrat. Lombard is a naturalized U.S. citizen, but when she was one year old, her parents separated, and her father, who is of Russian, Italian and Swiss descent, took Karina and her four siblings, Helen, Inez, Charles, and Denise, to live at his estate in Barcelona, Spain. She went on to attend a number of Swiss boarding schools, including in Lausanne, where she has said that “being American Indian meant being treated like a savage”. Over the years she gained proficiency in Spanish, English, Italian, French, and German. She came to New York when she was 18 and began modeling and studying acting.

Career

Lombard’s major break in modeling came about due to a Calvin Klein photo shoot with a Native American theme. One of her photographs was chosen to be a billboard ad.

As an actress, her first major film was Wide Sargasso Sea in 1993, followed by the 1994 film Legends of the Fall, and in the 2000s she moved into television, appearing on the first season of The L Word, and also in The 4400. She reprised her role as Marina Ferrer in the first episode of Season Four of The L Word and made one more brief appearance later that season (as an actress auditioning for Jenny’s film, Lez Girls).

Her theatre training and stage experience primarily comes from New York City‘s Gallery Theatre, the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Actors Studio. Lombard was with controversial director Damian Chapa shortly after his divorce from Natasha Henstridge.

Sexuality

Lombard has hinted at being bisexual. When asked about her love scenes in The L Word she said, “I grew up in Europe and you know – you love who you love, so I didn’t have to prepare, you know what I mean?”

Later, in 2006, she did a six-page nude pictorial for Playboy where she portrayed both feminine and masculine counterparts of a lesbian couple. The concept was her own idea. She told planetout.com: “one night I had this dream about these images, and it was all about the dichotomy of male and female within an individual, and the empowerment within a human being in embracing the female and the male inside of you — the dichotomy of the wild self vs. the tamed self. I woke up and I was like, “Whoa — what was that about?” And when I get those dreams, it’s always very specific, and for a specific reason, it’s not random.”

Though this comment and the pictorial would seem to confirm her orientation as bisexual, she told the magazine: ‘I thought I was bisexual until I did the The L Word, then I associated it with work…”

In a Planetout interview she was asked, “What type of women are you attracted to, butch or femme?” and answered, “I don’t have categories, I just go with the person. You can be butch and really sexy, and you can be femme and really sexy.”

 

 

NEW PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION

The following has been attributed to State Representative Mitchell Kaye
from GA. This guy should run for President one day…

       ’We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to
help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more
riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the
blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our
great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and
establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt
ridden, delusional. We hold these truths to be self evident: that a
whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim
they require a Bill of NON-Rights.’

       ARTICLE I:
       You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any
other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them,
but no one is guaranteeing anything.

       ARTICLE II:
       You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is
based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone — not just you!
You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion,
etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

       ARTICLE III:
       You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a
screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the
tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently
wealthy.

       ARTICLE IV:
       You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans
are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone
in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation
after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more
than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

       ARTICLE V:
       You do not have the right to free health care. That would be
nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in
public health care.

       ARTICLE VI:
       You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If
you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be
surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

      ARTICLE VII:
       You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you
rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens,
don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a
place where you still won’t have the right to a big screen color TV or a
life of leisure.

       ARTICLE VIII:
       You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to
have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect
you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational
training laid before you to make yourself useful. AMEN and AMEN

       ARTICLE IX:
       You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means
that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot
easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws
created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

       ARTICLE X:
       This is an English speaking country . We don’t care where you
are from, English is our language. Learn it or go back to wherever you
came from!

                                    Lastly

       ARTICLE XI:
       You do not have the right to change our country’s history or
heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And
yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or
no faith at all; with no fear of persecution.The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST
is part of our heritage and history, and if you are uncomfortable with
it, TOUGH!

      If you agree, share this with a friend. No, you don’t have to,
and nothing tragic will befall you if you don’t. I just think it’s about
time common sense is allowed to flourish. Sensible people of the United
States speak out because if you do not, who will?

A carrot, an egg, and a cup of coffee

 

A carrot, an egg, and a cup of coffee…You will never look at a cup of coffee the same way again. Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil; without saying a word.hard boiled egg. Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are the greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean? A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up, She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she! asked , ‘ Tell me what you see.’ ‘Carrots, eggs, and coffee,’ she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, ‘What does it mean, mother?’ ‘Which are you?’ she asked her daughter. ‘When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean? Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength? Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart? Or am I like the May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human and enough hope to make you happy. The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way. The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past; you can’t go forward in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying. You might want to send this message to those people who mean something to you; to those who have touched your life in one way or another; to those who make you smile when you really need it; to those who make you see the brighter side of things when you are really down; to those whose friendship you appreciate; to those who are so meaningful in your life.

this is getting ridiculous

Scary Sign of the Times: 7th graders now prospects

Reply

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OXON HILL, Md. — Giving in to the young-and-younger movement in college basketball recruiting, the NCAA has decreed that seventh-graders are now officially classified as prospects.

The organization voted Thursday to change the definition of a prospect from ninth grade to seventh grade – for men’s basketball only – to nip a trend in which some college coaches were working at private, elite camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-graders. The NCAA couldn’t regulate those camps because those youngsters fell below the current cutoff.

“It’s a little scary only because — we talked about this — where does it stop?” said Joe D’Antonio, chairman of the 31-member Division I Legislative Council, which approved the change during a two-day meeting at the NCAA Convention. “The fact that we’ve got to this point is really just a sign of the times.”

Schools had expressed concern that the younger-age elite camps were giving participating coaches a recruiting advantage, pressuring other coaches to start their own camps.

“The need to nip that in the bud was overwhelming,” said Steve Mallonee, the NCAA’s managing director of academic and membership affairs.

While men’s basketball is the only sport affected, D’Antonio said he could envision future discussions on lowering the limit for other sports, notably football.

In other moves, the council deferred decisions on the NBA draft declaration window, the admission of women’s beach volleyball as an emerging sport, the admissibility of online courses and the length of the baseball season. All will be submitted to the NCAA as a whole during a comment period and will likely be put to a vote again by the council in April.

The Atlantic Coast Conference proposed that underclassmen be given a 10-day period to decide whether to remain committed to entering the NBA draft. Currently, a player who declares for the draft can take up to two months to mull over his decision, leaving his team in limbo.

D’Antonio said the consensus seemed to be that 10 days was too short of a span for a player to fully explore his draft prospects, but that the current window was too long. A compromise time period will probably be put to a vote in April.

“Is there somewhere in the middle that we can meet that would make the majority of the membership pleased?” D’Antonio said. “It appears we could be headed in that direction, but it’s too early to tell.”

Beach volleyball, which is NCAA is calling “sand volleyball” in the quest for more universal appeal, didn’t get the two-thirds approval necessary but looks certain to pass after the comment period, when only 50 percent of the vote is needed. If passed, it would be placed on the list of emerging sports for women in 2010.

The council gave four low-participation women’s sports the ax from the emerging list: archery, badminton, team handball and synchronized swimming.

In an era in which students are taking many courses online, the council wasn’t ready to allow athletes to do the same. Proposals to allow athletes to take online courses at other schools were defeated, as was a proposal to allow athletes to take all of their courses online at their own school. The council did leave open the possibility of an April vote that would allow athletes to take up to 50 percent of their courses online at their own school.

“There are perception concerns,” D’Antonio said, “that if you have an individual who is a high-profile student-athlete who’s taking nothing but nontraditional courses and never setting foot on campus, how is that going to be looked at by the general public?”

The council defeated a proposal to increase the number of scholarships for baseball, but left open for comment proposals that would change the length of the season and reduce the number of games.

On Friday, the NCAA is scheduled to vote on whether to override a new rule that would prohibit men’s basketball coaches from attending popular but unsanctioned April tournaments for high-schoolers.

How does one actually zip their lip?

Naked couple go for a stroll

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A couple treated open air diners to a 15-minute naked parade in Singapore, triggering both embarrassment and applause for a scene almost unheard of in the conservative city-state.

Pub manager Terence Chia told the Straits Times newspaper he saw the couple taking off their clothes on Saturday night at a staircase in a block of flats in Holland Village, known for its popular nightspots.

“Then, clothes in hand, they coolly walked in their flip-flops towards the market,” he said, adding when the couple did a U-turn a sea of spectators was ready and poised with cameras.

“There were more than 200 people and everyone was taking pictures,” the newspaper on Wednesday quoted Chia as saying. “Even women were busy clicking and people were cheering, whistling and applauding like crazy.”

Police said the couple, a white man and an ethnic Chinese woman in their 20s, had been arrested and released on bail. If convicted under Singapore law, they could face a fine of maximum fine of S$2000 ($1,330), up to 3 months in jail, or both.

Protests are rare in Singapore and only made legal last year in a designated area called “Speakers’ Corner”, modelled on London’s Hyde Park.

“They looked really comfortable walking down the street, which led to many curious stares,” wrote blogger Leonard Tan. “Singapore is getting more and more exciting.”

Defendant smears lawyer in faeces

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A mistrial was declared at a court in San Diego after a suspect in a robbery smeared human faeces on his lawyer’s face and then threw more at the jury.

Weusi McGowan, 37, became enraged when Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser refused to remove Deputy Alternate Public Defender Jeffrey Martin from the case.

During the break, McGowan produced a plastic bag with fecal matter and smeared it on Martin’s hair and face. He then flung the bag towards the jury, hitting the brief case of juror No. 9.

 

“That juror didn’t even see it coming,” said prosecutor Christopher Lawson.

After lunch, the judge dismissed the jury and said the defendant would have to find a new lawyer.

McGowan’s bail was raised from $250,000 to $1 million, as he was branded a danger to the community.

The prosecutor said the defendant had wiped human faeces on himself in the past.

McGowan is charged with kidnapping for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts and could face assault charges in connection with the attack on his lawyer and the jury.

McGowan is accused of hitting a man with a rock in a sock in October 2007.

I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer. ~ Colette

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954) French writer, usually known simply by her pen-name “Colette.”

When she raises her eyelids it’s as if she were taking off all her clothes. Claudine and Annie (1903)

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.  Break of Day (1928)

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.  Chance Acquaintances (1952)

1915 – An act of the U.S. Congress creates the United States Coast Guard.

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of seven uniformed services. In addition to being a military branch at all times, it is unique among the armed forces in that it is also a maritime law enforcement agency (with jurisdiction both domestically and in international waters) and a federal regulatory agency. It is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security during peacetime, and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy by the President during a time of war. The Coast Guard motto is “Semper Paratus“, Latin for “Always Ready” or “Always Prepared”.

As one of the five armed forces and the smallest armed service of the United States, its stated mission is to protect the public, the environment, and the United States economic and security interests in any maritime region in which those interests may be at risk, including international waters and America’s coasts, ports, and inland waterways.

The roots of the Coast Guard lie in the United States Revenue Cutter Service established by Alexander Hamilton under the Department of the Treasury on August 4, 1790. The first USCG station was in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Until the re-establishment of the United States Navy in 1798, the Revenue Cutter Service was the only naval force of the early U.S. It was established to collect taxes from a brand new nation of patriot smugglers. When the officers were out at sea, they were told to crack down on piracy; while they were at it, they might as well rescue anyone in distress.

“First Fleet” is a term occasionally used as an informal reference to the US Coast Guard, although as far as one can detect the United States has never in fact officially used this designation with reference either to the Coast Guard or any element of the US Navy. The informal appellation honors the fact that between 1790 and 1798, there was no United States Navy and the cutters which were the predecessor of the US Coast Guard were the only warships protecting the coast, trade, and maritime interests of the new republic.

The modern Coast Guard can be said to date to 1915, when the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the United States Life-Saving Service and Congress formalized the existence of the new organization. In 1939, the U.S. Lighthouse Service was brought under its purview. In 1942, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was transferred to the Coast Guard. In 1967, the Coast Guard moved from the Department of the Treasury to the newly formed Department of Transportation, an arrangement that lasted until it was placed under the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 as part of legislation designed to more efficiently protect American interests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In times of war, the Coast Guard or individual components of it can operate as a service of the Department of the Navy. This arrangement has a broad historical basis, as the Guard has been involved in wars as diverse as the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the American Civil War, in which the cutter Harriet Lane fired the first naval shots attempting to relieve besieged Fort Sumter. The last time the Coast Guard operated as a whole under the Navy was in World War II. More often, military and combat units within the Coast Guard will operate under Navy operational control while other Coast Guard units will remain under the Department of Homeland Security.

1986 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission (Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) – Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board.

Space Shuttle Challenger’s smoke plume after in-flight breakup that killed all seven STS-51-L crew members.

STS-51-L crew: (front row) Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; (back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986 when Challenger, a Space Shuttle operated by NASA, consisting of the Challenger Orbiter, designated OV-099, an External Tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer, and two Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), broke apart 73 seconds into its flight leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida, United States at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC). Disintegration of the shuttle stack began 73 seconds into its flight after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The O-ring failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing a flare (of pressurized hot gas from within the solid rocket motor) to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB attachment hardware and external fuel tank. Roughly 73 seconds into the launch, the SRB breach flare led to the separation of the right-hand SRB’s aft attachment and the structural failure of the external tank, dumping the liquid hydrogen fuel load all at once and causing a massive explosion as this fuel was immediately ignited by various present flame sources. Aerodynamic forces promptly broke up the orbiter after this event caused loss of attitude control. The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The crew were probably killed by impact of their crew compartment with the ocean surface, although they might have suffered lethal injuries from the forces of the disintegration.

The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program and the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The Rogers Commission found that NASA‘s organizational culture and decision-making processes had been a key contributing factor to the accident. NASA managers had known that contractor Morton Thiokol‘s design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings since 1977, but they failed to address it properly. They also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching on such a cold day and had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors. The Rogers Commission offered NASA nine recommendations that were to be implemented before shuttle flights resumed.

Many viewed the launch live due to the presence on the crew of Christa McAuliffe, the first member of the Teacher in Space Project. Media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident. The Challenger disaster has been used as a case study in many discussions of engineering safety and workplace ethics and inspired the 1990 television movie, Challenger.

Barbi Benton (born January 28, 1950 as Barbara Klein). is an American model, actress and singer. She became famous for being the girlfriend of Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner. She is often misperceived as having been a Playboy Playmate since she was featured on the Playboy cover several times.

Involuntary Muscular Contractions:

A professor at the University of Michigan was giving a lecture on ‘Involuntary Muscular Contractions’ to his first year medical students. Realizing this was not the most riveting subject, the professor decided to lighten the mood slightly. He pointed to a young woman in the front row and said, ‘Do you know what your ass hole is doing while you’re having an orgasm?’   She replied, ‘Probably deer hunting with his buddies.’   It took 45 minutes to restore order in the classroom………

There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes. – Doctor Who

Where singles go to play all sorts of games

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Lynne Lucas is taking herself off the meat market. Monique Brown is sick of having to look cute all the time. And Scott Hayes is searching for his inner child.

It’s Saturday night at PlayDate in Atlanta, Georgia, where 400 adults have gathered to play games, drink and socialize.

“It’s not your usual bar scene where I look good, you look good, I’m scared to talk to you,” Hayes says as he scans a giant Jenga tower for the right block to pull. “You’ll talk to anyone when you’re playing games, because you’re trying to beat them.”

Next to Hayes, Brown watches a rambunctious game of Pictionary while a twosome fights it out with Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots nearby. Across the room, Lucas joins her friends in a game of Trouble. And on the dance floor, Imari Havard is hula-hooping with some ladies.

Havard is the co-founder of Timeless Entertainment Concepts, host of PlayDate, with Ryan Hill and Ronald Gaither.

Timeless’ mission is clear: provide a fun alternative to the typical nightlife scene for an entrance fee of just $10 per person. In other words, if you’re looking for love in all the wrong places, try a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

PlayDate began in Atlanta in 2005 and has slowly expanded from a monthly crowd of 80 to 500 twice a month in nine cities across the nation. The three men hope to start affiliates in another 20 markets this year.

“It’s a pretty simple word-of-mouth advertising,” Havard says of how they’ve made PlayDate so popular. “The No. 1 question asked on a Monday morning, is ‘How was your weekend?’ The number two most popular question is ‘What did you do?’ Well, we’ve built our entire program around answering those questions.”

While Gaither takes care of the legal and administrative aspects, Hill and Havard attend events and deal with affiliates.

The two opposites complement each other. Tonight, Hill wears a red polo shirt and jeans. Havard wears a stingy fedora and a pin-stripe suit jacket. Hill uses the words “overhead,” “clientele” and “venue negotiation” regularly in conversation. Havard is more likely to shout phrases like “Patricia’s in the house, y’all!”

And while Havard is swiveling his hula-hooping hips, Hill blends into the background.

“Someone has to have a respectful corporate face,” Hill says as he laughs at Havard’s antics.

Meanwhile, Alisha Wheeler has on her game face. A man she just met is teaching her to play Scrabble, and it’s not as easy as it looks. Wheeler found out about PlayDate on the Internet and decided to check it out.

“To be able to play games again and not be an adult for one night, it’s kind of fun,” she says. “It’s not the typical, uneasy having to go up to someone you don’t know, because everyone has on these silly nametags, and [the games] are like an icebreaker.”

Todd Jones agrees. A PlayDate veteran, Jones has been coming to the events since they started three years ago. He’s even attended launches in other cities and says the atmosphere is the same everywhere.

“When you go to a club, people will stand around. They’re very defensive,” Jones says. “But here, you really have to intermingle.”

Gesturing to the six women he’s playing Uno with, Jones says he doesn’t come to PlayDate looking to hook up. “I just come here really to have a good time. If something happens after that, then, fine.”

Havard says that’s the basis of his company, Timeless, which also offers Paint By Numbers and Call Me UP. Paint By Numbers lets people socialize while painting a 100-square-foot mural. Call Me UP is a new interactive take on a stand-up comedy club.

“You go to a nightclub, a lot of times, that scene is the same,” Havard says. “It’s too loud; it’s too dark; it’s too smoky. A lot of people have on their nightclub personas, so you don’t get to know real people. What we’ve found with PlayDate is, it lets people let their guard down and be themselves. It’s romantic, in a sense, because you begin to connect like you did when you were younger.”

Back on the dance floor, Havard narrates a game of musical chairs. As the music stops, a woman and man fight for the last chair. “Girl, you’ve got a nice booty, but it ain’t in the seat,” Havard shouts into the microphone. “Everybody say byyyyyeee!

As the crowd shouts a farewell, Hill looks at his watch, shrugs proudly and smiles.

“It’s not every day you can answer ‘what do you do for a living?’ with ‘I have fun, and I make sure other people have fun, too,’ ” he says. “I mean, where else in the world would you see 30- and 40-year-olds playing musical chairs at midnight?”

Thou puny clapper-clawed horn-beast!

AIG Bailout

So this is the rest of the story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember when this economic crisis hit, and Congress let Bear Sterns go under, pushed a bunch of forced marriages between banks, etc.?

Then they bailed out AIG.

At the time, I thought: “That’s strange. |
What does an insurance company have to do with this crisis?”

I think I just found the answer.

Among other things, AIG INSURES THE PENSION TRUST OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS!!

No wonder they got bailed out right away!

 To hell with the people, let’s protect our future, said all our Senators and Congressmen.

Nice to see where their loyalties lie!

 

Matt Kibbe

FreedomWorks
Feb 02, 2009

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Stimulus

As with medicine, the first rule of law making should be first, do no harm. The “stimulus” bill fails this test spectacularly. Among so many other reasons to tell your U.S. Representative and Senators in Washington to oppose the stimulus, the Top 10 are:

1. The Stimulus Will Not Work

   Our history is replete with examples of “stimulus” spending failing to move our economy toward prosperity—Bush just tried it, Ford tried it. Even Christina Romer, Obama’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers agrees. Romer wrote in a study, “Our estimates suggest that fiscal actions contributed only moderately to recoveries.” The New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression and Obama’s stimulus package won’t end this recession. In fact, two UCLA economists published a study in 2004 finding FDR’s similar New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression by seven years.

   It fails because you don’t increase economic output by taking a dollar from one person and giving to another. The idea of “stimulus” spending falls for the “ broken window fallacy”—the allure of what is seen versus what is not seen. We will see the jobs created by the government spending. What we won’t see are the jobs lost because consumers have less money to spend because the government got the money its spending from us—the only place it can get money.

2. The Stimulus follows the same plan that ruined Japan’s economy

   Japan, after a dramatic market crash and a drop in real estate prices responded with government spending not unlike what the US Congress is considering today. In fact, they had 10 stimulus bills between 1992 and 2000, spending billions on infrastructure construction, building bridges, roads, and airports as well as pouring money into biotech and telecommunications. While many countries enjoyed booming economies and falling unemployment during this time, Japan had a lost decade, seeing its unemployment more than double. They spent double the US level of GDP on infrastructure, and now have a lousy economy and have one of the highest national debts in the world.

   After 10 stimulus packages, Japan has gone from having the second biggest economy in the world by a long shot, to being well behind the new number two, China, and is close to falling behind India. We do not want to follow their lead.

3. The Stimulus is full of Wasteful Projects

   While we were told the stimulus bill would focus on rebuilding America’s infrastructure—mainly the roads and bridges—only 5% of the current bill goes to such projects. The rest of the bill goes to pet projects like:

   • $400,000,000.00 for researching sexually transmitted diseases
   • $200,000,000.00 to force the military to buy environmentally-friendly electric cars
   • $34,000,000.00 to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
   • $75,000,000.00 for a program to end smoking which, if successful will bankrupt the State Children’s Health Program Democrats are about to pass (SCHIP) that is paid for by cigarette taxes
   • $650,000,000.00 for digital TV coupons
   • $50,000,000.00 for the National Endowment for the Arts

   These programs are just the 2008 version of the “ midnight basketball” program that derailed Bill Clinton’s attempt to ram through a “stimulus” bill in 1992. Despite that bill failing, the economy quickly recovered and the economic boom of the 1990s began.

4. The Government Can’t Afford the Stimulus

   President Bush pushed the government deep into a $1.2 trillion deficit this year, the third time he has set a record for biggest deficit ever, and President Obama’s stimulus bill follows his lead, piling on more debt. The deficit in 2008 amounted to about 8 percent of GDP. The entire debt is about 35 percent of GDP.

   Even for those who do still believe in Keynesianism, it is important to remember his theory didn’t start with the government already over a trillion dollars in the hole, he was generally operating from balanced budgets.

5. We Can’t afford the Stimulus

   How much is $825 billion? The Heritage Foundation has calculated that that comes to over $10,000 per American family. To further put that in context, on average, families annually spend:

   • $2,230 on apparel and services
   • $3,595 on health care
   • $4,322 on food at home
   • $11,657 on shelter

6. The Stimulus is Bigger Than the Economic Output of Most Countries

   If this bill were a country, it’d be the 15th largest country in world, ranking between Australia and Mexico. It is bigger than the economies of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined. In fact, the $875 billion it calls for is more than all the cash in the United States.

7. Central Planning like the Stimulus Doesn’t Work, Ask the USSR

   If centrally planned government spending on a grand scale produced economic growth, the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. If government spending on a grand scale produced economic growth we would be in the middle of the Bush Boom right now. It doesn’t. Working, saving, and investing leads to economic output and increases in productivity lead to growth.

   As economics professor Steven Horwitz said, “The stimulus plans assume consumption is the source of growth. It is not. It is the consequence of said growth.”

8. Remember the $750 Billion Bailout from this Fall?

   It was just a couple months ago when we were told if we would just quickly hand over $750 billion to the Treasury Secretary to bailout his friends on Wall Street, he would make the economy all better. That didn’t work, and neither will an additional $825 billion.

9. This Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees

   And this has nothing to do with paper money being made of cotton and linen. The only way the government gets money is through taxing, borrowing, or printing—that is, it has to take it out of the economy in order to put it back into the economy. If government borrows the money for the stimulus, then it will either have to print money later or raise taxes to pay it back. If it raises taxes to pay for the stimulus, it will, in effect, be robbing Peter to pay Paul – probably with interest. If it prints the money, inflation decreases the value of the dollar for every American – robbing Paul to pay Paul.

10. Economists do NOT Agree this is a Good Idea

    No matter how many times supporters of the bill say it, economists do not all agree this bill is a good idea. In fact, hundreds of economists have come out against it, including Noble Laureates, who signed a letter the Cato Institute ran as a full page ad in several major newspapers opposing the stimulus. Still more economists submitted statements to the US House of Representatives opposing the stimulus proposal.

And this only scratches the surface, there are so many more reasons to oppose the stimulus.

Why Can’t I Own a Canadian?

October 2002

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show. Recently, she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a east coast resident, which was posted on the Internet. It’s funny, as well as informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them:

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness – Lev.15:19- 24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination – Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? – Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted fan,
Jim

GOP Opposes Pay Limits On Bailed-Out Bankers

Ryan Grim

ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC

 

February 6, 2009 07:36 AM

 

Wall Street bankers, with their $18 billion in bonuses, private jets and gaudy conferences, are causing headaches for the GOP.

President Obama has proposed capping compensation for executives at banks that take taxpayer bailout money at $500,000. Republicans hate the idea — a position puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently about as popular as child-porn producers and subprime mortgage brokers.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blamed the “tone deaf” bankers for creating the political environment that allows Obama to call for a cap.

“Because of their excesses, very bad things begin to happen, like the United States government telling a company what it can pay its employees. That’s not a good thing in America,” Kyl told the Huffington Post.

“What executives have done is troubling, but it’s equally troubling to have government telling shareholders how much they can pay the executives,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL).

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he is “one of the chief defenders of Obama on the Republican side” for the president’s efforts to reach across the aisle. But, said Inhofe, “as I was listening to him make those statements I thought, is this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?”

Democrats argue that banks that take government money must accept any rules the government decides to send with it. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Barney Frank are both working on legislation that would complement Obama’s attempt to get a handle on executive compensation.

It’s not a novel concept, and it’s one the GOP supports — when applied to welfare recipients, at least. “We demand that welfare recipients do an honest day’s work for their checks. And now, since President Obama laid down the law Wednesday, we demand that the guys who ran our banking system into the ground abide by our pay scales in return for our bailing them out,” writes Harold Meyerson in a column Friday.

“After all, what’s the moral distinction between welfare recipients and the wizards of Wall Street, other than that the welfare recipients aren’t the ones responsible for tanking the global economy?”

Welfare reform that passed in the 1990s created the program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The government intervenes intimately into the lives of TANF recipients, requiring drug testing, time spent doing government approved activities and near-constant documentation of continuing compliance. The intervention is justified by reference to the payments being made.

One House Democratic aide quipped that bankers should be required to jump through some of the same hoops that welfare recipients are, beyond a simple salary cap. He suggested making bankers fulfill a strict work requirement and submit a time sheet, signed by a supervisor — perhaps the Board of Directors — in 15-minute intervals, proving that they worked 40 hours each week. Only certain activities would count, as is the case with TANF recipients.

“That three hour jet ride to get to the meeting in Chicago doesn’t count. Reading the Wall Street Journal is also not a countable activity. If they fail to do this once, you cut them off of TARP funds. If they fudge the time sheet, you charge them with TARP fraud and make them pay back any government money they’ve received,” the aide joked. “I’m sensing a legislative opportunity.”

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), though, said the underlying reasoning has merit. What applies to welfare recipients ought to also apply to corporate welfare recipients, he said.

“I think it does apply to that,” he said. “People are livid about these big bonuses and if the groups want to take government money it seems they should be able to have some limits on these bonuses.”

“If they don’t need it, don’t want it, fine. Don’t take it,” the Kansas Republican added.

Other Republicans disagreed. “It’s still government running business,” Inhofe said.

“It’s a leap, because the executive at the bank is a free agent who can leave the bank and go to work someplace else,” said Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) of the welfare comparison. “You run the risk of having a brain drain at the bank of their top talent.”

Bennett said, “Some of the things some of these bank executives have been doing demonstrates they have a tin ear. At the same time, I’m generally troubled by wage and price control, no matter how logical it may appear.”

The objection to the government intervention in salaries is rooted in the Republican belief that government is inherently ineffective. “If Congress can run a financial institution, it belies everything I’ve seen in this body. Government does not do a good job running private institutions,” said Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO).

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) agreed: “If we do such a good job of running the federal government, what business do we have telling them how to run the banks?”

The GOP is also concerned that setting compensation limits could put the country on the road to serfdom. “This is just a symptom of what happens when the government intervenes and we start controlling all aspects of the economy. This is just the first piece,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). “If you accept the fact that the government should be setting pay scales in America, then it’s hard not to go after these exorbitant salaries. But I think it’s a sad day in America when the government starts setting pay, no matter how outlandish they are.”

“What are we going to do next?” wondered Martinez. “Tell a company if they get TARP money where there offices should be? They should be renting maybe from an abandoned federal building?”

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) may have had the savviest responses to the tricky political question. McConnell didn’t acknowledge that he’d been asked the query; he walked on to the Senate floor instead of answering. McCain declined to comment.

Opposition isn’t uniform. Beyond Brownback, other Republican senators spoken to for this article, including Sens. Coburn, Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), expressed some support for a government effort to control the salaries of executives of banks that take bailout money.

At least one Republican has thought about the plan and come around to it. “In theory, I don’t like it. I just don’t like the government telling private industry how to run their businesses,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD) when first asked about it.

About fifteen minutes later, Thune had changed his mind. “You know what? I think I’m for that,” he said of Obama’s plan. “I don’t disagree with what he’s doing.”

Antivalentinism

Antivalentinism refers to a set of criticisms of Saint Valentine’s Day (February 14th). These tend to fall into two categories, one anticonsumerist and the other a critique of romantic love, or at least its role in modern society. These two objections can exist independently, so that one antivalentinist might exchange hand made gifts with his or her beloved and spend time together without spending any money, and another might go shopping or partying with single friends. That said, the two critiques seem more commonly to exist on a spectrum, expressed in the quip that “Love is just something created by Madison Avenue to sell perfume and chocolates.”

Commercialism

Valentine’s Day has been dubbed as a “Hallmark holiday” (a reference to the Hallmark greeting card company based in the United States). The moniker is used due to the millions of valentines exchanged each Valentine’s Day; a large portion of cards that are purchased in the U.S. are Hallmark cards. Many companies and businesses make large profits from selling massive amounts of cards, flowers, chocolates, candies, stuffed animals and other gifts which can lead to those with a significant other feeling they are expected to purchase such gifts, whether they want to or not. Some people believe this takes away from the values, significance and meaning of Valentine’s Day.

Alternatives

Singles Awareness Day (SAD) is a play on Valentines Day that is usually celebrated on the 14th of February or an adjacent day to get away from the commercialism of Valentine’s Day.

St. Skeletor’s Day (SSD) is a humorous celebration on the 15th of February that rejects consumerism and aims to raise awareness of the “corporate whore-fest” its organizers attribute to modern Valentine’s Day.

Anti-Valentine Cards

Anti-Valentine Cards have been popular almost as long as Valentine cards have been. They are typically cynical or sarcastic toward romance or the commercialism associated with Valentine’s Day.

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney

Lupercalia

Observed by	Roman, Pre-Roman Civilizations
Type	Pagan, Historical
Date	February 13 – February 15

Lupercalia was a very ancient, Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through February 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. The Lupercalia was believed in antiquity to have some connection with the Ancient Greek festival of the Arcadian Lykaia (from Ancient Greek: λύκος — lykos, “wolf”, Latin lupus) and the worship of Lycaean Pan, the Greek equivalent to Faunus, as instituted by Evander.

In Roman mythology, Lupercus is a god sometimes identified with the Roman god Faunus, who is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan. Lupercus is the god of shepherds. His festival, celebrated on the anniversary of the founding of his temple on February 15, was called the Lupercalia. His priests wore goatskins. The second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr mentions an image of “the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus,”  nude save for the girdle of goatskin, which stood in the Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. There, on the Ides of February, a goat and a dog were sacrificed, and salt mealcakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins were burnt.

The celebration during the Late Republic and Empire

Plutarch described Lupercalia:

Lupercalia, of which many write that it was anciently celebrated by shepherds, and has also some connection with the Arcadian Lycaea. At this time many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.

The Lupercalia festival was partly in honor of Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled the infant orphans, Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome,  explaining the name of the festival, Lupercalia, or “Wolf Festival.” The festival was celebrated near the cave of Lupercal on the Palatine (where Rome was founded, see Livy, Book I), to expiate and purify new life in the Spring. The Lupercal cave, which had fallen into a state of decay, was rebuilt by Augustus; the celebration of the festival had been maintained, as we know from the famous occurrence of it in 44 BC. A highly decorated cavern 50 feet below Augustus’ palace in the correct approximate location was discovered by archeologists in October 2007, which may prove to be the Lupercal cave when analyzed.

The religious ceremonies were directed by the Luperci, the “brothers of the wolf (lupus)”, a corporation of priests of Faunus, dressed only in a goatskin, whose institution is attributed either to the Arcadian Evander, or to Romulus and Remus. The Luperci were divided into two collegia, called Quinctiliani (or Quinctiales) and Fabiani, from the gens Quinctilia (or Quinctia) and gens Fabia; at the head of each of these colleges was a magister. In 44 BC. a third college, the Julii, was instituted in honor of Julius Caesar, the first magister of which was Mark Antony. In imperial times the members were usually of equestrian standing.

The festival began with the sacrifice by the Luperci (or the flamen dialis) of two male goats and a dog.^[6] Next two young patrician Luperci were led to the altar, to be anointed on their foreheads with the sacrificial blood, which was wiped off the bloody knife with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to smile and laugh.

The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called Februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth. This tradition itself may survive (Christianised, and shifted to Spring) in certain ritual Easter Monday whippings.

The Lupercalia in the fifth century

By the fifth century, when the public performance of pagan rites had been outlawed, a nominally Christian Roman populace still clung to the Lupercalia in the time of Gelasius (494–96). It had been literally degraded since the first century, when in 44 BC the consul Mark Antony did not scruple to run with the Luperci; now the upper classes left the festivities to the rabble, prompting Pope Gelasius I‘s taunt to the senators who would preserve it: “If you assert that this rite has salutary force, celebrate it yourselves in the ancestral fashion; run nude yourselves that you may properly carry out the mockery.” The remark was addressed to the senator Andromachus by Gelasius in an extended literary epistle that was virtually a diatribe against the Lupercalia. Gelasius finally abolished the Lupercalia after a long dispute.

 

free speech

Why is Free Speech so important?…

Why speak up about things that don’t seem to affect you?
Perhaps Pastor Martin Neimoller’s view in one version of his quote will answer that question.
He supported the Nazis until he realized, too late, what they were really about and was sent to Dachau concentration camp. 
He was one of the fortunate to be freed and live until 1984.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Social Democrats,
 and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Social Democrat.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
 and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew,

Then they came for me,
 and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

 

this version thanks to information researched at Liverpool Community College (which page has since been taken down) and by University of California Santa Barbara Professor Harold Marcuse who continues to update his pages with further research results.  This version is similar to the one I remember seeing when I was in middle school and it never left me.
I hope it never will.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

 

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

 

On February 16, 1884, Harper’s Weekly featured a cartoon about women’s rights.

 

“By All Means Commission the Ladies”

Neptune.  “I want to see the Captain of this ship.”

The Lady.  “I’m the Captain!”

Neptune.  “Shiver my Trident! my occupation’s gone.  A woman’s work is never done; and I can’t catch you napping.”

Artist: C. G. Bush

his Harper’s Weekly cartoon by C. G. Bush supports the commissioning of women as steamboat captains.

That position was also endorsed on the newspaper’s editorial page by George William Curtis, the longtime editor of Harper’s Weekly (1863-1892), who was a devoted champion of women’s rights.  In 1869, he helped found the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, and served for 20 years as one of its vice presidents. Curtis wrote and spoke often on the subject of securing political rights and advancing educational and economic opportunities for women.  He believed that women should be able to work at any occupation for which they were qualified by ability, to control their own wages legally, and to earn equal pay with men for doing the same job.

In his columns, Curtis encouraged the expansion of opportunities for women’s work and promoted women who engaged in labor reserved traditionally to men, denouncing the notion that those jobs would “unsex” the women.  When Kenneth Raynor, solicitor of the United States Treasury, denied Mary Miller of Louisiana a license to captain a steamboat on the Mississippi River, despite the fact that examiners had found her competent to command a steamer, editor Curtis and cartoonist Bush rallied to her support.  Raynor’s decision was soon overturned by Treasury Secretary Charles Folger, who granted Miller her commission.

Robert C. Kennedy

President’s Day

History

Titled Washington‘s Birthday, the federal holiday was originally implemented by the United States of America federal government in 1880 for government offices in the District of Columbia (20 Stat. 277) and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices (23 Stat. 516). As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, February 22. On January 1, 1971 the federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday in February by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. A draft of the Uniform Holidays Bill of 1968 would have renamed the holiday to Presidents’ Day to honor both Washington and Lincoln, but this proposal failed in committee and the bill as voted on and signed into law on June 28, 1968 kept the name Washington’s Birthday.

By the mid-1980s, with a push from advertisers, the term “Presidents’ Day” began its public appearance. The theme has expanded the focus of the holiday to honor another President born in February, Abraham Lincoln, and often other Presidents of the United States. Although Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, was never a federal holiday, approximately a dozen state governments have officially renamed their Washington’s Birthday observances as “Presidents Day”, “Washington and Lincoln Day”, or other such designations. However, “Presidents Day” is not always an all-inclusive term. In Massachusetts, while the state officially celebrates “Washington’s Birthday,” state law also prescribes that the governor issue an annual Presidents Day proclamation honoring the presidents that have come from Massachusetts: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge, and John F. Kennedy. (Coolidge, the only one born outside of Massachusetts, spent his entire political career before the vice presidency there. George H. W. Bush, on the other hand, was born in Massachusetts, but has spent most of his life elsewhere.) Alabama uniquely observes the day as “Washington and Jefferson Day”, even though Jefferson’s birthday was in April. In New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois, while Washington’s Birthday is a federal holiday, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is still a state holiday, falling on February 12 regardless of the day of the week. In California, Lincoln’s Birthday is also a legal state holiday, however, observance is frequently moved to the Monday or Friday occurring closest to February 12. When Lincoln’s Birthday is observed on the Friday preceding Washington’s Birthday, the resultant four-day weekend is commonly called “Presidents’ Day Weekend”, particularly by retailers in their sale advertisements.

In Washington’s home state of Virginia the holiday is legally known as “George Washington Day.”

Observance and traditions

Many American schools use the days leading up to Presidents Day to educate students about the history of the Presidents of the United States, especially Washington and Lincoln.

Today, the February holiday has become well-known for being a day in which many stores, especially car dealers, hold sales. Until the late 1980s, corporate businesses were universally closed on this day, the way they are on (for example) Memorial Day or Christmas Day. With the late 1980s advertising push to rename the holiday, more and more businesses are staying open on the holiday each year, and, as on Veterans Day and Columbus Day, most delivery services outside of the U.S. Postal Service now offer regular service on the day as well. Some public transit systems have also gone to regular schedules on the day. Various theories exist for this, one accepted reason being to make up for the growing trend of corporations to close in observance of the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. However, when reviewing the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill debate of 1968 in the Congressional Record, one notes that supporters of the Bill were intent on moving federal holidays to Mondays to promote business. Over time, as with many federal holidays, few Americans actually celebrate Presidents Day, and it is mainly known as a day off from work or school, although most non-governmental workers do not get the day off.

Consequently, some schools, which used to close for a single day for both Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthday, now often close for the entire week (beginning with the Monday holiday) as a “mid-winter recess”. For example, the New York City school district began doing so in the 1990s.

The federal holiday Washington’s Birthday honors the accomplishments of the man who has been referred to, for over two centuries, as “The Father of his Country”. Celebrated for his leadership in the founding of the nation, he was the Electoral College‘s unanimous choice to become the first President; he was seen as a unifying force for the new republic and set an example for future holders of the office.

The holiday is also a tribute to the general who created the first military badge of merit for the common soldier. Revived on Washington’s 200th birthday in 1932, the Purple Heart recognizes injuries received in battle. Like Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Washington’s Birthday weekend offers another opportunity to honor the country’s veterans.

Community celebrations often display a lengthy heritage. Historic Alexandria, Virginia, hosts a month-long tribute, including the longest running George Washington Birthday parade, while the community of Eustis, Florida, continues its annual “George Fest” celebration begun in 1902. At the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and at Mount Vernon in Alexandria, Virginia, visitors are treated to birthday celebrations throughout the federal holiday weekend and through February 22.

In Alabama, the third Monday in February commemorates the birthdays of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (who was born in April).

In Arkansas, the third Monday in February is “George Washington’s Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day,” an official state holiday.

In New Mexico, President’s Day, at least as a state government paid holiday, is observed on the Friday following Thanksgiving.

In 2007, the country celebrated both Washington’s 275th birthday and the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of the Purple Heart medal.

Since 1862, there has been a tradition in the United States Senate that George Washington’s Farewell Address be read on his birthday. Citizens had asked that this be done in light of the approaching Civil War. The annual tradition continues with the reading of the address on or near Washington’s Birthday.

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Howard Carter (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist, noted as a primary discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

In 1891, at the age of 17, Carter began studying inscriptions and paintings in Egypt. He worked on the excavation of Beni Hasan, the grave site of the princes of Middle Egypt, c. 2000 BC. Later he came under the tutelage of William Flinders Petrie.

He is also famous for finding the remains of Queen Hatshepsut‘s tomb in Deir el-Bahri. In 1899, Carter was offered a job working for the Egyptian Antiquities Service (EAS), from which he resigned as a result of a dispute between Egyptian site guards and a group of French tourists in 1905.

Tutankhamun’s tomb

Tomb of Tutankhamun

In 1907, after several hard years, Carter was introduced to Lord Carnarvon. Soon, Carter was supervising all of Carnarvon’s excavations.

Carnarvon financed Carter’s search for the tomb of a little known pharaoh, Tutankhamun, whose existence Carter had discovered. After several years of fruitless searching, Carnarvon was becoming dissatisfied with the lack of return from his investment and, in 1922, he gave Carter one more season of funding to find the tomb.

On 4 November 1922, Carter found the steps leading to Tutankhamun’s tomb (subsequently designated KV62), by far the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. He wired Carnarvon to come, and on 26 November 1922, with Carnarvon, Carnarvon’s daughter, and others in attendance, Carter made the famous “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of the doorway, and was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He did not yet know at that point whether it was “a tomb or merely a cache”, but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Carnarvon asked him if he saw anything, Carter replied: “Yes, I see wonderful things”.

The next several weeks were spent carefully cataloging the contents of the antechamber. On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway, and found that it did indeed lead to a burial chamber, and he got his first glimpse of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun. All of these discoveries were eagerly covered by the world’s press, but most of their representatives were stuck in the hotels; only H. V. Morton was allowed on the scene, and his vivid descriptions helped to cement Carter’s reputation with the British public.

Carter’s own papers suggest that he, Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert entered the tomb shortly after its discovery – without waiting for the arrival of Egyptian officials (as stipulated in their excavation permit). Artifacts and jewelry from the tomb were found in Carter’s home after his death, suggesting that he had violated his permit

When he discovered the tomb, it was said he also found 150 gold amulets and even a death mask weighing 11 kilograms, with which the pharaoh was buried. Carter was thought to have used an axe to retrieve the gold charms and the mummy was broken into 18 pieces. Due to the poor archaeological knowledge at the time, Carter left the mummy for hours without protection under the sun (in November, more than 35 degrees Celsius).

NEWS ANALYSIS

Liberals not pleased with go-slow approach by Obama

Frank Polich, Bloomberg News

IN CHICAGO: President Obama on his way to a friend’s house to watch the NBA All-Star game. Obama has been criticized for equivocation by some liberal groups.

Activists recall his promises as a candidate and express frustration at his equivocation as president. They cite stem cell research and the detainee policy as examples.

By Peter Wallsten
February 16, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Slowly over the last few weeks, some of Barack Obama’s most fervent supporters have come to an unhappy realization: The candidate who they thought was squarely on their side in policy fights is now a president who needs cajoling and persuading.

Advocates for stem cell research thought Obama would quickly sign an order to reverse former President Bush’s restrictions on the science. Now they are fretting over Obama’s statement that he wants to act in tandem with Congress, possibly causing a delay.

Critics of Bush’s faith-based initiative thought Obama had promised to end religious discrimination among social service groups taking federal money.

But Obama, in announcing his own faith-based program this month, said only that the discrimination issue might be reviewed.

And Obama’s recent moves regarding a lawsuit by detainees have left some liberal groups and Bush critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, feeling betrayed, given that Obama was a harsh critic of Bush’s detainee policies when running for office last year.

The anxiety is also being felt in the labor movement, one of Obama’s most important support bases. Some union officials and their allies are frustrated that at a crucial point in negotiations over his massive stimulus package, Obama seemed to call for limits on “Buy American” provisions in the bill aimed at making sure stimulus money would be spent on U.S.-made materials.

Obama has been president for less than a month, and his liberal critics concede that the economic crisis has understandably taken the focus off their issues. But some of the issues in play were crucial to building excitement on the left and mobilizing grass-roots support for Obama’s candidacy.

“He made very clear promises, and he should live up to them,” said Arthur Stamoulis, director of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, which received an unqualified “yes” from Obama on a campaign questionnaire last year when the group asked if he would support “Buy American” requirements. “The fact that he’s hedging on this is not promising. He’s catering much too much to the desires of Republicans who are not going to support the change that voters wanted.”

Thea Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO, said, “We would like to have him stand more forthrightly behind the positions that he took during the campaign.”

Obama has long said his administration will be driven by competence, not political ideology. He has blamed the nation’s problems on a failed and highly partisan political system, and has said that solutions should come by building coalitions that cross the traditional battle lines in Washington policy fights.

Moreover, White House aides say, Obama has already fulfilled promises such as enacting a labor-backed pay equity law and beginning the process of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“Given that we have only been here for three weeks, that is a pretty good start,” said White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki.

Yet for some who supported him, Obama’s recent actions contain either outright abandonment of what they thought had been campaign promises, or at least a hesitation on Obama’s part to follow through quickly and clearly.

Union leaders were taken aback this month when Obama, during television appearances discussing the stimulus legislation, spoke skeptically of “Buy American” provisions in the bill giving U.S. makers of steel and other materials an advantage in bidding for contracts.

Obama told Fox News that the U.S. “can’t send a protectionist message,” and he cautioned on ABC News that the requirements could be a “potential source of trade wars that we can’t afford at a time when trade is sinking all across the globe.”

That language mirrored the criticisms that business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had used in arguing against “Buy American” rules.

Business groups were thrilled at Obama’s words.

“That was an extremely important moment,” said John Murphy, vice president for international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the biggest business associations. “The business community is very pleased that the White House stepped in and showed leadership on this issue.”

“Buy American” rules remain in the stimulus bill that the president is scheduled to sign Tuesday, but labor advocates were alarmed by Obama’s willingness to insert himself in the debate as a champion of business concerns. They said his stance was far different than during the presidential election, when Obama was trying to win union votes and called for rebuilding America with union-made materials.

Obama’s new language was “a little disturbing,” said Jeff Faux, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which has received funding from labor unions. He said the president had “moved so quickly to concede on this question without really drawing the debate out.”

Now, some labor advocates worry about how aggressively the new president will push to fulfill other key campaign promises, such as passage of the so-called card check legislation that would make it easier to form labor unions.

At the ACLU, Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said his group’s disappointment was “deep and unparalleled” after the Justice Department decided to keep in place one of the most controversial legal tactics of the Bush anti-terrorism arsenal: using the “state secrets” doctrine to block lawsuits by detainees.

The Justice Department invoked the privilege last week in arguing that a case should not proceed because it might lead to the disclosure of state secrets.

As a candidate, Obama had attacked Bush for using the tactic and had pledged to reverse such policies.

“Clearly, the state secrets campaign promise is broken,” Romero said, “on his watch, with his attorney general, and with his government lawyers articulating the Bush administration policies.”

Advocates of medical research using human embryonic stem cells are also watching Obama.

When he was a candidate, Obama told the website sciencedebate2008.org that he would reverse Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for the research “through executive order.” Immediately following his campaign victory, transition director John Podesta told reporters that the stem cell order would be one of the first priorities.

But Obama recently signaled in remarks to Democratic lawmakers that he intended to wait for action in Congress.

Wary of a delay, one prominent advocacy group sent Obama a letter recently saying that he had pledged to revoke the Bush order. “We wanted him to know that we were still counting on the campaign commitment,” said Amy Comstock Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.

Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod told Fox News on Sunday that action could come soon.

Under Bush’s faith-based initiative, religious groups taking federal money to provide social services were allowed to discriminate in hiring against people of other religions.

Obama, as a candidate, had seemed to attack that policy when he said that groups receiving federal grants should not discriminate against the people they served, “or against the people you hire on the basis of their religion.”

But instead of reversing Bush’s policy, Obama has said his own faith-based team may conduct a case-by-case review.

“People know that this looks like a promise that has been deep-sixed,” said Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Though Lynn said he was upset by Obama’s Feb. 5 announcement of his policy on religious discrimination, “I’m more disillusioned now because there has been weeks of healthy criticism and yet no movement by the White House.”

 

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Human World

 

The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific are married at birth.

When Albert Einstein died, his final words died with him. The nurse at his side didn’t understand German.

St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.

The lance ceased to be an official battle weapon in the British Army in 1927.

St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death.

Many sailors used to wear gold earrings so that they could afford a proper burial when they died.

Some very Orthodox Jew refuse to speak Hebrew, believing it to be a language reserved only for the Prophets.

A South African monkey was once awarded a medal and promoted to the rank of corporal during World War I.

Born 4 January 1838, General Tom Thumb’s growth slowed at the age of 6 months, at 5 years he was signed to the circus by P.T. Barnum, and at adulthood reached a height of only 1 metre.

Because they had no proper rubbish disposal system, the streets of ancient Mesopotamia became literally knee-deep in rubbish.

The Toltecs, Seventh-century native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies.

China banned the pigtail in 1911 as it was seen as a symbol of feudalism.

The Amayra guides of Bolivia are said to be able to keep pace with a trotting horse for a distance of 100 kilometres.

Sliced bread was patented by a jeweller, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912. 

Before it was stopped by the British, it was the not uncommon for women in some areas of India to choose to be burnt alive on their husband’s funeral pyre.

Ivan the terrible claimed to have ‘deflowered thousands of virgins and butchered a similar number of resulting offspring’.

Before the Second World War, it was considered a sacrilege to even touch an Emperor of Japan.

An American aircraft in Vietnam shot itself down with one of its own missiles.

The Anglo-Saxons believed Friday to be such an unlucky day that they ritually slaughtered any child unfortunate enough to be born on that day.

During the eighteenth century, laws had to be brought in to curb the seemingly insatiable appetite for gin amongst the poor. Their annual intake was as much as five million gallons.

Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups

The Nobel Prize resulted form a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence – he invented dynamite.

The cost of the first pay-toilets installed in England was tuppence.

Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.

In 1647 the English Parliament abolished Christmas.

Mao Rse-Tang, the first chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, was born 26 December 1893. Before his rise to power, he occupied the humble position of Assistant Librarian at the University of Peking.

Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. The largest is petrol.

King George III was declared violently insane in 1811, 9 years before he died.

In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an ‘ugly’ potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.

For Roman Catholics, 5 January is St Simeon Stylites’ Day. He was a fifth-century hermit who showed his devotion to God by spending literally years sitting on top of a huge flagpole.

When George I became King of England in 1714, his wife did not become Queen. He placed her under house arrest for 32 years.

The richest 10 per cent of the French people are approximately fifty times better off than the poorest 10 per cent.

Henry VII was the only British King to be crowned on the field of battle

During World War One, the future Pope John XXIII was a sergeant in the Italian Army.

Richard II died aged 33 in 1400. A hole was left in the side of his tomb so people could touch his royal head, but 376 years later some took advantage of this and stole his jawbone.

The magic word “Abracadabra” was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.

The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas Carols, judging them to be out of keeping with the true spirit of Christmas.

Albert Einstein was once offered the Presidency of Israel. He declined saying he had no head for problems.

Uri Geller, the professional psychic was born on December 20 1946. As to the origin of his alleged powers, Mr Geller maintains that they come from the distant planet of Hoova.

Ralph and Carolyn Cummins had 5 children between 1952 and 1966, all were born on the 20 February.

John D. Rockefeller gave away over US$ 500,000,000 during his lifetime.

Only 1 child in 20 are born on the day predicted by the doctor.

In the 1970′s, the Rhode Island Legislature in the US entertained a proposal that there be a $2 tax on every act of sexual intercourse in the State.

Widows in equatorial Africa actually wear sackcloth and ashes when attending a funeral.

The ‘Hundred Years War’ lasted 116 years.

The British did not release the body of Napoleon Bonaparte to the French until twenty days after his death.

Admiral Lord Nelson was less than 1.6 metres tall.

John Glenn, the American who first orbited the Earth, was showered with 3,529 tonnes of ticker tape when he got back.

Native American Indians used to name their children after the first thing they saw as they left their tepees subsequent to the birth. Hence such strange names as Sitting Bull and Running Water.

Catherine the First of Russia, made a rule that no man was allowed to get drunk at one of her parties before nine o’clock.

Queen Elizabeth I passed a law which forced everyone except for the rich to wear a flat cap on Sundays.

In 1969 the shares of the Australian company ‘Poseidon’ were worth $1, one year later they were worth $280 each.

Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the onset of baldness.

Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour during World War II, left school at the age of eleven.

At the age of 12, Martin Luther King became so depressed he tried committing suicide twice, by jumping out of his bedroom window.

It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.

The Turk’s consider it considered unlucky to step on a piece of bread.

The authorities do not allow tourists to take pictures of Pygmies in Zambia.

The Dutch in general prefer their french fries with mayonnaise.

Upon the death of F.D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman became the President of America on 12 April 1945. The initial S in the middle of his name doesn’t in fact mean anything. Both his grandfathers had names beginning with ‘S’, and so Truman’s mother didn’t want to disappoint either of them.

Sir Isaac Newton was obsessed with the occult and the supernatural.

One of Queen Victoria’s wedding gifts was a 3 metre diameter, half tonne cheese.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.

It was considered unfashionable for Venetian women, during the Renaissance to have anything but silvery-blonde hair.

Queen Victoria was one of the first women ever to use chloroform to combat pain during childbirth.

Peter the Great had the head of his wife’s lover cut off and put into a jar of preserving alcohol, which he then ordered to be placed by her bed.

The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler’s Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Henry Ford was the inventor of the assembly line, and Hitler used this knowledge of the assembly line to speed up production, and to create better and interchangeable products.

Atilla the Hun is thought to have been a dwarf.

The warriors tribes of Ethiopia used to hang the testicles of those they killed in battle on the ends of their spears.

On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died. Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson’s fictional ship was the Titan.

There are over 200 religious denominations in the United States.

Eau de Cologne was originally marketed as a way of protecting yourself against the plague.

Charles the Simple was the grandson of Charles the Bald, both were rulers of France.

Theodor Herzi, the Zionist leader who was born on May 2 1860, once had the astonishing idea of converting Jews to Christianity as a way of combating anti-Semitism.

The women of an African tribe make themselves more attractive by permanently scaring their faces.

Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland seemed to have a prodigious sexual appetite, and fathered hundreds of illegitimate children during his lifetime.

Some moral purists in the Middle Ages believed that women’s ears ought to be covered up because the Virgin May had conceived a child through them.

Hindus don’t like dying in bed, they prefer to die beside a river.

While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.

It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.

The Emperor Caligula once decided to go to war with the Roman God of the sea, Poseidon, and ordered his soldiers to throw their spears into the water at random.

The Ecuadorian poet, José Olmedo, has a statue in his honour in his home country. But, unable to commission a sculptor, due to limited funds, the government brought a second-hand statue .. Of the English poet Lord Byron.

In 1726, at only 7 years old, Charles Sauson inherited the post of official executioner.

Sir Winston Churchill rationed himself to 15 cigars a day.

On 7 January 1904 the distress call ‘CQD’ was introduced. ‘CQ’ stood for ‘Seek You’ and ‘D’ for ‘Danger’. This lasted only until 1906 when it was replaced with ‘SOS’.

Though it is forbidden by the Government, many Indians still adhere to the caste system which says that it is a defilement for even the shadow of a person from a lowly caste to fall on a Brahman ( a member of the highest priestly caste).

In parts of Malaya, the women keep harems of men.

The childrens’ nursery rhyme ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses’ actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.

The word ‘denim’ comes from ‘de Nimes’, Nimes being the town the fabric was originally produced.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, there was a tax put on men’s beards.

Idi Amin, one of the most ruthless tyrants in the world, before coming to power, served in the British Army.

Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.

It is illegal to play tennis in the streets of Cambridge.

Custer was the youngest General in US history, he was promoted at the age of 23.

It costs more to send someone to reform school than it does to send them to Eton.

The American pilot Charles Lindbergh received the Service Cross of the German Eagle form Hermann Goering in 1938.

The active ingredient in Chinese Bird’s nest soup is saliva.

Marie Currie, who twice won the Nobel Prize, and discovered radium, was not allowed to become a member of the prestigious French Academy because she was a woman.

It was quite common for the men of Ancient Greece to exercise in public .. naked.

John Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, had a payphone in his mansion.

Iceland is the world’s oldest functioning democracy.

Adolf Eichmann (responsible for countless Jewish deaths during World war II), was originally a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Co. of Austria.

The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Matami Tribe of West Africa play a version of football, the only difference being that they use a human skull instead of a more normal ball.

John Winthrop introduced the fork to the American dinner table for the first time on 25 June 1630.

Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Bristol, England on 3 February 1821, was the first woman in America to gain an M.D. degree.

Abraham Lincoln was shot with a Derringer.

The great Russian leader, Lenin died 21 January 1924, suffering from a degenerative brain disorder. At the time of his death his brain was a quarter of its normal size.

When shipped to the US, the London bridge ( thought by the new owner to be the more famous Tower Bridge ) was classified by US customs to be a ‘large antique’.

Sir Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ cloakroom after his mother went into labour during a dance at Blenheim Palace.

In 1849, David Atchison became President of the United States for just one day, and he spent most of the day sleeping.

Between the two World War’s, France was controlled by forty different governments.

The ‘Crystal Palace’ at the Great Exhibition of 1851, contained 92 900 square metres of glass.

It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on their testicles when taking an oath. The modern term ‘testimony’ is derived from this tradition.

Sir Winston Churchill’s mother was descended from a Red Indian.

The study of stupidity is called ‘monology’.

Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marring a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.

More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on Life insurance.

In 1911 3 men were hung for the murder of Sir Edmund Berry at Greenbury Hill, their last names were Green, Berry , and Hill.

A firm in Britain sold fall-out shelters for pets.

During the seventeen century , the Sultan of Turkey ordered his entire harem of women drowned, and replace with a new one.

Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill ‘if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee’. His reply …’ if you were my wife, I would drink it ! ‘.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

The Great Pyramid of Giza consists of 2,300,000 blocks each weighing 2.5 tons.

On 9 February 1942, soap rationing began in Britain.

Paul Revere was a dentist.

The Budget speech on April 17 1956 saw the introduction of Premium Savings Bonds into Britain. The machine which picks the winning numbers is called “Ernie”, an abbreviation, which stands for’ electronic random number indicator equipment’.

Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.

The Russian mystic, Rasputin, was the victim of a series of murder attempts on this day in 1916. The assassins poisoned, shot and stabbed him in quick succession, but they found they were unable to finish him off. Rasputin finally succumbed to the ice-cold waters of a river.

Bonnie Prince Charlie, the leader of the Jacobite rebellion to depose of George II of England, was born 31 December 1720. Considered a great Scottish hero, he spent his final years as a drunkard in Rome.

The Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, was born of the 29th December 1809. Apparently, as a result of his strong Puritan impulses, Gladstone kept a selection of whips in his cellar with which he regularly chastised himself.

A parthenophobic has a fear of virgins.

South American gauchos were known to put raw steak under their saddles before starting a day’s riding, in order to tenderise the meat.

There are 240 white dots in a Pacman arcade game.

In 1939 the US political party ‘The American Nazi Party’ had 200,000 members.

King Solomon of Israel had about 700 wives as well as hundreds of mistresses.

Urine was once used to wash clothes.

North American Indian, Sitting Bull, died on 15 December 1890. His bones were laid to rest in North Dakota, but a business group wanted him moved to a ‘more natural’ site in South Dakota. Their campaign was rejected so they stole the bones, and they now reside in Sitting Bull Park, South Dakota.

St Nicholas, the original Father Christmas, is the patron saint of thieves, virgins and communist Russia.

Dublin is home of the Fairy Investigation Society.

Fourteen million people were killed in World War I, twenty million died in a flu epidemic in the years that followed.

People in Siberia often buy milk frozen on a stick.

Princess Ann was the only competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics that did not have to undergo a sex test.

Ethelred the Unready, King of England in the Tenth-century, spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and his mother-in-law.

Coffins which are due for cremation are usually made with plastic handles.

Blackbird, who was the chief of Omaha Indians, was buried sitting on his favourite horse.

The two highest IQ’s ever recorded (on a standard test) both belong to women.

The Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disreali, was born 21 December 1804. He was noted for his oratory and had a number of memorable exchanges in the House with his great rival William Gladstone. Asked what the difference between a calamity and a misfortune was Disreali replied: ‘If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out again, it would be a calamity’.

The Imperial Throne of Japan has been occupied by the same family for the last thirteen hundred years.

In the seventeenth-century a Boston man was sentenced to two hours in the stocks for obscene behaviour, his crime, kissing his wife in a public place on a Sunday.

President Kaunda of Zambia once threatened to resign if his fellow countrymen didn’t stop drinking so much alcohol.

Due to staggering inflation in the 1920′s, 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 German marks were worth 1 US dollar.

Gorgias of Epirus was born during preparation of  his mothers funeral.

The city of New York contains a district called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.

The city of Hiroshima left the Industrial Promotion Centre standing as a monument the atomic bombing.

During the Medieval Crusades, transporting bodies off the battlefield for burial was a major problem, this was solved by carrying a huge cauldron into the Holy wars, boiling down the bodies, and taking only the bones with them.

A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.

George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.

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I just want to thank all of you for your educational emails over the past year.

Thanks to you, I no longer open a public bathroom door without using a paper towel.

I can’t sit down on the hotel bedspread because I can only imagine what has happened on it since it was last washed.

 I can’t enjoy lemon slices in my tea or on my seafood anymore because lemon peels have been found to contain all kinds of nasty germs including feces. 

 I have trouble shaking hands with someone who has been driving because the number one pass-time while driving alone is picking your nose (although cell phone usage may be taking the number one spot)

 Eating a Little Debbie sends me on a guilt trip because I can only imagine how many gallons of trans fats I have consumed over the years.

 I can’t touch any woman’s purse for fear she has placed it on the floor of a public bathroom.  Yuck!

 I must send my special thanks to whoever sent me the one about poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing. 

 Also, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.

 I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown)  who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.

 I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the  $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.

 I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish.

 I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.

 I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

 Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.

 Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

 I no longer can buy gasoline without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won’t crawl in my back seat when I’m pumping gas..

 I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put ‘Under God’  on their cans.

 I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

 And thanks for letting me know I can’t boil a cup of water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face…disfiguring me for life.

 I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.

 I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

 I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.

 I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our American troops or the Salvation Army.

 I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to  Jamaica ,  Uganda &  Singapore and  Uzbekistan .

 I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their  recipe.

 Thanks to you, I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine because a big brown  African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt.

 And thanks to your great advice,

I can’t ever pick up $5.00 dropped in the parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.

I can no longer drive my car because I can’t buy gas from certain gas companies!
    

 If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00 PM this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician…

 Have a wonderful day… 

 

Oh, by the way….. 

 

A German scientist from Argentina , after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with insufficient brain activity read their e-mail with their hand on the mouse.

 

Don’t bother taking it off now, it’s too late

Commentary: If you oppose stimulus, don’t take the money

By Paul Begala
CNN Contributor

Editor’s note: Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House.

Paul Begala says South Carolina’s governor should refuse to take federal aid he opposes.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina took umbrage at my writing that his approach to the economic crisis is to do nothing. I’ll deal with his “ideas” in a moment, but first let me make a modest proposal:

If Republican politicians are so deeply opposed to President Obama’s economic recovery plan, they should refuse to take the money. After all, if you think all that federal spending is damaging, there are easy ways to reduce it: Don’t take federal money.

Gov. Sanford can lead the way. South Carolina should decline to accept any federal funds for transportation, education, health care, clean energy or any of the other ideas President Obama is advocating to fix the economy. And the rest of the GOP can follow suit.

Justice Louis Brandeis famously called states “laboratories of democracy.” So let’s experiment. Gov. Sanford can be the guinea pig. His Palmetto State already gets $1.35 back from Washington for every dollar it pays in federal taxes, according to 2005 numbers, the latest calculated by the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit tax research group.

South Carolina is a ward of the federal government. It’s been on welfare for years. If Gov. Sanford is so all-fired opposed to federal spending, let’s start by cutting federal spending in South Carolina. Otherwise, he’s got about as much credibility on fiscal conservatism as A-Rod has on steroids.

Under the Bush-Sanford economic theories, South Carolina’s unemployment rate has reached 9.5 percent — among the highest in the nation. But if Gov. Sanford wants to continue those policies, good luck to him.

Make no mistake about it, Republicans like Gov. Sanford want to go back to the bad old days of George W. Bush. In his CNN.com column, Gov. Sanford expends 605 words attacking President Obama’s plan to turn the country around after eight years of Bush-Republican-Sanford economics.

That is his right, but attacking President Obama‘s plan is not itself an alternative plan. Nor is dredging up hoary old gripes about the New Deal. Nor, indeed, is deriding neighborhood electric vehicles — which create jobs, save money and reduce pollution — as “streamlined golf carts.” But that is what Gov. Sanford offers us. iReport.com: Share your thoughts on the stimulus plan

Then Gov. Sanford turns to his ideas (keep in mind he was responding to my charge that he favors doing nothing). He devotes precisely one half of one sentence to his plan to save the world economy; 24 words that will create millions of jobs, restore liquidity to capital markets, protect investors and consumers, regenerate stagnant demand and restore the capitalist system. Here they are:

“… cutting the payroll tax, opening foreign markets through an expansion of our trade agreements, and reducing our corporate tax, which is among the highest worldwide.”

Wow. As we say in the South, I’ve got the vapors. So cutting taxes and cutting trade deals will get us out of this mess? That’s all we need to do?

We don’t need to extend unemployment insurance, or update health information technology, or move to renewable energy or repair roads or rebuild bridges or modernize the power grid or prevent states and cities from laying off teachers and cops or any of the other myriad proposals in President Obama’s plan?

To be sure, President Obama’s plan includes tax cuts — mostly for middle-class families. But cutting taxes on corporate profits is of little utility when there are no corporate profits to tax. And precisely with whom would Gov. Sanford cut these miraculous trade deals? In case he hasn’t been watching CNN, the entire world economy is in the tank.

If cutting taxes for the rich and for big corporations and promoting foreign trade alone could energize the economy, we wouldn’t be in this mess. But maybe Gov. Sanford is right. Let’s keep our federal money — give it to states where the governors will actually put it to good use. We’ll let Gov. Sanford try his plan, we’ll try President Obama’s plan.

Something tells me Gov. Sanford won’t take that gamble. Because for all his rhetoric about hating federal spending, he can’t wait to get his hands on our money.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Begala.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice – Marquis de la Grange

Universal cellphone charger will ring the changes, say makers

BARCELONA, Spain (CNN) — Cell phone makers Tuesday pledged to end one of modern life’s chief frustrations — and introduce a universal charger for handsets by 2012.

An estimated 1.2 billion cell phones were sold in 2008, at least half of which were replacement handsets.

The GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Association), which represents more than 750 of the world’s cell phone operators, made the announcement at its annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Tuesday.

Under the scheme, phone makers have pledged that a majority of new handset models will include the universal charger by January 1 2012. The planned device will use a micro USB plug.

Aside from bringing relief to drawers stuffed full of redundant chargers, the GSMA stressed that the new device would reduce raw materials.

“The mobile industry has a pivotal role to play in tackling environmental issues and this programme is an important step that could lead to huge savings in resources, not to mention convenience for consumers,” said Rob Conway, CEO and member of the board of the GSMA in a statement.

Last year an estimated 1.2 billion cell phones were sold, according to University of Southern Queensland data reported by the GSMA, of which handsets accounted for between 50 and 80 per cent. That equates to between 51,000 and 82,000 tonnes of chargers.

The GSMA hopes the initiative will slash the greenhouse gases that result from the manufacture and transport of chargers by 13.6 and 21.8 million tonnes each year

“There is enormous potential in mobile to help people live and work in an eco-friendly way and with the backing of some or the biggest names in the industry, this initiative will lead the way,” Conway added.

The GSMA says that companies which have signed up to the plan include 3 Group, AT&T, KTF, LG, mobilkom austria, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

1801 – An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President of the United States and Burr Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.

The emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns soon complicated matters in the elections of 1796 and 1800. In 1796, the winner of the election was John Adams, a member of the Federalist Party. The runner up, and therefore the new Vice President, was Thomas Jefferson of the opposition Democratic-Republican Party.

In 1800, the candidates of the Democratic-Republican Party (Jefferson for President and Aaron Burr for Vice President) each tied for first place. However, since all electoral votes were for President, Burr’s votes were technically for him being President even though he was his party’s second choice. Jefferson was so hated by Federalists that the party members sitting in the lame duck Congress tried to elect Burr. The Congress deadlocked for 35 ballots as neither candidate received the necessary vote of a majority (nine) of the state delegations in the House. Only after Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton—who disliked Burr much more than Jefferson—made known his preference for Jefferson was the issue resolved on the 36th ballot.

In response to those elections, the Congress proposed the Twelfth Amendment—with electors casting one vote for President and one vote for Vice President—to replace the system outlined in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3. The Twelfth Amendment was proposed in 1803 and was adopted in 1804

AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

In 1801, in only the 4th presidential election for the young American nation, Thomas Jefferson, President John Adams and Senator Aaron Burr find themselves in a three-way tie for the leadership of the small country. Ballot after ballot was cast indecisively in the House of Representatives, leading only to more rancor and entrenchment among those who wanted one of their candidates to come out on top. Thomas Jefferson urged Senator Burr, who had ostensibly been running with him to become Vice-President, to drop out and throw his supporters to the Virginian. The senator, seeing himself this close to power, balked, and campaigned vigorously for the top office. In the end, his congressional relationships carried the day, and he won the presidency, with Jefferson serving, yet again, as Vice-President. The enmity between the two men over this incident spilled out into legislation as Jefferson, in his post as President of the Senate, blocked many of Burr’s initiatives out of spite. In 1803, this proved to be too much for Burr to take any longer, and he challenged Jefferson to a duel. Jefferson, the better shot of the two, emerged victorious, and assumed the office of President as Burr died on the field of honor. This caused an uproar in the dead president’s home state of New York, which sent its militia to the capitol to seize President Jefferson. They were met by Virginia’s soldiers, and a civil war erupted between the northern supporters of President Burr and the southern partisans who backed Jefferson. Great Britain, seeing the chance to reclaim their old colonies, jumped in on the side of the north, which then annihilated the southern states. Massachusetts alone of the northern states resisted the British reconquest of the states, but it was overwhelmed, too. In 1812, all of the colonies were placed under a royal vice-regent, and welcomed back into the United Kingdom.

Entry posted by Robbie Taylor  

© Robbie Taylor, 2004.

Thread: Crises Source: History Channel Labels: Four Way Presidency, Election Deadlock, America, Presidency, Thomas Jefferson.

Robert K. Preston (born c. 1954) is an American infamous for landing a helicopter on the White House lawn.

At 2 A.M. On February 17, 1974, Preston, a U.S. Army private, stole a United States Army helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, flew it to Washington, D.C., and hovered for six minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn, about 100 yards from the West Wing. There was no initial attempt from the Executive Protective Service to shoot the helicopter down, and he later took off and was chased by two Maryland State Police helicopters. Preston forced one of the police helicopters down through his maneuvering of the helicopter, and then returned to the White House. This time, as he hovered above the south grounds, the Executive Protective Service fired at him with shotguns and submachine guns. Preston was injured slightly, and landed his helicopter.

At the time of the incident, President Richard Nixon was travelling in Florida, and First Lady Pat Nixon was in Indianapolis, Indiana, visiting their sick daughter.

Preston was a 20-year-old Private First Class in the U.S. Army, stationed in Panama City, Florida. Although he was training to become a helicopter pilot, he abandoned the training due to “deficiency in the instrument phase”.

It has been suggested that news reports of Preston’s actions inspired Samuel Byck to attempt to crash a passenger airplane into the White House on February 22, 1974. This implication has also been used as a plot device in the film dramatization of Byck’s attempt, The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

	On February 17, 1872, Harper’s Weekly featured a cartoon about the Free Love movement.
	“Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!” Wife (with heavy burden).  “I’d rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps.” Artist: Thomas Nast his Harper’s Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast warns against the allure of the Free Love movement advocated by Victoria Woodhull.In 1872, Victoria Woodhull, the well-known advocate of Free Love and women’s rights, became the first woman to be nominated for president. She ran on the Equal Rights party ticket at a time when she and other women were not legally allowed to vote. She and her sister, Tennesse Claflin, published their own newspaper, The Woodhull & Claflin Weekly.  In this cartoon, Thomas Nast depicts Woodhull as Satan incarnate for her advocacy of Free Love—i.e., the rejection of marriage as an oppressive institution and the embrace of sexual freedom. The poor wife in the background spurns the temptation, despite carrying the heavy burden of children and an alcoholic husband up the steep and treacherous path of life.  Near the end of the 1872 presidential campaign, Woodhull would publish allegations that the nation’s most prominent and respected clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, had been having an affair with the wife of Woodhull’s biographer, Theodore Tilton. In Woodhull’s estimation, Beecher was hypocritically preaching one tenet while living by another, even though his adultery was a far cry from Free Love. A subsequent trial over the case, which ended with a hung jury, became a sensational news story. Robert C. Kennedy

1981 – Paris Hilton, American actress and heiress

Paris Hilton turns 28 years old today.

The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Vicar fights to keep brothel in business

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Reverend David Gilmore says the brothel has caused few drug problems

A vicar could be the unlikely saviour of a group of prostitutes who face being turfed out of their brothel, according to reports.

Police claim the two flats the prostitutes use in the Soho area of London attract drug dealers and thieves, according to the Evening Standard.

But the Reverend David Gilmore from St Anne’s Anglican Church insists that since the brothel was temporarily closed two weeks ago there has been no difference in the level of drug dealing.

Mr Gilmore told Westminster magistrates: “I live five doors away from the brothel. I have seen drug dealing opposite the rectory, but I have never seen drug dealing going on outside [the brothel].

Residents, bar staff, shop owners and restaurateurs in the area have also complained about the closure.

A prostitute from the Dean Street brothel also told the court: “The closure would lead to loss of my income and the place I stay for six months a year.”

The court will decide on the closure application tomorrow.

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions. George Carlin

Ever since vaccines were invented, there has been vaccine controversy, which is dispute over the morality, ethics, effectiveness, or safety of vaccination. This cartoon from 1802, entitled The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation! mocks the rumour that cowpox vaccine would cause cow-like appendages to emerge.

 

Try to never, ever BE LATE

Retirement Dinner 

    

A Priest was being honoured at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish.  A leading local politician and member of the congregation was chosen to make the presentation and to give a little speech at the dinner. 

However, he was delayed, so the Priest decided to say his own few words while they waited: 

‘I got my first impression of the parish from the first confession I heard here.   I thought I had been assigned to a terrible place. The very first person who entered my confessional told me he had stolen a television set and, when questioned by the police, was able to lie his way out of it. He had stolen money from his parents, embezzled from his employer, had an affair with his boss’s wife, taken illegal drugs, and gave VD to his sister.   I was appalled.    

But as the days went on I learned that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, come to a fine parish full of good and loving people.’… 

     

Just as the Priest finished his talk, the politician arrived full of apologies at being late.  He immediately began to make the presentation and  gave his talk: 

     

‘I’ll never forget the first day our parish Priest arrived,’ said the politician. ‘In fact, I had the honour of being the first person to go to him for confession.’ 

     

Moral:    Try to never, ever BE LATE 

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily – George Santayana

 

1885 – The newly completed Washington Monument is dedicated.

 

 

 

The Washington Monument is a large, tall, sand-colored obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is a United States Presidential Memorial constructed to commemorate the first U.S. president, George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world’s tallest stone structure and the world’s tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches (169.294 m) in height. It is also the tallest structure in Washington D.C. It was designed by Robert Mills, an architect of the 1840s. The actual construction of the monument began in 1848 but was not completed until 1884, almost 30 years after the architect’s death. This hiatus in construction happened because of co-option by the Know-Nothing party, a lack of funds, and the intervention of the American Civil War. A difference in shading of the marble, visible approximately 150 feet (46 m) up, shows where construction was halted for a number of years. Its cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884, and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. It officially opened October 9, 1888. Upon completion, it became the world’s tallest structure, a title it inherited from the Cologne Cathedral and held until 1889, when the Eiffel Tower was finished in Paris, France.

The Washington Monument reflection can be seen in the aptly named Reflecting Pool, a rectangular pool extending to the west toward the Lincoln Memorial.

Ashley Michele Greene (born February 21, 1987) is an American television and film actress and model. She is best known for playing Alice Cullen in the 2008 film Twilight.

Personal life

Greene was born in Jacksonville, Florida to Joe and Michele Greene. She grew up in Middleburg and Jacksonville, and went to University Christian School before transferring to Wolfson High School when she was in tenth grade. She moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of 17 to pursue an acting career. Greene has one sibling, an older brother named Joe, who still resides in Jacksonville with her parents^.

Greene is good friends with her Twilight co-stars Kellan Lutz and Jackson Rathbone, who she knew before filming the movie.

Career

Greene initially planned to become a model, but was told that she wasn’t tall enough to be a runway model and should instead focus on commercials. After taking commercial and acting classes, she fell in love with acting and realized that she preferred it over modeling. Greene thus graduated high school early at the age of 17 and moved to L.A. to pursue an acting career. Though her career is still evolving, Greene has appeared as a guest on many popular television programs, such as Punk’d and Crossing Jordan, as well as in an iPod commercial. Greene’s big break came in 2008 when she was cast as Alice Cullen in Twilight, a film based on the novel of the same name by Stephenie Meyer. Greene will be reuniting with her Twilight co-star Kellan Lutz in the upcoming movie Warrior.

Teen thieves leave sweet-wrapper trail

Friday, February 20, 2009

Five American teenagers were arrested after they helpfully left a trail of sweet wrappers for police to follow from the scene of a burglary.

Officers responded to a break-in on Tuesday in Palm Bay, on Florida’s central Atlantic coast (it’s always Florida).

An officer then followed a trail of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups packages in the backyard. The officer noticed another wrapper on the front porch of a house near the victim’s house.

Officers found several juveniles in the house the wrapper-trail led to. Police say the teens confessed to the burglary, and told officers that the stolen property was in the attic.

Three of the teens face armed burglary charges and two others face charges of resisting arrest without violence and tampering with evidence.

Top Ten Signs You’re a Fundamentalist Christian

10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
 
9 – You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
 
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
 
7 – Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!
 
6 – You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
 
5 – You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
 
4 – You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects – will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering.  And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

 
3 – While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.
 
2 – You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers.  You consider that to be evidence that prayer works.  And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
 
1 – You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history – but still call yourself a Christian.

 

The World As I See It. An Essay by Albert Einstein

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving… “I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible. “My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…” “My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality… The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. “This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them! “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”  Albert Einstein

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Niklas Jansson’s adaptation of Michelangelo‘s The Creation of Adam depicts the Flying Spaghetti Monster in its typical guise as a clump of tangled spaghetti with two eyestalks, two meatballs, and many “noodly appendages“.

Logo of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on a car bumper evoking the Ichthys.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the parody religion The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, created in 2005 by Bobby Henderson as a satirical protest to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. Since the intelligent design movement used ambiguous references to an unspecified ‘Intelligent Designer’ to avoid court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism as a science, this presumably left open the possibility that any imaginable thing could fill that role.

In an open letter sent to the education board, Henderson parodies the concept of intelligent design by professing belief in a supernatural creator, which closely resembles spaghetti and meatballs. He furthermore calls for the “Pastafarian” theory of creation to be taught in science classrooms.

Due to its recent popularity and media exposure, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is often used by atheists, agnostics (known by Pastafarians as “spagnostics”), and others as a modern version of Russell’s teapot and the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Origins

The first public exposure of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (CoFSM) can be dated to January 2005, when Bobby Henderson, describing himself as a concerned citizen, sent an open letter regarding the FSM to the Kansas State Board of Education. The letter was sent prior to the Kansas evolution hearings as an argument against the teaching of intelligent design in biology classes. Intelligent design was thought of as a way to teach creationism in the public school system without mentioning the word “God”. Henderson stated that both his theory and intelligent design had equal validity; saying

“I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.”

Henderson explained, “I don’t have a problem with religion. What I have a problem with is religion posing as science. If there is a god and he’s intelligent, then I would guess he has a sense of humor.”

The Board only responded after Henderson posted the letter on his website, gaining significant public interest. Henderson subsequently published the responses he received from Board members.

As word of Henderson’s challenge to the Board spread, the website and Henderson’s cause gathered more attention and support. The satiric nature of Henderson’s argument made the Flying Spaghetti Monster popular with bloggers as well as humor and Internet culture websites. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was featured on websites such as Boing Boing, Something Awful, Uncyclopedia, and Fark.com. Even recent fan sites, such as fsmawareness.com have sprung up to spread its existence. The mainstream media quickly picked up on the phenomenon as the Flying Spaghetti Monster became a symbol for the case against intelligent design theory in public education. Henderson himself was surprised by its success, stating that he “wrote the letter for [his] own amusement as much as anything.”

 Later developments

In August 2005, in response to a challenge from a reader, BoingBoing.net announced a $250,000 challenge, later raised to $1,000,000, for “Intelligently Designed currency” by other bloggers, payable to any individual who could produce empirical evidence proving that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The challenge is modeled after a similar challenge issued by young-Earth creationist Kent Hovind (an award of $250,000 to anyone who can prove evolution “is the only possible way” that the Universe and life arose).

In November 2005, the Kansas State Board of Education voted to allow criticisms of evolution, including language about creative design, as part of testing standards. On February 13, 2007, the Board voted 6 to 4 to reject the amended science standards enacted in 2005. This was the fifth time in eight years that the Board had rewritten the standards concerning evolution.

Bobby Henderson, a 25-year-old Oregon State University physics graduate, had stated on his website that he was desperately trying to avoid taking a job programming slot machines in Las Vegas. On November 15 the Dallas Morning News described him as an unemployed slot-machine engineer, and on the following day the New York Magazine described an advance from Villard to write The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster with the subheading “Jackpot for unemployed slot-machine engineer and heretic”. As of February 2008, Henderson describes himself as spending “a lot of time trying to avoid a Real Job”, saying that “it’s not just about the money. Speculative work is more interesting. Specifically, I’m interested in random stupid projects.” He cites as a successful example his “taco-art project” which took him one day, and orders for prints had made him over $2,000, though many other “stupid (but interesting) projects” didn’t work out.

In November 2007, three talks involving the Flying Spaghetti Monster were scheduled to be delivered at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in San Diego. The talks included titles such as, “Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion”. Academics say while its inclusion in the program may get laughs, it is a serious debate on the essence of religion exploring questions such as “does religion require a genuine theological belief or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?” or in short, “is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?”

In December 2007, The Ledger reported that members of venganza website, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, sent emails to School Board members in Polk County, Florida, on the issue of intelligent design.

Beliefs

Henderson proposed many of the beliefs in reaction to common arguments by proponents of intelligent design.

The canonical beliefs of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism are set forth by Henderson in the Open Letter, the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and on Henderson’s web site, where he is described as a prophet.

The central belief is that there is an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, who created the entire universe “after drinking heavily.” The Monster’s intoxication was supposedly the cause for a flawed Earth. All “evidence” for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in an effort to test Pastafarians’ faith — a form of the Omphalos hypothesis. When scientific measurements, such as radiocarbon dating, are made, the Flying Spaghetti Monster “is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.”

The Pastafarian belief of heaven stresses that it contains beer volcanoes and a stripper factory. Hell is similar, except that the beer is stale, and the strippers have STDs.

Henderson uses parallel concepts from religious texts when describing the FSM, poking fun at those who literally interpret the Bible. The religious text of the Pastafarian religion is called the Loose Canon instead of the formal Canon. In place of the Ten Commandments, it contains the Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts.

The official conclusion to prayers is “RAmen”, contained in certain sections of The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and so on. It is a portmanteau of the Semitic term “Amen” (used in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam); and Ramen, a type of noodle. While it is typically spelled with both a capital “R” and “A”, it is also acceptable to spell it with only a capital R.

Pirates and global warming

Chart comparing Number of Pirates versus Global Warming. This chart, a version of which was included with Bobby Henderson’s original letter to the Kansas School Board, illustrates the absurdity of assuming that correlation implies causation. Note the inversion of 45,000 and 35,000 on the Number of Pirates-axis, implying that the strength of the intelligent design argument lies in the misrepresentation of data.

According to the Pastafarian belief system, pirates are “absolute divine beings” and the original Pastafarians. Their image as “thieves and outcasts” is misinformation spread by Christian theologians in the Middle Ages and by Hare Krishnas. Pastafarianism says that they were in fact “peace-loving explorers and spreaders of good will” who distributed candy to small children, and adds that modern pirates are in no way similar to “the fun-loving buccaneers from history.” Pastafarians celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19.

The inclusion of pirates in Pastafarianism was part of Henderson’s original letter to the Kansas School Board. It illustrated that correlation does not imply causation. Henderson put forth the argument that “global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of pirates since the 1800s.” A chart accompanying the letter shows that as the number of pirates decreased, global temperatures increased. This is akin to the suggestion from some religious groups that the high numbers of disasters, famines and wars in the world is due to the lack of respect and worship towards a deity.

In 2008, Henderson has interpreted the growing pirate activities at the Gulf of Aden as an additional empirical support, pointing out that Somalia has “the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country.”

 Holiday

Around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, Pastafarians celebrate a vaguely-defined holiday named “Holiday”, which doesn’t take place on “a specific date so much as it is the Holiday season, itself.” Because Pastafarians “reject dogma and formalism”, there are no specific requirements for the holiday.^[29]

Pastafarians note the increasing popularity of their holiday at the expense of others, with stores and shops now wishing people “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” — even George W. Bush’s White House Christmas cards wished people a happy Holiday season, leading Henderson to write the President a note of thanks, including an FSM “fish” emblem for his limo or plane.

 The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster

In December 2005, Bobby Henderson received a reported USD $80,000 advance from Villard to pen The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Henderson said he plans to use the proceeds from the sale of the book to build a pirate ship, with which he may travel the world in order to convert heathens to the Pastafarian religion. The book was released on March 28, 2006 (ISBN 0-8129-7656-8).

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster parodies biblical figures with characters such as Captain Mosey, a pirate and the FSM equivalent of Moses. The Gospel contains the aforementioned Eight “I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts.” It also provides information on how to convert non-”Pastafarians” and explains many of the religion’s beliefs (for example, that lack of pirates causes global warming).

 Notable use in other religious disputes

In December 2007, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was credited with being at the forefront of successful efforts in Polk County, Florida to persuade Polk County School Board to withdraw from a potential challenge to new science standards mentioning evolution. The issue was raised after five of the seven board members declared a personal belief in the concept of intelligent design. Opponents describing themselves as Pastafarians sent e-mails to Polk school board members, demanding equal time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Board member Margaret Lofton, who supported intelligent design, dismissed the e-mail as ridiculous and insulting, and said, “They’ve made us the laughing stock of the world”. As the controversy developed, scientists expressed their opposition to the claims of intelligent design. Hopes for a new applied science-focused campus of the University of South Florida in northeast Lakeland were reportedly in question, but University Vice President Marshall Goodman expressed surprise and said of intelligent design that, “It’s not science. You can’t even call it pseudo-science.” Lofton then stated that she had no interest in engaging with the Pastafarians or anyone else seeking to discredit intelligent design. While unhappy with the outcome, Lofton chose not to resign over the issue. She and the other board members expressed a desire to return to the day-to-day work of running the school district.

There are some North American universities that, in addition to having various long-standing religious organizations, also have organizations dedicated to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Bryan Killian, a high school student in Buncombe County in North Carolina, was suspended for wearing “pirate regalia”, which he said was part of his faith. Killian protested the suspension, saying it violated his right to religious freedom.

In March 2008, Pastafarians in Crossville, Tennessee successfully won city approval to place a Flying Spaghetti Monster statue next to the Courthouse, and proceeded to do so. The statue was later evicted, as part of a removal of all long-term statues from the premises, caused mainly by controversy over the statue.

 The Flying Spaghetti Monster in media

• In August 2005, the Swedish concept designer Niklas Jansson created, “pretty much free to use for press and such as far as I’m concerned”, an adaptation of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (superimposing the Flying Spaghetti Monster over God) which became and remains today the FSM’s de facto brand image.
• The Hunger Artists Theatre Company produced a comedy called The Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday Pageant in December 2006, detailing the history of Pastafarianism. The production has spawned a sequel called Flying Spaghetti Monster Holy Mug of Grog, to be performed in December 2008.
• The Flying Spaghetti Monster was discussed by Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion. It has also been featured in several other media outlets, including The Colbert Report and Science Friday.
• The Flying Spaghetti Monster was mentioned by Dimitris Xygalatas in his introduction to the Greek translation of Daniel Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell, to demonstrate what the author views as the absurdity of Intelligent Design, which he claims is equal to that of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM also features on the cover of the book.
• In the British television series, The IT Crowd, the sympathetic character Maurice Moss has a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster above his desk.

Sarcastic Quotes

» Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

 

» It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.
- Paul Newman

» It’s a catastrophic success.

» I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.
- Stephen Bishop

» History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban

» No, Groucho is not my real name. I am breaking it in for a friend.
» I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.
» I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
» I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
» I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up.
- Groucho Marx

» The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
- Frank Zappa

» The 100% American is 99% idiot.
» The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
- George Bernard Shaw

» He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
» Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
- Oscar Wilde

» He was happily married – but his wife wasn’t.
- Victor Borge

» I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
» Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.
» Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.
» Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
» I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.
- Mark Twain

» I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
- Clarence Darrow

» If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?
- Charles Pierce

» You have delighted us long enough.
- Jane Austen

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.- Havelock Ellis

Man dies after Viagra-fuelled 12-hour orgy

Friday, February 27, 2009

Viagra – don’t take too many

A Moscow man died of a heart attack after guzzling a bottle of Viagra to win a bet he could sustain an erection through a 12-hour orgy.

Sergey Tuganov, 28, was bet £3,000 by two female colleagues that he wouldn’t be able to satisfy them non-stop for 12 hours.

But just minutes after winning the wager he suffered a heart attack. Ambulance services couldn’t revive him.

14-year-old girl’s ‘joke marriage’ ruled valid

Friday, February 27, 2009

A 14 year old girl has become the youngest ever to get divorced in Israel – after a rabbinical court ruled that a joke marriage ceremony she’d taken part in was valid.

The girl got accidentally married to a 17-year-old boy after joking around in the schoolyard. The boy recited the Jewish marriage ritual, declared her his wife, and she then accepted a ring from him – in front of witnesses.

Israel’s Rabbinical Courts ruled that this – along with what they described as the consummation of the marriage – was enough to make them officially wed.

Efrat Orbach, a spokeswoman for the rabbinical courts, said that the court had granted the couple a rabbinical divorce this week.

In Israel, sex with a 14-year-old girl is not a criminal offence, so long as the age gap between her and her partner is not more than three years.

Bride mucks up wedding with joke

Friday, January 5, 2007

Me! I know of a just impediment!

A bride who jokingly replied ‘I don’t’ during her wedding found that her joke backfired slightly – as the registrar then refused to go ahead with the ceremony.

As a result, the entire wedding had to be cancelled, and the guests sent home.

Tina Albrecht, 27, was to marry fiancé Dietmar Koch, 29, at a castle in Steyr, Upper Austria. But the wedding had to be called off after Albrecht, a receptionist, tried to bring a bit of humour into the ceremony by saying ‘I don’t', before immediately correcting herself.

Under an Austrian law intended to prevent forced marriages if either party replies to the key question in the negative the wedding is cancelled and cannot be rescheduled for a further 10 weeks.

Ms Albrecht said: ‘We had to send all our guests home and now we have to wait until March before we can try again.

She added: ‘In retrospect it was probably not so funny.’

Frankly, we have to disagree on that point

We should commend the person who thought of this….brilliant!

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that seems to happen is they reduce their staff and workers.  The remaining workers need to find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their job would be eliminated as well.  Wall street, and the media normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of “tough decision”, and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks. 

Therefore: Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218 members and Senate members from 100 to 50 (one per State). Also reduce remaining staff by 25%.
 
Accomplish this over the next 8 years. (two steps / two elections) and of course this would require some redistricting.

Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay / member / yr.)

$97,175,000 for elimination of the above people’s staff. (estimate $1.3 Million in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Million in staff per each member of the Senate every year).

$240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork barrel ear-marks each year. (those members whose jobs are gone. Current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion / yr).

The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and would need to improve efficiencies.  It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country?

We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well.  It might even be easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.

Congress has more tools available to do their jobs than it had back in 1911 when the current number of representatives was established.  (telephone, computers, cell phones to name a few).

 

Note:
Congress did not hesitate to head home when it was a holiday, when the nation needed a real fix to the economic problems.  Also, we have 3 senators that have not been doing their jobs for the past 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all have been accepting full pay.  These facts alone support a reduction in senators & congress.

Summary of opportunity:

$ 44,108,400 reduction of congress members.

$282,100, 000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.

$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.

$59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.

$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.

$8,073,383,400 per year, estimated total savings. (that’s 8-BILLION just to start!)

Big business does these types of cuts all the time.

If Congresspersons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits there is no telling how much we would save. Now they get full retirement after serving only ONE term. 

 

 

 

The value of a # 2 pencil

YOU WILL LAUGH OUT LOUD!! AND THEN YOU WILL FORWARD TO EVERYONE WITH
THAT BIG OLE’ SMILE ON YOUR FACE!!

The value of a Catholic education and a #2 pencil.

Little Susie was not the best student in Catholic School . Usually she slept through the class.

One day her teacher, a Nun, called on her while she was sleeping.

‘Tell me Susie, who created the universe?’

When Susie didn’t stir, little Johnny who was her friend sitting behind her, took his pencil and jabbed her in the rear.

‘God Almighty!’ shouted Susie.

The Nun said, ‘Very good’ and continued teaching her class.

A little later the Nun asked Susie, ‘Who is our Lord and Savior?’

But Susie didn’t stir from her slumber. Once again, Johnny came to her
rescue and stuck her in the butt.

‘Jesus Christ!!!’ shouted Susie.

And the Nun once again said, ‘Very good,’ and Susie fell back asleep.

The Nun asked her a third question…’What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?’

Again, Johnny came to the rescue. This time Susie jumped up and shouted,

‘If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I’ll break it in half!’

The nun fainted.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle. Henny Youngman

KIDS IN CHURCH

3-year-old Reese:
“Our Father, Who does art in heaven,
Harold is His name.
Amen.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little boy was overheard praying:
“Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, don’t worry about it.
I’m having a real good time like I am.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After the christening of his baby brother in church,
Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.
His father asked him three times what was wrong.
Finally, the boy replied,
“That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home,
and I wanted to stay with you guys.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One particular four-year-old prayed,
“And forgive us our trash baskets
as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
“And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?”
One bright little girl replied,
“Because people are sleeping.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3.
The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.
Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
“If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,
‘Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.’
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,
“Ryan, you be Jesus!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A father was at the beach with his children
when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore
where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
“Daddy, what happened to him?” the son asked.
“He died and went to Heaven,” the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said,
“Did God throw him back down?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A wife invited some people to dinner.
At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said,
“Would you like to say the blessing?”
“I wouldn’t know what to say,” the girl replied.
“Just say what you hear Mommy say,” the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said,
“Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if you don’t send this to at least 8 people —– who cares?!
Peace, love and happiness

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

AUSTRALIA GETS DRUNK, WAKES UP IN NORTH ATLANTIC
Tired of Being Isolated and Ignored, Continent Isn’t Bloody Moving

Sydney, 800 miles S. of Nova Scotia (SatireWire.com) — After what witnesses described as an all night blinder during which it kept droning on about how it was always being bloody ignored by the whole bloody world and would bloody well stand to do something about it, Australia this morning woke up to find itself in the middle of the North Atlantic.

“Good Lord, that was a booze up,” said a bleary-eyed Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, speaking from his residence at Kirribilli House, approximately 600 nautical miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

According to Australians and residents of several countries destroyed or lewdly insulted during the continent’s nearly 7,000-mile saltwater stagger, the binge began just after noon yesterday at a pub in Brisbane, where several patrons were discussing Australia Day and the nation’s general lack of respect from abroad.

“It started off same as always; coupla fossils saying how our Banjo Patterson was a better poet than Walt Whitman, how Con the Fruiterer is funnier than Seinfeld, only they’re Aussies so no one knows about ‘em,” recalled witness Kevin Porter. “Then this bloke Martin pipes up and says Australia’s main problem is that it’s stuck in Australia, and everybody says ‘Too right!’”

“Well, it made sense at the time,” Porter added.

By 2 a.m., powered by national pride and alcohol, the 3-million-square-mile land mass was barging eastward through the Coral Sea and crossing into the central Pacific, leaving a trail of beer cans and Chinese take-away in its wake.

When dawn broke over the Northern Hemisphere, the continent suddenly found itself, not only upside down, but smack in the middle of the Atlantic, and according to most of its 19 million inhabitants, that’s the way it’s going to stay.

“We sent troops to Afghanistan. You never hear about it. We have huge government scandals. You never hear about it. It’s all ‘America did this,’ and ‘Europe says that,’” exclaimed Perth resident Paul Watson. “Well, we’re right in the thick of things now, so let’s just see if you can you ignore us.”

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic conceded that would be difficult. “They broke Florida,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. “And most of Latin America is missing.”

Meanwhile, victims of what’s already been dubbed the “Australian Crawl” are still shaking off the event.

“Australia bumped into us at about midnight local time,” said Hawaii governor Ben Cayetano. “They were very friendly — they always seem friendly — but they refused to go around unless we answered their questions. But the questions were impossible. ‘Who is Ian Thorpe? Do you have any Tim Tams? What day is Australia Day?’”

“Fortunately, somebody here had an Unimportant World Dates calendar and we aced the last one,” Cayetano added.

Panama, however, was not so lucky.

“Australia came through here screaming curses at us to let them through,” said Ernesto Carnal, who guards the locks at the entrance to the Panama Canal. “We said they would not fit, so they demanded to speak with a manager. When I go to find Mr. Caballos, they sneak the whole continent through.”

When Caballos shouted to the fleeing country that it had not paid, Australia “accidentally” backed up and took out every nation in the region, as well as the northern third of Venezuela. They then made up a cheery song about it.

By late morning today, however, not everyone in Australia was quite so blithe. “We’ve still got part of Jamaica stuck to Queensland,” said Australian army commander Lt. Gen. Peter Cosgrove. “I think we might have declared war on it. I don’t bloody remember. Maybe it’s time to go home.”

Cosgrove, however, is not in the majority, and at press time, U.S., African, and European leaders were still desperately trying to negotiate for Australia’s withdrawal. But the independent-minded Aussies were not making it easy. In a two-hour meeting at midday, Australian representatives listed their demands: immediate inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a permanent CNN presence in all 6 Australian states, a worldwide ban on hiring Paul Hogan, a primetime U.S. television contract for Australian Rules Football, and a 4,500-mile-long bridge between Sydney and Los Angeles.

U.S. negotiators immediately walked out, calling the Australian Rules Football request “absurd.”

“Design for a Modern Historical Picture”

Napoleon III crossing the American Continent on his Mexican Mule.

Artist: unknown

---

his unsigned Harper’s Weekly cartoon parodies the imperial design of Napoleon III in Mexico, as he mimics the previous expansionist quest of Napoleon I.

In 1854, a coalition of Mexican liberals overthrew their country’s dictator, General Antonio de Santa Ana, to establish a republic. In 1857, disputes over a new constitution led to a civil war and the establishment of rival governments. In 1859, the United States formally recognized the liberal administration of Benito Juárez as the legitimate government of Mexico. American president James Buchanan sanctioned shipments of war materiel to the Juárez military, as well as the participation of American mercenaries in the republican cause. France, Spain, and Great Britain, however, favored the conservative regime in Mexico. In late December 1860, the liberal forces defeated the conservatives, and a triumphant Juárez reclaimed Mexico City on January 1, 1861.

Mexican conservatives then allied with French emperor Napoleon III, who desired to incorporate Mediterranean states and former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas into a French-led federation (giving rise to the concept of a Latin America). The United States Civil War provided an opportunity for Napoleon III to intervene in Mexico, and the new republic’s large foreign debt supplied the excuse. When the Juárez government suspended its debt payments in 1861, Spain, France, and Britain sent an expeditionary force to demand redress. Quarrels between the three European powers prompted Spain and Britain to withdraw, but Napoleon III reinforced French troops and dispatched them to the Mexican capital.

When this cartoon appeared, French and Mexican armies were in the midst of a war. The image of Napoleon III crossing Mexico (he was never actually there) is based on a famous painting of the French emperor’s uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte: Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard (1800-1801) by Jacques-Louis David. In the winter of 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte and 40,000 French troops crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass, one of the highest Alpine passages between Switzerland and Italy, to surprise and defeat Austrian troops in northern Italy. The ploy’s daring and danger were captured in David’s romanticized portrait of a windswept Napoleon Bonaparte heroically astride his rearing white steed. By contrast, this “Modern Historical Picture” presents a languid Napoleon III atop a frightened mule, with the emperor oblivious to either the human skulls he tramples or the deadly chasm before him.

The cartoonist, though, underestimated the chances of (at least initial) success for the French intervention. In June 10, 1863, French troops occupied Mexico City, and from there secured most of the central region of the country. In early 1864, Napoleon III established a puppet regime in Mexico under Maximilian, the archduke of Austria. By 1865, the French had forced Juárez and his men to the Mexican-U.S. border.

The monetary and human cost of the intervention, however, aroused opposition within France. Also, with the end of the American Civil War in April 1865, the United States government turned its attention to the situation. In May, General Philip Sheridan led 50,000 American soldiers to face down French troops across the Mexican border. On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State William Seward intensified pressure for a French withdrawal. Realizing the futility of the Mexican morass, Napoleon III agreed in February 1866 to remove his troops, a task completed in March 1867. President Juárez reestablished Republican government in Mexico, and had Maximilian executed.

Robert C. Kennedy

 

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. – Iris Murdoch

Drug smuggler wore cast made of cocaine

Friday, March 6, 2009

Sniffy feet: The cocaine plaster cast

Spanish police have arrested a 66-year-old Chilean who tried to smuggle drugs into Barcelona with a cast made of cocaine fitted on a truly broken leg.

The man also had cocaine hidden in six beer cans that had been emptied, packed with drugs and resealed, and inside the legs of two small folding stools, police said. Altogether, he was carrying about 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of the drug, police said.

The man was arrested Wednesday at Barcelona’s El Prat airport after arriving from Santiago, Chile.

His left shin was broken, and investigators do not rule out the possibility that the injury was inflicted intentionally so he could smuggle with the cocaine

Spain is a major European gateway for cocaine from Latin America and airport officials pay especially close attention to passengers on flights from Peru, Colombia and Chile, police spokesman Jose Antonio Nin said.

Nin said he knew of cases in which smugglers had concealed cocaine underneath casts but this was the first time officials had seen a cast made entirely of compressed cocaine. It weighed about a kilogram (2.2 pounds), he said.

Police detected the drug by spraying the cast with a chemical that turns bright blue when it comes in contact with cocaine, Nin said. The man was taken to a hospital after the cast was removed.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

RECORD 75 MILLION AMERICANS NOW
PRETENDING THEY OWN THEIR OWN HOMES
Low Interest Rates Help Many Fulfill The American (Banker’s) Dream

Minneapolis, Minn. (SatireWire.com) — Showing no ill effects from a weak economy, housing numbers released by the National Association of Realtors today showed that a record 75 million Americans are now participating in the mass self-delusion that they, and not their banks, actually own their homes.

“Home ownership is the fulfillment of the American (banking industry’s) dream, and we are proud to announce that more Americans than ever have been able to (help lending institutions) achieve that dream,” said NAR President Richard Schicter.

After putting 20 percent down on a $235,000 house yesterday morning, Minneapolis pediatric nurse Stephanie Doogan officially became the 75 millionth American to take part in the widely accepted fantasy.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to (deceive myself into believing I could) be a homeowner,” said Doogan, 35. “Well, look at me now! Me, little Stephanie Doogan, I actually have a place I can call 100 percent (minus 80 percent) my own!”

Across the country, other (people in denial concerning their status as) property owners expressed similar satisfaction.

“There’s nothing like taking a walk around your (bank-owned) house, then going outside and kneeling down in your (bank-owned) lawn and grabbing a handful of (the bank’s) dirt to make you realize how precious (their) land is,” said 28-year-old Matt Jackson, who(‘s bank) bought a $210,000 home on New York’s Long Island last year. “It makes me feel as though I really have something that no one can take away from me (unless I miss so much as one mortgage payment).”

Added Devon Knight, who recently thinks he purchased a condominium in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor: “When I was renting an apartment, if the furnace went out, I had to get the landlord to fix it. But now, if the furnace goes out, I have to fix it!… hold on, I’m losing the illusion here… why is that good again?”

“Equity,” said Jay Harrington, Knight’s mortgage broker at First Union. “Just remember, you have equity. And next to the right of every single American (major corporation) to have a say in who gets elected, that’s the most sacred thing you can (pretend you) have.”

Copyright © 2001-2002, SatireWire

Fun Facts 4

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies. The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader’s lines, and didn’t know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie. Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time. Barbie’s measurements (prior to her recenct makeover) if she were life size: 39-23-33. February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon. Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds. The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites. The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category. Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church. Back in the mid to late 80′s, an IBM compatible computer wasn’t considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. The first Ford cars had Dodge engines. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated. Babies are born without knee caps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age. The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. No NFL team which plays it’s home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver”. In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers –they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine. The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball. If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000      times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more,      so it ends up on the bottom. The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F. A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. The longest word in the English language, according to the      Oxford English Dictionary, is      pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.  The only other      word with the same amount of letters is its plural,      pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses. The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the      1968 Jane Fonda movie “Barbarella. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of  Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth…and whose shame created      the expression for ignominy, “His name is Mudd.” Wilma Flintstone’s maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty      Rubble’s Maiden name was Betty Jean McBricker. The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses      II who fathered over 160 children. Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when      they rode past their king.  This custom has become the modern      military salute. White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly      of the Monkees) Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an      Oscar with “Midnight Cowboy.”  Her entire role lasted only six      minutes. Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches with him on his famous      transatlantic flight. Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island had a first name that was only      used once, on the never-aired pilot show.  His first name was      Willy.  The skipper’s real name on Gilligan’s Island is Jonas      Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on their      radio’s newscast about the wreck. Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII.  If      captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a      map for escape. The “L.L.” in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood. Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing      the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float.      Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated,      and it has floated ever since. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks      otherwise it will digest itself. The Sanskrit word for “war” means “desire for more cows.” A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in      the background — when they say “walla-walla” it looks like they      are actually talking. 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney      cartoon features with both parents that are present and don’t      die throughout the movie. ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the      left hand. The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after President Grover      Cleveland’s baby daughter, Ruth. A whale’s penis is called a dork. Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known      as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, “Three quarks for      Muster Mark!” “Three dog night” (attributed to Australian Aborigines) came      about because on especially cold nights these nomadic people      needed three dogs (dingos, actually) to keep from freezing. The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan” A group of unicorns is called a blessing. Twelve or more cows are known as a “flink.” A group of frogs is called an army. A group of rhinos is called a crash. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A group of whales is called a pod. A group of geese is called a gaggle. A group of ravens is called a murder. A group of officers is called a mess. A group of larks is called an exaltation. A group of owls is called a parliament.

Don’t eat anything without a face…

If god didn’t want people to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?

Oxnard,CA-July 07,2004-Research scientists at Oxnard UNC Medical Center have proven that plants, including vegetables, feel pain when subjected to trauma such as being yanked out of the ground, peeled, cooked, and eaten. “Veggies and plants initiate a massive hormone and chemical barrage internally when they suffer any kind of injury,” says professor Harry Simeon. “This response is akin to the nerve response and endorphin release when an animal is injured. We cannot ignore the similarities.” When Baker asked professor Simeon and his research team what they thought this finding might mean, they responded unanimously, “Nobel prize, baby!” Other agencies and the sum total of the world’s hard-core vegetarians (known as vegans) registered formal complaints against the research. Their team of lawyers has already submitted a motion to have the results of the research destroyed or sealed. Others fear the damage has already been done. A spokesman said, “This is bad for us. Most of our members haven’t eaten anything since hearing about the results. Our lawyers are looking into suing Mother Earth for false advertising, but concede that the suit will probably be inconclusive. In the meantime we’ll be surviving on vitamin supplements and water.” In an ironic related story, a dozen protesters picketing the Hungry Carnivore Steak House in Dallas were allegedly assaulted by three patrons of the restaurant. Eyewitnesses say that the picketers were making their typical nuisance display of scorn and righteous indignation over the willful consumption of “the flesh of murdered animals” outside the Hungry Carnivore when two unidentified men and a woman stepped out of the establishment and sprayed the picketers with several gallons of what appeared to be blood. Victims and bystanders alike were surprised to discover that the liquid was actually V-8 juice. The truly shocking result of the alleged attack was the reaction of the picketers. All of the protesters were wracked with convulsions and suffered hours of dry heaves while many of the bystanders merely laughed. This reaction within vegetarianism’s great bastion of faith has many true believers reconsidering their dietary requirements. Others are quietly making funeral arrangements and the Environmental Protection Agency is considering declaring vegans an endangered species.

NEWS: Calif. Marijuana Bill Would Mean $1.3 Billion in Revenue a Year

By National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws , Working to Reform Marijuana Laws – February 26, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation this week to legalize and regulate the commercial production and sale of cannabis for adults age 21 or over. The proposal – Assembly Bill 390: The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act – is the first bill ever to be introduced in the California legislature that seeks to tax and control the sale of cannabis.

Ammiano introduced AB 390 at a press conference Monday. Joining the assemblyman in support of the measure were Betty Yee, Chairwoman of the California Board of Equalization (Taxation), Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan, Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray (retired), and Dale Gieringer, Coordinator of California NORML, which provided legislative text and financial analysis for the bill.

“With the state in the midst of an historic economic crisis, the move toward regulating and taxing marijuana is simply common sense,” Ammiano said. “This legislation would generate much needed revenue for the state, restrict access to only those over 21, end the environmental damage to our public lands from illicit crops, and improve public safety by redirecting law enforcement efforts to more serious crimes. California has the opportunity to be the first state in the nation to enact a smart, responsible public policy for the control and regulation of marijuana.”

Local news anchors from CBS, ABC, NBC, and PBS television covered the press conference. National stories regarding Ammiano’s bill have appeared in USA Today, as well as on Air America and CNN.

As introduced, AB 390 would raise over $1.3 billion in annual revenue by taxing the retail production and sale of marijuana, according to financial estimates provided by the California Board of Equalization. An economic analysis by California NORML estimates that a legal, statewide retail market for cannabis could generate additional revenues totaling some $12 to $18 billion dollars per year.

The noncommercial cultivation of marijuana for personal use – defined as ten plants or fewer – would not be subject to taxation under the proposal. In addition, AB 390 would not alter existing legislation on the use of medicinal cannabis, nor would it impose new taxes or sanctions on the medical cultivation of cannabis.

A recent Zogby poll of 1,053 likely voters, commissioned by California NORML and Oaksterdam University, reported that nearly six out of ten respondents on the west coast favor taxing and legally regulating cannabis like alcohol.

“This bill is a winning proposition for California taxpayers,” Gieringer said. “It’s time that California stops wasting resources trying to enforce marijuana prohibition, and instead realizes the tax benefits derived from a legal, regulated cannabis market.”

Read the Opposing Views debate, “Should the U.S. Legalize Marijuana?”

POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW

By National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws , Working to Reform Marijuana Laws – February 26, 2009

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Historical Facts On Daylight Saving Time

 

1784: Ben Franklin floats idea of daylight-saving time during his time in Paris.

1907: London builder William Willett is the first to seriously push the concept in a pamphlet titled “The Waste of Daylight.” His plan: Advance clocks by 20 minutes each Sunday in April, roll them back by 20 minutes each Sunday in September.

1916: To conserve fuel during World War I, Germany and Austria become the first nations to adopt daylight-saving time.

1918: The United States gets daylight time fever. Congress approves the measure on March 19; it goes into effect 12 days later, on the 31st.

1919: Still a largely agrarian society of early risers, the United States dumps daylight time shortly after World War I ends.

1942: President Franklin Roosevelt revives “War Time” at the start of World War II.

1945: War ends, so does War Time. The option of keeping daylight time is left open to local jurisdictions. This creates a hodge-podge of time zones; according to the Web site WebExhibits.org, at one point the 35-mile drive between Moundsville, W.Va., and Steubenville, Ohio, required seven time changes.

1966: Congress creates a uniform – more or less – daylight time for the United States. States are given the choice of opting out.

1974: In response to Arab oil embargo and resulting fuel crisis, the daylight-saving time Energy Act is passed, pumping clocks ahead by an hour for a 15-month period running from Jan. 6 to April 27, 1975.

1986: Law is passed to begin daylight-saving time at 2 a.m. the first Sunday of April and end it at 2 a.m. the last Sunday of October.

2005: Energy Policy Act of 2005 extends daylight-saving time by four weeks beginning in 2007.

2007: New, extended daylight-saving time went into effect.

Did You Know

- It’s daylight-saving time, not daylight savings time.

- A U.S. Department of Transportation study found that daylight-saving time cuts electricity usage nationwide by about 1 percent a day.

- About 70 countries worldwide observe daylight-saving time. The only major industrialized nations that don’t: Japan, India and China.

- In 1999, a terrorist attack on Israel’s West Bank was thwarted when the terrorists failed to take into account the switch back to standard time. The bomb went off an hour early, killing only the terrorists.

- Data shows violent crime is down 10 percent to 13 percent during daylight-saving time than standard times, according to a study from the U.S. Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.

- Passengers on Amtrak during the traditional “fall back” might experience a delay. Trains cannot leave a station before their scheduled time, so in early November trains will stop at 2 a.m. and wait an hour before resuming. In the spring, trains become an hour behind schedule when time leaps forward an hour, but they keep running to try to make up the difference.

- Daylight-saving time is not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Arizona (except Arizona’s Navajo Nation, which does observe the time change).

Teens: Security took topless photos

Store officer jailed after report of incident

By Jeremy Pawloski | The Olympian • Published March 05, 2009

OLYMPIA – A loss-prevention officer at the J.C. Penney store at the Capital Mall was in jail Wednesday after two girls, ages 17 and 18, accused him of coercing them into exposing their breasts and soliciting them for sex after they were caught shoplifting.

The girls said Michael Anthony Olivas, 35, told them that if they took off their clothes, he wouldn’t call police about the shoplifting. They said he then took their photos with his cell-phone camera while they were undressed. Olympia Police Lt. Jim Costa said Olivas’ cell phone is being processed for evidence at the State Patrol Crime Lab.

Olivas was being held Wednesday at the Thurston County Jail with bail set at $10,000 after Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor found probable cause to order him held on suspicion of one count of unlawful imprisonment with sexual motivation.

Costa said that Olympia police have no record of Olivas taking the girls into custody after the alleged shoplifting of clothing at the J.C. Penney around Feb. 22.

“We do not have a record that he notified our police department that he had people in custody,” Costa said. Olivas did generate internal reports about the alleged shoplifting.

OPD has seized computer equipment from the home in Shelton where Olivas lives with his wife and child.

Olivas said in court Wednesday that he is unemployed. A J.C. Penney store manager could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

According to court records:

The girls initially reported to Shelton police that Olivas took them into custody for shoplifting and “threatened and pretended to call the police.”

“Olivas took their cell phones and looked through them for ‘dirty pictures’ and asked them questions about their boyfriends,” court papers state. “Olivas coerced them into exposing their nude breasts and semi-clothed groin/buttocks areas to him so he could take pictures with his cell phone to avoid going to jail.”

The girls said “they were held by Olivas from 4 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. when they were released.”

The girls reported the incident to Shelton police Feb. 24, after the 18-year-old told her boyfriend about the incident. The boyfriend “happens to be” a cousin of Olivas’, and he confronted Olivas about the incident. The boyfriend alleges “Olivas admitted to talking (the girl) into exposing her breasts and had solicited her for sex to keep her out of trouble.”

When Olympia Police detective Jeff Herbig arrested Olivas at work at J.C. Penney on Tuesday, “Olivas admitted to apprehending the victims for shoplifting and admitted to holding them in the security office for over three hours.” He also admitted to looking through the girls’ cell phones and asking them questions about their private lives. “Olivas admitted that he led the victims to believe they were going to jail and that the incident was serious. Olivas admitted to taking clothed photos of the victims with his cell phone for his loss-prevention report but denied taking any nude or semi-nude photos of the victims.”

Olivas told Herbig that “both victims exposed their breasts to him and that they did so voluntarily to avoid getting in trouble.” Olivas also said “he might have joked with the victims about taking their pictures when they exposed their breast.”

Olivas told officers he was formerly a law enforcement officer in El Paso, Texas.

Costa said that it appears that the victims shoplifted clothing items from the J.C. Penney on the date that they were detained by Olivas.

Unlawful imprisonment is a class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. If an unlawful imprisonment is found to be sexually motivated, a defendant can face additional prison time.

Republican pedophiles

	Republican pedophiles
	Evil members of the Republican Party and supporters thereof who have abused children despite their high-and-mighty crusades for the return to moral values. The following is a partial list; due to the neocon obsession with NAMBLA, names with asterisks next to them are suitable for membership in that organization through their repulsive actions. And feel free to research these people independently. Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida. Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor. Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17. Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls. Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl. Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child. Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile. Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl. *Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s. *Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s. Republican Congressman Donald “Buz” Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail. Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos. Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children. Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child. Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page. Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter. Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger allegedly had sex with a 16 year old girl when he was 28. *Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar. Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped. Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. “Republican Marty”), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD. *Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography. Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media. *Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him. Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl. Republican anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her. Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison. Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl. *Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy. Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children). Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15-year old girl. *Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child. Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl. Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters. Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl. *Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy. Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison. Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession. *Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a “good military man” and “church goer,” was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter. Republican director of the “Young Republican Federation” Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison. Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was charged with rape for allegedly paying a 15-year old girl for sex. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women. by Shreve Lamb and Harmon Jul 24, 2005 share this

Help us pass the “Read the Bills Act” (RTBA)

You can read the text of RTBA by clicking the Draft Legislation tab above, or you can start by reading a summary of the legislation below. Following that summary is a description of our strategy for passing RTBA, and then a call to action.

Part 1: What RTBA does and why

Most Congressmen are lawyers, and many others are businessmen. They know what “fiduciary responsibility” is. For Members of Congress, fiduciary responsibility means reading each word of every bill before they vote.

But Congress has not met this duty for a long time. Instead . . .

Submission Committee

Leo Hamel
R W Kerr
Paul Davis
Winnona Christeson
Thomas Fultz
Peter R. Abeln
David Chapman
Donald D. Franklin
Jim Fuller
Gregory Utas
Robert S. Moore
Leslie C. Hardison
Daniel J. Dunn
Craig B. Googan
Benjamin Rousch
James D. Meyer
James Marquart
Stephanie Adams
Lisa Z. Morgan
David C. Ripley
Robert W. Shubring
Clarence Garnder
Stan Jones
Russell J. Kominski
Melanie Marshall
Jeffrey S. Schulman, Jr.
Maria Spicer
Dan Steelandt
William W. Bell
David W. Landram
V.K. Benson
Frank Bowman
Jessica Hathaway
Joseph Hegener
Beck Horne
Matthew M. Hosler
Geoffrey H. Hunter
Shane Killian
Owen Mann
Thomas E. Regneir
Leslie J. Russell
Kempes Trager
Mary Warner
Kevin C. Kuhns
Peter Skaates
Craig P. Thompson
George R. Whitfield
Bernard S. Browning
Jacob Burckhardt
Michael Ciulla
Kerry G. Daniel
Marc L. Guttman
Robert L. Morgan
Ken Mosher
Randy Norton
Victoria E. Pate
Joel G. Rauch
John Schultz
Kirk Singh
Edward W. Sudduth
Emil R. Wolanski
Dr. Warren Barr
Richard K. Chaplin
David Erickson
Dorsey J. Glenn
Kenneth Obenski
Zach Sycks
Michael T. Foley
Shal Loeser
Kay Samalin
Charles Braly Distributors
Daniel Edgar
Robert G. Howard
Robert Larkin
Thomas Anderson
Eugene L. Bivins
Mann Page Ciesemier
David del Rio
Richard T. Hogan
Ronald G. Holley
Herb C. Johnson
Andrew Marold
Robert C. Sheets
Judith A. Shellabarger
Chris Taylor
David A. Eckhardt
Andrew D. Bourdon
Brian R. Key
Mike Spalding
Andrew L. Sullivan
Nancy Woods
Duane Bates
Constitution Party of WA
Anthony J. Diliberto
Kamarat McWashington
Dr. Mike Rosing
Darrell D. White
Edward J. Wirzulis
Walter Uhlman
Lynn Cunningham
Noel Gibeson
J. Roderick Greig
Louise Javra
Joseph R. Jordan
Robert L. Knowlden
Michael Maloy
Joyce E. Manett
Yuri Mankovskiy
Ruth Matheny
Joe Moorman
Olivier Schreiber
Jermainie J. Schultz
Paul B. Simon
Steven Smith
Christopher K. Walters
Matthew Weigel
James A. West
Verlin Whipple
Gregory A. Wolfe
Gil Magno
Richard Schwartzman
Thomas J. Boyle
Mallory Montgomery
Steven Pilchman

• They carelessly pass mammoth bills that none of them have read. Sometimes printed copies aren’t even available when they vote!
• Often no one knows what these bills contain, or what they really do, or what they will really cost.
• Additions and deletions are made at the last minute, in secrecy.
• They combine unpopular proposals with popular measures that few in Congress want to oppose. (This practice is called “log-rolling.”)
• And votes are held with little debate or public notice.
• Oh, and once these bills are passed, and one of these unpopular proposals comes to light, they pretend to be shocked. “How did that get in there?” they say.

There’s a basic principle at stake here. America was founded on the slogan, “No taxation without representation.” A similar slogan applies to this situation:

“No LEGISLATION without representation.”

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.

And since Congress has repeatedly committed “legislation without representation,” strong measures to prohibit these Congressional misrepresentations are both justified and required.

To this end we have created the “Read the Bills Act (RTBA).” RTBA requires that . . .

• Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.
• Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.
• Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.
• Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.
• Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.
• Congress cannot waive these requirements.

The effects of these provisions will be profound . . .

• Congress will have to slow down. This means the pace of government growth will also slow.
• Bills will shrink, be less complicated, and contain fewer subjects, so that Congress will be able to endure hearing them read.
• Fewer bad proposals will be passed due to “log-rolling.”
• No more secret clauses will be inserted into bills at the last moment.
• Government should shrink as old laws reach their sunset date, and have to be read for the first time before they can be renewed.

And all of these things will enable a larger DownsizeDC.org to more effectively lobby Congress for small government.

Part 2: Our Strategy for passing RTBA

Our plan for passing this legislation is simple, but powerful.

• We have submitted a copy of RTBA to every member of Congress.
• We are asking every member of the House and Senate to sponsor this legislation and work for its passage.
• We are mounting a campaign to recruit thousands, and perhaps millions of Americans to lobby Congress to support RTBA.
• We are promoting this campaign with a variety of tactics, from Internet networking, to media interviews, to whatever it takes.
• We will run targeted radio ads, letting citizens know that their Congressman is failing to support this badly needed reform.

The need for this reform is so self-evident that nearly every person in America should support it, and few oppose it. We see no reason why we should not be able to overwhelm Congress with calls to pass this legislation.

• We dare Congress not to pass it. The more they resist, the larger and stronger we will grow.
• We dare anyone to challenge it in Court. The more the lobbyists attempt to defeat this reform, the larger and stronger we will grow.
• We dare the Courts to declare it un-Constitutional. If they do, we will grow larger and stronger as a result — probably big enough to begin a campaign to amend the Constitution to forbid “LEGISLATION without representation.”

There is simply no reason that any normal, tax-paying American should oppose RTBA. And the more the “powers that be” resist these reforms, the larger and stronger we will grow.

We win either way. And thus, we believe, we will win in the end.

Part 3: A Call to Action

You can help pass RTBA. All you have to do is register to use our easy Electronic Lobbyist system and send a message to your Representative and your Senators asking them to pass RTBA. Registering to use our system will also enable you to lobby Congress on other issues, and to receive our free email newsletter, Downsizer-Dispatch. This free email newsletter will keep you posted on progress with RTBA and other Downsize DC lobbying campaigns. To send your message to Congress in support of RTBA click here.

Thank you.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org

“Vampire” unearthed in Venice plague grave Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:24pm EDT

By Daniel Flynn ROME (Reuters) – Italian researchers believe they have found the remains of a female “vampire” in Venice, buried with a brick jammed between her jaws to prevent her feeding on victims of a plague which swept the city in the 16th century.

Matteo Borrini, an anthropologist from the University of Florence, said the discovery on the small island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon supported the medieval belief that vampires were behind the spread of plagues like the Black Death.

“This is the first time that archaeology has succeeded in reconstructing the ritual of exorcism of a vampire,” Borrini told Reuters by telephone. “This helps … authenticate how the myth of vampires was born.”

The skeleton was unearthed in a mass grave from the Venetian plague of 1576 — in which the artist Titian died — on Lazzaretto Nuovo, which lies around three km (2 miles) northeast of Venice and was used as a sanitorium for plague sufferers.

The succession of plagues which ravaged Europe between 1300 and 1700 fostered the belief in vampires, mainly because the decomposition of corpses was not well understood, Borrini said.

Gravediggers reopening mass graves would sometimes come across bodies bloated by gas, with hair still growing, and blood seeping from their mouths and believe them to be still alive.

The shrouds used to cover the faces of the dead were often decayed by bacteria in the mouth, revealing the corpse’s teeth, and vampires became known as “shroud-eaters.”

According to medieval medical and religious texts, the “undead” were believed to spread pestilence in order to suck the remaining life from corpses until they acquired the strength to return to the streets again.

“To kill the vampire you had to remove the shroud from its mouth, which was its food like the milk of a child, and put something uneatable in there,” said Borrini. “It’s possible that other corpses have been found with bricks in their mouths, but this is the first time the ritual has been recognized.”

While legends about blood-drinking ghouls date back thousands of years, the modern figure of the vampire was encapsulated in the Irish author Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula,” based on 18th century eastern European folktales.

(Editing by Phakamisa Ndzamela)

Sex in the (18)90′s

Sex in the (18)90's

            INSTRUCTION AND ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG BRIDE
               On the Conduct and Procedure of the
               Intimate and Personal Relationships
                 of the Marriage State for the
               Greater Spiritual Sanctity of this
             Blessed Sacrament and the Glory of God
                              by
                 Ruth Smythers beloved wife of
                  The Reverend L.D. Smythers
               Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist
           Church of the Eastern Regional Conference
             Published in the year of our Lord 1894
                   Spiritual Guidance Press
                        New York City

To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper
upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and
most terrifying day of her life.  On the positive side, there is the
wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a
beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing
a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life.  On the
negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must
pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible
experience of sex.

At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth.  Some
young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with
curiosity and pleasure!  Beware such an attitude!  A selfish and
sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride.  One
cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE,
GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY.  Otherwise what could
have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

On the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme.  While sex
it at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be
endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is
compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced
through it.

It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom
to forego the sexual initiation.  While the ideal husband would be one
who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the
purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot
be expected from the average man.

Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day.  The wise
bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly
during the first months of marriage.  As time goes by she should make
every effort to reduce this frequency.  Feigned illness, sleepiness,
and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter.
Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective,
if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would
normally commence his seduction.

Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of
denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband.  A good
wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by
the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end
of the fifth year of marriage.

By their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their
child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all
sexual contacts with the husband.  By this time she can depend upon
his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in
the home.

Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as
possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind
and degree of sexual contacts.  Most men are by nature rather
perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety
of the most revolting practices.  These practices include among others
performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female
body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

Nudity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing
photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious
habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted.  A wise bride will
make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body,
and never allow him to display his unclothed body to her.  Sex, when
it cannot be prevented, should be practiced only in total darkness.
Many women have found it useful to have thick cotton nightgowns for
themselves and pajamas for their husbands.  These should be donned in
separate rooms.  They need not be removed during the sex act.  Thus, a
minimum of flesh is exposed.

Once the bride has donned her gown and turned off all the lights, she
should lie quietly upon the bed and await her groom.  When he comes
groping into the room she should make no sound to guide him in her
direction, lest he take this as a sign of encouragement.  She should
let him grope in the dark.  There is always the hope that he will
stumble and incur some slight injury which she can use as an excuse to
deny him sexual access.

When he finds her, the wife should lie as still as possible.  Bodily
motion on her part could be interpreted as sexual excitement by the
optimistic husband.

If he attempts to kiss her on the lips she should turn her head
slightly so that the kiss falls harmlessly on her cheek instead. If
he attempts to kiss her hand, she should make a fist.  If he lifts her
gown and attempts to kiss her anyplace else she should quickly pull
the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature
calls her to the toilet.  This will generally dampen his desire to
kiss in the forbidden territory.

If the husband attempts to seduce her with lascivious talk, the wise
wife will suddenly remember some trivial non-sexual question to ask
him.  Once he answers she should keep the conversation going, no
matter how frivolous it may seem at the time.

Eventually, the husband will learn that if he insists on having sexual
contact, he must get on with it without amorous embellishment. The
wise wife will allow him to pull the gown up no farther than the
waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus
make connection.

She will be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while his
huffing and puffing away.  Above all, she will lie perfectly still and
never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in
progress.  As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife
will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to
perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual
satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is
over.  Thus the wife must insure that there is no peace in this period
for him to enjoy.  Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for
more.

One heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact
that the husband's home, school, church, and social environment have
been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep
sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to
the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half
cowed and subdued.  The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and
relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate
completely her husband's desire for sexual expression.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. – Thomas A. Edison

The State of Maine  is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, New Hampshire to the southwest, the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is the northernmost portion of New England and is the easternmost state in the contiguous United States. It is known for its scenery—its jagged, mostly rocky coastline; its low, rolling mountains; and its heavily forested interior — as well as for its seafood cuisine, especially lobsters and clams.

The original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking peoples. The first European settlement in Maine was in 1604 by a French party. The first English settlement in Maine, the short-lived Popham Colony, was established by the Plymouth Company in 1607. A number of English settlements were established along the coast of Maine in the 1620s, although the rugged climate, deprivations, and Indian attacks wiped out many of them over the years. As Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen settlements still survived. American and British forces contended for Maine’s territory during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Maine was an exclave of Massachusetts until 1820, when as a result of the growing population, it became the 23rd state on March 15 under the Missouri Compromise.

Maine State House, designed by Charles Bulfinch, built 1829–1832

The original inhabitants of the territory that is now Maine were Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki peoples including the Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscots. The first European settlement in Maine was in 1604 by a French party that included Samuel de Champlain, the noted explorer. The French named the entire area, including the portion that later became the State of Maine, Acadia. The first English settlement in Maine was established by the Plymouth Company at Popham in 1607, the same year as the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Both colonies were predated by the Roanoke Colony by 22 years. Because the Popham Colony did not survive the harsh Maine winters and the Roanoke Colony was lost, Jamestown enjoys the distinction of being regarded as America’s first permanent English-speaking settlement. The coastal areas of western Maine first became the Province of Maine in a 1622 land patent. Eastern Maine north of the Kennebec River was more sparsely settled and was known in the 17th century as the Territory of Sagadahock.

The province within its current boundaries became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1652. Maine was much fought over by the French and English during the 17th and early 18th centuries. After the defeat of the French in the 1740s, the territory from the Penobscot River east fell under the nominal authority of the Province of Nova Scotia, and together with present day New Brunswick formed the Nova Scotia county of Sunbury, with its court of general sessions at Campobello. American and British forces contended for Maine’s territory during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, and British forces occupied eastern Maine in both conflicts. The treaty concluding revolution was ambiguous about Maine’s boundary with British North America. The territory of Maine was confirmed as part of Massachusetts when the United States was formed, although the final border with British territory was not established until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. (Indeed, in 1839 Governor Fairfield declared war on Britain over a boundary dispute between New Brunswick and northern Maine. Known as the Aroostook War, this is the only time a state has declared war on a foreign power. The dispute was settled, however, before any blood was shed.

Because it was physically separated from the rest of Massachusetts and was growing in population at a rapid rate, Maine became the 23rd state on March 15, 1820 through the Missouri Compromise. This compromise allowed admitting both Maine and Missouri (in 1821) into the union while keeping a balance between slave and free states. Maine’s original capital was Portland, the largest city in Maine, until it was moved to Augusta in 1832 to make it more central within the state.

Bad Resumes

These items were actually on resumes.

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Objectives:

To acquire a creative development position within the entertainment industry that would utilize my vast (2 years) technical experience.

To find a gig.

My goal is to be a meteorologist. But since I have no training in meteorology, I suppose I should try stock brokerage.

I demand a salary commiserate with my extensive experience.

Reasons for Leaving the Last Job:

Terminated after saying, “It would be a blessing to be fired.”

Responsibility makes me nervous.

Being in trouble with the law, I moved quite frequently.

In my last position, got nowhere as part of a 60-person herd.

I did not give the company my full effort and received no chance of advancement in return.

Note: Please don’t misconstrue my 14 jobs as job-hopping. I have never quit a job.

My last employer insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 every morning. I couldn’t work under those conditions.

Was met with a string of broken promises and lies, as well as cockroaches.

I was working for my mom until she decided to move.

The company made me a scapegoat – just like my three previous employers.

Maturity leave.

Job Responsibilities:

Maintained files and reports, did data processing, cashed employees’ paychecks.

Responsibilities included checking customers out.

Creator / Writer: ihatemylife.us, Los Angeles, CA

Overlooked all areas to ensure an overwhelming success.

Develop and recommend an annual operating expense fudget.

Dealing with customers’ conflicts that arouse.

While I am open to the initial nature of an assignment, I am decidedly disposed that it be so oriented as to at least partially incorporate the experience enjoyed heretofore and that it be configured so as to ultimately lead to the application of more rarefied facets of financial management as the major sphere of responsibility.

Personal Interests:

Donating blood. 14 gallons so far!

I like the Simpsons.

Interests: Running, editing video, cooking, writing and wondering.

Go Chargers!

Qualifications:

Professionally watered 22,500 house plants.

I often use a laptap.

I am able to say the ABCs backwards in under five seconds.

I’m a lean, mean, marketing machine.

In response to your ad for Web Editor, here is a URL to a site I have worked on: www.seeyouinbed.com

I have a current passport.

Excellant at people oriented positi9ons and organizational problem solving.

Minor allergies to house cats and Mongolian sheep.

I am a great team player I am.

I have lurnt Word Perfect 6.0, computor and spreadsheat progroms.

Very experienced with out-house computers.

Spent several years in the United States Navel Reserve.

1881-1995: Spent my time teaching and going to school for computer science.

I flurrish in an environment where there is no inner-office tension and people respect one another.

I never take anything for granite.

I am creative, dependable, and housebroken.

I am a perfectionist and rarely if if ever forget details.

I am an onest and ambitious person, understanding the words as deadline, professional skills, communication with people, seriousity.

I have eight arms and eight legs with excellent interpersonal skills.

I have unsuccessfully raised a dog.

At the age of twelve, I began hustling newspapers like many other great Americans had done. The only difference was that they became great.

I can adapt to just about any environment from cubicles to fancy IKEA desks.

I’m a rabid typist.

Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a Midwest chain operation.

Wholly responsible for two (2) failed financial institutions.

It’s best for employers that I not work with people.

Failed bar exam with relatively high grades.

I procrastinate, especially when the task is unpleasant.

Marital status: single. Unmarried. Unengaged. Uninvolved. No Commitments.

I am loyal to my employer at all costs. Please feel free to respond to my resume on my office voice mail.

I am a quick leaner, dependable and motivated.

I have become completely paranoid, trusting completely no one and absolutely nothing.

As indicted, I have over five years of analyzing investments.

Marital status: often. Children: various.

Education:

While I’ve never quite gotten a degree, I am quite close to several.

Completed 11 years of high school.

College: August 1880-May 1984.

Finished eighth in my high school graduating class of ten.

Suspected to graduate early next year.

No education or experience.

Special Requests:

Desired Salary: $1.00 Per Year

I’ll need $30K to start, full medical, three weeks of vacation, stock options and ideally a European sedan.

Please call me after 5:30 because I am self-employed and my employer does not know I am looking for another job.

I want a boss of average height, not too tall, though not strangely small (though I guess I could get used to just about anything given time).

I need just enough money to have pizza every night.

If U hire me, U will not have any regrets.

I don’t have a phone 4 the time being. Please email me instead.

I prefer informality like wearing sports shirts and sandals for footwear in the summer.

I prefer setting my own pace. When things get slack I like the right to walk out and get a haircut during working hours.

Skills and Accomplishments:

I am the leader of a 6,000 member clan on World of Warcraft.

I make an excellent sandwich.

Received a plague for Salesperson of the Year.

I was proud to win the Gregg Typting Award.

I have an excellent track record, although I am not a horse.

Proven ability to track down and correct erors.

Excellent memory; strong math aptitude; excellent memory.

I have never had a single blemish held against me and my IQ is off the charts.

I am quick at typing, about 25 word per minute, 35 with caffeinated coffee.

Outstanding worker; flexible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Additional Information:

Being in trouble with the law, I moved quite frequently.

At the age of 12, I began hustling newspapers like many other great Americans. The only difference was that they became great.

Let’s meet, so you can ooh and aah over my experience.

You will want me to be Head Honcho in no time.

At the emphatic urging of colleagues, I have consented to apply for your position.

Have had littel luck in finding a new and challenging position.

I am anxious to spread my wings in new directions and soar to new heights.

I am writing to you, as I have written to all Fortune 1000 companies every year for the past three years, to solicit employment.

Shot at the local gun club.

I’ve left a path of destruction behind me.

If you can’t be a people person on a Navy ship, then you will probably get tossed overboard.

one of the best ideas i have seen

The Liberty Amendment Liberty, freedom and sovereignty restored to all Americans

Individual liberty, freedom and sovereignty of the people will be restored in a representative republican form of government by clarifying the original spirit and intent of the Constituon. Thtie Liberty Amendment will give back to the Constitution its full force and effect in limiting the powers and activities of the Federal Government and restoring those powers reserved to the States and to the people. The Liberty Amendment, proposed, could become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

Text of the proposed Liberty Amendment

Section 1. The Government of the United States shall not engage in any business, professional, commercial, financial or industrial enterprise except as specified in the Constitution. Section 2. The constitution or laws of any State, or the laws of the United States shall not be subject to the terms of any foreign or domestic agreement which would abrogate this amendment. Section 3. The activities of the United States Government which violate the intent and purpose of this amendment shall, within a period of three years from the date of the ratification of this amendment, be liquidated and the properties and facilities affected shall be sold. Section 4. Three years after the ratification of this amendment the sixteenth article of amendments to the Constitution of the United States shall stand repealed and thereafter Congress shall not levy taxes on personal incomes, estates, and/or gifts.

The Liberty Amendment states that the Federal Government shall not operate business-type activities unless they are specifically authorized by the Constitution.

It provides a three-year period for selling or liquidating more than 900 agencies and business-type enterprises presently operated by the Federal Government without constitutional authority. Sale of these enterprises will bring in enough money to substantially reduce the national debt. Annual budget spending by the government could be reduced by more than fifty percent. Revenue from excise taxes on goods and services, and on corporation incomes, will increase at least twenty percent, without increase of tax rates.

This means that the annual revenue collected from the Federal Personal Income and Withholding Tax, the Federal Estate Tax, and the Federal Gift tax, will not be needed. So the Liberty Amendment will stop these three types of taxes, at the end of the three-year period

Current status

• There are currently nine States which have already endorsed the Liberty Amendment. These States and the year in which they endorsed the Amendment are:
  

  Wyoming (’59) • Nevada (’60) • Texas (’60) • Louisiana (’60) • Georgia (’62) • South Carolina (’62) • Mississippi (’82) • Arizona (’82) • Indiana (’82)

• On February 7, 2007 the Hon. Ron Paul of Texas introduced in The House of Representatives the House Joint Resolution 23:
  

  Proposing an amendment the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.

  HJR 23 has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. See the latest status of HJR 23.

  (Ron Paul previously introduced this amendment on January 28, 2003 as House Joint Resolution 15. HJR 15 was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. See its latest status.)

For more background information, please see The Liberty Amendment – its origin and progress.

The purpose of the Liberty Amendment

The purpose of this Amendment is to give full force and effect to the Constitution of the United States; to restore freedom and lost liberties to all Americans; and to restore sovereignty to the United States of America, the States and the body of the People.

The Liberty Amendment will renew personal freedom – the ability of individuals to exercise their God-given rights with a minimum of dependence on, and interference from, the Federal Government. It will restore to ourselves and to future generations the advantages which we inherited from our forefathers – advantages which made us the most fortunate people on earth.

Economic freedom, without which no freedom is possible, will be renewed by terminating federal competition with free enterprise and interference in “our” economy. When this has been accomplished, federal personal income, estate, and gift taxes will be unnecessary. So this Amendment will further renew economic freedom by terminating these taxes.

The Liberty Amendment is designed to regain the Constitutionally guaranteed powers reserved to the States and to the people. We are requesting that all States consider the urgent need to save the sovereignty of the States, the United States in its true Constitutionally framed Republic, and the Individual Liberty of all of our People.

Questions and Answers

Way back in 1975, Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Georgia) entered an excellent series of Questions and Answers about the Liberty Amendment into the Congressional Record. Even today, this is still one of the best explanations of the Liberty Amendment. Read it here.

The Liberty Amendment will win the battle on 45 issues all at once

The Liberty Amendment has been designed to fight all the multitude of apparently different battles at once – and win by restoring the Constitution to full force and effect. Once the Amendment is applied, a multitude of diversified battles will be won. Please read this important section.

ACTION FOR AMERICANS: HERE IS THE ACTION BY ANY AMERICAN WHO REALLY WANTS TO ACHIEVE RATIFICATION OF THE LIBERTY AMENDMENT

Since the purpose and design of the Liberty Amendment is to Restore Liberty in America, it is our goal to inform as many Americans as possible about how this amendment to the Constitution will accomplish this difficult task in our time. And since nine States, so far, have passed resolutions requesting Congress to initiate the ratification process, it is our intent to motivate all freedom loving citizens of the remaining States to request their State Legislators to pass a resolution endorsing the Liberty Amendment. This resolution should request Congress to initiate the preferred process of submitting the Amendment directly to the States for ratification and firmly insist that a Constitutional Convention only be called for the single purpose of ratifying the Liberty Amendment.

So now is the time – for everyone to work for the endorsement of the Liberty Amendment and for its ratification. We will have to work hard to convince our state legislators that they should introduce a resolution calling for the Congress to submit the the Amendment to the states for ratification. Please read this section to see how you can help!

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Background Reading

The Liberty Amendment – its origin and progress

How the Liberty Amendment originated, its author, and a timeline of its progress through the years.

Growth of the Federal Government

The specter of Federal Government growth in size and power, and the need for the Liberty Amendment is more desperate now than ever.

Centralizing Power in the Federal Government

The erosion of the balance of powers from the States and the People – to the Federal Government, generating momentum for the Liberty Amendment movement.

Bureaucratic Domination

Bureaucratic domination and how it has accelerated in America. “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence–it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.” – George Washington

Worst Date Ever

 

A True Date story

We have all had bad dates…but this takes the cake. This just tells you how tough it is to be single nowadays.

This was on the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Jay went into the audience to find the most embarrassing first date that a woman

ever had.

The winner described her worst first date experience. There absolutely no question as to why her tale took the prize!

She said it was midwinter … snowing and quite cold… and the guy had taken her skiing to Lake Arrowhead.  It was a day trip, no overnight, they were strangers after all, and truly had never met before.  The outing was fun but relatively uneventful until they were headed home late that afternoon.

They were driving back down the mountain, when she gradually began to realize that she should not have had that extra latte.  They were about an hour away from anywhere with a rest room and in the middle of nowhere! Her companion suggested she try to hold it, which she did for a while.  Unfortunately, because of the heavy snow and slow going, there came a point where she told him that he had better stop and let her pee beside the road or it would be the front seat of his car.

They stopped and she quickly crawled out beside the car, yanked her pants down and started. Unfortunately, in the deep snow she didn’t have good footing, so she let her butt rest against the rear fender to steady herself. Her companion stood on the side of the car watching for traffic and indeed was a real gentleman and refrained from peeking.

All she could think about was the relief she felt despite the rather embarrassing nature of the situation.  Upon finishing however, she soon became aware of another sensation. As she bent to pull up her pants, the young lady discovered her buttocks were firmly glued against the car’s fender.  Thoughts of tongues frozen to pump handles immediately came to mind as she attempted to disengage her flesh from the icy metal.  It was quickly apparent that she had a brand new

problem due to the extreme cold. Horrified by her plight and yet aware of the humor she answered her date’s concerns about “What is taking so long?” with a reply that indeed, she was “freezing her butt off and in need of some assistance!”

He came around the car as she tried to cover herself with her sweater and then, as she looked imploringly into his eyes, he burst out laughing.  She too, got the giggles and when they finally managed to compose themselves, they assessed her dilemma.  Obviously, as hysterical as the situation was, they also were faced with a real problem. Both agreed it would take something hot to free her chilly cheeks from the grip of the icy metal!

Thinking about what had gotten her into the predicament in the first place, both quickly realized that there was only one way to get her free. So, as she looked the other way, her first-time date proceeded to unzip his pants and pee her butt off the fender.

As for the Tonight Show, she took the prize hands down … or perhaps that should be “pants down.”   And you thought your first date was embarrassing.

Jay Leno’s comment – - – - This gives a whole new meaning to being, “pissed off.”

Physics 1021

Bread is Dangerous

 

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average North American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 240 degrees Celsius! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.
12. Most bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions:

1. No sale of bread to minors
2. A nationwide “Just Say No To Toast” campaign, complete celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.
3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.
4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.
5. The establishment of “Bread-free” zones around schools.

 

Girl Arrested for Texting; Hides Phone in Butt

Earlier last week, an incident occurred in Wisconsin where a 14 year old girl was arrested by police officers after she was reported to the police by her school teacher for texting on her phone during class.

After the girl was caught texting by her teacher, she was requested to hand over her phone, but then refused to. Instead, the girl argued back and continued to text during her class. Frustrated at the situation, the teacher ended up calling the police, who then came to the school to question the girl. After repeated denial of ever having a phone, officer Jeffrey S. Griffin, noticed that the girl had her pant zipper undone. This lead officer Griffin to believe that the girl hid the phone in her pants.

Officer Griffin then requested for a female officer to come on location for a physical search. After a frisk down, Officer Paula Roberson retrieved a Samsung Cricket cellphone from “the buttocks area” of the girl. The girl then laughed at the situation, but was then arrested for lying to the police about not having a phone, as well as lying when the officers attempted to ask for the girl’s phone number.

After examining the phone, Officer Roberson found that the girl had used the phone during class to send a text message to her dad, and the phone itself belonged to her dad.

The 14 year old girl was charged with a misdemeanor with a bail of $298 and a mandate to appear in court. The girl was not allowed to go back to school for several days, and would be charged with trespassing if she was found to be on school grounds during her suspension.

Do you think the teacher, officers and school went too far for a texting incident with a 14 year old girl? Or do you feel that justice was rightly served? Has technology gone to the point where things like SMS texting during school is considered criminal?

When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite By ThosPayne

SS. Sergius & Bacchus – 7th cent.

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay “wedding” is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs. These two officers in the Roman army incurred the anger of Emperor Maximian when they were exposed as ‘secret Christians’ by refusing to enter a pagan temple. Both were sent to Syria circa 303 CE where Bacchus is thought to have died while being flogged. Sergius survived torture but was later beheaded. Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early Christian church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly intimate. Severus, the Patriarch of Antioch (AD 512 – 518) explained that, “we should not separate in speech they [Sergius and Bacchus] who were joined in life”. This is not a case of simple “adelphopoiia.” In the definitive 10th century account of their lives, St. Sergius is openly celebrated as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus. Sergius and Bacchus’s close relationship has led many modern scholars to believe they were lovers. But the most compelling evidence for this view is that the oldest text of their martyrology, written in New Testament Greek describes them as “erastai,” or “lovers”. In other words, they were a male homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was not only acknowledged, but it was fully accepted and celebrated by the early Christian church, which was far more tolerant than it is today.

Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual.

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).

These church rites had all the symbols of a heterosexual marriage: the whole community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar was conducted with their right hands joined, holy vows were exchanged, a priest officiatied in the taking of the Eucharist and a wedding feast for the guests was celebrated afterwards. These elements all appear in contemporary illustrations of the holy union of the Byzantine Warrior-Emperor, Basil the First (867-886 CE) and his companion John.

Such same gender Christian sanctified unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12thand/ early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded.

Same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe list in great detail some same gender ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century rite, “Order for Solemn Same-Sex Union”, invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, and called on God to “vouchsafe unto these, Thy servants [N and N], the grace to love one another and to abide without hate and not be the cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God, and all Thy saints”. The ceremony concludes: “And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded”.

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic “Office of the Same Sex Union”, uniting two men or two women, had the couple lay their right hands on the Gospel while having a crucifix placed in their left hands. After kissing the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Records of Christian same sex unions have been discovered in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, in Istanbul and in the Sinai, covering a thousand-years from the 8th to the 18th century.

The Dominican missionary and Prior, Jacques Goar (1601-1653), includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek Orthodox prayer books, “Euchologion Sive Rituale Graecorum Complectens Ritus Et Ordines Divinae Liturgiae” (Paris, 1667).

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, homophobic writings didn’t appear in Western Europe until the late 14th century. Even then, church-consecrated same sex unions continued to take place.

At St. John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope’s parish church) in 1578, as many as thirteen same-gender couples were joined during a high Mass and with the cooperation of the Vatican clergy, “taking communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together” according to a contemporary report. Another woman to woman union is recorded in Dalmatia in the 18th century.

Prof. Boswell’s academic study is so well researched and documented that it poses fundamental questions for both modern church leaders and heterosexual Christians about their own modern attitudes towards homosexuality.

For the Church to ignore the evidence in its own archives would be cowardly and deceptive. The evidence convincingly shows that what the modern church claims has always been its unchanging attitude towards homosexuality is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

It proves that for the last two millennia, in parish churches and cathedrals throughout Christendom, from Ireland to Istanbul and even in the heart of Rome itself, homosexual relationships were accepted as valid expressions of a God-given love and committment to another person, a love that could be celebrated, honored and blessed, through the Eucharist in the name of, and in the presence of, Jesus Christ.

Police Forces Dressing In Black To “Instill Fear” In Citizens

Recent news that police in Massachusetts are to switch to black, military-style uniforms in an effort to appear more authoritative and aggressive highlights a more general move to militarize police in America and affect a “post 9/11″ psychology of fear.

Last week an AP report headlined Massachusetts Police Get Black Uniforms to Instill Sense of ‘Fear‘ detailed the move:

Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to criminals that officers are serious about making arrests.

Delaney said a sense of “fear” has been missing for the past few years.

In recent years police in cities all over America have been increasingly seen in all black attire.

The introduction of black police uniforms has an ominous precedent. In 1932 Hitler’s propaganda chief Heinrich Himmler famously introduced black uniforms for SS police, tailored to project authority and foster fear and respect. The choice of color was not by chance.

It is believed that the Nazis took the idea from the “blackshirts” in Italy years before the creation of the SS.

A 2001 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin has summarized research on police uniforms and noted the psychological influence they have:

Research has suggested that clothing has a powerful impact on how people perceive each other. The police officer’s uniform has a profound psychological impact on others, and even slight alterations to the style of the uniform may change how citizens perceive them.

The studies cited found that black uniforms elicit emotions of anger, hostility, dominance, and aggression:

Applying the results of these studies in color to the police uniform suggests that darker police uniforms may send negative subconscious signals to citizens. A dark police uniform may subconsciously encourage citizens to perceive officers as aggressive, evil, or corrupt and send a negative message to the community.

Even more interesting are further findings that suggest both police officers and citizens are more likely to engage each other violently when the authorities come dressed in black:

The experiment with the colored jerseys also suggests that police officers in dark uniforms subconsciously may act more aggressively; therefore, departments should consider modifying police uniform colors.

The police uniform also may influence the safety level of the officer who wears it. Dark colored uniforms may elicit subconscious negative feelings from citizens, who may perceive the officer as aggressive, and subsequently, encourage them to consider violent action when confronted by the police.

Research has also shown that police uniforms with a lighter half have been ranked by citizens as “good, honest, helpful, and competent, the lighter colored sheriff’s uniform rated noticeably higher for warmth and friendliness”.

It is telling that police have ditched these in favor of the all black approach.

The same black uniform tactics have been adopted by police forces in the UK, who have ditched traditional uniforms in favor of black roll-necks and black combat trousers.

MPs have spoken out against the move, with David Jones, Conservative MP for Clwyd West describing the uniforms as “sinister”.

“I think that the connotations of black shirts are obvious to anybody. They’ve got a kind of fascist, militaristic appearance.” Jones commented at the time.

When the role of the police in a supposedly free country is to admittedly appear dangerous and to instill fear, in tandem with enhanced powers and more draconian practices, history tells us that something is most definitely not right.

How the Drug Companies Want Us to Be Sick

 

 

Posted in the database on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 @ 20:08:18 MST (32494 views)

 

by Stan Cox    AlterNet

 

 

 

 

The pharmaceutical industry has a dream: at least one disease (and more than one prescription drug) for every American.

You see a TV show or a commercial featuring medical problems, and you start feeling the symptoms yourself: a twinge in the leg or maybe a moment of doubt about your emotional stability.

If so, you, like millions of Americans, could be suffering from a serious condition known as telechondria. But help is here, with new Advertil(R) in the green-and-yellow caplet. Ask your doctor …

No, wait, don’t really ask. Telechondriacs have not yet been recognized by science. Pharmacists are not dispensing drugs like “Advertil,” and they probably never will. The last chemical that pharmaceutical executives would want to sell you is one that makes it harder for them to convince you that you’re sick and need their products.

Drug corporations and their “awareness” groups, as we’re all painfully aware, have defined and redefined a host of medical conditions — including female sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, restless legs, sleeplessness, bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder, social anxiety disorder and irritable bowel syndrome — to include larger and larger segments of the population in the United States and other Western nations.

Accepting for a moment the industry’s claims about the numbers of people suffering from the eight diseases listed above, we could do some simple calculations showing that up to 93 percent of adult women and men in the United States suffer from at least one of them. Throw in a few more conditions like depression, bone density loss and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and industry figures make it appear that virtually every American has a disease in need of a treatment.

Last year, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels called attention to the epidemic of disease marketing in their book “Selling Sickness.” Last month, health professionals, academics, journalists and consumers gathered in Newcastle, Australia, for the Inaugural Conference on Disease Mongering. A set of papers from that meeting was published free by the online journal PLoS Medicine. Also last month, the Prescription Access Litigation Project (PALP) in Boston announced its “2006 Bitter Pill Awards,” recognizing drug companies that engaged in the year’s worst “overzealous and questionable marketing practices.”

These and other recent activities make it all too clear that the profitable practices exposed in Lynn Payer’s 1992 book “Disease Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick” have been refined and amplified in recent years, with the apparent goal of medicating an entire population.

Unruly body parts

The evolution of “restless legs syndrome,” documented by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz in a paper from the Disease Mongering Conference, is a case study in how a pharmaceutical company, with help from the media, can turn what is a serious problem for some people into a contrived medical condition for millions more.

Woloshin and Schwartz analyzed media coverage in the interval between 2003, when GlaxoSmithKline Inc. first issued press releases about trials of its drug Requip for relief of restless legs syndrome, and 2005, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved that use.

Of 187 major newspaper articles published during those two years, 64 percent relayed without comment the industry’s claims that millions of Americans — as many as “1 in 10 adults” — suffer restless leg. Forty-five percent of the articles stressed that many people may be unaware they’re sick, even though, according to 73 percent of the articles, the syndrome can have extreme physical, social and emotional consequences. Reports of the relief provided by drug treatment used “miracle language” 34 percent of the time, while 93 percent of articles failed to quantify Requip’s side effects.

Yet the relief people get from Requip appears to be anything but miraculous. In one trial, 73 percent of subjects saw improvement — compared with 57 percent whose symptoms improved with a placebo! Side effects that occurred in clinical trials at least twice as often with Requip as with a placebo included nausea (40 percent of subjects), vomiting (11 percent), somnolence (12 percent), dizziness (11 percent) and fatigue (8 percent).

My attempts to obtain responses from several drug companies to charges of mongering restless leg and other conditions went unanswered. Quoted last month by the Guardian (U.K.) as he defended his company against bad publicity generated by the conference, David Stout of GlaxoSmithKline said, “You need to talk to the patients. Things like restless leg syndrome can ruin people’s lives. It is easy to trivialize things when you don’t have them. If people did not want the treatments, they would not seek them.”

Restless leg syndrome in its most serious form is indeed no joke. My father was tormented for years by near-constant symptoms, until, without ever having seen an advertisement, he sought treatment.

But, says Dr. David Henry, who is a physician, professor at the University of Newcastle and co-organizer of the Disease Mongering conference, “When you extend a drug beyond the [most severely afflicted] group on which claims of its effectiveness are based, you see a falling ratio of good to harm. The benefits of the drug diminish, while the side effects tend to stay the same.”

Henry told me, “The companies know quite consciously that they’re going into areas where they’re doing net harm.”

In their conference paper, Woloshin and Schwartz note that restless legs syndrome is one of those “disease promotion stories” that the press loves to cover: “The stories are full of drama: a huge but unrecognized public health crisis, compelling personal anecdotes, uncaring or ignorant doctors, and miracle cures.”

Irritable everything syndrome

The story of another disease, irritable bowel syndrome, has all of those dramatic elements, plus dead patients.

In “Selling Sickness,” Moynihan and Cassels describe public-relations offensives by Novartis Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline to popularize a condition called irritable bowel syndrome (symptoms of which are described as “abdominal pain or discomfort associated with changes in bowel habits in the absence of any apparent structural abnormality”).

The companies stood to gain billions in sales if, as they claimed, as many as 20 percent of Americans had the syndrome. GlaxoSmithKline’s drug Lotronex received FDA approval for treatment of irritable bowel in 2000, and Novartis’ Zelnorm was approved in 2002. In statements to the FDA and the public, the companies tended to characterize irritable bowel syndrome as it is experienced by the worst-afflicted patients — a tiny percentage of the total — while emphasizing claims that the syndrome hits vast numbers of Americans.

TV star Kelsey Grammer and his wife Camille Grammer, who suffers from the disease, made the rounds of talk shows in a publicity effort quietly funded by GlaxoSmithKline, while Novartis deployed former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter to stress that common stomach problems might be irritable bowel, a “real medical condition.” The FDA wrote to Novartis in 2003, demanding that the company discontinue other advertising that it considered misleading because it exaggerated the drug’s benefits and the numbers of people who need it while minimizing its side effects.

Lotronex can now be prescribed only by doctors who have enrolled in a GlaxoSmithKline “Prescribing Program.” According to Moynihan and Cassels, the drug came under fire in late 2000 when three FDA scientists wrote to their superiors expressing alarm over a rising toll of deaths and hospitalizations of irritable-bowel patients during the nine months that Lotronex had been on the market. (The concern was spurred by the remarkably increased rates; the deaths had not been shown in a clinical trial to have been caused by Lotronex.)

“Selling Sickness” contains this frightening description of one side effect: “For some of those who experienced severe constipation after taking the drug, their feces would become so impacted within their bowel that the bowel wall perforated, leading to potentially fatal infections inside the body.”

Head games

A conference paper by David Healy traced the expanding definition of bipolar disorder over the past quarter century. The disease officially entered the manual of mental disorders in 1980, and based on its original diagnostic criteria — which included an episode of hospitalization — bipolar disorder is a devastating disease for 0.1 percent of the U.S. population. Over time, it has been broadened with additional criteria based on community surveys, so that the disease once known as “manic depression” is now said to affect 5 percent or more of Americans.

According to Healy, there is “almost no evidence” that drug treatment works for that much broader group of “community-based” disorders. Yet manufacturers like Eli Lilly and Co. and Janssen L.P. have heavily promoted pharmaceutical treatment of bipolar, as broadly defined, through websites, patient literature and new scientific journals devoted to the disease.

Evidence is accumulating that one drug prescribed for bipolar disorder (Lilly’s Zyprexa) causes withdrawal symptoms, that patients on drugs for bipolar tend to be hospitalized more often than those who are not, that the drugs are associated with a heightened risk of suicide and that antipsychotic drugs in general are associated with increased death rates.

Despite such problems, says Healy, there is a recent “surge of diagnoses of bipolar disorder in American children.” He cites one book that actually appears to accept the possibility that bipolar disorder may first show up in hyperactive fetuses.

The drug industry has thoroughly penetrated the juvenile market for another well-known disease, attention deficit disorder (ADD, also called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD). The numbers of prescriptions to be written are huge; the National Institutes of Mental Health estimates that there’s an average of at least one afflicted child per typical-size classroom. But people spend many more years as adults than as children, and stiff competition among the major ADD drugmakers — among them Shire PLC, Novartis and Lilly — guaranteed that the larger pool of potential adult patients would be targeted.

All three companies contribute or have contributed funds to the organization Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), which calls ADD “a lifespan disorder, affecting children, adolescents and adults.” In “Selling Sickness,” Moynihan and Cassels describe a talk by a Shire executive at a CHADD charity golf event, in which he estimated that 8 million U.S. adults could benefit from treatment. CHADD gets about 20 percent of its funding from drug firms, and its website provides detailed advice on medication for ADD. One example:

Although there is little research on utilizing short-acting and long-acting medications together, many individuals, especially teenagers and adults, find that they may need to supplement a longer-acting medication taken in the morning with a shorter-acting dose taken in mid- to late afternoon. The “booster” dose may provide better coverage for doing homework or other late afternoon or evening activities and may also reduce problems of “rebound” when the earlier dose wears off.

The marketing of ADD can venture into bewildering territory. One of PALP’s 2006 Bitter Pill Awards went to Lilly for a TV commercial plugging its drug Strattera. In the ad, information on approved uses and risks is accompanied by wildly distracting sights and sounds of a video game. The FDA issued Lilly a mild rebuke over the ad: “The overall effect of the distracting visuals and graphics is to undermine the consumer’s ability to pay attention and comprehend the risk information …”

The Bitter Pill Awards stressed the obvious irony of an attention-confounding ad targeted at a clientele who have difficulty paying attention. It could also be that the well-known practice of drawing notice away from side-effects information had to be cranked up a couple of notches in this ad to help persuade people who don’t really have a serious ADD problem that they might just need Strattera.

Anxiety blitz

“Selling Sickness” traces another history of market expansion: the memorable publicity blitz that started with the FDA’s 1999 approval of GlaxoSmithKline’s antidepressant Paxil for a condition called “social anxiety disorder.” An early press release insisted that social anxiety disorder is “not just shyness” but something far worse.

Enough people were convinced that they had that “something worse” to make Paxil the country’s biggest-selling antidepressant for a time in 2000. Moynihan and Cassels write that GlaxoSmithKline avoided the term “social phobia,” which was preferred by psychiatry for what can be a seriously debilitating condition, probably because “a lot more people can be categorized as being ill if you apply the definition of an anxiety disorder rather than a phobia.”

It also couldn’t have hurt that the initial letters of GlaxoSmithKline’s name for the disease spelled “SAD.”

The pinking of Viagra

Seeing the continuing deluge of advertising for impotence remedies in the American media, a visitor from the planet Zefitor could be forgiven for wondering how Earth, with such seemingly dysfunctional male humans, ever came to be inhabited by 6.5 billion of the species.

At the Disease Mongering Conference, Joel Lexchin traced the history of the Pfizer Inc. campaign that transformed the father of all impotence drugs, Viagra, “from an effective product for erectile dysfunction due to medical problems, such as diabetes and spinal-cord damage, into a drug that ‘normal’ men can use.”

Pfizer spent $303 million in direct-to-consumer advertising for Viagra in 1999-2001, often featuring younger-looking men and sports stars. That effort paid off handsomely, by extending the market well beyond men with well-defined medical conditions and attaining its greatest sales growth in the 18 to 45 age group. Pfizer’s salesmanship broke the age barrier for Viagra, but the company failed to extend the drug’s market to that half of the human population that is completely immune to erectile dysfunction: women.

A paper by conference speaker Leonore Tiefer traced the term “female sexual dysfunction” (FSD) back to 1997. In the years that followed, demand for a “pink Viagra” was boosted by sisters Jennifer and Laura Berman, who, says Tiefer, “became the female face of FSD, opening a clinic at UCLA in 2001, and continuing to popularize FSD and off-label drug treatments on their television program, website and books; in appearances on the television show Oprah; and in innumerable women’s magazines.”

Pfizer aggressively promoted FSD, which it labeled “female sexual arousal disorder.” But its plans for a women’s Viagra eventually fizzled because of “consistently poor clinical-trial results.”

Tiefer is coordinator of the Campaign for a New View of Women’s Sexual Problems, which runs the media-watchdog website fsd-alert.org. The Campaign and other groups have been fighting back against the medicalization of sex with some success.

Sleeping sickness

What latest malady is the pharamaceutical industry selling? It’s turning out to be a hard-to-escape one-two punch: sleeplessness and sleepiness.

In the past year, any TV viewer who’s managed to stay awake through commercials knows that the drugmakers’ latest target is sleeplessness. The media blitzes of two companies, the sanofi-aventis Group (that’s their lower-case), which makes Ambien, and Sepracor Inc., which makes Lunesta, earned them a 2006 Bitter Pill Award “for overmarketing insomnia medications to anyone who’s ever had a bad night’s sleep.”

Last month, at the request of government- and industry-funded groups, the National Institute of Medicine issued a report concluding that 50 million to 70 million Americans suffer from sleep problems and that U.S. businesses lose as much as $100 billion a year because of sleepy workers.

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed column, Ira R. Allen, vice president of the Center for the Advancement of Health, blasted the Institute for having been “co-opted.” He stressed to me that he was not criticizing the report’s methods or results, that “sleep is an important issue” and that “there were some legitimate partners in sponsoring the report.” But, he said, “The report was issued right on the heels of National Sleep Awareness Week (March 27-April 2), and just as advertising for sleep aids was reaching a peak.”

That, he said, is just too much of a coincidence: “I doubt that the United States has suddenly been invaded by tsetse flies! I’m not naive; I know the country’s economy is built on advertising. But our organization’s message is ‘Transparency, transparency, transparency.’ Don’t hide your motive.”

Even if we accept the Institute’s and the drug industry’s claims of a sleep-loss epidemic, other research has shown that the benefits of drug treatment are far from overwhelming. The class of drugs to which Ambien and Lunesta belong provide an extra half-hour of sleep per night, on average. (And Ambien made headlines earlier this year when reports revealed that some patients who took the drug were eating and even cooking in their sleep.)

The lack of a clearly superior pharmaceutical solution to sleeplessness may partly explain the recent orgy of advertising for sleep problems and sleep aids in general. Drug companies spent $345 million on ads for sleep drugs in 2005 alone, and that’s expected to increase this year.

Wake up and smell the coffee

But, you say, you’re already getting enough sleep? Well, maybe it’s too much! The latest, and perhaps most disturbing, wave of sleep-controlling drugs are designed to let you stay awake for up to 48 hours with no ill effects.

According to the Feb. 18, 2006, print edition of the British magazine New Scientist, Cephalon Inc., the maker of one such product called Provigil, insists that the drug is meant only for treating serious diseases like narcolepsy and sleep apnea. But Provigil is also becoming a “lifestyle drug” for people who can’t fit everything they want to do into 16 hours a day. And it can’t help but beckon employers with the promise of an always-alert work force.

New Scientist reports that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (the notorious DARPA) “is one of the most active players in the drive to conquer sleep.” Sometime this year, DARPA will test an experimental wakefulness drug, CX717, on combat soldiers engaged in hard work for four straight nights with only four hours of “recovery sleep” in between. Tests have shown that monkeys awake on CX717 for 36 straight hours had better memory and alertness than undrugged monkeys after normal sleep.

Yet another generation of drugs that skew sleep toward the most restorative, so-called “slow wave” phase are on the horizon. Due for release as early as next year, Merck & Co. Inc.’s gaboxadol, says New Scientist, holds out “the promise of a power nap par excellence.” The temptation to seek approval for the broadest possible labeling (and profit base) for drugs like Provigil, CX717 and gaboxadol will likely be overwhelming.

Patient pending

What kinds of medical conditions will expand to embrace millions of newly diagnosed “patients” in the coming months and years? I put that question to Dr. Richard Lippin, an occupational-health physician, health forecaster, and co-founder of a health-care reform blog, Critical Condition. His response:

“My guess is anything to do with pain, fatigue or feeling stressed. The first two are related to medicalizing the avoidance of aging and death among baby boomers and the third — stress — is due to very real anxiety people should feel about a host of worldwide and U.S. megatrends that legitimately create anxiety and depression — trends like global warming, wars, economic collapse, political corruption, etc. But the answers are not pills. The answer is to elect sane political leaders. There is no pill for the ‘white water’ that’s ahead for all of us.”

David Henry says that the disease-mongering documented at his conference “can’t be stopped. It’s a consequence of our political economy, the domination of marketing in all areas of life. So we need to build counterforces. People are becoming more skeptical, and that needs to be encouraged. We should exercise the same healthy skepticism when being sold a drug as we do when being sold a secondhand car.”

He says greater use of the attention-getting term “disease mongering” will prove useful in changing the behavior of medical professionals, the media and even pharmaceutical public-relations departments. “We want it to be an idea that pops up in their heads, so PR people will say, ‘Hey, we don’t want to run this ad and be accused of disease mongering!’”

Where would be a good place for average Americans to start exercising the healthy skepticism that’s needed to fight disease mongering by the pharmaceutical industry? Ask your doctor.

 

Happy Monday

Teenager drops trousers in front of policewoman

Friday, March 20, 2009

An Australian teenager wearing baggy trousers and no underwear was fined after his trousers fell down just as a female police officer was walking past. , a newspaper reported.

Trent Joseph Wroe, 19, was fined A$250 ($168), and ordered to wear a belt, after the February 28 incident in Mooloolaba in the northern Queensland state, the Sunshine Coast Daily newspaper reported.

The world’s biggest losers

Fri, 03/20/2009 – 1:52pm

If there’s one thing you’ve got to love about tough times is: they’re tough on everyone. These days, it’s not easy even for those who have taken historically proven paths to amassing wealth, fame, power, social acceptance and happiness — like becoming a billionaire or pope or U.S. Treasury secretary or an Austrian sadist. Admittedly, it’s hard to work up too much sympathy for most of these mighty who have fallen, but sympathy is not the only reason to reflect on their fates. There are also the cautionary lessons offered up by their Icarus-like descents. Nah, who are we kidding? That’s for some other blog. There are only two real reasons to revisit these stories. It’s fun to watch the bastards squirm. And because recently the headlines have been filled with so many prominent people who for one reason or another are royally screwed, we want to know: Who’s the most screwed? Which of these figures who have chosen a well-worn path to the limelight, has done the most damage to their own reputations and the lives of those around them?

Here are thirteen choices from this month’s headlines ranked by just how little sympathy we should have for them:

13.) Edward Liddy

The only reason this guy is on the list is that his career is probably finished simply because most people will forever associate him with A.I.G. But while the company has already joined Enron, Long Term Capital Management, Drexel Burnham Lambert and Blue Horseshoe in Wall Street’s Hall of Infamy, Liddy himself is something like a hero, coming to work for a dollar a year as a public service in the most thankless job in the global business community.  (And what is Blue Horseshoe? Hint: “Blue Horseshoe loves Anacot Steel.”)

12.) Forbes Billionaires List

According to Forbes, the official magazine of Wall Street greed, the world’s billionaires managed to misplace $1.4 trillion in the past year, their ranks thinning from 1125 to 793. Their average net worth has fallen by almost a quarter to only $3 billion. Both Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim each lost $25 billion. One, Adolf Merckle, ended up killing himself. Former Wall Street titans like Hank Greenberg and Sandy Weill fell completely off the list as did Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg. But Zuckerberg is only 25 and still has $900 million left. So as far as sympathy goes this is pretty much a mixed bag. The reality is that these days even a few hundred million gets you pretty far so let’s not lose too much sleep over them. (The reason they are this low on the list is not because I feel sympathy for them… it’s because I feel considerably less for everyone else on the list.)

11.) Eliot Spitzer

Poor Eliot. If only he had kept it in his pants, this would have been his moment. One can hardly imagine what is making his life worse right now, the fact that the A.I.G. scandal and the collapse of Wall Street could have been his apotheosis, the moment the howling dogs of ambition in his breast might have finally gotten enough red meat of press exposure… or the fact that his wife Silda has stood by him and thus will have the moral high ground in his marriage until he dies. Admittedly, while Spitzer unzipped his own career, his worst violation did not come against the public but against his family.

10.) Gordon Brown

It’s hard to hate Gordon Brown. In fact, it’s hard not to feel bad for the guy. This is due in part to the fact that he is Britain’s first prime minister who is also part basset hound. Also, he had to follow Tony Blair who was quite telegenic and appealing, particularly in that phase of his career when he was being played by Michael Sheen. (Less so later when he was being played by one of George W. Bush’s hand-puppets.) Still, Gordon did accept the job of PM, did screw it up to a fare-thee-well and now is on the verge of blowing his last big moment on the public stage as he prepares to host a G20 Summit that is very likely to realize somewhere between zero and few of his grand ambitions for it. 

9.) Bibi Netanyahu

The fact that a man President Clinton’s White House spokesman once called “one of the most obnoxious individuals you’re going to come into — just a liar and a cheat” has managed to bring himself to the verge of returning as Israel’s prime minister is something of an amazing feat. Although perhaps not so much if you are familiar with what people in Israel euphemistically call politics. But Netanyahu assured that he was lost before he even took office by teaming up with racist boor Avigdor Lieberman. Together the two may fight so hard to protect Israel that they irreversibly weaken it.

8.) A.I.G. Bonus Babies

The NY Times writes, “Residents who had been pillars of Connecticut towns are finding themselves the focus of populist rage.” But shouldn’t we have hated them already for even wanting to be pillars of Connecticut towns? I mean, these people actually chose to become insurance executives and live in John Cheever hell just to become wealthy? Didn’t they see The Ice Storm. Oh, the humanity! I hate them for their stale dreams more than I do the fact they squandered one of the great names of Wall Street while gaming both global financial markets and the American taxpayer. 

7.) Ben Bernanke

In ancient societies, dark uncontrollable forces were placated by throwing virgins into volcanoes. In Washington, the ritual involves throwing officials under the bus. (The bus is implacable but near-sighted.  As it approaches one victim, it will be at least temporarily satisfied if that victim throws someone else in its path.) Edward Liddy was in front of the bus this week during Congressional hearings and at the last minute, threw Bernanke in its path by saying the Fed knew everything A.I.G. was doing re: bonuses. But later the bus claimed other more delicious victims and Bernanke escaped… then he announced the U.S. government was going to print a trillion dollars in monopoly money to stem the crisis. Inflation was a near certainty before… now it will be Bernanke’s inflation. No one will even remember he had anything to do with A.I.G. … and that won’t be a good thing.

6.) Tim Geithner

Sadly for Tim Geithner, he even looks like a sacrificial lamb. Earnest, brilliant, trying his best, he will never be able to escape the fact that he is one of the few who will get the blame for both the misguided Bush era bailouts and the false-starts of the Obama administration. Every time there is a mistake, the bus will head in his direction. Obama says he has confidence in Geithner. That is exactly what they said about Tom Daschle before they pulled the plug on him. Heck, Obama said he would no sooner disown Jeremiah Wright than his own grandmother shortly before he disowned him, as they say, with prejudice. Geithner might survive, but he has been wounded. The good news for the economy: sometimes they say people who have been through near death experiences actually develop psychic powers.

5.) Asif Ali Zardari

Zardari was known to be a bad guy long before he became Pakistan’s president. Many of the closest friends of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, could not stand him. Now, as it turns out, neither can most of the Pakistani people. Locked in a bitter struggle with opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, Zardari showed his weakness by capitulating to demands to reinstate Pakistan’s former Chief Justice per Sharif’s demands. Now in a desperate attempt to reassert control of his own party he may be plotting the ouster of his Prime Minister according to Indian press reports. He’s on the ropes, his opposition is gaining strength, and meanwhile fraught, dangerous, complex Pakistan is hardly being governed at all.

4.) Chris Dodd

The Nutmeg State’s longest-serving senator got his job the old-fashioned way, he [effectively] inherited it from his father, Sen. Thomas Dodd. He is also now virtually certain to lose it the old-fashioned way, as a result of a combination of arrogance, corruption, lying, and misreading the mood of the times. From his questionable home-mortgage finances to the comedy of errors this week when he denied having anything to do with legislative provisions allowing the A.I.G. bonus then blamed it on his staff then blamed it on the Treasury, Dodd is serving himself up on a silver platter to his opponents. And none of that even addresses the issue that as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee he was at the center of a fat-donations-from-Wall Street-equals-zero-oversight-from-Congress culture that helped get the world into this mess in the first place.

3.) Bernie Madoff

What more can you say about Bernie? For a decade and a half he went to bed every night knowing that he was lying, cheating, faking trades, committing fraud, and putting his and countless other families at grievous risk. And yet he lived his life like a king, like the former chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers that he was, with yachts and mansions in the Hamptons and Mayfair. In fact, noted judge of character and bankruptcy-addict Donald Trump said “he was a pretty respected guy.” That says it all.

2.) The pope

To non-believers he may be just a creepy old ex-Hitler Youth member who wears funny clothes and has appalling values, but to Catholics he is so much more than that. For example, according to one Vatican insider quoted in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, “he’s out of touch with the real world” and his papacy is “a disaster.” Another is reported to have said he “is isolated and fails to adequately consult his advisors.” At least. His Africa trip pronouncement that condoms not only don’t help the fight against AIDS but that their distribution actually “aggravates the problems” is not just a PR nightmare for the Holy See; delivered on the continent where both AIDS is most rampant and the Church is growing fastest, it is a formula for massive death and suffering.

1.) Josef Fritzl

Back in the good old days, when Joseph Alois Ratzinger was a little boy, being an Austrian sadist was a surefire path to the top, it could lead anywhere, perhaps even to world domination. But today, Austrians are outraged that one of their own could have locked his daughter in the basement, made her his sex slave, and killed one of the seven children he had with her. Which is really bad. Austria has changed, you see. There is no tolerance for twisted brutality there anymore. Well, less. In fact, fewer than a third of Austrians voted for the hate-spewing, neo-fascist extreme right parties like the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future. And while cynics (Jews or Muslims) might point out that this was the same proportion of the population who voted for Austria’s leading party, the Social Democrats, their point is undercut by the fact that it was only a relatively few Austrians who honor Nazi heroes in public ceremonies on the anniversary of Kristalnacht or who have participated in nasty little rituals like the recent unfurling of a Nazi flag in Hitler’s hometown of Braunau. No, there is no place for a Fritzl in modern Austria and so he will be sent to a psychiatric prison for the rest of his life. But one must wonder, is the outrage because of his crimes, because they were against fellow Austrians or because he thought so small?

for your amusement

Japanese schoolgirl was a man

February 22, 2008 – 6:05PM

TOKYO - A Japanese man has been arrested for trespassing after turning up at a high school dressed in a girl’s uniform and a long wig.

Thirty-nine-year-old Tetsunori Nanpei told police he had bought the uniform over the internet and put it on to take a stroll near the school in Saitama, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said.

When students standing outside the gates started to scream at the sight of him, he dashed inside the school grounds, hoping to blend in with the crowds of teenagers, the paper said.

They also screamed, forcing the man to flee, losing his wig in the process. A school clerk pursued him and stopped him at a nearby riverbank, the paper said.

Police confirmed the arrest of the man in school uniform and wig but declined to give further details.

REUTERS

The Wiccan Rede

Bide within the Law you must, in perfect Love and perfect Trust. Live you must and let to live, fairly take and fairly give.      For tread the Circle thrice about to keep unwelcome spirits out. To bind the spell well every time, let the spell be said in rhyme.      Light of eye and soft of touch, speak you little, listen much. Honor the Old Ones in deed and name, let love and light be our guides again.      Deosil go by the waxing moon, chanting out the joyful tune. Widdershins go when the moon doth wane, and the werewolf howls by the dread wolfsbane.      When the Lady’s moon is new, kiss the hand to Her times two. When the moon rides at Her peak then your heart’s desire seek.      Heed the North winds mighty gale, lock the door and trim the sail. When the Wind blows from the East, expect the new and set the feast.      When the wind comes from the South, love will kiss you on the mouth. When the wind whispers from the West, all hearts will find peace and rest.      Nine woods in the Cauldron go, burn them fast and burn them slow. Birch in the fire goes to represent what the Lady knows.      Oak in the forest towers with might, in the fire it brings the God’s insight. Rowan is a tree of power causing life and magick to flower.      Willows at the waterside stand ready to help us to the Summerland. Hawthorn is burned to purify and to draw faerie to your eye.      Hazel-the tree of wisdom and learning adds its strength to the bright fire burning. White are the flowers of Apple tree that brings us fruits of fertility.      Grapes grow upon the vine giving us both joy and wine. Fir does mark the evergreen to represent immortality seen.      Elder is the Lady’s tree burn it not or cursed you’ll be. Four times the Major Sabbats mark in the light and in the dark.      As the old year starts to wane the new begins, it’s now Samhain. When the time for Imbolc shows watch for flowers through the snows.      When the wheel begins to turn soon the Beltane fires will burn. As the wheel turns to Lamas night power is brought to magick rite.      Four times the Minor Sabbats fall use the Sun to mark them all. When the wheel has turned to Yule light the log the Horned One rules.      In the spring, when night equals day time for Ostara to come our way. When the Sun has reached it’s height time for Oak and Holly to fight.      Harvesting comes to one and all when the Autumn Equinox does fall. Heed the flower, bush, and tree by the Lady blessed you’ll be.      Where the rippling waters go cast a stone, the truth you’ll know. When you have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.      With a fool no season spend or be counted as his friend. Merry Meet and Merry Part bright the cheeks and warm the heart.      Mind the Three-fold Laws you should three times bad and three times good. When misfortune is enow wear the star upon your brow.      Be true in love this you must do unless your love is false to you.      These Eight words the Rede fulfill:                An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will

 

Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation ~

1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil
2. Become incredulous and indignant
3. Create rumor mongers
4. Use a straw man
5. Sidetrack opponents w name calling, ridicule
6. Hit and Run
7. Question motives
8. Invoke authority
9. Play Dumb
10. Associate opponent charges with old news
11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions
12. Enigmas have no solution
13. Alice in Wonderland Logic
14. Demand complete solutions
15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions
16. Vanish evidence and witnesses
17. Change the subject
18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad
19. Ignore facts, demand impossible proofs
20. False evidence
21. Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor
22. Manufacture a new truth
23. Create bigger distractions
24. Silence critics
25. Vanish

Eight Traits of The Disinformationalist ~

1. Avoidance
2. Selectivity
3. Coincidental
4. Teamwork
5. Anti-conspiratorial
6. Artificial Emotions
7. Inconsistent
8. Newly Discovered: Time Constant

C	New Jersey

• Population (rank): 8,724,560 (11)
• Average per capita income (rank): $31,877 (3)
• Total state spending (rank): $54,073,301,000 (8)
• Spending per capita (rank): $6,198 (9)
• Governor: Jon Corzine (D)
• First elected: 11/2005
• Senate: 40 members: 23 D, 17 R
• Term limits: None
• House: 80 members: 48 D, 32 R
• Term limits: None

The problems in New Jersey’s fiscal stewardship have never been clearer than they were on the Fourth of July, 2006, when the state’s casinos and parks had to be closed — the result of lawmakers’ inability to pass a budget on time. The budget fracas revolved around Governor Jon Corzine’s plan to deal with structural money shortfalls by raising the sales tax from 6 to 7 percent. The impasse was resolved only when legislators agreed to approve the increase but send half of it back out in the form of property tax relief.

Last year the governor and legislature seemed genuinely dedicated to avoiding similar embarrassment. And they took a step toward accountability by publishing a comprehensive Citizens’ Guide to the budget that included every change to the governor’s original submission along with the name of the official who proposed that change. Transparency seemed to help; the budget passed nine days early.

But an on-time budget isn’t necessarily a good one, and New Jersey hasn’t yet found a way to deal with the long-term imbalance between its revenues and its spending. The state’s citizens have begun to understand the problem. In November 2007, staring down a $3 billion hole in a $33 billion budget, voters rejected a plan to dedicate the remaining half-penny of the sales tax increase to property tax relief — and they did this despite the fact that New Jersey has the highest property tax in the nation. With a debt of $32 billion, such hard decisions are going to be necessary for some time.

The consequences of the fiscal problem hit home everywhere in state government. Deferred maintenance in the transportation system has swelled to $13 billion. As one Department of Transportation official puts it, “we are holding ground on the pavement and we are losing on the bridges.” Although New Jersey has the nation’s third-lowest gas tax, a tax increase to bolster maintenance doesn’t seem politically possible. Corzine talks about creating a nonprofit public benefit corporation to manage the day-to-day operation of several major roadways, including the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway.

Non-transportation infrastructure is no better off. The state dedicated $7 million this year toward a prioritized list of roof improvements on public buildings; even so, life-cycle roof replacement is three or four years behind schedule.

Similarly, the state’s dwindling investment in human capital training has begun to leave a mark. With a hiring freeze on for many positions in the state, maximizing the productivity of each employee becomes critical. But New Jersey spends less than 0.2 percent of its corrections payroll on training, for example, while neighboring Pennsylvania and Connecticut spend 1 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively. That ranks among the lowest in the nation. Civil service rules dictate that employees with seniority have protected jobs during layoffs, potentially compounding the problems of the baby-boomer retirement wave by leaving a dearth of young, well-trained talent in its wake.

Worse still, New Jersey faces a newly revealed $58 billion long-term bill for post-employment retirement benefits owed to its workers. Many other states are up against big bills on this front, but New Jersey’s is a whopper by anyone’s standards. On the pension side, the state is similarly hobbled. Despite improved funding in the past two years, liabilities continue to grow.

Note: This online version has been modified from the version that appeared in print to remove an incorrect reference to the amount spent by New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families on training of managers.

The Criminalization of Everyday Life – City Limits, civil rights, law, police state, Robert Neuwirth

City Limits, Robert Neuwirth

I spent 24 hours in the slammer the other day. My crime? Well, the police couldn’t tell me when they locked me up. The prosecutor and judge couldn’t either, when I was arraigned the following day. I found out for myself when I researched the matter a few days after being released: I had been cited for walking my dog off the leash – once, six years ago.

Welcome to the ugly underside of the zero-tolerance era, where insignificant rule violations get inflated into criminal infractions. Here’s how it worked with me: a gaggle of transit cops stopped me after they saw me walk between two subway cars on my way to work. This, they told me, was against the rules. They asked for ID and typed my name into a hand-held computer. Up came that old citation that I didn’t know about and they couldn’t tell me about. I was immediately handcuffed and brought to the precinct. There, I waited in a holding cell, then was fingerprinted (post-CSI memo: they now take the fingers, the thumbs, the palms, and the sides of both hands) and had the contents of my shoulder bag inventoried. I could hardly believe it: I was being arrested without ever having committed a crime.

I was held overnight in the Midtown North Precinct lock-up (shoelaces and belt confiscated, meals courtesy of the McDonald’s dollar menu). In the morning, my fellow convicts and I were led, chain-gang style, to the Manhattan Community Court next door. The judge there dismissed the charge against me – because no one ever does time for that kind of crime. A few days later, at Brooklyn’s central court, my warrant was lifted for “time served” – again because no one is ever locked up for breaking the leash law.

If the cops had simply written me a ticket, I would have paid it, and I would have also had to pay to vacate my outstanding warrant. But by cuffing me and holding me overnight, the city spent quite a bit of money (it took two police officers approximately six hours each just to arrest and process me), while the fines assessed against me were rescinded.

While I was inside, I was astounded by the kinds of things that take up police and court time. A couple of people nabbed for being in various parks after dark. One of them was walking his dog. Two young men accused of riding their bicycles on the sidewalk. Three people arrested for sleeping in a subway station. My roommate in the lock-up was an articulate and self-aware 60-year-old whose sin was that he bought a bottle of booze and had taken a swig on the street. In the cell next to us: two costumed Mariachis busted for busking on the subway. They were repeat offenders. Their weapons: a guitar and an accordion.

With zero tolerance, we have finally done it: We have criminalized everyday life. After all, in the course of their life people sometimes ride their bikes on the sidewalks. And once upon a time not too long ago, it was normal to go into the parks after dark. My friends and I did all the time, particularly if we had time to kill before or after the opera, the symphony, or a jazz or rock concert. We walked brazenly between subway cars. Some of us even – horror of horrors! – played music on the street or in the subway without a license. And, though my parents would not be happy to know it even now, we sometimes drank beer in public – making sure, in an important but legally meaningless gesture, that the bottle was in a paper bag. If I did any of this on a regular basis today, I’d probably be considered a behavioral recidivist and sent to Riker’s Island.

I can laugh away my time in a cell—my life suddenly turned into an update of “Alice’s Restaurant.” But I get angry when I think of kids in their teens or 20s being treated the way I was. I’m not against hard time for criminal, violent or anti-social behavior. But slapping young people behind bars and giving them an arrest record simply because the normal things they do are trivial rule violations is not only wasteful, it’s downright criminal.

- Robert Neuwirth

Robert Neuwirth, a longtime contributor to City Limits, is the author of “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World,” and is at work on a new book about the global reach of the informal economy.

Editor’s note: The Giuliani administration highlighted its increase of “quality of life” summonses, but statistics from the annual Mayor’s Management Report indicate that the Bloomberg administration has been just as zealous. The number of such summonses under Giuliani reached its height in fiscal 2001, hitting 523,000. After a dip in 2002, the number of “quality of life” summonses rose under Mayor Bloomberg to more than 700,000 in fiscal 2004. They’ve declined since then to 527,000 in fiscal 2008—still higher than under the previous mayor. The city’s courts, meanwhile, have registered an uptick in the number of people getting arraigned on minor charges: In 2007, the last year for which the court system published statistics, the number of arraignments for infractions and violations was the highest in 10 years – 20 percent greater than the previous year.

 

Strip-searching teenage girls in school?

posted at 2:57 pm on March 24, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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The Supreme Court will get a chance to determine whether schools acting in loco parentis have the right to strip-search students in ways that could get parents a visit from Child Services.  Tom Maguire highlights the case of School Officials Gone Wild, who demanded that a 13-year-old girl display her genitalia to a school nurse and a school secretary to ensure that she had no drugs on her.  What were they hoping to find, besides a lawsuit?  You’re not going to believe it:

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

The best part of the story?  The school officials never bothered to ask her if she had pills on her before the strip search.  They just took her aside and had the nurse and a clerk force her to strip.

Maybe Redding was a bad kid with a track record of disciplinary problems?  Well, no, she wasn’t.  In fact, before the strip search, she had no record of disciplinary problems at all.  When her lawyers pointed this out in court documents, the district acknowledged the lack of a disciplinary record, but said that the inference should have been that she’d just been masterful at avoiding getting caught. They also defended themselves by claiming to have heard rumors that Redding had drunk alcohol at a party, but the court documents show that the person starting the rumor hadn’t attended the event.

Quite frankly, I’m not surprised that the school district has appealed their loss to the Supreme Court, because they appear consistently too stupid to know when to stop.

In this case, the ACLU (which is supporting Redding) has it right.  The school acts in loco parentis, not in loco law enforcement.  They had no probable cause to do a strip search of the student, and even more basically, have no right to force students into strip searches in the first place.  They never tried contacting Redding’s mother or the police.  The school was so horrified by the thought that this student, who had never caused them problems before, might have ibuprofen that they decided to act like storm troopers rather than a school.

The question won’t be whether Redding will win.  It will be whether it goes 9-0 in her favor. I’d put that at even money.

Frank Zappa

I’m vile and perverted.
I’m obsessed and deranged.
I’ve existed for years but very little has changed.
I’m the tool of the government and industry too.
For I’m destined to rule and regulate you.
You may think I’m pernicious, but you can’t look away.
I’ll make you think I’m delicious with the stuff that I say.
I’m the best you can get… have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozing out of your TV set….
[Frank Zappa]

Actual Cost Of Making These Popular Prescription Drugs

Posted November 8, 2003 thepeoplesvoice.org

From Dr. Betty Martini / Bettym19@mindspring.com

From JUDICIAL REFORM INVESTIGATIONS / justice@court.to

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the Active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

 In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart below speaks for itself.

BRAND NAME	CONSUMER PRICE 100	COST OF GENERAL ACTIVE INGREDIENTS per 100 tab/cap	PERCENT MARKUP
Celebrex 100 mg Claritin 10 mg Keflex 250 mg Lipitor 20 mg Norvasc 10 mg Paxil 20 mg Prevacid 30 mg Prilosec 20 mg Prozac 20 mg Tenormin 50 mg Vasotec 10 mg Xanax 1mg Zestril 20 mg Zithromax 600mg Zocor 40mg Zoloft 50mg	$130.27 $215.17 $157.39 $272.37 $188.29 $220.27 $44.77 $360.97 $247.47 $104.47 $102.37 $136.79 $89.89 $1,482.19 $350.27 $206.87	$0.60 $0.71 $1.88 $5.80 $0.14 $7.60 $1.01 $0.52 $0.11 $0.13 $0.20 $0.024 $3.20 $18.78 $8.63 $1.75	21,712% 30,306% 8,372% 4,696% 134,493% 2,898% 34,136% 69,417% 224,973% 80,362% 51,185% 569,958% 2,809% 7,892% 4,059% 11,821%

Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone I knew should know about this. Please read the following and pass it on. It pays to shop around. This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreens on every corner…

On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for channel 7 News in Detroit, did a story on generic drug price gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation, that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. Yes, that’s not a typo….. three thousand percent!

So often, we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs,and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example, if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are “saving” $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs. I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience, I had to use the drug, Compazine, which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients. I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.I would like to mention, that although Costco is a “membership” type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there, as it is a federally-regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.

The Government Who Cried Wolf

March 15th, 2007.

My husband’s youngest child has developed a bit of a lying problem. He lies to get out of trouble. He lies to avoid doing something he doesn’t enjoy. He lies to get attention or to get people to like him. Sometimes, he lies for no apparent reason at all.

I tried to explain to him that lying is probably one of the worst things a person can do. I expected him to accept my morality as fact and not question my Supreme Adult-like Assessment of his Bad Behavior.

Instead, he asked me, “Why? What’s so bad about it?”

Well, touché.

What is so bad about lying? We currently live in a culture that cumulatively lies our asses off on a nearly daily basis. We lie to get out of trouble. (I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t realize how fast I was going.) We lie to avoid doing something we won’t enjoy. (I’d love to go to your party; it’s just that I already made plans.) We lie to get attention (Oh man, I am feeling so sick today) and we lie to get people to like us. (I love your new haircut!)

At first, we told ourselves that Little White Lies were OK. After all, there were good intentions behind a lot of our lies. Most of the time, we were trying to be tactful. We were attempting to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. We were doing our best to remain politically correct. We wanted to make friends and keep them happy. What’s the harm in that?

Then, our lying got out of control. It was almost as if we started to glorify lying. Joe Millionaire was a likeable guy despite his steady stream of lies to potential new wives. The biggest and most skilled liar won a million dollars on ‘Survivor’ or earned a position working for Donald Trump. A greedy woman lied about being raped in order to sue a basketball star and escaped punishment when she was found out. Our very own president of the United States chose to perjure himself in a court of law rather than simply say, “Fuck off, it’s none of your damn business.”

So how does one explain to a child that lying is wrong when it’s so obviously in vogue?

For a minute there, I was just as confused as my husband’s son. Then I closed my eyes tightly and desperately searched my memory for what my Father told me. This is what I finally came up with:

“Because, someday, you are going to be telling the truth and you’ll need someone to believe you. But no one will.”

I consider myself to be quite the Average Joe when it comes to politics. By that, I mean I am mildly ignorant about what goes on in Washington and I go to the polls with only a vaguest understanding of the issues. Oftentimes, I end up voting with my gut or just giving up altogether and voting down party lines.

I don’t want to be ignorant. I want to make informed, solid, confident decisions. However, the more I read about the people in power, the more I have a sneaking suspicion that everything they say is all bunch of bullshit. Every time I attempt to do some honest research, I am confronted with nothing but lies.

The Democrats want me to believe that anyone who doesn’t support government sponsored programs that promote a victim mentality (such as welfare and social security) is a cruel, intolerant, selfish asshole. The Democrats want me to pay minorities for past atrocities (Through affirmative action, etc) committed against their ancestors based completely on the color of my skin. If I argue or point out the fact that my ancestors did not even live in America when slavery was rampant, they call me a racist. Should I be against gay marriage but completely supportive of homosexual civil unions, I am a homophobe. The Democrats want me to believe that supporting speech that is hateful strictly based on a person’s constitutional rights is akin to agreeing with the person being the jerk.

I am starting to wonder if ‘Intolerance’ is the Democrat’s big lie. It seems to me that they use that word as a weapon to demoralize people and create social stigma around any idea that is contrary to their own. Excuse me if that doesn’t seem very tolerant to me.

The Republicans want me to believe that anyone who is an Atheist possesses no morals and will someday commit a crime. They tell me that I only resent being spied on because I have something to hide. If I support abortion because I believe it is more merciful to end a life than to bring it into the world unwanted and abused, they accuse me of being a heartless murderer. If I say it is better for a child to be raised by a gay couple as opposed to being completely abandoned, the Republicans say I lack family values. If I insist that school should be a place for education and not religious training, it is obvious to them that I don’t give a shit about the children.

Perhaps ‘Family Values’ is the Republican’s big lie. That phrase is being used to shame the opposition into supporting religious agendas in a country that prides itself on religious freedom. Just because I am not a Christian does not mean that I do not see the value in a strong family unit, nor does it make me a criminal.

The Feminists tell me that men and women who complete the same job do not make equal pay. If true, I agree that is unfair. However, when I make note of the fact that men do not get equal rights in family court, I notice that the feminists are suspiciously quiet.

Is Feminism about equality or superiority? Do they even know anymore?

Some scientists say global warming is a very real phenomenon. They say that unless we act now, there will be tragic consequences for the future. Other scientists say that the Earth has gone through varying climate changes for billions of years. They note the tropical climate back when dinosaurs walked the planet and the ice age that soon followed.

Who shall I believe when both groups hold their hands out for more grant money?

Every time I turn on the TV, I hear varying versions of the phrase ‘SEE HOW YOUR CHILDREN ARE IN DANGER, NEWS AT 11!’ Undoubtedly, I am worried and I quickly tune into the news that night….only to watch a report about a steep set of stairs or a chair that is being recalled because of its tendency to pinch thighs. Serious Thunderstorm Alerts turn out to be minor rainfall and scary viruses that sweep the nation are nothing more than common colds.

When did the news embrace cheap scare tactics in lieu of unbiased, factual reporting?

We are told that we’ve gone to war to prevent more terrorist attacks similar to the one that took place on September 11th. The President assures us that he is trying to prevent the loss of more American lives. But as the war rages on, one can’t help but notice the death toll is rising. We were told the Middle East had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then someone said that they didn’t. Then we found some chemical….things? I don’t know. Something doesn’t quite add up anymore.

My gut tells me that everyone currently in power is a liar. But if that is the case, then who do I believe? Where do I go for unbiased facts when every legitimate source is suspect?

I consider myself an Average Joe in that I have lost faith in it all. I have turned my television off and I have canceled my subscription to the newspaper. I have lost the will to sift through partial truths, minor falsities, purposeful deceptions, and bald face lies. Instead, I have focused all of my attention on My World and I pay little mind to what goes on in The World.

But, someday, I wonder what will happen if some vital information was suddenly stumbled upon. Perhaps the politicians will try to warn us and we will all sneer at them in disgust. Maybe the media will frantically attempt to report the news…to billions of people who only roll their eyes in response. Scientists and Activists may beg us to believe them only to be met with bored, apathetic sighs.

I wonder if one day this world will be met with tragic consequences simply because those in power refused to stop crying wolf.

If so, we’ll all be royally fucked. But at least we can take our children by the hand and say, “This. This is why lying is bad.”

Man Forced to Pay Child Support for Another Man’s Child

strollerderby@babble.com

Posted by JeanneSager

All Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. did was sign for a certified letter. Considering the addressee was Andre Sharpe – not far off – could you blame him?

A judge in Pennsylvania did. He made Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. liable for child support for a little girl who’s real father was Andre Sharpe. When Walter Sharpe couldn’t keep up with the payments to support a child that wasn’t even his? The state threw him in jail.

Walter Andre Sharp Jr. ignored the letter once he realized it wasn’t really meant for him. The father of four from a previous marriage already paid child support to his ex-wife. But when neither he nor the real Andre Sharp showed up at a child support hearing to answer the letter, a judge put the onus on Walter Sharpe. He authorized Walter’s wages be garnished – to pay not only new charges but more than $5,000 in back support. That was 2001.

Walter Sharpe applied several times for a paternity test to prove he wasn’t the girl’s father, but he was denied each time. Between 2001 and 2005, Walter Sharpe landed in jail for four separate six-month terms for falling behind on payments to support the little girl. He finally lost his job in 2005, but it would take another two years before the paternity order would be overturned. But as recently as two months ago, the state has still been denying him compensation for the $12,000 subtracted from his pay and sent the way of the real Andre Sharpe’s baby mama’s mother, the little girl’s grandmother. Ironically, the real Sharpe says he’s always supported his daughter. In fact, she’s lived with him for the past four years. 

The district attorney is finally investigating, but the president of the county where this happened is still putting at least a portion of the blame on Walter Sharpe, essentially for not being more proactive. 

Since when should a man have to be more proactive in expecting NOT to pay child support for someone else’s child? I admit there are plenty of deadbeat parents out there – and they deserve to be hunted down and made to support the child they helped create. HOWEVER, when a guy asks for a paternity test, a paternity test is in order. Who could really lose here? If the result is positive, the judge has even more support behind him or her in making a decision. If it’s negative, well, you save a guy $12,000 and four years of his life spent in prison for a crime that he really couldn’t have committed. Because how could you fail to pay child support you never owed in the first place?

Subject: Letter to the IRS – Scary when you add it all up – makes you think

Dear IRS,

I am sorry to inform you that I will not be able to pay taxes owed April 15, but all is not lost.

I have paid these taxes: accounts receivable tax, building permit tax, CDL tax, cigarette tax, corporate income tax, dog licence tax, federal income tax, unemployment tax, gasoline tax, hunting licence tax, fishing licence tax, waterfowl stamp tax, inheritance tax, inventory tax, liquor tax, luxury tax, medicare tax, city, school and county property tax (up 33 percent last 4 years), real estate tax, social security tax, road usage tax, toll road tax, state and city sales tax, recreational vehicle tax, state franchise tax, state unemployment tax, telephone federal excise tax, telephone federal state and local surcharge tax, telephone minimum usage surcharge tax, telephone state and local tax, utility tax, vehicle licence registration tax, capitol gains tax, lease severance tax, oil and gas assessment tax, Texas property tax, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma and New Mexico sales tax, and many more that I can’t recall but I have run out of space and money.

When you do not receive my check April 15, just know that it is an honest mistake. Please treat me the same way you treated Congressmen Charles Rangle, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and ex-Congressman Tom Dashelle and, of course, your boss Timothy Geithner. No penalties and no interest.

P.S. I will make at least a partial payment as soon as I get my stimulus check.

 
      Note:
Actual ‘Letter to the Editor’ from the February 5th edition of the
Wichita Falls, Texas Times Record News…

The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.

Surrender to your destiny; have faith that it will unfold as it should. Choose to be happy, at peace and one with the universe.

Actually, If You Look It Up, The Winter Solstice Is The Reason For The Season

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
[Thomas Paine, 1783]

Sophia – light of wisdom

 

I came out as a brook from a river, and as a conduit into a garden. I said, I will water my best garden, and will water abundantly my garden bed: and lo, my brook became a river, and my river became a sea. I will make doctrine to shine as the morning, and will send forth her light afar off. I will yet pour out doctrine as prophecy, and leave it to all ages for ever. Behold that I have not laboured for myself only, but for all them that seek wisdom. The words of Sophia, the Book of ben-Sirach, 1st century B.C. “For her thoughts are more than the sea, and her counsels profounder than the great deep.” Sophia is the Hebrew “consort” of Yahweh, and probably predates him, her origins going back to Inanna and Isis. She is the “woman clothed with the sun,” who brings the blazing light of knowledge. Sophia is the embodiment of all wisdom, and it is she who urges us to know, to understand. She leads the willing soul out of ignorance and blesses those who study and endeavor to know her. In the words of Solomon: “I prayed and understanding was given me: I called upon God and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I loved Her above health and beauty, and chose to have Her instead of light, for the light that cometh from Her never goeth out.” Sophia is the deepest part of ourselves – that part that can grasp in an instant the mysteries of the ages.

Sophia is God’s sharing of himself with creatures. His outpouring, and the Love by which he is given, held and loved.She is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her they prosper. In her they glorify God. In her they rejoice to reflect him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them. She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory . . . She is the Bride and the Feast and the Wedding. Thomas MertonSophia! You of the whirling wings, circling, encompassing energy of God: you quicken the world in your clasp. One wing soars in heaven, one wing sweeps the earth, and the third flies all around us. Praise to Sophia! Let all the earth praise her! Hildegard of Bingen

OSTRICH HUNTING: The Bill Clinton Gambit

by David Brin, Ph.D.

 

Visit the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov/) and check out Table 3.9.1. Percent Change From Preceding Period in Real Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment. In summary:

• G.W. Bush Grew the National Government by 27.3%
• Clinton “Grew” the National Government by -10.8% (that is an 11% shrinkage.)
• G H W Bush Grew the National Government by 1.6%
• Reagan grew the National Government by 33.9%
• Carter grew the National Government by 11.7%

Fact: Accusations that democrats represent big government, fiscal irresponsibility or runaway debt are simply lies. Big lies. Giant whopping lies.

 

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq. “For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC’s Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources…. A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations….. And example cited in the article: “In the run-up to the invasion one of the most senior officials in charge of procurement in the Pentagon objected to a contract potentially worth seven billion that was given to Halliburton, a Texan company, which used to be run by Dick Cheney before he became vice-president. Unusually only Halliburton got to bid – and won.”

In fact, this is the tip of the iceberg. Arguably THE biggest reason for the war may have been the excuse it offered, to bypass normal contracting rules using “emergency” clauses in the law. Now look back at how the far-right howled over the UN’s “Oil for Food” program and some possible graft that might have added up, over a decade, to a billion dollars. Where is the same indignation over theft that directly betrayed our troops in the field, amounting to tens and even hundreds of times as much?

 

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE SAID IF CLINTON HAD….

• sent twelve billion dollars of taxpayer money into a war zone — as a raw cash, unsupervised slush fund — then managed to lose nine billions of it… including almost a billion dollars that were “misplaced” by the side of an Iraqi road? (HOW do you “lose” 270 tons of one hundred dollar bills? That’s ninety million $100 bills, or the average monthly mortgage payments of TEN million Americans)

  Self-check: Remember how mad you were over “Whitewater corruption,” amounting to at most $80,000? Would you have let Clinton get away with “losing” a hundred thousand times as much without even attempting an explanation? Then how about George W. Bush?

 

HOW WOULD YOU HAVE REACTED IF BILL CLINTON….

• made US taxpayers subsidize a huge, private, mercenary army, controlled by one of his closest and most fanatical liberal-democrat supporters?

• then lavished more tax dollars on that crony-contractor, for him to lure top soldiers out of the Army and Marines, into that private force, instead of using a fraction of the same taxpayer money to simply make re-enlistment palatable to those highly skilled men and women?

• then signed documents making that liberal mercenary force immune from any law, American or foreign?

• then let those leftist mercenaries exonerate themselves from cold-blooded murder, by allowing them to ghost-write a “report” under US diplomatic letterhead?

• while also using tax dollars to create many more secret liberal groups, to perform intelligence-gathering, interrogation, kidnapping and international “operations” without even a figleaf of supervision by the CIA?

• then ruined the effectiveness of one of the best of those groups, by leaking its methods, simply to make a minor political point?

 

WHAT IF CLINTON…

• upon facing more criticism from serving and retired senior military officers than all other presidents since Lincoln, combined, routinely responded by having his minions attack their character?

• then refused to discuss why other whistleblowers and war critics — including airborne and special forces noncoms — have been killed, some shot in the head, at a rate far exceeding normal combat casualties in their units?

 

WOULD IT HAVE ANGERED YOU IF BILL CLINTON…

• canceled rules requiring that government contracts be awarded by competitive bidding — (it’s called capitalism) — and instead granted multibillion dollar sweetheart deals directly to liberal cronies and Clinton family friends, free of supervision or auditing?

• used the words “emergency” and “top secret” to conceal those crooked deals?

• hid the fact that each private contractor costs five to ten times as much as a soldier or civil servant, while doing astonishingly shoddy work?

• then appointed “inspectors” to many cabinet departments and Iraq reconstruction agencies, who had no professional qualifications other than longtime political loyalty to Bill Clinton?

• then managed to lose, waste or “misplace” more Iraqi oil each and every week than the UN “Oil For Food Program” did in its entire history?

 

DO YOU FIGURE YOU’D HAVE NOTICED IF BILL CLINTON…

• sent our National Guard units into endless deployments, wrecking families, demolishing our reserves, and leaving our states and cities defenseless, in case of natural disaster. Or in case of a future terror attack?

• allowed a great American city to be destroyed through staggering bureaucratic negligence, despite plenty of warnings about hurricane danger? Then allowed graft and corruption to siphon off billions, in the aftermath?

• allowed U.S. air travel to decline into a morass of filthy, overcrowded airports, overbearing security and deteriorating service, while the rich escape to charters and corporate jets?

• allowed our nation’s infrastructure, bridges, highways etc to deteriorate at the fastest rate in history?

• oversaw the worst spiral into national debt the world has ever seen, reversing 1990s surpluses into record-breaking deficits?

 

WOULD YOU CRITICIZE YOUR “COMMANDER IN CHIEF” IF IT WERE BILL CLINTON WHO…

• supervised and directly oversaw the steepest decline in U.S. military readiness since the War of 1812? With the Army and Marines running out of troops and equipment, unable to train, and unable to meet recruitment quotas, despite steeply lowering standards and offering signup bonuses in excess of $20,000?

• brought us to the point where only two Army brigades are currently trained, equipped and prepared to fight a national land force? And those two are in Korea? (Hint: that’s fewer ready brigades than Belgium or Mexico have.)

• fired, transferred, punished, or forced into retirement hundreds of US military officers, for refusing to parrot a party line or for not helping twist our armed forces into a political tool?

• appointed to top positions at the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Defense and Homeland Security men and women without experience in those fields, whose sole attribute was partisan loyalty and a willingness to bully civil servants, harassing professionals into toeing the line?

 

WOULD YOU HAVE LAUGHED ALOUD — OR CRIED — IF BILL CLINTON…

• declared that he was the one and only “decider,” in what had previously been a vast and sophisticated democracy?

• declared repeatedly that a president can refuse to answer to any kind of accountability or oversight by our elected Congress?

• promised (as a candidate) never to commit troops without a timetable, an exit strategy, adequate financing, or clear, achievable goials that directly help our nation, enough to outweigh our soldiers’ sacrifice? What if Clinton had promised all that… then did the opposite?

• declared “Mission Accomplished” when an endless, Vietnam-style quagmire had only just begun?

 

WHAT IF — BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES — “COMMANDER IN CHIEF” BILL CLINTON…

• transformed our military’s reputation from one of agile invincibility (after Gulf-I, the Balkans and Afghanistan) to one of floundering quagmire-incompetence? (And reputation is what deters aggressors.)

• transformed our nation’s reputation for always taking the moral high ground to one that makes excuses for torture and treating prisoners as non-humans? (Wasn’t that reputation more valuable, over the long run, than any short term access to coerced information?)

• drove away nearly all of our allies and made the United States more unpopular around the world than at any time in our history?

 

WOULD YOU HAVE PROTESTED, IF DEMOCRATS…

• systematically dismantled dozens of independent scientific panels, including all of those charged with advising Congress? Then stocked the remaining panels with second-rate shills who are despised, all across the scientific community?

• …allowed major special interests to write the administration’s energy and other policies?
• … spent 13 years blocking energy research that might have helped America wean its addiction to foreign oil?
• …poured most of the remaining energy “research” money into agri-business ventures closely linked to cronies and political allies?

 

WHAT IF THE MOVEMENT YOU OPPOSED…

• first denied the existence of a looming threat to our climate, then pressured government and independent scientists to censor their reports, then claimed “the jury is still out and we need more research”…

• while slashing climate research budgets…

• and then, finally, after years of delay, when the proof-of-danger was too blatant to ignore any longer, blithely did a complete and dizzying 180 reversal, suddenly calling human-generated climate change “a dire international crisis”?

 

WOULD IT REDUCE DEMOCRATS’ CREDIBILITY IF THEY…

• praised and supported and encouraged Saddam Hussein for decades? Then fought to eject him from Kuwait, only to prop him back up and protect him, yet again? Then, after leaving him to brutalize Iraqis for 12 more years, finally decided to go after him — in the stupidest way possible?

• praised and supported and encouraged Osama bin Laden? Armed and helped him gain power in Afghanistan. Then, finally decided to go after him, declaring “We’ll never rest till he is brought to justice!” Only… thereupon seemed to forget?

 

WHAT IF A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT HAD…

• encouraged us to be far more afraid of vague “terrorists” than we were ever afraid of a monstrous communist empire, bristling with tens of thousands of hair-trigger nuclear weapons?

• vastly increased government secrecy, to levels never seen before, not even when we were in a life/death struggle against the Soviet KGB? (Would you have wondered if the president was doing it in order to hide misdeeds? You bet you would have! That is, if it were a democrat.)

• engaged in illegal wiretapping schemes, spying on American citizens and interfering with their rights?

• appointed scores of US attorneys who were openly partisan Democrats, then fired a few of them for not going after Republicans harshly enough? (Would you wonder about the remaining ones, who weren’t fired? Worrying what kind of a country you are living in, when a majority of US attorneys are acceptable to such a partisan regime?)

 

WHAT IF BILL CLINTON HAD…

• taken every bill passed by the Newt Gingrich Congress and signed it, while scribbling in the margins that “this bill means only what I say it means”? Would that have angered you?

• reversed his party’s long commitment to “states rights”by asserting federal supremacy over every state law, to a degree never before seen, even under Franklin Roosevelt?

• Would that have raised your hackles, denouncing Clinton as “undermining the Constitution and grabbing power?” Ah but Clinton didn’t do any of that. Bush has. So, any denunciations?

 

WOULD YOUR HACKLES RAISE IF IT WERE DEMOCRATS WHO…

• insist that it is just fine for two companies, run by a pair of extreme-partisan brothers, to manufacture the nation’s voting machines, never submitting their software code for open testing, obstructing paper trails or auditing, while lobbying for state laws that forbid exit polling as a last ditch way to verify election results? Wouldn’t that combination make you a little, well, paranoid? That is, if democrats did it.

• kept buying up newspapers, radio stations and television outlets, aided by rule changes that allow just a few men to control most of the news Americans get to hear? Fabulously rich men who are actively and relentlessly partisan?

• let politically connected companies control the FDA, write laws, pick the inspectors who regulate them, and allowed Big Tobacco to settle court judgements for one penny on the dollar?

 

WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN UPSET IF BILL CLINTON…

• responded to a terror attack by grounding all Americans for two days, not allowing them to fly…

• but meanwhile whisked out of the country, in luxury, every rich or well-connected citizen of a hostile foreign power? The same foreign power from which most of the terrorists had come? Including some relatives and close friends of the plotters? Not even allowing the FBI to ask them any questions?

 

WHAT IF BILL CLINTON…

• initiated intimate and unwanted body contact with a female foreign leader? On camera?

• preened and preached about his own personal courage, then had himself put unconscious under anesthesia, simply to avoid the discomfort of a routine colonoscopy? Not once but twice? While the White House made a big deal out of “minimizing the risk” this caused the nation, by transferring power officially to the Vice President? Can you imagine what Rush would have made of such incredible wimpiness, if Clinton had cried to be put out for a routine exam?

• preened and preached about his own personal courage, then hid out for the first few days after a nation’s trauma with a major terrorist attack? (That is, after finishing reading a 2nd grade children’s book aloud, before watching cameras.)

• mocked and sneered at a condemned woman’s plea for clemency, on national television? (Whatever your opinions on capital punishment, is a “mature leader”someone who treats such matters with sober dignity, or with fratboy nastiness and hand-rubbing glee?)

• spent his first days in office re-assigning scores of FBI agents away from proper duties, sending them, instead, sifting through executive department files, in a vain and (utterly!) fruitless search for any kind of dirt on the previous administration? Agents who were thus not on duty, looking out for dangers to the people, during months leading up to a terrible terror attack upon the nation?

 

MORE OSTRICH BAIT (added 7/1/08)

Imagine how a Republican might feel if – late in the Clinton Administration – the Justice Department’s own Inspector General reported that Clinton’s White House staff had meddled with nearly all Justice Department hiring decisions, ending the traditional practice of hiring and promoting on advice from neutral commissions and instead applying blatant political tests, transforming the U.S.J.D. into a massive, private law firm serving one political party… relentlessly ignoring crimes by their “side” and pursuing vendettas against the other.

If This happened under Bill Clinton, and only fiercely partisan liberal Democrats were allowed inside Justice, would you have called it a scandal? But the Inspector General says that this did NOT happen under Clinton. It happened under Bush and the Republicans. So where’s your righteous sense of anger?

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him. – Henry Stimson

1841 – William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and the one with the shortest term served.

William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841) was an American military officer and politician, the ninth President of the United States, and the first president to die in office. The oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before American Independence, Harrison died on his 32nd day in office—the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by the Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment.

Before election as president, Harrison served as the first territorial congressional delegate from the Northwest Territory, governor of the Indiana Territory and later as a U.S. representative and senator from Ohio. He originally gained national fame for leading U.S. forces against American Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, where he earned the nickname “Tippecanoe” (or “Old Tippecanoe”). As a general in the subsequent War of 1812, his most notable contribution was a victory at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, which brought an end to hostilities in his region.

After the war, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to United States Congress, and in 1824 he became a member of the Senate. There he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia, he lectured Simon Bolívar on the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio, where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before being elected president in 1840.

Domino’s dishes out 11,000 free pizzas by mistake

Friday, April 3, 2009

Here’s one, just 10,999 to go

Bailout” was the magic word as Domino’s had to give away thousands of free pizzas because someone stumbled on an online promotion the company scrapped.

Domino’s Pizza Inc. spokesman Tim McIntyre said Wednesday that the company prepared an Internet coupon for an ad campaign that was considered in December but not approved.

He says someone apparently typed “bailout” into a Domino’s promo code window and found it was good for a free medium pizza.

Word about the code spread quickly Monday night on the Web and 11,000 free pizzas were delivered before it was deactivated Tuesday morning.

Cincinnati-area franchise owner John Glass says his 14 stores gave away more than 600 pies, but that Domino’s promised to reimburse him.

COMET IMPACT: THE ORIGIN OF DRAGON MYTHS?

Dragon – a mythical monster, usually represented as a large reptile with wings and claws, breathing out fire and smoke. (Webster’s New World Dictionary)

There are dragon or serpent monster myths found in practically every culture on Earth (for simplicity, I will refer to serpent monsters as dragons). Usually in these myths, the dragons were capable of great destruction with wind and fire. I have always wondered why dragon myths are so widespread in the world and in this site I will present possible answers to the following questions:

• Why haven’t any dragon fossils ever been found?
• What were dragons?
• Why are there dragon myths in almost all cultures on Earth?

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Why haven’t any dragon fossils ever been found?

There are literally thousands of animal fossil species that have been found but there has not been a single dragon fossil ever found! The world is full of dragon myths and this would suggest that there were an abundance of dragons at some time in history and if so, there should be fossils or some kind of physical evidence. Since there isn’t any physical evidence, the only logical conclusion is that dragons did not exist.

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What were dragons?

It is quite possible that dragons were comets. So what do dragons and comets have in common? Dragons were depicted as serpents with wings and could fly through the sky. They had a head and a long body. Likewise, comets have a head and a long body and appear to fly through the sky. The chief Mayan god was “Kukulkan” which literally meant “feathered serpent“. A comet has a long body but the body fans out as if it has feathers. A “feathered serpent” is a perfect description of a comet. See pictures of comets Hyakutake and Halebopp.

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Why are there dragon myths found in almost all cultures on Earth?

In order for dragon legends to be so widespread, there must have been an event that was common to all areas of the Earth. The only thing that looks like a flying serpent, could be seen by every person in the world, and be able to cause global destructive effects would be an impact on the Earth by a comet. If this did happen at some remote time in history, all of the people on Earth would have seen the comet (dragon) moving through the stars and each night it would have gotten bigger and bigger until it had a tail that stretched all the way across the sky. The sight of this monstrous flying serpent monster must have struck terror in all of the people of Earth. Relatively few people would have witnessed the impact of the comet but soon afterward, the entire Earth would have been bombarded by burning rocks falling from the sky. The sky would have darkened from the smoke of the impact and all of the fires started around the world. The darkness would have lasted for months and the crops everywhere on Earth would have failed. There would have been widespread starvation and disease. Every culture would have experience the terrible after effects of the comet impact. If there had been an advanced civilization at that time (Atlantis perhaps), it would have fallen apart as its people were reduced to a hand to mouth existence. Many generations later, the knowledge and culture from the previous civilization would have disappeared but each generation would tell stories about the monstrous flying serpent that caused so much destruction.

“This is a joke, isn’t it?”

“This is a joke, isn’t it?” My Ex-Nazi Father’s Reaction to Fox News

by MaikeH

Fri Apr 03, 2009 at 01:20:18 PM PDT

In response to a request from BrandonM and buckeyekarl, I am going to expand on a comment I made the other day in response to GregMitch‘s diary “Colbert went where ‘NYT’ feared to tread on Glenn Beck.”

Before you follow me below the fold, I should probably give you a Godwin’s Law-related warning: the N-word (the other N-word, that is) will come up.

Well, here it is, the long version:

Whenever Pope Benedict comes up in conversation, someone (at least here in America) will bring up his Hitler Youth past. Actually, though, he was a rather reluctant member (automatically enrolled by being a public school student) who went to meetings only if he absolutely had to. He did not turn into Germany’s equivalent of Pat Robertson until the late 1960s.

The same cannot be said for my Dad. He loved Hitler Youth meetings. It was great fun, like being in Boy Scouts. My father’s young brain absorbed the ideology like a sponge. He was not the only member of his family who had bought into the party line. His father (my grandfather), even though he had Jewish ancestry (his parents were not married, and his Jewish father had been left off the birth certificate), was a Nazi with all his heart and soul.

During the war, when my father’s hometown was bombed and 80% of the infrastructure destroyed, all public schools were evacuated. My father and uncle spent two years in a camp in Austria, with government-approved teachers, where they experienced the end of the war and the so-called Thousand Year Empire. Abandonded by the adults, the boys fended for themselves until one day they decided to take a chance and try to find their way back home, not knowing whether their parents were still alive.

In Germany, my grandparents’ house was completely flattened and my grandfather was in a mental hospital, where he would stay for the rest of his life. The rest of the family, though, was reunited, and my grandmother found a job as a cook on the British base. My father, whose education had been seriously disrupted, left school after tenth grade and started a clerical apprenticeship in a publishing house, where he stayed until his retirement in 1996.

My Dad eventually completely abandoned his former political views. In fact, he became a progressive. In their younger days, he and my mother were both active in their union, and my mother is a member of the SPD to this day (when former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visited San Antonio, I got to have a beer with him). When my father moved up in the company, he would be conflicted during labor disputes since he was now middle management and couldn’t participate in strikes anymore.

In spite of his complete 180, my father never forgot the propaganda he was subjected to in his childhood. Whenever he was really drunk, he would start singing Nazi songs, and my mother had to drag him home before he got beaten up.

In 2004, my father visited me in San Antonio for the last time. Due to his strong opposition to the war in Iraq and the death penalty, he was not crazy about coming to Texas, but he was curious to see the new condo that I had bought. So he and my mother came for Christmas.

One day, we had the TV on, and for whatever reason (that I have forgotten), we were watching Fox News. My father watched for about ten minutes, then he said, “What is this?”
“Fox News,” I answered.
“This is some kind of joke, right?”
“Uhm, no.”
“You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?” My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.
“No, it’s not satire. Why are you asking?” I said.
“Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it’s Nazi talk.”

Wow. I had never thought about why “conservatives” had always made me cringe. But he definitely had a point. Now I am not saying that Republicans are Nazis, but they do employ totalitarian rhetoric, and sometimes… well, they do sound like Nazis. Here are some eerie parallels:

- “homeland” and all the imagery connected to it (also prominently featured in patriotic songs) – Invocation of patriotism, of which there is supposedly never enough – Glorification of the military while regarding actual soldiers as disposable – Glorification of motherhood with ulterior motives (the Lebensborn movement got started with homes for unwed mothers to prevent abortions) – “We” are the good guys, not because of what we do (or don’t do) but because we say so – “We” are superior at anything and everything, again because we say so – Discrimination against a particular minority is morally justified to preserve national security – Even though racism and gender discrimation are considered morally right, ideology supercedes racial, ethnic, or gender affiliation. Minority members are tolerated (“We decide who’s a Jew”) and women can have careers if they are useful to the party – A crime or injustice was committed against us, so we must punish somebody, whether they had anything to do with it or not – If we lose a war, it’s the left-wing traitors’ fault – Everybody else is out to get us, and we must get them first – Messed up grammar and nonsensical sentence structures interrupted by bumper sticker-style slogans. If you ever tried to read Mein Kampf in the original (I don’t recommend it), you would be reminded of a Sarah Palin speech. – speaking of Sarah Palin rallies, need I say more…The one ingredient that the wingnuts are missing is the personality cult. They simply have not found a charismatic figure to build a movement around. There is Ronald Reagan (a.k.a. St. Ronnie), who is good for mytho-historical legend building, but, being that he’s dead, he cannot go out and campaign. What they need is a Barack Obama with a military/war hero background. Alas, the characters they have been trying to sell us have come across as caricatures of what they were supposed to represent.

My father died in 2006, so obviously he missed last year’s elections. If he had witnessed the McCain campaign, he would remind us daily what a bullet we dodged.

Dyslexic Student Expelled Over Toy Gnu

Dyslexic Student Expelled Over Toy Gnu WATERBURY, CT – A fourth grade Oakville student has been expelled from a Waterbury school for bringing a toy gnu onto the property. The action falls under the school district’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy, according to administrators. Officials believe the student, who is dyslexic, tried to intentionally break the policy.

“We’re convinced he intended to bring a toy gun.” said Meredith Simmons, Principal of Waterbury Elementary. “His reading disability may have confused him about what is prohibited in the policy, but we can’t take any chances. That’s why it’s called zero tolerance.”

The expulsion received full approval from the superintendent’s office. “We support Principal Simmons’ decision.” said Milton Decker, Assistant Superintendent. “The toy gnu may seem harmless, but we can’t ignore the underlying intent. I seriously doubt any of our students even know what a gnu is.”

The student, who requested to remain amomynous, will be eligible for admission next year following a psychological evaluation and sensitivity training. The toy gnu was confiscated and destroyed by janitorial personnel.

The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr. [Muhammed]

Each time a person stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. Few are willing to embrace the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. [Robert F. Kennedy]

Public Transportation

Phoenix Unveils Fancy Light Rail Line, Newbie Transit Riders Too Polite to Squeeze Into Crowded Cars

January 3, 2009 at 2:43 PM | 1 Comment

 

We were in Phoenix for Christmas, and we wondered, as we always do when we travel, if we could ever be happy living there. Having fled the cold and wet New York winter, Arizona’s mild weather and breezy lifestyle seemed awfully enticing, but we’d hate to give up the energy and convenience of the city for a suburban, car-dependent existence. We’re just so used to taking the subway that the idea of having to drive everywhere seems like a drag.

But as of now, it’s possible – if difficult – to live in Phoenix without owning a car. The city just took a big step toward a 21st century public transit system with the opening of its light rail line, and while it’s a far cry from the New York City Subway, it’s a cheap and convenient way to get around the city without worrying about traffic, gas, or those insidious red light and speeder cameras that keep popping up everywhere.

Transit geeks that we are, we took a ride on the Phoenix Metro on its first day of operation and found it to be quite impressive. The $1.4 billion line stretches twenty miles from northwestern Phoenix to Mesa, and the green-and-white cars are quiet, smooth, and futuristic. Since the train was free during its first few days of operation (normally it costs $1.25 a ride, or $2.50 for an all-day pass) it was packed with riders, many of whom probably haven’t taken public transit in years. As regular subway commuters, we found it cute that people were reluctant to press into the crowded cars, opting instead to wait for the next train. That will change.

The light rail is also great news for area boozers, as it passes through the bar-heavy town of Tempe. While the last train leaves at 11:00 p.m., it offers safe, sober transportation to many tipplers who heretofore saw little alternative to getting behind the wheel after having a few too many. If only Charles Barkley had the option of taking the train on New Year’s Eve he might not be in such hot water right now.

The Bill of No Rights

 

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The following was written by State Representative Mitchell Kaye from Cobb County, GA

We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden delusional and other liberal, commie, pinko bedwetters.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that a whole lot of people were confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights.

ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone – not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the World is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won’t have the right to a big-screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VII: You don’t have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won’t lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you’d like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.

ARTICLE VIII: You don’t have the right to a job. All of us sure want all of you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE X: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to pursue happiness – which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

You know, I would die happy if I saw you naked just once!

Human Nature Makes People Assholes; Not the Internet

March 23rd, 2007.

When I was 15 years old, I developed a crush on one of my best guy friends. He was oblivious and his failure to pick up on any of my signals caused me great distress. Teenage girls can often become overwhelmed with frustration and one day, while hanging out with this boy, I suddenly wailed:

“Why do you always make me feel so bad?”

My comment came completely out of the blue and I’m sure he had no idea what I was talking about. However, without missing a beat, he replied, “I only have as much power as you give me.”

Taken aback, my graceful, articulate response was simply, “Huh?”

Suddenly angry, he railed, “If I’m somehow making you feel bad, it’s because you are letting me. You are giving me that power. The only way I could make you feel bad is if you placed more importance on my opinion than you do your own.”

I’ve always liked that exchange. I’ve never been one to relish a victim status and he took that away from me.

I’ve been reading a lot about the Internet and how people have a tendency to act like assholes when they’re anonymous. The theory is the anonymity makes them a jerk. In reality, they’re all perfectly nice people, but the nefarious Internet forces them to behave out of character.

I think that’s all a bunch of bullshit.

The people that buy into this theory are the same simple-minded retards that also buy into the theory that human beings are innately good people. They are not. They are whiny, manipulative, greedy, stupid, jealous, vengeful, selfish cows. Very few people in the history of the world were genuinely kind people.

If anything, it is society that makes them appear nice.

Don’t believe me?

Take a really nice man and give him millions of dollars. Talk to him in a couple of years and see how nice he really is. I’ve spent enough time around people with money to learn that people are only nice when they feel they have something to lose. If a guy has a bank vault full of priceless diamonds, his perception is that he doesn’t need people anymore. It is only then when his true colors are revealed.

The same effect can be produced after giving someone too much fame. Have any of you ever met anyone famous? In my old line of work, I met quite of few actors and actresses. An elitist sense of entitlement leaks off of them in choking waves when the cameras are off. You would literally be shocked at how nasty America’s Sweetheart can act when she doesn’t have a script in front of her. I mean, why the hell do you think they make their nannies and servants sign confidentiality agreements? Trust me, it’s not because they’re afraid their employees will shout from the rooftops all their positive character traits.

Fame and money don’t make good people bad. Fame and money give already bad people the perception that they have nothing to lose by being honest. It is only when someone has nothing to lose that we get to see their true colors.

Personally, I fucking love the Internet for that very reason. If it takes a false sense of anonymity to get people comfortable enough to be honest for a change, then so be it. I value truth over nice.

Besides, an opinion on the Internet can only hurt me if I let it.

I’m going to switch gears here and talk a little bit about Internet drama. A couple of weeks ago, an altercation happened between two bloggers. A blog called L’undone started getting exposure and the masses started putting two and two together and realized that “lola” was actually writing about The Girl Who. Apparently, Lola used to date The Girl Who’s husband and there was a bit of real life drama when the couple broke up. What follows is a “tale of high-weirdness, big love, cyber crime, and the mutual insane obsession of two people who never even met.”

The drama is even more laughable when you find out that these two ladies are absolutely destroyed because the other one had the audacity to read their blog. Supposedly, this constitutes as stalking now. After that, there is a lot of back and forth and the masses jump into the fray condemning the ladies for being “crazy.”

I still don’t understand what happened that was so crazy. To me, it all looked like typical womanly behavior. After all, should one of my ex-boyfriend’s, girlfriends, best friend, whatever friend, write a blog, I’d likely read it every single day. Because, honestly, it’s not like there is shit else to read on the fucking Internet, so might as well peak into the life of people I indirectly know, right?

The only interesting part of this whole scenario is how the women responded to criticisms. Each wrote long diatribes about how the situation had ‘hurt’ them and cried big clown tears when the obsessive checking of their stats revealed that people they didn’t like were reading what they wrote. When people like Heaven Nose started poking a little fun, posts went missing, hysterical posts would appear in their place, and then those were deleted as well. I watched the whole thing, fascinated, if only because the entire brouhaha is merely a reflection of what is wrong with society today as a whole.

First of all, I’ve noticed that people nowadays lack the ability to take even the slightest bit of criticism. No one considers their own shortcomings in how other people treat them anymore. No one makes any attempt to see the value in a negative viewpoint. Instead, they respond with righteous indignation and are shockingly quick to demand Victim Status. Any opinion that is not presented in a way that the recipient perceives as nice is immediately discounted and the messenger is dismissed as jealous, evil, hurtful, and cruel. And while that may be true of the messenger, that doesn’t mean there is no validity in their argument. Automatically shying away from harsh words on the Internet because you lack the coping skills to deal with a negative opinion of yourself is more cowardly than being mean on the Internet, people.

The flip side to this is putting too much stock in what others think about you. Since I’ve started this website, I’ve been called evil, cruel, hateful, stupid, immature, meandering, a sociopath, a pedophile, a monster. I have not cried myself to sleep. Not once. First of all, I can see merit in a lot of those statements. But more importantly, I can see where those statements lack merit. Ultimately, I am the only expert on my psyche. Why would I value someone’s opinion of myself over my own? Why would I give a nameless, faceless, stranger on the Internet the power to shame me, humiliate me, or hurt me? Why should my self esteem be so fragile that Susie BlowJo from Michigan can completely destroy it with a few casually typed out sentences?

It shouldn’t. But if it does, perhaps you need to look inwardly to find what is lacking as opposed to playing the part of the victim being bullied by the big, bad Internet. The Internet hurts you only when you let it. And people are assholes. That’s human nature and it’s been a given for thousands of years. But that doesn’t make them liars and it most assuredly doesn’t make you perfect.

If you really desire to grow and evolve as an individual, it’s best to glean what you can from the negativity….and chuck the rest.

America’s Government Is Secular Not Christian!

America’s Government Is Secular

Not Christian!

 

Pagan Awareness In America There’s a lot of talk in the US today about the founding fathers establishing our constitution based on Christian values. Unfortunately this propaganda by religious zealots is false and breeds intolerance. Through some research I happened upon the following article that can explain the historical position of many of the founding fathers and their predecessors. Thanks to the author for allowing Pagan’sPath to reprint their ever so well written article here.

Little-Known U.S. Document Signed by President Adams Proclaims America’s Government Is Secular by Jim Walker earlyamerica.com Some people today assert that the United States government came from Christian foundations. They argue that our political system represents a Christian ideal form of government and that Jefferson, Madison, et al, had simply expressed Christian values while framing the Constitution. If this proved true, then we should have a wealth of evidence to support it, yet just the opposite proves the case. Although, indeed, many of America’s colonial statesmen practiced Christianity, our most influential Founding Fathers broke away from traditional religious thinking. The ideas of the Great Enlightenment that began in Europe had begun to sever the chains of monarchical theocracy. These heretical European ideas spread throughout early America. Instead of relying on faith, people began to use reason and science as their guide. The humanistic philosophical writers of the Enlightenment, such as Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire, had greatly influenced our Founding Fathers and Isaac Newton’s mechanical and mathematical foundations served as a grounding post for their scientific reasoning. A few Christian fundamentalists attempt to convince us to return to the Christianity of early America, yet according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, “No more than 10 percent– probably less– of Americans in 1800 were members of congregations.” The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, “Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom.” Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscious. Masonry welcomed anyone from any religion or non-religion, as long as they believed in a Supreme Being. Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, Lafayette, and many others accepted Freemasonry. The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, “the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety.”   George Washington Much of the myth of Washington’s alleged Christianity came from Mason Weems influential book, “Life of Washington.” The story of the cherry tree comes from this book and it has no historical basis. Weems, a Christian minister portrayed Washington as a devout Christian, yet Washington’s own diaries show that he rarely attended Church. Washington revealed almost nothing to indicate his spiritual frame of mind, hardly a mark of a devout Christian. In his thousands of letters, the name of Jesus Christ never appears. He rarely spoke about his religion, but his Freemasonry experience points to a belief in deism. Washington’s initiation occurred at the Fredericksburg Lodge on 4 November 1752, later becoming a Master mason in 1799, and remained a freemason until he died. To the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789, Washington said that every man “ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.” After Washington’s death, Dr. Abercrombie, a friend of his, replied to a Dr. Wilson, who had interrogated him about Washington’s religion replied, “Sir, Washington was a Deist.”   Thomas Jefferson Even most Christians do not consider Jefferson a Christian. In many of his letters, he denounced the superstitions of Christianity. He did not believe in spiritual souls, angels or godly miracles. Although Jefferson did admire the morality of Jesus, Jefferson did not think him divine, nor did he believe in the Trinity or the miracles of Jesus. In a letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787, he wrote, “Question with boldness even the existence of a god.” Jefferson believed in materialism, reason, and science. He never admitted to any religion but his own. In a letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, 25 June 1819, he wrote, “You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.”   John Adams Adams, a Unitarian, flatly denied the doctrine of eternal damnation. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote: “I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!” In his letter to Samuel Miller, 8 July 1820, Adams admitted his unbelief of Protestant Calvinism: “I must acknowledge that I cannot class myself under that denomination.” In his, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” [1787-1788], John Adams wrote: “The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. “. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a presence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”   James Madison Called the father of the Constitution, Madison had no conventional sense of Christianity. In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments: “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” “What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”   Benjamin Franklin Although Franklin received religious training, his nature forced him to rebel against the irrational tenets of his parents Christianity. His Autobiography revels his skepticism, “My parents had given me be times religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. “. . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist.” In an essay on “Toleration,” Franklin wrote: “If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England.” Dr. Priestley, an intimate friend of Franklin, wrote of him: “It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin’s general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers” (Priestley’s Autobiography)   Thomas Paine This freethinker and author of several books, influenced more early Americans than any other writer. Although he held Deist beliefs, he wrote in his famous The Age of Reason: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. “ “Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. “   The U.S. Constitution The most convincing evidence that our government did not ground itself upon Christianity comes from the very document that defines it– the United States Constitution. If indeed our Framers had aimed to found a Christian republic, it would seem highly unlikely that they would have forgotten to leave out their Christian intentions in the Supreme law of the land. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution do we have a single mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any Supreme Being. There occurs only two references to religion and they both use exclusionary wording. The 1st Amendment’s says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .” and in Article VI, Section 3, “. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Thomas Jefferson interpreted the 1st Amendment in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in January 1, 1802: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.” Some Religious activists try to extricate the concept of separation between church and State by claiming that those words do not occur in the Constitution. Indeed they do not, but neither does it exactly say “freedom of religion,” yet the First Amendment implies both. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom: “Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindu and Infidel of every denomination.” James Madison, perhaps the greatest supporter for separation of church and State, and whom many refer to as the father of the Constitution, also held similar views which he expressed in his letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822: “And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion & Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” Today, if ever our government needed proof that the separation of church and State works to ensure the freedom of religion, one only need to look at the plethora of Churches, temples, and shrines that exist in the cities and towns throughout the United States. Only a secular government, divorced from religion could possibly allow such tolerant diversity.   The Declaration of Independence Many Christians who think of America as founded upon Christianity usually present the Declaration as “proof.” The reason appears obvious: the document mentions God. However, the God in the Declaration does not describe Christianity’s God. It describes “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This nature’s view of God agrees with deist philosophy but any attempt to use the Declaration as a support for Christianity will fail for this reason alone. More significantly, the Declaration does not represent the law of the land as it came before the Constitution. The Declaration aimed at announcing their separation from Great Britain and listed the various grievances with the “thirteen united States of America.” The grievances against Great Britain no longer hold, and we have more than thirteen states. Today, the Declaration represents an important historical document about rebellious intentions against Great Britain at a time before the formation of our independent government. Although the Declaration may have influential power, it may inspire the lofty thoughts of poets, and judges may mention it in their summations, it holds no legal power today. Our presidents, judges and policemen must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but never to the Declaration of Independence. Of course the Declaration depicts a great political document, as it aimed at a future government upheld by citizens instead of a religious monarchy. It observed that all men “are created equal” meaning that we all come inborn with the abilities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The Declaration says nothing about our rights secured by Christianity, nor does it imply anything about a Christian foundation.   Treaty of Tripoli Unlike governments of the past, the American Fathers set up a government divorced from religion. The establishment of a secular government did not require a reflection to themselves about its origin; they knew this as an unspoken given. However, as the U.S. delved into international affairs, few foreign nations knew about the intentions of America. For this reason, an insight from at a little known but legal document written in the late 1700s explicitly reveals the secular nature of the United States to a foreign nation. Officially called the “Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary,” most refer to it as simply the Treaty of Tripoli. In Article 11, it states: “As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussel men; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.” The preliminary treaty began with a signing on 4 November, 1796 (the end of George Washington’s last term as president). Joel Barlow, the American diplomat served as counsel to Algiers and held responsibility for the treaty negotiations. Barlow had once served under Washington as a chaplain in the revolutionary army. He became good friends with Paine, Jefferson, and read Enlightenment literature. Later he abandoned Christian orthodoxy for rationalism and became an advocate of secular government. Barlow, along with his associate, Captain Richard O’Brien, et al, translated and modified the Arabic version of the treaty into English. From this came the added Amendment 11. Barlow forwarded the treaty to U.S. legislators for approval in 1797. Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, endorsed it and John Adams concurred (now during his presidency), sending the document on to the Senate. The Senate approved the treaty on June 7, 1797, and officially ratified by the Senate with John Adams signature on 10 June, 1797. All during this multi-review process, the wording of Article 11 never raised the slightest concern. The treaty even became public through its publication in The Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797. So here we have a clear admission by the United States that our government did not found itself upon Christianity. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, this treaty represented U.S. law as all treaties do according to the Constitution (see Article VI, Sect. 2). Although the Christian exclusionary wording in the Treaty of Tripoli only lasted for eight years and no longer has legal status, it clearly represented the feelings of our Founding Fathers at the beginning of the U.S. government.   Common Law According to the Constitution’s 7th Amendment: “In suits at common law. . . the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact, tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.” Here, many Christians believe that common law came from Christian foundations and therefore the Constitution derives from it. They use various quotes from Supreme Court Justices proclaiming that Christianity came as part of the laws of England, and therefore from its common law heritage. But one of our principle Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, elaborated about the history of common law in his letter to Thomas Cooper on February 10, 1814: “For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Carte, which terminates the period of the common law. . . This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. “. . . if any one chooses to build a doctrine on any law of that period, supposed to have been lost, it is incumbent on him to prove it to have existed, and what were its contents. These were so far alterations of the common law, and became themselves a part of it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” In the same letter, Jefferson examined how the error spread about Christianity and common law. Jefferson realized that a misinterpretation had occurred with a Latin term by Prisot, “*ancient scripture*,” in reference to common law history. The term meant “ancient scripture” but people had incorrectly interpreted it to mean “Holy Scripture,” thus spreading the myth that common law came from the Bible. Jefferson writes: “And Blackstone repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew Hale, that ‘Christianity is part of the laws of England,’ citing Ventris and Strange ubi surpa. 4. Blackst. 59. Lord Mansfield qualifies it a little by saying that ‘The essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.” In the case of the Chamberlain of London v. Evans, 1767. But he cites no authority, and leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the opinion of the judge, and according to the measure of his foot or his faith, are those essential principles of revealed religion obligatory on us as a part of the common law.” Thus we find this string of authorities, when examined to the beginning, all hanging on the same hook, a perverted expression of Priscot’s, or on one another, or nobody.” The Encyclopedia Britannica, also describes the Saxon origin and adds: “The nature of the new common law was at first much influenced by the principles of Roman law, but later it developed more and more along independent lines.” Also prominent among the characteristics that derived out of common law include the institution of the jury, and the right to speedy trial.   Christian Sources Virtually all the evidence that attempts to connect a foundation of Christianity upon the government rests mainly on quotes and opinions from a few of the colonial statesmen who had professed a belief in Christianity. Sometimes the quotes come from their youth before their introduction to Enlightenment ideas or simply from personal beliefs. But statements of beliefs, by themselves, say nothing about Christianity as the source of the U.S. government. There did occur, however, some who wished a connection between church and State. Patrick Henry, for example, proposed a tax to help sustain “some form of Christian worship” for the state of Virginia. But Jefferson and other statesmen did not agree. In 1779, Jefferson introduced a bill for the Statute for Religious Freedom which became Virginia law. Jefferson designed this law to completely separate religion from government. None of Henry’s Christian views ever got introduced into Virginia’s or U.S. Government law. Unfortunately, later developments in our government have clouded early history. The original Pledge of Allegiance, authored by Francis Bellamy in 1892 did not contain the words “under God.” Not until June 1954 did those words appear in the Allegiance. The United States currency never had “In God We Trust” printed on money until after the Civil War. Many Christians who visit historical monuments and see the word “God” inscribed in stone, automatically impart their own personal God of Christianity, without understanding the Framers Deist context. In the Supreme Court’s 1892 Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, Justice David Brewer wrote that “this is a Christian nation.” Many Christians use this as evidence. However, Brewer wrote this in dicta, as a personal opinion only and does not serve as a legal pronouncement. Later Brewer felt obliged to explain himself: “But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all.”   Conclusion The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture. Today we have powerful Christian organizations who work to spread historical myths about early America and attempt to bring a Christian theocracy to the government. If this ever happens, then indeed, we will have ignored the lessons from history. Fortunately, most liberal Christians today agree with the principles of separation of church and State, just as they did in early America. “They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point” -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

 

 

You are Destroying America. Yes, You.

	You are Destroying America. Yes, You.

by Brian Trent

Sooner or later (as all great civilizations through time have dealt with) America will be attacked by terrorists again. There are too many people out there hopelessly addicted to extremism, to acting as pawns in a game of supernatural Risk, to blind fanaticism for it not to happen.

But that won’t destroy America.

In history, there have been the Hyksos, the Hittites, the Visigoths, the Huns, the Golden Horde, the Crusaders, and countless other unnamed peoples who have arrived with sword and torch to bring devastation to society. Today they use bombs and AK-47s. And in the future, even if education raises up humanity from the gutters of ignorance there will still be those of the fanatic pathology. It is likely there will always be barbarians.

But that won’t destroy America either.

You will.

I’m referring to the screeching fear-addicts who have raped the United States so thoroughly that they should be drawn up on charges of treason. The cowards who, unlike their grandfathers and earlier ancestors, want a nanny state to coddle them, hug them, and ultimately contain them in a little crib with bars and monitors and cameras.

These are the whining tantrum-throwers who live in such a fear-choked world that they will trade in America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights for far less than thirty pieces of silver.

They want the President to have the power to arrest Americans without review or charges. To have the power to imprison them indefinitely. To be able to strip away a citizen’s status with the magic words “enemy combatant” and cart them off to secret military trials per the PATRIOT ACT’s overbroad definitions.

These are the traitorous weasels who think that standing up for America’s rights is an act of weakness! The fools who have forgotten that every President swears an oath to “protect, defend, and preserve the Constitution of the United States.” At the end of the day, it is the Constitution which must survive us and continue as the guiding principle for America’s future as it has been for our past.

These are the cultists who have surrendered their most precious ability – freethinking – to be told by pundits what to echo and chant with brainless repetition.

I am not afraid of terrorists.

My country defeated the British Empire when we were but scattered colonies in the wilderness.

We defeated Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

We can defeat today’s Visigoths without devolving into a police state, without becoming the very antithesis to freedom and civil liberty that we were founded upon. For it is these notions that form the spine of our founding document – the Constitution.

And while we’re at it:

You spineless people who endorse the government listening to your phone calls, invading your homes, monitoring you beneath banners of “Freedom is Slavery” and ever-watchful eyes.

You people who are so terrified of open and honest debate that you simply parrot your equally cowardly pundit priests. You who refuse to hold the government accountable, refuse to remind them that they work for us, that we have the power in this nation, that the principles of liberty you mouth are things which must be fought for on domestic soil.

You who allow George W. Bush’s illegal wire-tapping and surveillance and propaganda machines to operate unfettered, without realizing that someday a Hillary or PETA or Moore will have access to the same system put in place today. Didn’t think of that, did you?

America can only be destroyed from within, not without. It isn’t gay marriage or pluralism that destroys us. It is the fear-addicts who are also astounding hypocrites: who support the right to bear arms despite 11,000 deaths a year (and for the record, I also support the Second Amendment wholeheartedly) but freak out when confronted with the proportion of deaths-from-terrorism over the last several years and will fork over their souls to a nanny-state self-perpetuating White House regime without hesitation.

Hypocrites. Cowards. Traitors.

Make no mistake that those in power are keenly aware of how easy you are to manipulate. They flash the lightning and you cower. They feed you a steady diet of feel-good platitudes because they know the real meal – reading the Constitution – is something you won’t bother to stomach.

Shame.

When we’re attacked again, we need to stand strong and firm and fight, against those barbarians who hurt us and against those opportunistic politicians who will try to exploit the tragedy.

Don’t let others tell you what the Founding Fathers wrote. Read it for yourself, brush up on your history, and rediscover the bravery of your progenitors.

Before it’s too late, and the “land of the free/home of the brave” becomes a footnote filed under irony.

Terrorism, Fear, Cowards, Liberty, Tyranny, Freedom

WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL

		WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL They smile when they want to scream. They sing when they want to cry. They cry when they are happy And laugh when they are nervous. They fight for what they believe in. They stand up for injustice. They don’t take “no” for an answer when they believe there is a better solution. They go without new shoes so their children can have them. They go to the doctor with a frightened friend. They love unconditionally. They cry when their children excel and cheer when their friends get awards. They are happy when they hear about a birth or a new marriage. Their hearts break when a friend dies. They have sorrow at the loss of a family member, yet they are strong when they think there is no strength left. They know that a hug and a kiss can heal a broken heart. Women come in all sizes, in all colors and shapes. They’ll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you to show how much they care about you. The heart of a woman is what makes the world spin! Women do more than just give birth. They bring joy and hope. They give compassion and ideals. They give moral support to their family and friends. Women have a lot to say and a lot to give. Let us celebrate the women in our lives !

Detained by Montgomery County Police For Buying Sugar

Detained by Montgomery County Police For Buying Sugar

By bstanfield

I was detained by the police today and accused of stealing. I was also illegally detained against my will by several Wal*Mart employees preceding the detention by police. My crime? Leaving Wal*Mart with four bags of sugar (that I had just purchased) without showing a receipt, because I was not given one by the Wal*Mart cashier. I was threatened with being taken to jail, threatened with physical violence as I attempted to leave, and had to defend myself and my property while Wal*Mart security attempted to rip it from my hands, breaking my bags and causing one of my items to break open on the pavement. After I was released (having been completely innocent all along), I was lectured by the police officer and Wal*Mart manager about how next time I could make it easier on myself by just agreeing to give up my rights to their goons to begin with. While the initial employee who detained me apologized, the others, including the Wal*Mart Manager, did not.

I was at the Germantown Wal*Mart to buy four bags of sugar because earlier in the day I had been at Butler’s Orchard picking 10 pounds of strawberries to turn into delicious jam. And to make delicious jam, you need lots of sugar. I grabbed four bags and headed to the checkout, where I also decided I could use some refreshment. I grabbed a Mountain Dew from the cooler, but the cashier had already processed my card for the four bags of sugar. He apologized and rang up another transaction for the Mt. Dew. At that point, he crumpled up my receipt for the four bags of sugar and handed me the receipt for the Mountain Dew. I headed for the exit, and was greeted by Wal*Mart security who wanted to check my receipt. I produced the receipt for the Mountain Dew and explained that the cashier had tossed the other receipt for the sugar. I would repeat this explanation 6 more times before this affair ended. The rest of the tale is below…

At this point, I attempted to leave, but was told I could not. I immediately asked if I was being detained. I was told “no” but that I wasn’t allowed to leave unless I walked back to the cashier to get a receipt. I said that I was “happy to let the security guard talk to the cashier, but that I was heading home with my sugar.” I attempted to leave again, and the door was blocked. I asked again if I was being detained, and was told “yes.” I asked on what grounds, and the security guard said “Because you stole.”

I informed the guard I had done no such thing, that the sugar was my property, and I was leaving with it. This time I pushed passed him and left the store, with him following me demanding I stop. As I left, he grabbed my bags, ripping them open. As he followed me he attempted to grab my bags, and grab the items inside of my bags. At one point, he told me that he should “kick my ass.” As I reached the end of sidewalk outside the store and headed towards my car in the parking lot, another employee came running and blocked my path. Soon afterwards a manager arrived. I again asked if I was being detained. I was informed by the manager that I was. I again asked for what reason, and was told by the original security guard that it was for stealing. I once again informed them that I hadn’t stolen anything and that I was leaving.

At this point, the manager informed me that Wal*Mart policy did not allow me to leave the store without showing a receipt. I said that I had paid for my merchandise, that it was in fact a store employee that had thrown away my receipt, and that I was not compelled to prove that items that I legally owned belonged to anyone but me. Again I inquired whether I was being detained, and was told my only options were to go back in the store to talk to the cashier or have the police called. I informed the manager that she was welcome to call the police, because I had done nothing wrong. At tht point, she radioed for someone to call the police. Once again, I started to walk to my car as the two security guards again attempted to block my path in the parking lot.

At this point, and off duty police officer came to the scene (he appeared to be heading into Wal*Mart to shop, not the one called by the manager), showed his badge, and asked for an explanation. Everyone was calmed by this, and tensions visibly eased on the faces of the Wal*Mart employees. I explained my side, and Wal*Mart employees explained their side. After the explanations, I asked the police officer if I was being detained, and he said yes. I asked on what grounds, and he said “suspicion of theft.” The officer told me I could give them “their merchandise back” and leave at that point or I could go inside and talk to the cashier. I indicated that since he was detaining me, I was willing to go back into the store and speak with the cashier, but that the merchandise belonged to me.  At this point, one of the bags of sugar fell from my ripped bags and split open on the pavement. It was an accident, but I could tell no one believed me when I said so.

On the way into the store, the officer informed me that it was his day off, he had important things to do, and he didn’t want to take me to jail. But I had one last chance to give them their merchandise back and just leave, because if I wasn’t telling the truth, he would personally drive me to the station. I agreed wholeheartedly with him, and told him so. I’m fairly certain he thought I had actually stolen the sugar at this point. He then asked what I needed so much sugar for anyway. At the time, I was literally covered with strawberry juice. It had stained my shorts and shirt red, and I thought it was fairly believable that I was going to make strawberry jam. He still seemed skeptical, asking where I had been picking strawberries, and only seemed to believe me after I was able to name Butler’s Orchard. He then asked if I had ID, what my name was, and how old I was. Upon telling him this, he said “You better not be lying to me,” so perhaps I was too quick to think he didn’t assume I was guilty.

Of course, upon re-entering the store and speaking with the cashier, he informed everyone that I had paid for the sugar and the receipt was found in his trash can. His story differed slightly in that he told them he had given me the receipt but I had thrown it into his trash can. That was impossible based on where his trash can was from the checkout counter, but it didn’t matter. The original security guard was cordial, shook my hand, and apologized. The Wal*Mart manager and police officer lectured about how next time if I just cooperated and gave up my rights at the beginning, it would have been much easier on everyone. Trust me, Wal*Mart, there won’t be a next time.

More than 50% of Americans have a “negative” or “highly negative” view of people who don’t believe in God. 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be “strongly religious.”

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“A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.”

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44% of Americans think Jesus Christ will return in the next 50 years. (22% are “certain” that he will, another 22% think he “probably” will.)

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“According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”

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Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution (and two-thirds of these believe evolution was “guided by God”). 53% are actually creationists.

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“Despite a full century of scientific insights attesting to the antiquity of the earth, more than half of our neighbors believe that the entire cosmos was created six thousand years ago. This is, incidentally, about a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.”

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87% of Americans say they “never doubt the existence of God.”

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“Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces, but a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.”

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28% of Americans believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. 49% believe that it is the “inspired word” of God.

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“We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).”

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80% of Americans expect to be called before God on Judgment Day to answer for their sins. 90% believe in heaven. 77% rate their chances of going to heaven as “excellent” or “good.”

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“In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise. Western secularists, liberals, and moderates have been very slow to understand this. The cause of their confusion is simple: they don’t know what is like to really believe in God.”

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65% of Americans believe in the literal existence of Satan. 73% believe in Hell.

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“It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity.”

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83% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. (11% disbelieve. 6% don’t know.)

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“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”

Dear Dr. Laura

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a US radio personality. Recently, she said that as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22 & cannot be condoned under any circumstances. The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura, purportedly penned by a US resident, J. Kent Ashcraft, which was posted on the Internet:

May 2000

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

What Makes 100%?

From a strictly mathematical viewpoint it goes like this:  

What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?  Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?  We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.  How about achieving 103%?  What makes up 100% in life? 

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:  

If: 

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as: 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26. 

Then: 
 
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K is

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%    

and 

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E is

11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96% 

But, 

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E   is

1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100% 

And, 

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T is 

2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103% 

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you. 

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G is

1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118% 

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it’s the Bullshit and Ass kissing that will put you over the top.

Fully Informed Jurors Need to Know of Jury Nullification

by Iloilo Marguerite Jones

Friday, 05 September 2008

Jury Rights Day September 5, 2008 marked the 338th anniversary of when jurors refused to convict William Penn of violating England’s Conventicle Acts, despite clear evidence that he acted illegally by preaching a Quaker sermon. In refusing to convict Penn, the jurors ignored what they knew to be an unjust law. This is known as jury nullification. By refusing to enforce what they knew was an unjust law, the Penn jurors served justice, and provided a basis for our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion, and peaceable assembly. For refusing to find Penn guilty, the judge sent four of Penn’s jurors to prison. Their exoneration fixed forever the English and American doctrine that jurors have the responsibility to decide both matters of law and fact in any case before them. Individual jurors are last line of defense for people who are prosecuted under bad laws by overzealous prosecutors and court officials. The Founders intended that jurors would use their rights and responsibilities to judge the law and the facts in every trial, and do justice. The Sixth and Seventh Amendments were included in the Bill of Rights to guarantee that every person brought to trial has Juror Protection. Juror nullification is integral to our judicial system. It is one of the “checks and balances” of justice required by a free society. An individual juror has the authority to stop an unjust prosecution by refusing to convict. No reason for the verdict is required. Most Grand and Petit Jurors do not know about their authority. This authority must be restored to protect us. Our Founders embraced juror nullification as necessary to a free society. Nullification is the test that all laws must pass. Juror nullification has been used by jurors throughout our history to “nullify” unpopular and unjust laws, ranging from laws against witches, publishing the truth, free speech, religion, hiding slaves, and Prohibition. The Fully Informed Jury Association (www.fija.org) is dedicated to educating all Americans about the authority of the Juror. FIJA publishes and distributes educational material but depends upon grassroots activists to inform jurors of their rights and to undertake state-level lobbying or ballot-issue efforts.

Christians who hate Christ

Christians who hate Christ

 

It is not typically my style to write editorials or news stories about religion. Religion typically inspires people to emotional reactions rather than intellectual thought, however this time I have a point about America’s political and corporate leadership that requires me to examine what the Bible said and how loyally the Republicans and Right-Wingers have followed the dictates of Jesus Christ.

You see, the Republicans of my lifetime (1966 up until present day) have been very fond of claiming that the Christian God is on their side and that they’re doing the Lord’s work. George W. Bush even went so far as to claim that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. But really, when you read the words of Jesus Christ how well do the Republicans walk the walk? What would Jesus Christ say about Republicans such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush or Rush Limbaugh?

In our search for answers, let us look to the book of Matthew. In chapter 19 we see a rich man ask Jesus what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus advised the rich man that he would need to sell all of his possessions, give his money to the poor and then follow Jesus.

The rich man refused to do this and Jesus indicated that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter heaven, making his famous quote that it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. In Matthew Chapter 26 Jesus’s disciples indicate that they have a a habit of raising money so that they can give it to the poor. What does this all tell us so far? Well, obviously Jesus was very concerned about the welfare of the poor and the less fortunate. He encouraged those who wanted to be his followers to recognize their obligation to assist the poor and needy people in society.

 When the rich man in Matthew Chapter 29 refused to give money to the poor, Jesus indicated that his chances of getting into heaven were either slim or non-existent. However the most famous leaders of the Republican party take the opposite view. According to them, giving money or assistance to the poor is “socialism” or “communism”. And even pointing out the disparity between the rich and poor is “class warfare”. While liberals, Democrats and labor unions work hard to help the poor and the unfortunate, the Republicans and the Right-Wingers have worked hard to protect the wealthy and worked hard to keep the poor voiceless, powerless, exploited and unprotected. So, the Republicans do the OPPOSITE of what Jesus said to do, and yet the Republicans take credit for being the party of Jesus Christ and Christianity. How do they get away with that? It gets worse when we look at the book of John. In John Chapter 2 we see that a group of greedy capitalists is in the Jewish Temple selling oxen, sheep, doves and changing money.

This pissed Jesus off and he chased the greedy capitalists out of the temple with a scourge of small cords (a whip basically), overturned their tables, spilled their money out onto the floor and screamed at them for turning a house or worship into a place for making money. And … isn’t that really what Republicans like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have done? Taking advantage of the tax breaks that churches receive in America, Pat Robertson has bought up real estate, a law school, invested in diamond mines and gold mines, sold books and health drinks on his TV show and (of course) begged his viewing audience for money.

Jerry Falwell has used his preaching to become a millionaire and Pat Robertson is said (he won’t release his financial information) to be a billionaire. What would Jesus (who angrily chased greedy capitalists out of the temple) have to say about Falwell and Robertson using Christianity to get rich? 2000 years ago people like Falwell and Robertson were described as “money lovers”, who “devoured the houses of the widows” and were more concerned about keeping their traditions than caring for the aged or the needy. Jesus had no respect for men like Falwell or Robertson. He would have gladly chased either one of them with a whip and banned them from any house of worship. If the Jesus of the gospels were to come to America today, the Republican Party would label him as a “liberal” and a “socialist” and a “communist”. He would be insulted and attacked by Fox News and the White House Press Secretary. Rush Limbaugh would accuse him of “class warfare” for Jesus’s attempts to act as an advocate for the poor and would call Jesus a “communist” and “un-American”.

Jesus was never an advocate for the rich. He was an advocate for the poor, the unfortunate and the voiceless. So why do people like George W. Bush (advocates for the millionaires and billionaires) get away with claiming that Jesus guides them in everything they do?

“THE WAY WE WERE”

 

When Florida Attorney Norm Kent received a form letter from Sen. Norm Coleman condemning marijuana, Kent fired off this note to his former Hofstra University smoking buddy.

My friend Norman,

Years ago, in a lifetime far away, you did not oppose the legalization of marijuana…

Sure, we had to tape the doors shut, burn incense and open the windows…yet we grew up okay, without the help of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s advice.

We grew up to become lawyers. Our other friends, as you go down the list, are doctors, professors, parents, political consultants and professionals. No one ever got cancer from smoking pot or diabetes from using a joint.

You never said then that pot was dangerous. What was scary then, and is as frightening now, is when national leaders become voices of hypocrisy, harbingers of the status quo, and protect their own position instead of the public good.

In your public life, as an attorney general, mayor and United States senator, you have been in the forefront of speaking out against abuses which are harmful. You have been a noble and honorable public servant… How about admitting that if the Rockefeller drug laws were applied to Norman Bruce Coleman on Long Island in 1968, or to me, or to our friends, and fellow students, you, I and others we knew and loved might just be getting out of jail now?

How about standing up and saying: “I, Norm Coleman, smoked pot in 1969.” That “I am not a gang member, a drug addict or a criminal.” How about saying: “I was able to responsibly integrate my prior pot use into my life, and still succeed on my own merits.”

How about standing up not only for who you are, but who you were?

Norm Kent

Human Definitions of God Need Revision

I welcome the attention that serious atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are offering the world at this moment through their books. They are bringing what I regard as a deserved criticism and a necessary correction to what Christianity has become in our generation.

I, for one, have no desire to worship a God who is thought to favor the war in the Middle East in order to accomplish some obscure prediction found in the late first century book of Revelation, who suppresses women in the name of ancient patriarchy, or who is so deeply homophobic that oppressing homosexuals becomes the defining issue of church life.

Such an irrational, superstitious deity has no appeal to me and the attack of atheists against this kind of God is welcome. I also do not want to be told that the “true God” can be found either in the inerrancy of the Bible or in the infallibility of a Pope. Both are absurd religious claims designed not to discover truth but to enforce religious authority and conformity.

I believe, therefore, that atheism as a challenge to organized religion has a worthy vocation to fulfill. The real atheists are saying that the God they have encountered inside the life of the church is too small and too compromised to be God for their lives. If the church is dedicated to such an unbelievable, magical and miracle-working deity that it cannot admit to any genuine probing of the divine, then the atheist speaks a powerful truth.

Atheism, technically, does not mean a denial of the existence of God. It means literally a denial of the theistic definition of God. That is to say, theism is not what God is; it is what human beings have decided that God is. Human definitions of God can die without God dying. Theism means that we perceive of God as “a being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere external to this world (usually conceived of as above the sky), who periodically invades this world in miraculous ways.”

This is the God who split the Red Sea to rescue the chosen people and who invaded the world in the person of Jesus to rescue the fallen creation. This is also the deity displaced by Galileo, made impotent by Isaac Newton, ridiculed by Freud and relativized by Einstein.

The theological question that needs to be explored in both church and state is this: Can God be understood in some way other than through these infantile and tribal images? Can Jesus be seen in some way other than as the divinely appointed sacrificial victim who paid the price owed to God for our sinfulness? Because I believe that both God and Jesus are so much more than these distorting images suggest, I am confident that a dialogue with those who call themselves “atheists” would not only be good for the church but it would also allow deep and profound truth to emerge.

Among the issues for discussion between atheists and believers would be: What leads human beings to seek to define God in the first place? Is it the human experience of transcendence? Otherness? Divinity? How then do we conceptualize that experience? If the worship of our God leads us to justify our killing religious prejudices that have throughout history created such things as the Inquisition, the Crusades, religious wars and even the current ecclesiastical attack on homosexual persons, can this God really be anything other than a creature of our own making? Will we remain deluded enough to call this creature God? Since that is what the theistic God has so regularly given us, would not the world be better off without such a deity?

The choice between the theism of the church and the atheism of those who reject the God of the church is to me a sterile and lifeless choice. Such a meeting between believers and atheists might lead us to examine what Paul Tillich called “the God beyond the gods of men and women.” If believers cannot have that conversation because it compromises their God definition, then that is a tip-off that the God they serve is in fact an idol and atheism is always a proper response to idolatry.

By John Shelby Spong , Former Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Newark

John Shelby Spong

His best-selling books include “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,” “A New Christianity for a New World,” “Why Christianity Must Change or Die,” and “Here I Stand.”

James Fuqua’s Law Jokes

Coyote vs. Acme, Plaintiff’s Opening Statement

 

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by Ian Frazier, The New Yorker Magazine, 26 February 1990

Also in Ian Frazier’s book, Coyote v. Acme, originally published in June 1996

Amazon.com

 

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHWESTERN DISTRICT OF ARIZONA
Tempe, Arizona

Judge Joan Kujava, Presiding

________________________________

WILE E. COYOTE,		§
Plaintiff		§
v.		§		CIVIL ACTION NO. B19294
		§
ACME COMPANY,		§
Defendant		§

________________________________

OPENING STATEMENT OF HAROLD SCHOFF,

COUNSEL FOR PLAINTIFF

By Mr. Schoff:

My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hearby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state, district, and territory. Mr. Coyote seeks compensation for personal injuries, loss of business income, and mental suffering caused as a direct result of the actions and/or gross negligence of said company, under Title 15 of the United States Code Chapter 47, section 2072, subsection (a), relating to product liability.

Mr. Coyote states that on eighty-five separate occasions, he has purchased of the Acme Company (hereinafter, ‘Defendant’), through that company’s mail order department, certain products which did cause him bodily injury due to defects in manufacture or improper cautionary labeling. Sales slips made out to Mr. Coyote as proof of purchase are at present in the possession of the Court, marked Exhibit A. Such injuries sustained by Mr. Coyote have temporarily restricted his ability to make a living in the profession of predator. Mr. Coyote is self-employed and thus not eligible for Workmen’s Compensation.

Mr. Coyote states that on December 13th, he received of Defendant via parcel post one Acme Rocket Sled. The intention of Mr. Coyote was to use the Rocket sled to aid him in pursuit of his prey. Upon receipt of the Rocket Sled, Mr. Coyote removed it from its wooden shipping crate and sighting his prey in the distance, activated the ignition. As Mr. Coyote gripped the handlebars, the Rocket Sled accelerated with such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote’s forelimbs to a length of fifteen feet. Subsequently, the rest of Mr. Coyote’s body shot forward with a violent jolt, causing severe strain to his back and neck and placing him unexpectedly astride the Rocket Sled. Disappearing over the horizon at such speed as to leave a diminishing jet trail along its path, the Rocket Sled soon brought Mr. Coyote abreast of his prey. At that moment, the animal he was pursuing veered sharply to the right. Mr. Coyote vigorously attempted to follow this maneuver but was unable to, due to poor design and engineering on the Rocket Sled and a faulty or non-existent steering system. Shortly thereafter, the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled led it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa.

Paragraph One of the Report of Attending Physician (Exhibit B), prepared by Dr. Ernst Grosscup, M.D., D.O., details the multiple fractures, contusions, and tissue damage suffered by Mr. Coyote as a result of this collision. Repair of the injuries required a full bandage around the head (excluding the ears), a neck brace, and full or partial casts on all four legs. Hampered by these injuries, Mr. Coyote was nevertheless obliged to support himself. With this in mind, he purchased of Defendant as an aid to mobility one pair of Acme Rocket Skates. When he attempted to use this product, however, he became involved in an accident remarkably similar to that which occurred with the Rocket Sled. Again, Defendant sold over the counter, without caveat, a product which attached powerful jet engines (in this case, two) to inadequate vehicles, with little or no provision for passenger safety. Encumbered by his heavy casts, Mr. Coyote lost control of the Rocket Skates soon after strapping them on, and collided with a roadside billboard so violently as to leave a hole in the shape of his full silhouette.

Mr. Coyote states that on occasions too numerous to list in this document he has suffered mishaps with explosives purchased of Defendant: the Acme ‘Little Giant’ Firecracker, the Acme Self-Guided Aerial Bomb, etc. (For a full listing see the Acme Mail Order Explosives Catalogue and attached deposition, entered in evidence as Exhibit C.) Indeed, it is safe to say that not once has an explosive purchased of Defendant by Mr. Coyote performed in an expected manner. To cite just one example: At the expense of much time and personal effort, Mr. Coyote constructed around the outer rim of a butte a wooden trough beginning at the top of the butte and spiraling downward around it to some few feet above a black X painted on the desert floor. The trough was designed in such a way that a spherical explosive of the type sold by Defendant would roll easily and swiftly down to the point of detonation indicated by the X. Mr. Coyote placed a generous pile of birdseed directly on the X, and then, carrying the spherical Acme Bomb (Catalogue #78) climbed to the top of the butte. Mr. Coyote’s prey, seeing the birdseed, approached, and Mr. Coyote proceeded to light the fuse. In an instant, the fuse burned down to the stem, causing the bomb to detonate.

In addition to reducing all Mr. Coyote’s careful preparations to naught, the premature detonation of Defendant’s product resulted in the following disfigurements to Mr. Coyote:

1. Severe singeing of the hair on the head, neck, and muzzle.

2. Sooty discoloration.

3. Fracture of the left ear at the stem, causing the ear to dangle in the aftershock with a creaking noise.

4. Full or partial combustion of whiskers, producing kinking, frazzling, and ashy disintegration.

5. Radical widening of the eyes, due to brow and lid charring.

We come now to the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes. The remains of a pair of these purchased by Mr. Coyote on June 23rd are Plaintiff’s Exhibit D. Selected fragments have been shipped to the metallurgical laboratories of the University of California at Santa Barbara for analysis, but to date, no explanation has been found for this product’s sudden and extreme malfunction. As advertised by Defendant, this product is simplicity itself: two wood-and-metal sandals, each attached to milled-steel springs of high tensile strength and compressed in a tightly coiled position by a cocking device with a lanyard release. Mr. Coyote believed that this product would enable him to pounce upon his prey in the initial moments of the chase, when swift reflexes are at a premium.

To increase the shoes’ thrusting power still further, Mr. Coyote affixed them by their bottoms to the side of a large boulder. Adjacent to the boulder was a path which Mr. Coyote’s prey was known to frequent. Mr. Coyote put his hind feet in the wood-and-metal sandals and crouched in readiness, his right forepaw holding firmly to the lanyard release. Within a short time, Mr. Coyote’s prey did indeed appear on the path coming toward him. Unsuspecting, the prey stopped near Mr. Coyote, well within range of the springs at full extension. Mr. Coyote gauged the distance with care and proceeded to pull the lanyard release. At this point, Defendant’s product should have thrust Mr. Coyote forward and away from the boulder. Instead, for reasons yet unknown, the Acme Spring-Powered Shoes thrust the boulder away from Mr. Coyote. As the intended prey looked on unharmed, Mr. Coyote hung suspended in the air. Then the twin springs recoiled, bringing Mr. Coyote to a violent feet-first collision with the boulder, the full weight of his head and forequarters falling upon his lower extremities. The force of this impact then caused the springs to rebound, where upon Mr. Coyote was thrust skyward. A second recoil and collision followed. The boulder, meanwhile, which was roughly ovoid in shape, had begun to bounce down a hillside, the coiling and recoiling of the springs adding to its velocity. At each bounce, Mr. Coyote came into contact with the boulder, or the boulder came into contact with Mr. Coyote, or both came into contact with the ground. As the grade was a long one, this process continued for some time. The sequence of collisions resulted in systemic physical damage to Mr. Coyote, viz., flattening of the cranium, sideways displacement of the tongue, reduction of length of legs and upper body, and compression of vertebrae from base of tail to head. Repetition of blows along a vertical axis produced a series of regular horizontal folds in Mr. Coyote’s body tissues, a rare and painful condition which caused Mr. Coyote to expand upward and contract downward alternately as he walked, and to emit an off-key, accordion-like wheezing with every step. The distracting and embarrassing nature of this symptom has been a major impediment to Mr. Coyote’s pursuit of a normal social life.

As the court is no doubt aware, Defendant has a virtual monopoly of manufacture and the sale of goods required by Mr. Coyote’s work. It is our contention that Defendant has used its market advantage to the detriment of the consumer of such specialized products as itching powder, giant kites, Burmese tiger traps, anvils, and two-hundred-foot-long rubber bands. Much as he has come to mistrust Defendant’s products, Mr. Coyote has no other domestic source of supply to which to turn. One can only wonder what our trading partners in Western Europe and Japan would make of such a situation, where a giant company is allowed to victimize the consumer in the most reckless and wrongful manner over and over again. Mr. Coyote respectfully requests that the Court regard these larger economic implications and assess punitive damages in the amount of seventeen million dollars. In addition, Mr. Coyote seeks actual damages (missed meals, medical expenses, days lost from professional occupation) of one million dollars; general damages (mental suffering, injury to reputation) of twenty million dollars; and attorney’s fees of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. By awarding Mr. Coyote the full amount, this Court will censure Defendant, its directors, officers, shareholders, successors, and assigns, in the only language they understand, and reaffirm the right of the individual predator to equal protection under the law.

Read these beautiful lines:

 

 

Read these beautiful lines:
To realize
The value of a sister
Ask someone
Who doesn’t have one. 

To realize
The value of ten years:
Ask a newly
Divorced couple.

To realize
The value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize
The value of one year:
Ask a student who
Has failed a final exam.

To realize
The value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a still born.

To realize
The value of one month:
Ask a mother
who has given birth to
A premature baby.

To realize
The value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize
The value of one hour:
Ask the lovers who are waiting to Meet.

To realize
The value of one minute:
Ask a person
Who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize
The value of one-second:
Ask a person
Who has survived an accident…

To! realize
The value of one millisecond:
As k the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics

Time waits for no one.

Treasure every moment you have.
You will treasure it even more when

you can share it with someone special.

To realize the value of a friend:
Lose one.

The origin of this letter is unknown,
But it brings good luck to everyone who passes it on.

 

 

 

Proud To Be Liberal

Why Liberal values are American values By Brian Elroy McKinley

“You are a contentious person….and probably a Liberal,” started a recent response to an article I published on abortion rights.

Contentious? Possibly.

Liberal? Absolutely.

Seems these days Conservatives have convinced themselves, and some of the American public, that being a Liberal is akin to being a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. While this may be a great smear tactic for an election year, to believe such a notion proves that the believer is uneducated in the fundamentals of the American political system. Our nation was founded on Liberalism. Embodied in the Declaration of Independence are its three tenets: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The very term, itself, is taken from the same root as the second of these precepts. To be a Liberal is to defend the freedom – the Liberty – of all people who make up our great nation. To be a Liberal is to trust individuals and families to run their own lives as they see fit. To be a Liberal is to create a nation where anyone can excel if they are willing to do the work.

In order to understand the true nature of Liberalism, and to dispel the misconceptions fomented by those whose agenda is counter to our freedom, I will detail the tenets of Liberal thought and dispel the misconceptions so often put forth by Conservative rhetoric.

Liberalism is “Life.” It is freedom from physical dangers that can kill or disable us. The Liberal believes it is a nation’s job to protect its citizens from physical harm, whether from external sources, such as hostile nations, or internal ones, like crime, disease, or hunger. Without the solid ground of physical wellbeing, our nation and its citizens cannot enjoy the benefits of being free. Liberals believe in a strong military, well suited to defend the nation. Liberals believe in good laws, hard-working police, and a just legal system to protect its citizens from crime. Liberals believe in affordable health care for everyone, to keep our people strong. And Liberals believe in the availability of food and shelter for its needy, not as a hand out but as a reasonable step in moving all Americans toward self-reliance and the freedom that comes with it.

Liberalism is “Liberty.” It is the freedom to do as your conscience dictates without impeding another’s rights. Fleeing oppression in mother Europe, our founders established a nation where personal belief and self-determination are protected, not persecuted, where hard work is rewarded, not demanded, and where each person is bestowed with the ability to better his or her life because of citizenship, not class. Liberals believe in freedom of speech to protect us from political oppression. Liberals believe in sound regulations to protect us from economic oppression. Liberals believe in just laws to protect us from social oppression. And Liberals believe in quality education to protect us from the oppression of ignorance.

Liberalism is “The Pursuit of Happiness.” It is the freedom to create an environment where the individual can excel. What is freedom if it cannot be used to better our lives? A truly free society must be one where its members can rise above their limitations and expand their futures. We call it “The American Dream,” and it’s alive and well in the heart of the Liberal. Liberals believe in equal opportunities for all to rise above our means. Liberals believe in equal opportunities to rise above our education levels. Liberals believe in equal opportunities to rise above our social status. And Liberals believe each and every family should have an equal opportunity to make this world better for their children.

Based on these tenets, we can see that Liberalism is not the monster it’s made out to be by the opposition. It is pro individual and pro family. It is pro community and pro country. Liberalism is, by its very definition, the heart and soul of what it means to be an American. It stands against tyranny of any kind, whether international or domestic. It works to remove abuse and fight crime. And it strives to eliminate the idea of a wasted life by not wasting resources and opportunities.

By this time someone might ask, “if that is a Liberal, then what is a Conservative?”

Liberals and Conservatives received their names for good reasons. Just as Liberals get their label by standing for Liberty, Conservatives get their label from the desire to “conserve” a style of living. They, too, claim they are fighting to conserve our personal rights and our economic opportunities, but they do it with a different ideal than the Liberal. The term they use for the difference is “values.” Values are norms or codes by which people live their lives. While most Americans share some common values, such as the right to own property and the right to protect our families, we also have many divergent values with which we raise our children. So if we try to impose values into the political framework of the nation, we are forced to ask, “whose values?” And in the search for such absolutes, we must also ask, “which generation’s values?”

As the nation ages and new generations take over leadership, the values of its population change. Where once a woman was valued for how well she cooked, cleaned and entertained, today’s women are gaining recognition that they offer as much, if not more, to the work force than men. Where once African Americans were forced to live as second-class citizens, now they have a legal status equal to that of whites, even if we still have a ways to go in actual practice. Changing values brings confusing times for many – especially for those who believe that America was better with an older set of values. These people want to “conserve” a style of American living they believe once existed, what they call, “traditional family values.” They want to conserve the system that they believe made America wealthy and strong. Unfortunately that also means they want to force all of us to live according to their values.

Conservatives don’t really fight for our rights – they fight for what they think our rights should be – putting limits on our freedom of speech in order to “conserve” an older, more traditional norm of what should be said. Conservatives don’t really fight for our family values – they fight for what they believe our family values should be – putting limits on our behavior, even behavior between consenting adults, in order to “conserve” an older, more traditional view of acceptable personal activity. Conservatives don’t really fight for our income – they fight for little or no regulations – putting limits on our ability to be treated fairly by large companies, who if left without restriction, can form monopolies that choke out competition and drive down wages.

Conservatives are willing to curb our freedom of speech if it clashes with their interpretation of “traditional” values, values from an older time where woman were in domestic servitude to men, where child abuse, sexual abuse, wife abuse, and homosexuality were all kept locked in closets, where minorities were second-class citizens and discrimination was free from incrimination, and where the inability to plan a family’s growth meant an explosion of mouths to feed – a population explosion that today threatens to bankrupt our nation’s retirement funds. The Conservative position, therefore, is inherently contradictory. You cannot be for legislating away freedom in the name of “family values” and also claim you are protecting individual and family rights.

As new generations have placed their own values into the laws that govern our land, Conservatives have sought to fight back by limiting the size and power of the government. Conservatives are willing to give away the very power needed to protect our liberties in the work place. Their idea of a smaller, less-intrusive government means a return to the days where business decisions and profits were more important than clean air and clean water, where a business could abuse its employees without incrimination, and where minorities and women could be passed over for jobs or paid less then white males for the same jobs. Again the Conservative position is at odds with itself. You cannot claim you are fighting for families at the same time that you allow the family bread winner to be overworked and underpaid and allow neighborhoods to be overrun by non-regulated big business. The Conservative would effectively shift power away from the people, who can elect public officials to fight for their rights, and into the hands of private businesses, who need not answer to the public when making decisions that affect us all.

Because Liberals fight to protect every citizen from having other people’s values imposed on them, Conservatives like to label Liberals as being evil. The following list shows what Conservatives like to say against Liberals, and then goes on to show why such assertions are false:

1. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-family.

   However . . .

   Conservatives want to define what your family should be

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals put you in charge of your family

   Liberals support your right to define what your family will be

   Liberals fight for your family’s rights against economic and political oppression

2. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-business.

   However . . .

   Conservatives are pro-money, but that often translates into monopolies, which hurt small business and competition, which hurts us all

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals protect small businesses by regulating the larger ones and by breaking up monopolies

   Liberals protect workers in order to create a healthy workforce that will help businesses grow

3. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-religion.

   However . . .

   Conservatives are often for one dominant religion, and are, therefore, against others

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals support complete freedom of religion and from religion so that all citizen are free to choose the manner in which faith is a part of their lives

   Liberals strive to keep government completely out of a family’s religious choices

4. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-freedom.

   However . . .

   Conservatives want to stop homosexuals, stop abortions, stop the women’s movement, and stop freedom of expression through the use of censorship

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals leave it up to the parents to teach such values to their children

   Liberals believe each person or family should be free to choose how to behave as long as it does not interfere with another’s rights

5. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-morality.

   However . . .

   Conservatives are for one specific kind of morality

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals are for the morality of free choice, where each person or family decides their own values

   Liberals want the government to protect our freedom to choose what is important to us rather than to impose the laws and codes of another’s morality

6. Conservatives say that Liberals are anti-military.

   However . . .

   Conservatives see the military as a means to impose their values and standards on others

   Whereas . . .

   Liberals see the military as a vital protection of our freedoms and our liberties, giving us a space in which to pursue happiness

Liberalism’s Stance on Specific Issues

With the desire to promote Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as the central motivation, the Liberal always defends these tenets when deciding how to stand on a particular issue. The following will show why Liberals often take the stance they do:

Abortion/Contraception – Liberty means the freedom to control your body, your reproductive system, and your future.

Affirmative Action – Liberty means having fair opportunities for those in society who are discriminated against.

Education – Liberty means the freedom to learn in order to build a better future for yourself, your family, your community, and your country.

Environment – Liberty means the fair use of our nation’s natural resources for all citizens. Where possible, without unreasonable restriction to private enterprise, the government should strive to protect our natural environment so all can enjoy its bounty.

Gun Control – Liberty means the freedom to protect yourself, your family, and your property, with deadly force if necessary. People have a right to keep guns for such a purpose. People also have a right to use guns in sporting activities and in the event that citizens should be called on to form a citizen militia. We do not, however, have a right to own all the latest people-killing technology. The People, through the government, can restrict some of the more deadly weapons being sold today.

Health – Liberty means the freedom to overcome physical limitations in order to better yourself, your family, your community, and your country.

Regulations – Liberty means the freedom to live and work in an environment that best allows individuals and families to grow in the pursuit of happiness. Bad air, bad water, bad living and working conditions only stifle that liberty.

Sexuality – Liberty means the freedom to share mutual intimate affection with the person of your choice, regardless of gender.

Substance Abuse – Liberty means the freedom to decide what you put in your body. Unless the use of a substance is a danger to unwilling victims, its use should be kept legal. In situations where use of a substance may or may not effect bystanders, regulations – such as in the case with tobacco – should be enacted to protect the bystander without denying the individual’s choice to use the substance. Smoking and non-smoking areas in public places are a prime example of this.

Taxation – Liberty is found within a system. That system does not happen by itself. It is created and supported by us, the People, and it is funded by our labors. The money we pay in taxes is what allows us to thrive in Liberty and work in fairness. Reasonable taxation is necessary because without it, many of us would find it difficult to get paid even a fraction of what we are paid now. And those who benefit more from the system should expect to pay more to help support it.

Women’s/Minority Rights – Liberty means the freedom to be valued and judged on talent and work, not on the physical characteristics over which we have no control.

In closing let me state that freedom sometimes brings situations we don’t like. Some people will choose to use their freedom to engage in activities that go against our personal values. It is a great temptation to use our democratic rights to try and enshrine our own personal values – whether they come from religious or humanistic origins – in the laws of the nation. The inherent problem with this is that when Liberty is restrained by any one group’s values, even if that group represents the majority of the population at the time, it can easily be changed from one generation to the next, meaning that you could be forced to live under someone else’s values as easily as you might force someone to live under yours.

The only true defense of our values is the defense of our liberties.

If you don’t want to be forced to live under a foreign set of values, don’t force others to live under yours. Instead, fight for the freedom to believe as you want while others believe as they want. Freedom of choice, as long as it does not infringe on another’s rights, is the foundation upon which this nation was built. Liberalism is the ideology that strives to defend that freedom for everyone. And for that reason it pleases me to no end to state that I am proud to be Liberal.

Magic (of) Numbers

Feel free to try it out yourself:

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10 = 1111111111

Trick Your Body Into Submission

Contents

1. If your throat tickles, scratch your ear!
2. Experience supersonic hearing!
3. Overcome your most primal urge!
4. Feel no pain!
5. Clear your stuffed nose!
6. Fight fire without water!
7. Cure your toothache without opening your mouth!
8. Make burns disappear!
9. Stop the world from spinning!
10. Unstitch your side!
11. Stanch blood with a single finger!
12. Make your heart stand still!
13. Thaw your brain!
14. Prevent nearsightedness!
15. Wake the dead!
16. Impress your friends!
17. Breathe underwater!
18. Read minds!

1. If your throat tickles, scratch your ear!
“When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm,” says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. “This spasm relieves the tickle.”

2. Experience supersonic hearing!
If you’re stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech, according to researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.

3. Overcome your most primal urge!
Need to pee? No bathroom nearby? You are male? Then fantasize… Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won’t feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., chief of male reproductive medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.

4. Feel no pain!
German researchers have discovered that coughing during an injection can lessen the pain of the needle stick. According to Taras Usichenko, author of a study on the phenomenon, the trick causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, inhibiting the painconducting structures of the spinal cord.

5. Clear your stuffed nose!
The easiest, quickest, and cheapest way to relieve sinus pressure is to alternately thrust your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then press between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion? after 20 seconds, you’ll feel your sinuses start to drain.

6. Fight fire without water!
Studies have shown that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The esophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you’re on your left, the stomach is lower than the esophagus, so gravity’s in your favor.

7. Cure your toothache without opening your mouth!
Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.

8. Make burns disappear!
When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, Dr. DeStefano says, but since the natual method brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature, the skin is less likely to blister.

9. Stop the world from spinning!
One too many drinks left you dizzy? Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance, the cupula, floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. “As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises,” says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional footonthefloor wisdom.

10. Unstitch your side!
If you’re like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

11. Stanch blood with a single finger!
Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed if you don’t mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums just behind that small dent below your nose and press against it, hard. “Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose,” says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. “Pressing here helps stop them.”

12. Make your heart stand still!
Trying to quell firstdate jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It’ll get your heart rate back to normal.

13. Thaw your brain!
Too much ice-cream too fast will freeze the brains of lesser men. As for you, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. “Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too,” says Abo. “In compensating, it overheats, causing an icecream headache.” The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.

14. Prevent nearsightedness!
Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. “It’s usually caused by nearpoint stress.” In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles like the eyes into relaxing as well.

15. Wake the dead!
If your hand falls asleep while you’re driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from side to side. It’ll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck? loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don’t let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.

16. Impress your friends!
Next time you’re at a party, try this trick: Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He’ll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that’s a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you’ve offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., coowner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body’s ability to resist.

17. Breathe underwater!
If you’re dying to retrieve that quarter from the bottom of the pool, take several short breaths first essentially, hyperventilate. When you’re underwater, it’s not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath? it’s the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that somethin’ ain’t right. “When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity,” says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. “This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen.” It’ll buy you up to 10 seconds.

18. Read minds!
Your own! “If you’re giving a speech the next day, review it before falling asleep,” says Candi Heimgartner, an instructor of biological sciences at the University of Idaho. Since most memory consolidation happens during sleep, anything you read right before bed is more likely to be encoded as longterm memory.

Author: Kate Dailey

HABEAS CORPUS-THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY WRIT

HABEAS CORPUS
THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY WRIT

Habeas Corpus is an ancient common law prerogative writ – a legal procedure to which you have an undeniable right. It is an extraordinary remedy at law. Upon proper application, or even on naked knowledge alone, a court is empowered, and is duty bound, to issue the Extraordinary Writ of Habeas Corpus commanding one who is restraining liberty to forthwith produce before the court the person who is in custody and to show cause why the liberty of that person is being restrained. Absent a sufficient showing for a proper restraint of liberty, the court is duty bound to order the restraint eliminated and the person discharged. Habeas Corpus is fundamental to American and all other English common law derivative systems of jurisprudence. It is the ultimate lawful and peaceable remedy for adjudicating the providence of liberty’s restraint. Since the history of Habeas Corpus is predominately English we must visit that history to gain understanding of American use of Habeas Corpus.

ENGLISH HISTORY OF HABEAS CORPUS: The history of Habeas Corpus is ancient. It appears to be predominately of Anglo-Saxon common law origin. Clearly, it precedes Magna Carta in 1215. Although the precise origin of Habeas Corpus is uncertain in light of it’s antiquity, its principle effect was achieved in the middle ages by various writs, the sum collection of which gave a similar effect as the modern writ. Although practice surrounding the writ has evolved over time, Habeas Corpus has since the earliest times been employed to compel the appearance of a person who is in custody to be brought before a court. And while Habeas Corpus originally was the prerogative writ of the King and his courts, the passage of hundreds of years time has permitted it to evolve into a prerogative writ initiated by the person restrained, or someone acting in his interest rather than by the King or his courts. Magna Carta obliquely makes reference to Habeas Corpus through express reference to “the law of the land”. From Magna Carta the exact quote is: “…no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed except by the lawful judgment of their peers or by the law of the land.” The practice and right of Habeas Corpus was settled practice and law at the time of Magna Carta and was thus a fundamental part of the unwritten common “law of the land” as was expressly recognized by Magna Carta.

CIVIL LAW VS. COMMON LAW: However, Habeas Corpus was generally unknown to the various civil law systems of Europe which are generally devolved from Roman and/or Justinian law. European civil law systems tend to favor collective authority from the top down while the Anglo-Saxon common law tends to favor the individual. Thus, it is altogether understandable that the ultimate right to determine the propriety of restraint upon the liberty of an individual is an almost unique feature derived from the ancient Anglo-Saxon common law of England. Indeed, the Magna Carta itself is arguably a reaction to the incursion of European civil law into the English common law legal system via William in 1066. The running tension and contest between the civil law of the “Norman intruders” intrusively confronting the ancient Anglo-Saxon common law continued throughout the period 1066 to the 1640’s when, following the English Civil War, and the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, the people’s parliament clearly established the respective position of King and citizen. In this crucible of contest, the confrontation of top down authoritarian civil law principles clashed and continuously competed with, but then yielded to, the ancient “good old” common law of the land. In the final analysis, the strength and resilience, and I might add common sense, of the evolved, time tested, common law prevailed. The interest of the people as reflected in their common law won a several centuries old contest with the civil law brought to England by the Norman conquest. Habeas Corpus is merely one feature, albeit it an important one, of the common law. As a feature of common law, the right of Habeas Corpus reflects the age old contest between the individual and the state. Habeas Corpus empowers the individual in holding accountable the exercise of the state’s awesome power to restrain liberty.

The frequent use of the great writ reflected the tension between common and civil law practice during the period 1485 thru 1509, generally the reign of Henry VII. At that time Habeas Corpus was employed to secure the liberty of those imprisoned by the Chancellor, the King’s Privy Counsel, the Courts of Admiralty, The Court of High Commission and its prerogative courts including its inquisitorial processes featured by the hated “star chamber court” at Westminster, so called because of the stars on its ceiling. Conversely, the common law preference of accusatorial processes had long been a fixture of Anglo-Saxon history. The modern writ of Habeas Corpus dates from this history. During this period, the sheer frequency of which Habeas Corpus was employed together with its procedure and results, established the Writ of Habeas Corpus as a powerful tool to check the power of the state and to preserve the rights of individuals against the arbitrary power of the King and his Counsel together with the King’s courts. It was the King’s prerogative courts which were given to inquisitorial practices while the parallel system of common law courts employed purely common law accusatorial practices. Thus the arbitrary character of civil law power devolved in England since William’s Norman intrusion was largely checked through employment of the Writ of Habeas Corpus by the first part of the sixteenth century. And Habeas Corpus saw frequent use and growth in prominence throughout the reign of Charles I which, in turn, found its bloody end on the chopping block in 1649.

THE HABEAS CORPUS ACT: The English common law practice and procedure respecting Habeas Corpus was codified by Parliament in 1679 by enactment of the Habeas Corpus Act. This historic act of the English Parliament empowered English courts to issue Writs of Habeas Corpus even during periods when the court was not in session and provided significant penalties to the judge, personally, who disobeyed the statute. And while great hypocrisy surrounded the practice of the Habeas Corpus Act in the late 17th century, Habeas Corpus was nevertheless establishing itself as the primary means by which individual liberty was empowered at the expense of the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. During the 19th century the Writ of Habeas Corpus was further expanded to include those held by a purely private process other than that of the state.

AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT OF HABEAS CORPUS: As with other features of English common law and practice, by the time of the American Revolutionary War, the Writ of Habeas Corpus was clearly established in all of the British colonies in New England and was generally regarded as part of the fundamental protections guaranteed by law to each citizen. The American Constitution at Article I, Section 9 states that: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Case of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” It is important to note that the framers of the Constitution for the United States of America choose to include in the body of the Constitution the Writ of Habeas Corpus while other important individual rights, arguably as an afterthought, were included in the first ten amendments which were popularly called the Bill of Rights. The “afterthought”, that is to say the Bill of Rights, was not included even as amendments until James Madison single handedly, but persistently and successfully, argued before congress for its adoption and passage on 15 December 1791, some two years after the constitution was ratified. This fact sheds light on the importance of the Writ of Habeas Corpus as viewed by the framers of the American Constitution at the time it was established.

CIVIL WAR & HABEAS CORPUS: The most famous American Habeas Corpus action prior to the civil war was the case of Ex parte Dred Scott. Dred Scott was a slave owned by a physician. Upon the death of his master, it was promised that Dred Scott would be set free. However, at that time Dred Scott was still being detained as a slave. Dred Scott petitioned the Federal Court for a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Habeas Corpus was granted by the Federal District Court and subsequently upheld by the Federal Court of Appeals. However, the Habeas Corpus was overturned by the United States Supreme Court on the grounds that Dred Scott, as a slave, was not a “person” as contemplated by the United States Constitution and therefore did not have the right to petition the Federal Courts for a Writ of Habeas Corpus. As to Dred Scott, the extraordinary writ, the great writ as Sir William Blackstone put it, was effectively suspended. This notable case remains as one of the most controversial Habeas Corpus actions in American history.

As is generally known, the Writ of Habeas Corpus was suspended by President Lincoln during the civil war. Chief Justice Roger Tanney, in the case of Ex parte Merryman (See: Ex parte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cas. No.9, 487, p.144 (1861)) strongly excepted suspension of Habeas Corpus by a sitting president and concluded that only the congress had the power of suspension under Article I Section 9 of the constitution. The ruling of the Supreme Court was apparently ignored by the President and the military during the civil war. Congress later authorized the already presidential suspension of the writ in 1863. After 1863, and acting on congressional authorization, the military was permitted to temporarily hold people who were to be turned over to and adjudicated by the civil courts. After the assassination of President Lincoln, and in the case of Ex parte Milligan (See: Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 18 L.Ed. 281 (1866)) the United States Supreme Court granted the writ and once again established that only Congress had the power to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus and that the military had no jurisdiction over the trial of civilians in the post civil war South.

THE MODERN WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS: Today the Writ of Habeas Corpus is used in many different ways. It applies to post conviction relief in criminal matters even where the judgment of judge and jury is final. It applies to those who are in police custody but who are not charged with a crime. It applies to those who are awaiting trial but who have not been able to make an excessive bail. It applies to death row prisoners who challenge their death sentence. It applies to prisoners who remain in custody after the expiration of their lawful sentence. Additionally, Habeas Corpus applies to both adults and children who are restrained of their liberty in some meaningful manner but who are not in the actual custody of police or other public authority. For example, Writs of Habeas Corpus have been issued in civil cases on application of a parent where a child’s custody is being sought against the wishes of the other parent who allegedly “restrains” the child. It applies equally to those who have been held because of their mental condition. And the writ applies equally for any other fact or circumstance, civil or criminal, in which the liberty of someone is restrained in any meaningful manner. Habeas Corpus extends even to those who are already released from actual custody on bail and who are contesting the manner and/or authority of the restrictions which bail places on their liberty or the charge for which they have been required to make bail. And although, research by this writer has failed to reveal any cases to date, home schooling contest are subject to the writ of Habeas Corpus. Parents whose authority to home school their own children and who are challenged by the state or other authority may properly file a Writ of Habeas Corpus to adjudicate the dispute as in any other child custody case. And, the writ may properly be signed and filed by an attorney – or – by “any other person” (See: Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 11.12 and 11.13.) who has knowledge of the improvident restraint of liberty. In fact, there is legal precedent recognizing the duty of any citizen to proceed by Writ of Habeas Corpus to notice a court and to invoke the duty of the court as to Habeas Corpus when any illegal restraint of any other citizen is observed.

CAVEAT & SUMMARY: On a more ominous note, the Writ of Habeas Corpus is not without its detractors today. Movement is underway throughout the United States and each of the states to curtail the employment and exercise of Habeas Corpus. This questionable, if not highly suspicious, exercise can be divided generally into two camps. Congressional restrictions on the writ; and judicial restrictions on the writ. For example, the United States Congress enacted the anti terrorism act in April of 1996 which effectively stripped the Supreme Court of its power to review lower federal court rulings in Habeas Corpus cases. However, the Supreme Court retained its power to review petitions for Habeas Corpus which are directly submitted to the court. Additionally, and more disturbingly, there is evidence that the Writ of Habeas Corpus has in some jurisdictions been selectively suspended in certain types of cases.

For example, frequently State courts selectively ignore, as a practical matter, the effect of the writ in cases where citizens are charged with the “unauthorized practice of law”. In most of these jurisdictions, it is disturbing to note that it is an agency of the state Supreme Court itself which makes the complaint and then prosecutes the charge. In these cases the supreme court is making the charge, prosecuting the charge only to later sit in final adjudication of the charge before their own court. The consolidation of power as reflected in this practice against the liberty of individual citizens smacks of star chamber practice and should be condemned by state legislators as was the star chamber itself condemned by the English Parliament in 1641. Additionally, many of these cases result in imprisonment of the defendant in a purely civil case only to thereafter be effectively denied review by the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Tragically, in these cases the ordinary review by appeal is also denied leaving the defendant with no adequate remedy under law. The Writ of Habeas Corpus in such cases is simply “overruled” without comment or findings or supporting law. It is precisely this practice which was sought to be avoided by those constitutional provisions pertaining to the separation of powers as well as the constitutional provisions that the Writ of Habeas Corpus is never to be suspended. While all states have constitutional provisions pertaining to the separation of powers only a few states have provisions prohibiting the suspension of Habeas Corpus. Nevertheless, the Extraordinary Writ of Habeas Corpus remains as the final and most fundamental process by which one may test the propriety of a restraint on individual liberty.

Joseph Dale Robertson

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http://rangevoting.org/

Cybersecurity Act would give president power to ‘shut down’ Internet

Cybersecurity Act would give president power to ‘shut down’ Internet-

Greg Fulton
Published: Monday April 13, 2009

A recently proposed but little-noticed Senate bill would allow the federal government to shut down the Internet in times of declared emergency, and enables unprecedented federal oversight of private network administration.

The bill’s draft states that “the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic” and would give the government ongoing access to “all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”

Authored by Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 seeks to create a Cybersecurity Czar to centralize power now held by the Pentagon, National Security Agency, Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security.

While the White House has not officially endorsed the draft, it did have a hand in its language, according to The Washington Post.

Proponents of the measure stress the need to centralize cybersecurity of the private sector. “People say this is a military or intelligence concern,” says Rockefeller, “but it is a lot more than that. It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity.”

Snowe added, “America’s vulnerability to massive cyber-crime, global cyber-espionage and cyber-attacks has emerged as one of the most urgent national security problems facing our country today. Importantly, this legislation loosely parallels the recommendations in the CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies] blue-ribbon panel report to President Obama and has been embraced by a number of industry and government thought leaders.”

Critics decry the broad language, and are watchful for amendments to the bill seeking to refine the provisions. According to opencongress.com, no amendments to the draft have been submitted.

Organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology fear if passed in its current form, the proposal leaves too much discretion of just what defines critical infrastructure. The bill would also impose mandates for designated private networks and systems, including standardized security software, testing, licensing and certification of cyber-security professionals.

“I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t include communications systems, which are certainly critical infrastructure,” CDT General Counsel Greg Nojeim told eWEEK. “The president would decide not only what is critical infrastructure but also what is an emergency.”

Adds Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many systems (banks, telecommunications, energy)are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government.”

This Tax Is for You – cutting their own throat

• REVIEW & OUTLOOK APRIL 15, 2009

This Tax Is for You

A levy on Joe Six Pack.

Today is the dreaded April 15, but at least in Oregon it’s even going to cost you more to drown in your tax sorrows. In their sober unwisdom, the state’s pols plan to raise taxes by 1,900% on . . . beer. The tax would catapult to $52.21 from $2.60 a barrel. The money is intended to reduce Oregon’s $3 billion budget deficit and, ostensibly, to pay for drug treatment.

If it passes, Oregon will overnight become the most taxing state for suds, one-third higher than the next highest beer tax state, Alaska. The state may do this even though Oregon is the second largest microbrewery producer in the U.S. The beer industry and its 96 breweries contribute 5,000 jobs and $2.25 billion to state GDP. Kurt Widmer of Widmer Brewing Co. says the tax would “devastate our company and small breweries throughout the state.” Adds Joe Henchman, director of state projects at the Tax Foundation, “This microbrewery industry has gravitated to Oregon in part due to low beer taxes.”

For Oregon to enact punitive taxes on its homegrown beer industry makes as much sense as Idaho slapping an excise tax on potatoes or for New York to tax stock trading. Even without the tax increase, taxes are the single most expensive ingredient in a glass of beer, according to the Oregon Brewers Guild.

But Democrats who run the legislature are desperate for the revenues to help pay for Oregon’s 27.9% increase in the general fund budget last year. If they have their way, every time a worker steps up to the bar and orders a cold one, his tab will rise by an extra $1.25 to $1.50 a pint. Half of these taxes will be paid by Oregonians with an income below $45,000 a year. Voters might want to remember this the next time Democrats in Salem profess to be the party of Joe Six Pack.

More Factor Whining about Atheism

Skeptic Con

April 13, 2009

More Factor Whining about Atheism

Filed under: Atheism, Bill O’Reilly, Christian morality, humanism — skepticcon @ 4:48 pm
Tags: Bill Maher, Gretchen Carlson, Lewis Black, skeptic

The other day O’Reilly ran another segment about how atheism is growing in influence in America and as a result, the moral influence of Christianity is decreasing.  I hear something similar from a Jehovah’s Witness I know.  He believes that the end is coming soon, and like others, points to the “turmoil” in the world today as a sign of the prophecies coming true.

First of all, whatever bad things are happening in the world (and there are plenty), you have to take them in context.  I was just reading about the illusion of this end-of-time mindset.  There are fewer wars now than at any other time in history.  A higher percentage of people have access to medicine and clean water than ever before.  A bigger percentage of people are being lifted out of poverty.  We’re living longer, less people die from violence, and more and more countries are feeling the influence of a free, democratic society.  If these are not indicators of the “direction” mankind is going, what are?  It seems to me that we’re at least stumbling forward, however slowly and fitfully.

What I find funny, however, is people like O’Reilly and his guest Gretchen Carlson, blame “the media” for teaching kids that they don’t need faith.  First of all, what exactly do they mean by “the media?”  On the segment, two of the clips O’Reilly played were of Lewis Black and Bill Maher making jokes about Christianity.  Two comedians making jokes.  Do you get that, O’Reilly?  They’re comedians making jokes.  What news correspondent is out there supporting the benefits of leaving faith out of your life?  Where are hardcore atheists of any consequence represented in the media?  Bill Maher is the only example I can think of.

Gretchen Carlson, showing her amazing expertise at divining the mental states of millions of nonbelievers, even hypothesized that people are drawn to atheism because it means they don’t have to face consequences for what they do.  How insulting.  How incredibly arrogant.  Couldn’t it be, Ms. Carlson, that they simply don’t find any adequate evidence?

Besides, this notion that atheism leads to a “no consequences” attitude is preposterous.  Ever human being on this planet takes into account worldly consequences.  When a guy is tempted to cheat on his wife, he thinks, “My wife will kill me, my kids will hate me, my family will be destroyed, my life will be in shambles.”  He might even think, “I don’t want to cheat on my spouse because I love her and don’t want to hurt her and don’t want anyone else but her.”  What he does not do is think, “I better not do this or God will be mad at me.”

I’m tired of hearing this complain and blame game.  It’s Christianity’s responsibility to make itself desirable.  Most people who reject it do so because they think it’s inadequate in its explanatory power; not because they think atheism is some sort of ticket to party without a hangover.  If Christians like O’Reilly and Ms. Carlson want to stop the growth of nonbelievers, give people a reason to believe.  And really, it shouldn’t be difficult.  You’re offering salvation, paradise, and eternal life, and you’re still complaining about not being able to sell it?

http://bygonebureau.com/

1. “And I’m supposed to believe that Reagan was a great leader? This is who he chose as the Secretary of Education…” -Former Education Secretary William Bennett

2. “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” -Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

3. “The internet is a great way to get on the net.” – Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate

4. “Screw the Buddhists and kill the Muslims.” -Henry Jordan, South Carolina board of education (when another board member said the displaying of the Ten Commandments in public schools might offend students of other religions)

5. “We don’t necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.” -Colonel Gerald Wellman

6. “China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.” – Charles De Gaulle, former French President

7. “The world is more like it is now then it ever has before.” – Dwight Eisenhower

8. “A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.” – Everett Dirksen, Congressman

9. “Traditionally, most of Australia’s imports come from overseas.” – Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery

10. “We’re going to move left and right at the same time.” – Jerry Brown, Governor of California

11. “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”-Joe Theismann, former NFL football quarterback and sports analyst

12. “I always used to put my right boot on first, and then obviously my right sock.” – Barry Venison

13. “Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing – but none of them serious.” – Alan Minter, Boxer

14. “Men, I want you just thinking of one word all season. One word and one word only: Super Bowl.” – Bill Peterson, football coach

15. “Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer.” – David Acfield

16. It’s a humbling thing being humble.” – Former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett

17. “I have a God-given talent. I got it from my dad.” – Julian Wakefield, Missouri basketball player

18. “He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.” – Lou Duva, veteran boxing trainer, on the Spartan training regime of heavyweight Andrew Golota.

19. “Well, I used to look like this when I was young and now I still do.” – Yogi Berra

20. “Sometimes they write what I say and not what I mean.” – Pedro Guerrero, major leaguer

21. “The Bible commands that we hate.” -H. A. (Buster) Dobbs

22. “We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.” -Ann Coulter

23. “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” -Brooke Shields

24. “I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada”. -Britney Spears

25. “Most cars on our roads have only one occupant, usually the driver.” – Carol Malia, BBC Anchorwoman

26. “We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.” -Decca Records Rejecting the Beatles

27. “I don’t diet. I just don’t eat as much as I’d like to.” – Linda Evangelista, Supermodel

28. “A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man.” – Samuel Goldwyn

29. “Are you going to ask that question with shades on?” – George Bush to blind reporter Peter Wallsten

30. “The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America’s children.” – Nancy Pelosi, on the prospect of Democrats winning back Congress

American Revolution

1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland of British North America.

About 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were given secret orders to capture and destroy military supplies that were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Through effective intelligence gathering, Patriot colonials had received word weeks before the expedition that their supplies might be at risk, and had moved most of them to other locations. They also received details about British plans on the night before the battle, and were able to rapidly notify the area militias of the military movement.

The first shots were fired just as the sun was rising at Lexington. The militia were outnumbered and fell back, and the regulars proceeded on to Concord, where they searched for the supplies. At the North Bridge in Concord, several hundred militiamen fought and defeated three companies of the King’s troops. The outnumbered regulars fell back from the Minutemen after a pitched battle in open territory.

More Minutemen arrived soon thereafter and inflicted heavy damage on the regulars as they marched back towards Boston. Upon returning to Lexington, Smith’s expedition was rescued by reinforcements under Hugh, Earl Percy. A combined force of about 1,700 men marched back to Boston under heavy fire in a tactical withdrawal and eventually reached the safety of Charlestown. The accumulated militias blockaded the narrow land accesses to Charlestown and Boston, starting the Siege of Boston.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his Concord Hymn described the first shot fired by the Patriots at the North Bridge as the “shot heard ’round the world“.

Dartmouth’s instructions and Gage’s orders

On April 14, 1775, Gage received instructions from Secretary of State William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth to disarm the rebels, who were known to have hidden weapons in Concord, and to imprison the rebellion’s leaders, especially Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Dartmouth gave Gage considerable discretion in his commands^.

On the morning of April 18, Gage ordered a mounted patrol of about 20 men under the command of Major Mitchell of the 5th Regiment into the surrounding country to intercept messengers who might be out on horseback. This patrol behaved differently from patrols sent out from Boston in the past, staying out after dark and asking travelers about the location of Adams and Hancock. This had the unintended effect of alarming many residents and increasing their preparedness. The Lexington militia in particular began to muster early that evening, hours before receiving any word from Boston. A well known story alleges that after nightfall one farmer, Josiah Nelson, mistook the British patrol for the colonists and asked them, “Have you heard anything about when the regulars are coming out?”, upon which he was slashed on his scalp with a sword. However, the story of this incident was not published until over a century later, which suggests that it may be little more than a family myth.

Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith received orders from Gage on the afternoon of April 18 with instructions that he was not to read them until his troops were underway. They were to proceed from Boston “with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy… all Military stores… But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property.” Gage used his discretion and did not issue written orders for the arrest of rebel leaders, as he feared doing so might spark an uprising.

Successful Colonial intelligence

The rebellion’s ringleaders—with the exception of Paul Revere and Joseph Warren—had all left Boston by April 8. They had received word of Dartmouth’s secret instructions to General Gage from sources in London long before they had reached Gage himself. Adams and Hancock had fled Boston to the home of one of Hancock’s relatives in Lexington, where they thought they would be safe from the immediate threat of arrest.

The Massachusetts militias had indeed been gathering a stock of weapons, powder, and supplies at Concord, as well as an even greater amount much further west in Worcester, but word reached the rebel leaders that British officers had been observed examining the roads to Concord. On April 8, Paul Revere rode to Concord to warn the inhabitants that the British appeared to be planning an expedition. The townspeople decided to remove the stores and distribute them among other towns nearby.

The colonists were also aware of the upcoming mission on April 19, despite it having been hidden from all the British rank and file and even from all the officers on the mission. There is reasonable speculation, although not proven, that the confidential source of this intelligence was Margaret Gage, General Gage’s New Jersey-born wife, who had sympathies with the Colonial cause and a friendly relationship with Warren.

Between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m on the night of April 18, 1775, Joseph Warren told William Dawes and Paul Revere that the King’s troops were about to embark in boats from Boston bound for Cambridge and the road to Lexington and Concord. Warren’s intelligence suggested that the most likely objectives of the regulars’ movements later that night would be the capture of Adams and Hancock. They did not worry about the possibility of regulars marching to Concord, since the supplies at Concord were safe, but they did think their leaders in Lexington were unaware of the potential danger that night. Revere and Dawes were sent out to warn them and to alert colonial militias in nearby towns.

1906 – The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroys much of San Francisco, California.

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, CA and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely-accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude (M_w) of 7.8; however, other values have been proposed, from 7.7 to as high as 8.25. The main shock epicenter occurred offshore about 2 miles (3 km) from the city, near Mussel Rock. It ruptured along the San Andreas Fault both northward and southward for a total of 296 miles (477 km). Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. The earthquake and resulting fire is remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire, estimated to be above 3,000, is the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history. The economic impact has been compared with the more recent Hurricane Katrina.

1923 – Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built,” opens.

The original Yankee Stadium is a stadium located in The Bronx in New York City, New York. It served as the home baseball park of Major League Baseball‘s New York Yankees from 1923 to 1973 and after extensive renovations, from 1976 to 2008. Located at East 161st Street and River Avenue, the stadium has a capacity of 57,545 and hosted 6,581 Yankees regular season home games during its 85-year history. It was also the former home of the New York Giants football team, as well as the host of twenty of boxing‘s most famous fights and three Papal Masses. The stadium’s nickname, “The House That Ruth Built” comes from the iconic Babe Ruth, the baseball superstar whose prime years coincided with the beginning of the Yankees’ winning history.

Yankee Stadium is one of the most famous venues in the United States, having hosted a variety of events and many historic moments during its existence. Its primary occupants, the Yankees, have won far more World Series championships (26) than any other major league club and Yankee Stadium has hosted 37 World Series, far more than any other baseball stadium. The Stadium also hosted the major-league All-Star Game four times: 1939, 1960, 1977, and, as part of its curtain call, 2008.

In 2006, the Yankees began construction on a new $1.8 billion stadium in public parkland adjacent to the original Yankee Stadium. The new stadium opened in 2009, and most of the old stadium, including the above-ground structure, is to be demolished to become parkland.

The first game at the stadium was held on April 18, 1923, with the Yankees beating the Boston Red Sox 4–1. The final game at the stadium was held on September 21, 2008, with the Yankees beating the Baltimore Orioles 7–3.

The Oklahoma City Bombing:

A Morass of Unanswered Questions

by Steven Yates

It is official: for whatever reason, thousands of FBI documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing did not make it into the hands of Timothy McVeigh’s defense team. Some are calling for a full investigation into the FBI’s handling of what was their most important and visible criminal investigation of the last decade. As of this writing, McVeigh himself is toying with the idea of fighting his execution by the federal government, postponed by Attorney General John Ashcroft until June 11.

The question comes up: are the missing FBI documents the product of a foul-up of monumental proportions even for a government agency or the result of deliberate concealment? A lot of conspiracy theories have circulated around the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, not all of them consistent with one another, some of them plausible, none of them proven. Although I have no specific theories of my own, I’ve had the suspicion from the start that someone in the federal government had advanced knowledge that something nasty was going to happen in Oklahoma City that day. As to the details, I am as much in the dark as anyone who wasn’t there. Compounding the matter is the fact that – so far, anyway – McVeigh himself isn’t talking. He seems to have dismissed all conspiracy theories and reports of “John Doe No. 2’s” with the remark in a recent interview that “You can’t handle the truth. And the truth is that it is pretty scary that one guy can do this all alone.”

Perhaps McVeigh temporarily forgot about his official partner Terry Nichols. But is he covering for others who have never been identified, at least not publicly? Several of the FBI documents apparently refer to a mysterious figure named Robert Jacques (sometimes the name appears as Jacks). There are allegations of connections with a white supremacist compound named Elohim City, near the Oklahoma-Arkansas. I am rather dubious that this is significant, because Terry Nichols was twice married, once to a Mexican woman and the other time to a woman from the Philippines. This doesn’t sound like white supremacist behavior to me. Other allegations connect the Oklahoma City bombing with Osama bin Laden, the Middle East terrorist. Multiple allegations insist that McVeigh was sighted the morning of the bombing, and was never by himself. The FBI allegedly has 22 or more surveillance tapes from cameras mounted on the front of the Murrah Federal Building that survived the blast and would have shown the front of the Ryder truck itself including the driver’s and rider’s seats – presumably revealing whether McVeigh was alone or in the company of others up to the final seconds before the blast. The FBI has refused to release these tapes, although an independent investigator named David Hoffman has sued to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Does McVeigh even know all the players? It is clear, first of all, that McVeigh held the federal government responsible for the holocaust at Waco. His own anger was enormous. Could it have been used by others, some of them having infiltrated his circle of associates to learn of his plans and then acting without his knowledge? These questions are rhetorical, obviously. We just don’t know – at least, not yet. At least one item that was circulated my way on the Internet suggests that McVeigh cut a secret deal with the feds some time ago. In exchange for his continued silence, the federal government would spare his life at the last minute. I don’t find this idea all that plausible, either. I have a hard time seeing McVeigh, a soldier who faced death in the Gulf War, cutting deals with a government he despises to save his life here. Clearly, whatever one thinks of him, there are things of more value to him than his own life. Perhaps he sees himself as either a martyr or a prisoner of what he perceives to be the cold war going on between patriots and an out-of-control federal government. (Of course, the explanation for McVeigh’s silence could be more prosaic, relatively speaking: a desire to protect his family from possible retaliation.)

John Ashcroft has pledged not to delay McVeigh’s execution again. But if by some chance it should become clear that others – perhaps agents of the federal government itself – were involved in the worst bombing ever to occur on American soil, a bombing that killed 168 people including 19 children and injured hundreds more, heads will roll. The execution of Timothy McVeigh could well be postponed indefinitely as his lawyers demand a new trial. This, of course, is yet another ‘if,’ and we may seem to be piling still more rhetorical questions on top of speculations here. But there are an awful lot of unanswered questions floating around. I tend to think many people dismiss “conspiracy theories” as a kind of reflex, because they have been trained to do so. Some readers may have seen the Internet tract entitled Thirty Oklahoma City Bombing Questions That Demand an Answer Now! This tract raises questions no one has yet addressed, and about which there has been dead silence. Here is a sampling of unanswered questions that suggest that the federal government had advanced knowledge that the Oklahoma City bombing was coming, and that it could not have happened the way the official accounts say it did.

1. A number of federal employees were killed in the explosion, but no BATF employees. There were, as everyone knows, BATF offices in the Murrah Federal Building. But very shortly after the bombing, we learned that no BATF personnel were even injured – because none were in the building. Why were all BATF personnel away from their desks on a regular weekday morning? Did someone tip them off in advance? This, obviously, would have required advance knowledge of what would take place that morning. (One story of BATF “heroism,” that of a Resident Agent Alex McCauley who supposedly fell three floors in an elevator and then helped rescue others, turned out to be a hoax; there is such a person, but like the rest of the BATF personnel he was nowhere near the building when it exploded.)
2. At least one independent report cites “over 70 witnesses” who claimed to have seen Timothy McVeigh on the morning of the explosion in the company of others who were never identified. This includes those who rented McVeigh the Ryder truck in Junction City, Kansas. The manhunts for “John Doe No. 2″ were finally discontinued. Some of the composite sketches of other “John Does” seemed to be people of Middle Eastern origin. Who were these people seen by dozens of witnesses, and why did none of these witnesses testify at McVeigh’s trial? Was there a behind-the-scenes campaign to block the airing “conspiracy theories”?
3. U.S. Judge Wayne Alley, whose office was located in the Federal Building, reported the next day of having been warned in a Justice Department memo about an unspecified “terrorist act” to be directed against the Federal building? Who issued this memo, and what happened to it? Judge Alley’s statement was published in the Portland Oregonian. Since then he has refused to repeat the allegation and refused all requests for interviews. Why? Along very similar lines, the Oklahoma City Fire Department was allegedly warned by the FBI the weekend before the bombing to be on alert for something that would take place over the next few days.
4. “Norma” (not her real name), a witness who worked down the street from the Federal Building, reported seeing what appeared to be bomb squad personnel in the area at 7:45 a.m. – over an hour prior to the explosion. Were these really bomb squad personnel, and if so, what were they doing there if no one had advanced knowledge that the Oklahoma City bombing would take place? Other witnesses claimed to have seen bomb squad personnel around that morning, and still others claimed to have seen suspicious activity in the Federal Building itself the day before – which fits with the idea that someone had planted explosive devices inside the federal building. It might be worth noting that according to Thirty Oklahoma City Bombing Questions “Norma” was one of several such witnesses who have since quit their jobs and relocated, also refusing to talk about the incident any further. Were these people threatened?
5. Geophysicist Charles Mankin, Director of the University of Oklahoma’s Geological Survey in Norman, just southeast of Oklahoma City, contended that according to two different seismographic records in the Oklahoma City area there were two distinct explosions, the second coming approximately eight seconds after the first. Along these same lines, several witnesses reported two distinct events, describing how the first event enabled them to dive for cover before the Ryder truck exploded, possibly saving their lives. Within 24 hours such reports would also vanish from the official accounts. Why? Again, no one alleging a two-explosions account of the Oklahoma City bombing was called to testify.
6. It seems clear that Timothy McVeigh wanted to be caught. According to one account, he actually stopped and asked directions to the Murrah Building, placing himself on the scene. Within 48 hours after the explosion, he was stopped by police while speeding toward the state line at almost 100 miles an hour in a car with no license plate. Why has he done so little to defend himself this whole time, knowing full well that silence and inaction could cost him his life? (We may well have answered this above.)
7. Very damning to the government’s conclusions was the revelation that McVeigh used an ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bomb. According to Military Explosives, a Department of the Army and Air Force Technical Manual No. 9-1910, an ANFO requires a 99% or greater purity of ammonium nitrate, as well as a specific dryness, before it can be mixed with the fuel. FBI testimony held that McVeigh used 50 bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which comes in much weaker concentrations than the 99% purity necessary for explosives. From this one can infer that that even under ideal conditions, McVeigh’s concoction could not have created a blast capable of destroying the Murrah Building’s concrete structure, nor would it leave a crater the size of the one at the Murrah Building. In other words, the government’s own source materials lead to the conclusion that the Oklahoma City bombing could not have happened in the way the FBI says; it is physically and chemically impossible. Are the details here correct? No one in the government has to my knowledge come forward with a refutation of this account.
8. Still more damning is the testimony of Retired Air Force Brigadier General Benton K. Partin, former Commander of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory, a demolitions expert with 25 years experience in the design and development of explosives and bombs. He stated, “When I first saw the picture of the truck bomb’s asymmetrical damage to the Federal building…, my immediate reaction was that the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique.” Partin went on: “[R]einforced concrete targets in large buildings are hard targets to blast. I know of no way possible to reproduce the apparent building damage through simply a truck bomb effort.” In other words, again the truck bomb alone couldn’t have done it. Interestingly, General Partin’s lengthy statement earned him a smear, a false accusation associating him with the John Birch Society when his report was picked up and reprinted by the John Birch Society publication The New American – something not of his doing. General Partin had to threaten lawsuits to end the smear campaign. His detailed evaluation was entered into the Congressional Record, but has been completely ignored by federal investigators and by the news media. Why?
9. Also demonized as “cranks” and “right wing extremists” were other explosives experts and professional demolition contractors (such as former FBI agent Ted Gunderson) who reviewed the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the Murrah building and concluded that it was a professional job, with top-grade explosives and devices planted inside the building. No one I know of has come forward to refute the substance of these allegations.
10. The reaction to the bombing by both the Clinton Regime and the Republican-controlled Congress was swift. The former immediately blamed “right wing” talk show hosts and militias – despite no evidence connecting Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols with either. We saw long articles in leading newspapers like the New York Times dragging “angry white males” (critics of affirmative action) into this thing. A number of “domestic terrorism” bills were introduced in Congress in a matter of days, covering such topics as the banning of firearms to authorizing Federal wiretaps on private citizens and monitoring their activity on the Internet. The million dollar question: was this a pre-arranged and carefully organized response to a tragedy deliberately planned at the highest centers of power to discredit the militia movement and other critics of the federal government’s progressive abandonment of Constitutional government? Was it part of the ongoing campaign to disarm U.S. citizens through so-called gun control laws? Did the federal government sacrifice some of its own employees (and their children) and ruin the lives of many other people just to discredit its critics? The militias were among the first to denounce the bombing. Their leaders took no credit for it, wanted nothing to do with it. They reiterated that their posture was defensive. But since 1995 the number of citizens’ militias has dropped from over 500 to under 200, suggesting that if this was the motive, it worked.

There are additional allegations of curious events taking place when rescue workers first appeared on the scene following the blast. Some of these allegations involve sightings by rescue personnel of unexploded devices being removed from the debris. Others involve a severed leg that was never matched to any of the known victims. It is difficult to verify these accounts completely. The federal government sequestered the area immediately; no one who did not have official approval was allowed in. Eventually, of course, what was left of the building was bulldozed to the ground, its secrets (if there be any) buried.

One of the first rescue workers on the scene, an Oklahoma City police officer named Terrence Yeakey, had expressed deep concern about some of the things he saw to family members. One day not long after he turned up dead. His death was ruled a suicide. Shades of Vince Foster: a very unusual “suicide” it was. The man apparently cut his wrists, made another cut on his elbow and then cut both sides of his neck around the jugular vein. Having already lost a great deal of blood, he was able to walk out into a fenced-off area at the outskirts of the city where he shot himself. His service revolver was not the weapon used. No autopsy was done, despite it being standard procedure to do an autopsy when a police officer dies under unusual circumstances. The obvious question: was Officer Yeakey about to reveal information about the Oklahoma City bombing? Members of his family think so, but of course no one can prove it. Officer Yeakey’s briefcase had disappeared. It turned up later, but had been in the hands of the police who did not want to release it to his family. There was plenty of time and opportunity for someone so inclined to have removed incriminating documents or photographs. It should be added that Officer Yeakey had the respect of his fellow police officers and those in the communities he served. He was not a nut.

While the federal government has more and more relied on brute force to accomplish its goals, domestic as well as foreign, it is still hard for most ordinary people to believe that even the Clinton Regime or Janet Reno’s Justice Department could be involved in something as evil as this. I cannot blame people for being skeptical. These were the federal government’s own employees – and their innocent children – not to mention the countless other people working there or who just happened to be in the building or in the vicinity when the bomb(s) went off. Many skeptics will dismiss this as paranoia gone out of control. A flip response is that a little paranoia never hurt anybody, and that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone is not out to get you. Seriously, I would prefer that the skeptics be right, but I am not convinced they are.

The problem is that the official account of what happened in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, has more holes than Swiss cheese. Every independent investigation I am aware of has concluded that others besides Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved, though they diverge on the details. Some pick up on obscure remarks in McVeigh’s recent letter to Fox News as pointing to a connection between the bombing and the leading terrorist Osama bin Laden, suggesting that Terry Nichols met with bin Laden’s agents in the Phillipines two months earlier to help plan the bombing. Jayna Davis, an NBC reporter in Oklahoma City, claimed to have turned up evidence that McVeigh was involved with Iraqi immigrants. There was a group of around 5,000 Iraqi soldiers who had deserted Saddam Hussein’s army and were able to win asylum in the United States following the Gulf War. One such group was settled in Oklahoma City. It was this group that had become the target of Miss Davis’ investigation. She was sued by one of its members. The federal lawsuit went on for two years. Jayna Davis finally won. Neither the lawsuit itself nor the outcome was ever reported in any national media.

McVeigh’s silence is admittedly the most troublesome aspect of all the theories we have. There is no way to get inside his head and divine his motives. But we have already seen that there are reasons why he would be silent. His claiming sole credit for the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t make it so. Exactly what is the truth here? Did the BATF have advanced knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing? Had they perhaps infiltrated a local terrorist cell and simply allowed the terrorists and McVeigh to do their dirty work for them, knowing that the Clinton Regime and the media were ready to blame it on militias and “right wing extremists”? Again, I would insist: we don’t really know. But the best thing the FBI could do at this point is come clean about what we haven’t been told about the Oklahoma City bombing, and to do so now – because obviously the official story doesn’t add up. If by some chance there is a connection to terrorist movements originating with immigrants or even overseas, members of the public have a right to know about it! It could significantly impact the public’s willingness to tolerate continued open immigration. As an alternative, the least the FBI and the media can do is consider allegations such as those above and show in detail that they are erroneous – or at least discuss the issues they raise. Anything is better than the official silence that has been in place now for six years running.

May 19, 2001

Steven Yates [send him mail] has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action. He is presently compiling selected essays into a single volume tentatively entitled What Is Wrong With the New World Order and Other Essays and Commentary and a work on a second book, The Paradox of Liberty. He also writes for the Edgefield Journal, and is available for lectures. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina, and is starting his own freelance writing business, Millennium 3 Communications.

Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com

The anti-Christian bias in our society has reached absurd proportions. Consider:

 

1. During the 1988 election campaign, George Bush said that Christians should not be considered patriots or real American citizens.

2. Bill Clinton steadfastly refused to give any speeches at local churches.

3. Both major political parties are dominated by anti-Christians. The Republican party, for example, gave us such hard-core atheists as Pat Buchanan, Dan Quayle, Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan. And the Democrats have given us such personalities as the Rev. Martin Luther King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson– both noted for their vicious attacks on all forms of Christianity.

4. Let’s talk about the media. On Sunday mornings, nearly all major television channels broadcast pro-atheist shows; it is nearly impossible to find religious programming during that time period. Further, Madalyn Murray O’Hair has her own cable TV channel, while Pat Robertson has been unable to obtain one for himself.

5. Most major newspapers run a special weekly section devoted to atheism. There are no equivalent sections for religious news.

6. Anti-Christian shows such as the American Atheist Forum are broadcast by major national networks. Meanwhile, Billy Graham is only able to get on the air through public access TV, which is watched by few people.

7. On news programs and “reality” TV shows such as Rescue 911, nobody is ever shown giving thanks to God after surviving a disaster.

8. It is almost impossible to find a shopping mall with a Christian Armory book store, while Atheist Book Centers are featured prominently on every corner.

9. While atheists couples who marry rarely have any difficulty finding a place to do so, it is nearly impossible for Christian couples to find a church where they can marry.

10. For that matter, churches themselves are extremely rare, while atheist meeting centers can be found every few blocks.

11. Jurors must take an oath upon a copy of the Skeptical Inquirer before they can serve. There have even been court cases thrown out because one of the jury members was a Christian who insisted on swearing on a Bible.

12. Christians often find it nearly impossible to get time off work for religious holidays such as Christmas.

13. Even our language reflects the radical anti-Christian bias that pervades our society. For example, when somebody sneezes, most people say “Darwin bless you”. Similarly, “Voltaire dammit!” is a common cussword.

14. All of our money has the atheistic slogan “We do not trust in God” printed on it.

15. In school, our children are made to recite the pledge, “One nation, anti-God, indivisible….”

16. One cannot rent a hotel room without finding a copy of Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ in the room.

17. Organizations such as the Boy Scouts deny membership to Christians.

18. In the military, it is nearly impossible to obtain Conscientious Objector status for religious reasons, even though those with philosophical reasons can obtain C.O. status relatively easily.

19. Christian churches are forced to pay exorbitant taxes.

20. You can’t drive anywhere without seeing a Darwin fish or a “Jesus Was A Fraud” bumper sticker stuck to a car.

21. Georgia recently passed a new law requiring schools to have a “moment of noise” during which children are encouraged to degrade Christianity.

22. College campuses usually have dozens of atheist organizations, but few if any for Christians.

23. Many Christians are afraid to admit their Christianity to their parents and friends, for fear their kin will consider them immoral Christian scum and want nothing to do with them.

24. At presidential inauguration ceremonies, Madalyn Murray-O’Hair (that well-known friend of several presidents) gives a short pro-atheism speech.

25. For decades, high school and college commencement ceremonies have included brief speeches at the beginning and end of the ceremony in which atheism is praised and Christians deemed irrational. Christians who object to the practice, or who ask for an opening prayer instead, are regarded as cranks at best and subversives at worst.

26. “There are no Christians in foxholes” is a popular slogan in our society.

27. Communities set up atheist brainwashing facilities, and apply social pressure to citizens to report to these facilities every Sunday morning. Furthermore, attendees are expected to contribute money to support these facilities, and to build others through “outreach” programs.

28. At baseball games, you can often spot people carrying signs that read “Origin Of Species, page 34″.

29. Businesses often refuse to admit that they are Christian owned and operated, for fear of being boycotted by their atheist customers. Meanwhile, atheist-owned businesses often feature Darwin-fish logos in their ads.

30. Atheists have often invented “deathbed deconversion” stories about famous Christians, claiming they became atheists just before they died.

31. Insurance companies refer to natural disasters as “Acts of Darwin”.

32. Forms for job applications, government aid and so forth often ask what type of atheist you are, with checkboxes for “atheist”, “agnostic”, “humanist” and so forth. If you are a Christian, the only thing you can do is check the “other” box– if one is provided.

33. Sports teams often read from the Humanist Manifesto prior to the game, in the hopes that doing so will increase their chances of winning.

34. Atheists constantly threaten television and movies producers with boycotts whenever they portray Christianity in a positive light.

35. Well-known atheists like Michael Martin and Quentin Smith have set up ministries to witness to Christians, but it is virtually impossible to find Christians who specialize in debating atheists.

36. The word “Christian” is recognized as a term which represents the worst of human attributes: cynicism, pessimism, selfishness, and moral turpitude. The word “Atheist,” on the other hand, is used to signify all that is virtuous, as in, “That’s mighty Atheist of you!”

37. On sitcoms and movies of the week, the parents make references to how their lack of faith in God helps them get through life’s troubles. Meanwhile, Christians are portrayed as pathetic folks who end up converting to atheism.

38. Atheists who convert to christianity are often told by their parents “It’s just a rebellious phase. Once you move through this stage of life you’ll realize that you never really believed in God.” Similarly, people who are raised as Christians are condesended to, and told that if they would give atheism a chance, it would fill the empty hole that Chistianity must be leaving in their lives.

39. Most people assume everyone else is an Atheist and are unbelievers as they are. It makes for uncomfortable social situations for Christians and other religious types.

40. Despite the overwhelming number of Atheists in the general population and in powerful legislative positions, when they don’t get their own way, Atheists whine that this is an anti-Atheistic country.

41. Atheists constantly cite, out of context, books of philosophy by noted Atheists to prove that Christians live irrational lives.

42. Atheists do everything possible to get laws passed that will prevent irrational Christians from making their own choices in matters of sex, procreation, life-styles, family units, etc.

43. In small towns and communities all over the U.S. Atheist horns awake Christians at midnight on Saturdays preventing them from getting a good night’s sleep before their Sabbath. Fortunately for much of the population, few church bells wake Atheists who want to sleep in on Sundays.

44. Atheist Army (and other Freethought) soup kitchens force homeless Christians to listen to Atheist propaganda before serving them a meal.

45. Hundreds of self-help groups replace codependence with the 12 Steps of A.B.A. (Atheist Brainwashing Anonymous), convincing people they don’t have the power to help themselves but must rely on the power of Darwin to overcome addiction.

46. U.S. Atheist organizations send missionaries to underdeveloped countries to convince people to renounce long-held local religious beliefs and become Atheists.

47. All prisons have a resident atheist philosopher, and inmates are encouraged to participate in weekly philophical dicussions on Bible Contradictions. This is often reported to parole board, who consider it a good indication of contritenes on the prisoner’s part.

48. A political candidate who declares himself a Christian will have far less chance of winning an election than one who flaunts his atheism.

49. Whenever an atheist commits a crime, invariably people will argue that this is not a sign that teaching atheism might not guarantee a better society, because anyone who would act that way “isn’t a true atheist.”

50. One often sees bumper stickers like, “Thomas Paine said it, I believe it, that settles it,” but seldom sees Christian bumper stickers.

From Scientific Paganism list…think about it Christians…if this list were real how would you feel?

“Emperor of these United States” and “Protector of Mexico.”

Joshua Abraham Norton
Joshua Abraham Norton (a.k.a. Norton I)
Born	c. 1819 England
Died	January 8, 1880 San Francisco, California, U.S.

Joshua Abraham Norton (c. 1819 – January 8, 1880), the self-proclaimed His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California, who in 1859 proclaimed himself “Emperor of these United States” and “Protector of Mexico.” Born in London, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa. He emigrated to San Francisco in 1849 after receiving a bequest of $40,000 from his father’s estate. Norton initially made a living as a businessman, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice.

After losing a lawsuit in which he tried to void his rice contract, Norton left San Francisco. He returned a few years later, apparently mentally unbalanced, claiming to be the emperor of the United States. Although he had no political power, and his influence extended only so far as he was humored by those around him, he was treated deferentially in San Francisco, and currency issued in his name was honored in the establishments he frequented.

Though he was considered insane, or at least highly eccentric, the citizens of San Francisco celebrated his regal presence and his proclamations, most famously, his “order” that the United States Congress be dissolved by force (which Congress and the U.S. Army ignored) and his numerous decrees calling for a bridge and a tunnel to be built across San Francisco Bay. On January 8, 1880, Norton collapsed at a street corner, and died before he could be given medical treatment. The following day, nearly 30,000 people packed the streets of San Francisco to pay homage to Norton. Norton’s legacy has been immortalized in the literature of writers Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, who based characters on him. In December 2004, a resolution was made to name the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge in honor of Norton, but the idea did not progress further.

Republicans and the Sanctity of Marriage

What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder

In defense of marriage…

*Ronald Reagan - divorced the mother of two of his children to marry
Nancy Reagan who bore him a daughter only 7 months after the marriage.

*Bob Dole - divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through
the long recovery from his war wounds.

*Neil Bush - George W. Bush's Brother - divorced

*Newt Gingrich - divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.

*Dick Armey - House Majority Leader - divorced

*Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas- divorced

*Gov. John Engler of Michigan- divorced

*Gov. Pete Wilson of California- divorced

*George Will - divorced

*Sen. Lauch Faircloth - divorced

*Rush Limbaugh - Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and
four divorces between them.

*Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - Barr, not yet 50 years old, has been married
three times. Barr had the audacity to author and push the "Defense of
Marriage Act." The current joke making the rounds on Capitol Hill is
“Bob Barr...WHICH marriage are you defending?!?

*Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York- Catholic but divorced

*Mayor Rudy Giuliani – Catholic but divorced TWICE

*Sen. John Warner of Virginia- divorced (once married to Liz Taylor.)

*Gov. George Allen of Virginia- divorced

*Henry Kissinger - divorced

*Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho- divorced

*Sen. John McCain of Arizona- divorced

*Rep. John Kasich of Ohio- divorced

*Rep. Susan Molinari of New York- Republican National Convention Keynote
Speaker - Catholic but divorced

*Gov William Weld, divorced Susan Roosevelt Weld, mother of his five children.



*Jack Ryan, Illinois Republician candidate for U.S. Senate, took his
wife to sex clubs and ask her to perform sex acts there.
She refused and divorced him.

State Sen. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Cleveland
A state senator sponsoring a constitutional amendment aimed at ''solemnizing
the relationship of one man and one woman'' is accused
in a divorce case of cheating on his wife.

Rep. Henry Hyde Speaker of the US House:
While busy with the investigation of Clinton, the congressman was forced to
deal publicly with his own sex life. An Internet publication reported how
Hyde as a married father in his 40s started a years-long affair with a
29-year-old married woman.
Source:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=512&ncid=703&e=4&u=
/ap/20050418/ap_on_go_co/hyde_retiring

*Mary Bonom R-Calif and Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla.,

Mack, 38, announced his divorce from his wife, Ann, in August; he has
two children. Bono, 43, followed with her own announcement on Sept. 28
that she would separate - and ultimately divorce - her husband,
Glenn Baxley. It was her second marriage; her first husband,
Sonny Bono, was killed in a skiing accident in 1998.

*Strom Thurmond, at age 23, fathered an illegitimate daughter, with a
fifteen year old household maid.  Where I come from that's called
statutory rape.


So ... homosexuals are going to destroy the institution of marriage?

I don't think gays marrying can do much more damage to the sanctity of
marriage than these Republicans have done already.

Vagina a myth say Saudi scientists

April 2009

Vagina a myth say Saudi scientists

RIYADH. The so-called ‘vagina’ is a myth, and women should stop trying to claim that they enjoy sex, says a group of Saudi grand viziers.

The viziers, all experts in modern Saudi scientific fields such as astrology, water divination and alchemy, were speaking at the launch of their new study, ‘Between the Cracks: Stop Fannying About With Our Women’, which has set out to prove that the ‘vagina’ is nothing more than an extension of the buttocks.

“Everybody knows that women are non-sexual creatures,” said team leader Prince Abdul Abdul Abdul. “This fantasy about a female sexual organ, this subversive and frankly repulsive idea of a ‘vagina’, is yet another assault on our values and customs by the West.”

Senior researcher Abdul Saud agreed. “Ask any man in the Kingdom if his wife has ever showed the slightest bit of enjoyment while fulfilling the nasty but essential work of spawning a male heir, and he will tell you that sex for women is, and always has been, utterly joyless.”

“Until now, we naturally assumed that this lack of pleasure was the fault of the woman partner, perhaps due to some inherent psychological handicap shared by all women,” said Grand Vizier of Numerology, Professor Faisal Abdul Saud. “But now we have shown that women are not only stunted psychologically, but physically too.”

The team admitted that they had not questioned any actual women during the course of their research, since this would have required having a conversation with one, which is frowned upon in the Saudi scientific community.

Asked if they had ever heard of the clitoris, they confirmed that they had.

“Clitoris was a common name for girl-children in the mid-Victorian era,” said Prof. Saud, adding that it sounded quaint and “faintly reminiscent of flowers”.

The Marijuana Conspiracy – The Real Reason Hemp is Illegal by Doug Yurchey, June 15, 2005

THE REAL REASON CANNABIS HAS BEEN OUTLAWED HAS NOTHING
TO DO WITH ITS EFFECTS ON THE MIND AND BODY.

ARIJUANA is DANGEROUS. Pot is NOT harmful to the human body or mind. Marijuana does NOT pose a threat to the general public. Marijuana is very much a danger to the oil companies, alcohol, tobacco industries and a large number of chemical corporations. Various big businesses, with plenty of dollars and influence, have suppressed the truth from the people.

The truth is if marijuana was utilized for its vast array of commercial products, it would create an industrial atomic bomb! Entrepreneurs have not been educated on the product potential of pot. The super rich have conspired to spread misinformation about an extremely versatile plant that, if used properly, would ruin their companies.

Where did the word ‘marijuana’ come from? In the mid 1930s, the M-word was created to tarnish the good image and phenomenal history of the hemp plant…as you will read. The facts cited here, with references, are generally verifiable in the Encyclopedia Britannica which was printed on hemp paper for 150 years:

* All schoolbooks were made from hemp or flax paper until the 1880s; Hemp Paper Reconsidered, Jack Frazier, 1974.

* It was LEGAL TO PAY TAXES WITH HEMP in America from 1631 until the early 1800s; LA Times, Aug. 12, 1981.

* REFUSING TO GROW HEMP in America during the 17th and 18th Centuries WAS AGAINST THE LAW! You could be jailed in Virginia for refusing to grow hemp from 1763 to 1769; Hemp in Colonial Virginia, G. M. Herdon.

* George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers GREW HEMP; Washington and Jefferson Diaries. Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China to France then to America.

* Benjamin Franklin owned one of the first paper mills in America and it processed hemp. Also, the War of 1812 was fought over hemp. Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow’s export to England; Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer.

* For thousands of years, 90% of all ships’ sails and rope were made from hemp. The word ‘canvas’ is Dutch for cannabis; Webster’s New World Dictionary.

* 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets, etc. were made from hemp until the 1820s with the introduction of the cotton gin.

* The first Bibles, maps, charts, Betsy Ross’s flag, the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were made from hemp; U.S. Government Archives.

* The first crop grown in many states was hemp. 1850 was a peak year for Kentucky producing 40,000 tons. Hemp was the largest cash crop until the 20th Century; State Archives.

* Oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China, although hemp industrialization probably goes back to ancient Egypt.

* Rembrants, Gainsboroughs, Van Goghs as well as most early canvas paintings were principally painted on hemp linen.

* In 1916, the U.S. Government predicted that by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and that no more trees need to be cut down. Government studies report that 1 acre of hemp equals 4.1 acres of trees. Plans were in the works to implement such programs; Department of Agriculture

* Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935; Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

* Henry Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel; Popular Mechanics, 1941.

* Hemp called ‘Billion Dollar Crop.’ It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars; Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1938.

* Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled ‘The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.’ It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The following information comes directly from the United States Department of Agriculture’s 1942 14-minute film encouraging and instructing ‘patriotic American farmers’ to grow 350,000 acres of hemp each year for the war effort:

‘…(When) Grecian temples were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in China and elsewhere in the East. For centuries prior to about 1850, all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable…

…Now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of the Japanese…American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our industries…

…the Navy’s rapidly dwindling reserves. When that is gone, American hemp will go on duty again; hemp for mooring ships; hemp for tow lines; hemp for tackle and gear; hemp for countless naval uses both on ship and shore. Just as in the days when Old Ironsides sailed the seas victorious with her hempen shrouds and hempen sails. Hemp for victory!’

Certified proof from the Library of Congress; found by the research of Jack Herer, refuting claims of other government agencies that the 1942 USDA film ‘Hemp for Victory’ did not exist.

Hemp cultivation and production do not harm the environment. The USDA Bulletin #404 concluded that hemp produces 4 times as much pulp with at least 4 to 7 times less pollution. From Popular Mechanics, Feb. 1938:

‘It has a short growing season…It can be grown in any state…The long roots penetrate and break the soil to leave it in perfect condition for the next year’s crop. The dense shock of leaves, 8 to 12 feet above the ground, chokes out weeds.
…hemp, this new crop can add immeasurably to American agriculture and industry.’

In the 1930s, innovations in farm machinery would have caused an industrial revolution when applied to hemp. This single resource could have created millions of new jobs generating thousands of quality products. Hemp, if not made illegal, would have brought America out of the Great Depression.

William Randolph Hearst (Citizen Kane) and the Hearst Paper Manufacturing Division of Kimberly Clark owned vast acreage of timberlands. The Hearst Company supplied most paper products. Patty Hearst’s grandfather, a destroyer of nature for his own personal profit, stood to lose billions because of hemp.

In 1937, Dupont patented the processes to make plastics from oil and coal. Dupont’s Annual Report urged stockholders to invest in its new petrochemical division. Synthetics such as plastics, cellophane, celluloid, methanol, nylon, rayon, Dacron, etc., could now be made from oil. Natural hemp industrialization would have ruined over 80% of Dupont’s business.

THE CONSPIRACY

Andrew Mellon became Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury and Dupont’s primary investor. He appointed his future nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Secret meetings were held by these financial tycoons. Hemp was declared dangerous and a threat to their billion dollar enterprises. For their dynasties to remain intact, hemp had to go. These men took an obscure Mexican slang word: ‘marihuana’ and pushed it into the consciousness of America.

MEDIA MANIPULATION

A media blitz of ‘yellow journalism’ raged in the late 1920s and 1930s. Hearst’s newspapers ran stories emphasizing the horrors of marihuana. The menace of marihuana made headlines. Readers learned that it was responsible for everything from car accidents to loose morality.

Films like ‘Reefer Madness’ (1936), ‘Marihuana: Assassin of Youth’ (1935) and ‘Marihuana: The Devil’s Weed’ (1936) were propaganda designed by these industrialists to create an enemy. Their purpose was to gain public support so that anti-marihuana laws could be passed.

Examine the following quotes from ‘The Burning Question’ aka REEFER MADNESS:

a violent narcotic.

acts of shocking violence.

incurable insanity

soul-destroying effects.

under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an ax.

more vicious, more deadly even than these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine) is the menace of marihuana!

Reefer Madness did not end with the usual ‘the end.’ The film concluded with these words plastered on the screen: TELL YOUR CHILDREN.

In the 1930s, people were very naive; even to the point of ignorance. The masses were like sheep waiting to be led by the few in power. They did not challenge authority. If the news was in print or on the radio, they believed it had to be true. They told their children and their children grew up to be the parents of the baby-boomers.

On April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law or the bill that outlawed hemp was directly brought to the House Ways and Means Committee. This committee is the only one that can introduce a bill to the House floor without it being debated by other committees. The Chairman of the Ways and Means, Robert Doughton, was a Dupont supporter. He insured that the bill would pass Congress.

Dr. James Woodward, a physician and attorney, testified too late on behalf of the American Medical Association. He told the committee that the reason the AMA had not denounced the Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the Association had just discovered that marihuana was hemp.

Few people, at the time, realized that the deadly menace they had been reading about on Hearst’s front pages was in fact passive hemp. The AMA understood cannabis to be a MEDICINE found in numerous healing products sold over the last hundred years.

In September of 1937, hemp became illegal. The most useful crop known became a drug and our planet has been suffering ever since.

Congress banned hemp because it was said to be the most violence-causing drug known. Anslinger, head of the Drug Commission for 31 years, promoted the idea that marihuana made users act extremely violent. In the 1950s, under the Communist threat of McCarthyism, Anslinger now said the exact opposite. Marijuana will pacify you so much that soldiers would not want to fight.

Today, our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are killing people. These great problems could be reversed if we industrialized hemp. Natural biomass could provide all of the planet’s energy needs that are currently supplied by fossil fuels. We have consumed 80% of our oil and gas reserves. We need a renewable resource. Hemp could be the solution to soaring gas prices.

THE WONDER PLANT

Hemp has a higher quality fiber than wood fiber. Far fewer caustic chemicals are required to make paper from hemp than from trees. Hemp paper does not turn yellow and is very durable. The plant grows quickly to maturity in a season where trees take a lifetime.

ALL PLASTIC PRODUCTS SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP SEED OIL. Hempen plastics are biodegradable! Over time, they would break down and not harm the environment. Oil-based plastics, the ones we are very familiar with, help ruin nature; they do not break down and will do great harm in the future. The process to produce the vast array of natural (hempen) plastics will not ruin the rivers as Dupont and other petrochemical companies have done. Ecology does not fit in with the plans of the Oil Industry and the political machine. Hemp products are safe and natural.

MEDICINES SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP. We should go back to the days when the AMA supported cannabis cures. ‘Medical Marijuana’ is given out legally to only a handful of people while the rest of us are forced into a system that relies on chemicals. Pot is only healthy for the human body.

WORLD HUNGER COULD END. A large variety of food products can be generated from hemp. The seeds contain one of the highest sources of protein in nature. ALSO: They have two essential fatty acids that clean your body of cholesterol. These essential fatty acids are not found anywhere else in nature! Consuming pot seeds is the best thing you could do for your body. Eat uncooked hemp seeds.

CLOTHES SHOULD BE MADE FROM HEMP. Hemp clothing is extremely strong and durable over time. You could hand clothing, made from pot, down to your grandchildren. Today, there are American companies that make hemp clothing; usually 50% hemp. Hemp fabrics should be everywhere. Instead, they are almost underground. Superior hemp products are not allowed to advertise on fascist television. Kentucky, once the top hemp producing state, made it ILLEGAL TO WEAR hemp clothing! Can you imagine being thrown into jail for wearing quality jeans?

The world is crazy…but that does not mean you have to join the insanity. Get together. Spread the news. Tell people, and that includes your children, the truth. Use hemp products. Eliminate the word ‘marijuana.’ Realize the history that created it. Make it politically incorrect to say or print the M-word. Fight against the propaganda (designed to favor the agenda of the super rich) and the bullshit. Hemp must be utilized in the future. We need a clean energy source to save our planet. INDUSTRIALIZE HEMP!

The liquor, tobacco and oil companies fund more than a million dollars a day to Partnership for a Drug-Free America and other similar agencies. We have all seen their commercials. Now, their motto is: ‘It’s more dangerous than we thought.’ Lies from the powerful corporations, that began with Hearst, are still alive and well today.

The brainwashing continues. Now, the commercials say: If you buy a joint, you contribute to murders and gang wars. The latest anti-pot commercials say: If you buy a joint…you are promoting TERRORISM! The new enemy (terrorism) has paved the road to brainwash you any way THEY see fit.

There is only one enemy; the friendly people you pay your taxes to; the war-makers and nature destroyers. With your funding, they are killing the world right in front of your eyes. HALF A MILLION DEATHS EACH YEAR ARE CAUSED BY TOBACCO. HALF A MILLION DEATHS EACH YEAR ARE CAUSED BY ALCOHOL. NO ONE HAS EVER, EVER DIED FROM SMOKING POT!! In the entire history of the human race, not one death can be attributed to cannabis. Our society has outlawed grass but condones the use of the KILLERS: TOBACCO and ALCOHOL. Hemp should be declassified and placed in DRUG stores to relieve stress. Hardening and constriction of the arteries are bad; but hemp usage actually enlarges the arteries…which is a healthy condition. We have been so conditioned to think that: Smoking is harmful. That is NOT the case for passive pot.

Ingesting THC, hemp’s active agent, has a positive effect; relieving asthma and glaucoma. A joint tends to alleviate the nausea caused by chemotherapy. You are able to eat on hemp. This is a healthy state of being.

{One personal note: During the pregnancy of my wife, she was having some difficulty gaining weight. We were in the hospital. A nurse called us to one side and said: ‘Off the record, if you smoke pot…you’d get something called the munchies and you’ll gain weight.’ I swear that is a true story}.

The stereotype for a pothead is similar to a drunk, bubble-brain. Yet, the truth is one’s creative abilities can be enhanced under its influence. The perception of time slightly slows and one can become more sensitive. You can more appreciate all arts; be closer to nature and generally FEEL more under the influence of cannabis. It is, in fact, the exact opposite state of mind and body as the drunken state. You can be more aware with pot.

The pot plant is an ALIEN plant. There is physical evidence that cannabis is not like any other plant on this planet. One could conclude that it was brought here for the benefit of humanity. Hemp is the ONLY plant where the males appear one way and the females appear very different, physically! No one ever speaks of males and females in regard to the plant kingdom because plants do not show their sexes; except for cannabis. To determine what sex a certain, normal, Earthly plant is: You have to look internally, at its DNA. A male blade of grass (physically) looks exactly like a female blade of grass. The hemp plant has an intense sexuallity. Growers know to kill the males before they fertilize the females. Yes, folks…the most potent pot comes from ‘horny females.’

The reason this amazing, very sophisticated, ET plant from the future is illegal has nothing to do with how it physically affects us…..

…POT IS ILLEGAL BECAUSE BILLIONAIRES WANT TO REMAIN BILLIONAIRES!

ps: I think the word ‘DRUGS’ should not be used as an umbrella-word that covers all chemical agents. Drugs have come to be known as something BAD. Are you aware there are LEGAL drugstores?! Yep, in every city. Unbelievable. Each so-called drug should be considered individually. Cannabis is a medicine and not a drug. We should DARE to speak the TRUTH no matter what the law is.

Subject: History of the World

The following is a history of the world from the Egyptians to the beginning
of the First World War, ” pasted together from real sentences written by
students on history exams in the U.S.” (including the little-known and
rather discomforting suggestion that “Sir Francis Drake circumcised the
world with a 100-foot clipper”)…

Student History

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah
Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the
inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are
cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the
shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between
France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of
the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of
their children, Cain, asked “Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to
sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his
brother’s birthmark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons
to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons,
Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses
led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread
made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide
to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing
the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in
Biblical times. Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500
porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented
three kinds of columns – Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had
myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles
dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears
in “The Illiad”, by Homer. Homer also wrote the “Oddity”, in which
Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey.
Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people
advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits,
and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The
government of Athens was democratic because the people took the law into
their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so
high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.
When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the
Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people
Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman
banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished
himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because
they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who
would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King
Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before
the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw,
and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the
Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same
offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest
writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also
wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow
through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of
their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at
Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being
excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello’s interest in the
female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of
great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter
Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another
important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake
circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found
walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth
was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth
exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted “hurrah.” Then her
navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a
great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic.
His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the
Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim’s Progress.
When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came
down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs
carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed,
along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of
1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies
were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks
in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the
post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was
throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks
crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for
taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented
Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two
singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston
carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm.
He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared “a horse
divided against itself cannot stand.” Franklin died in 1790 and is still
dead.

George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the
Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was
adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people
enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother
died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own
hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said,
“In onion there is strength.” Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address
while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment
gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and
lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14,
1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the
actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes
Booth, a supposed insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire
invented electricity and also wrote a book called “Candy”. Gravity was
invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the
apples are falling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.
Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.
Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he
was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the
forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827
and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was
accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of
the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the
Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes.
Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon’s
flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and
unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine
was a baroness, she couldn’t bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is
in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest
queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally
the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was
the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and
thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to
spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the
work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis
Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who
wrote the “Organ of the Species”. Madman Curie discovered radium. And
Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a
surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
Unsigned email.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. ~Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler

July 30, 2008

Motto: The Object of One’s Affection

At the risk of never being given the keys to the city of Crapo Maryland, where you might not to want to open anything anyway, namely a business, there are some places that are just plain unappealing to the ear—as opposed to say, the state of Indiana*, which is unappealing to each of the other senses as well.
[*Editor's note: It could be worse. It could be farther away from its main selling point---proximity to Chicago]

There are towns that for whatever reason struck ‘appeal to tourists’ off the local chamber of commerce agendas, watched the Rotarians rotate their wheels out of Dodge and whose mayors are currently in the process of decommissioning our welcome wagons.

These are places where a road sign pointing to them, even with the gas tank registering near empty, would have you lead foot it down the interstate and take your chances getting stranded somewhere while some maniac with a billhook muttering something about ‘city folk’ chops you into the next episode of CSI.

Now, at the risking of offending anyone outside Indiana state lines (a state so ugly it should be annexed, partitioned and sold off to the highest bidder–perhaps if a sultan in Bahrain needs somewhere to work out the finer points of his Ferrari’s 5-speed transmission) we should note that we’ve never actually been to any of the offending towns on account of never experiencing break pad trouble anywhere in their vicinity, (though one of us sped through Gary quite quickly) but we’re sure they’re all lovely places.

1. Dildo, Newfoundland. The stagette gift that turns party-goers into short-form improvisational comedians, and if the party is held at an upper end restaurant will result in a board of health citation, this device is also the most embarrassing item that can be seized at customs (doubly so if you’re a man and with any sort of standing in the community, say the comptroller for Lizard Lick, NC)

2. Flushing, New York, Drain, Oregon. Two names that refer to sending something through pipes, like say, E. coli through your intestines or a hole that attracts flies, these plumbing-themed dud monikers are a plunger and a snake away from causing serious water damage to your bathroom tiles and your psyche.

3. Bald Knob, Arkansas. A particular sexual predilection detailed in the back pages of the Village Voice, or an insult hurled out the window at a chrome-dome trucker who cut you off.

4. Dead Horse, Alaska. What more could we say about it without invoking the phrase? If your town is a ‘one horse’ one, better make sure the beast isn’t glue factory-bound.

5. Hellhole, Idaho / Hell, Michigan. ‘Hell’ might mean bright in German, but these name choices aren’t. If Hell was at a lower latitude, instead of Michigan, at least in the summer it would lend itself to ‘It’s hotter than Hell”, “No it isn’t” repartee.

6. Crapo, Maryland. Indeed.

7. Asbestos, Quebec.

Like Fleatown (below), don’t make any long term plans to stay. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the asbestos kitchen. Can explain the high absentee level due to incarceration/death at your next high school reunion.

8. Red Lick, Mississippi French Lick, Indiana, Lizard Lick, North Carolina. Larry Bird may have put French Lick on the map, but technical fouls all around and a clang off the irons for these burgs.

9. Dismal, Tennessee.
1. obsolete : disastrous, dreadful
2: showing or causing gloom or depression
3: lacking merit : particularly bad

10. Hicksville, New York. Probably not the most sophisticated center for learning and culture.

11. Boogertown, North Carolina. One good thing about Boogertown, is that it’s in Gaston County, Cito Gaston having captained the Toronto Blue Jays to back to back World Series wins. This may be a stretch, but why don’t YOU come up with something for a substance a construction worker shoots out his left nostril.

12. Fleatown, Ohio. Brought in from a curbside mattress. Don’t make any motel reservations.

13. Boring, Oregon. Truth in advertising. Oregon town uses Salt Lake City Utah’s de facto title.

14. Ogle, Kentucky. You may want to think twice about using the hotel pool. A creepy uncle at a 4-H jamboree, whose hugs linger on a little too long.

15. Hardup, Utah, Blueball Pennsylvania. When it comes to new names, these towns aren’t gettin’ any and neither are you.

16. Spread Eagle, Wisconsin. A city that’s tough on crime, but leaves you feeling compromised.

17. Rudeville, New Jersey. A ten-cent tip town.

18. Lynch, Kentucky / Swastika, Ontario. Not exactly doing wonders for the tourism industry, and hopefully not given to showing civic pride through parades. Even in Lynchburg, TN, where they make Jack Daniels, you can’t drown your sorrows as the county’s a dry one.

19. Downer, Minnesota. Dismal, TN’s sister city.

20. Recluse, Wyoming. Along with ‘no fixed address’ and ‘loner’ this term makes up the serial killer trifecta.

a good thought

 

 

 

The Gentle Pagan

 

It is far better to lead yourself through life than to be led. If a rest is needed then it should be taken and the time required to heal be done with out guilt. But to live fully is not to fill the spaces of your life with emptiness, nor is it to surrender to the anyone who falsely believes that they have the answers that we ourselves do not hold dearly in our heart. I myself have walked many paths, some I never imagined I would know, and have taken pain and despair so deep with in my spirit that at times I truly thought I would not recover, yet I have. Life has taught my many things, but one of the most important is that, no matter how low we are brought, it is that we raise our head once more that shows our true measure and our true worth. Although this site is called The Gentle Pagan, I do not look to be passive nor to offer words of forgiveness. Nor am I trying to foster a path that leads to force. I am merely looking for a way for myself to walk this life with as little negative energy and destruction as possible. There is already too much experience in life that is looking to bring us down and so often because of that, we fail to see the beauty and the good that truly exists all around us. As for Life itself, I have heard so many people complain that they hate their life, recently I have started to realize that it is not life we should hate. Life has given us what we know, share and love, it is our essence and the reason we are here now. If anything is to be hated, the let it be our experiences in this life. They are far easier to change and offer so many more options in the process. With life, if we hate it there are only two options, to live through the hatred which colours the world an ugly shade of gray, or to end it, which is to give up on every possibility that may ever of come your way. Those to me are not true choices and they offer no real solutions to the problems we face. So if nothing else, please take this from the site, do not hate your life, hate the experiences if you must then work on changing them instead. Greed, power, the desire to control another are the basis for the corruption and degradation of our culture and our society.

http://www.thegentlepagan.com/

 

 

Reinventing Reagan?

Friday 24 April 2009

by: John Lamperti, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

In December 1981 about 1,000 civilians, mostly women and children, were massacred by the Salvadoran army at a village called El Mozote. The killers were an elite unit, the Atlacatl Battalion, that had been organized, trained and equipped by the United States. The Reagan administration denied that any such crime had occurred, and the Atlacatl and its commander continued to be favored by US military advisers in El Salvador. (Photo: Susan Meiselas / The New York Times Magazine)

    As president of the United States, Ronald Reagan wove a rich tapestry of illusions – “It’s morning in America!” – that did a lot to obscure the substance of his administration. Since his death in 2004, the myths have become denser. Comparing him with George W. Bush even created a certain nostalgia for the Reagan years, and by now the reality of his administration has all but vanished from sight and memory. This is unfortunate, because a clear vision of the past is vital for constructing a better future.

    All the 2008 Republican presidential candidates (except perhaps Ron Paul) tried to claim a Reagan legacy. John McCain said Reagan was one of his heroes. This is hardly surprising, since Reagan was unquestionably a great vote getter; he won two elections for governor of California and two for president, and not one of them was close. He was known for “communicating” with people who didn’t agree with, or were harmed by, what his administration was really doing; hence the “Reagan Democrat” phenomenon. Many politicians would love to have such an ability.

    But something else has been happening as well. Numerous Reagan biographies, plus thick volumes of his letters and diaries, have been published [1], and they’ve caused a strange Reagan revival that goes beyond admiring his vote-getting skill. Various writers think they have discovered in that material intellectual depths and moral excellence that escaped everyone’s notice during Ronald Reagan’s years in office. It is his spirit and grand ideals that really count, some of these authors think, while the actual policies pursued by his administration are not very important.

    The worst of these mythmakers is an intellectual historian, and he illustrates the proverb that if one’s only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. John Patrick Diggins [2], who once thought that as California’s governor Reagan stood mainly for “tear gas and police,” has belatedly decided that he “may be, after Lincoln, one of the two or three truly great presidents in American history.” Diggins writes that Reagan was “an intelligent, sensitive man with passionate convictions.” He “delivered America from fear and loathing. He stood for freedom, peace, disarmament,” and many more good things. Thanks to his “Emersonian outlook” he became “the great liberating spirit of modern American history.” Other authors share much of Diggins’s admiration with a variety of shadings. [3] When (some) intellectual historians try to capture the “mind and character of an era,” mere facts are apparently not very important.

    It is, of course, entirely reasonable to assess Reagan’s role in American politics, as does historian Sean Wilentz in his new book “The Age of Reagan.” [4] Wilentz is far more grounded in reality than Diggins et al., and his book seems to be a valuable analysis of the Reagan administration. But even Wilentz claims (in a recent Newsweek interview held jointly with George Will and absurdly titled “The Left Starts to Rethink Reagan” [5]) that “Ronald Reagan was much more serious than people have given him credit for.” Serious perhaps, but what did he do?

    In fact, things did not go well even inside Reagan’s own head. He was famously ignorant about such life-or-death questions as whether nuclear missiles can be recalled once they were launched. (Imagine the president of the United States not understanding that!) Reagan once claimed that the Russian language had no word for “freedom.” (Of course it does.) His policy speeches were largely stitched together from generalities and platitudes rather than factual analysis, and they were replete with anecdotes that he often made up or borrowed from old movies. At times, he seemed to confuse his own motion picture roles with history, as in 1983 when he told Jewish leaders that “I was there” at the liberation of Nazi death camps – while in reality he spent all the World War II years in Hollywood. [6] Finally, according to his former chief of staff, many presidential activities were strongly affected by the advice of his wife’s astrologer. [7]

    But above all, surely, a president should be judged not by his personal life or his “passionate convictions,” but by what his administration actually does. That sort of reality does not loom large for Reagan’s admirers, and it’s important to recall a few major themes of the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s presidential legacy included big tax cuts for the rich and record budget deficits; after denouncing the much smaller deficits of previous administrations in his first inaugural address, Reagan in a few years tripled America’s national debt. His administration distorted the Russian threat, and pushed preparations for a “winnable” nuclear war that could cost “only” a few million US lives. He slashed the social safety net, and introduced deregulation leading to the savings and loan meltdown and contributing to the current crisis. He promoted extreme anti-environmental policies and appointments, gave us the Iran-Contra scandal, advanced costly fantasies of a perfect missile defense, and a great deal more. It is difficult to conceive how Diggins imagines that Reagan “stood for peace.” “Our military forces are standing tall!” Reagan told us after the United States invaded tiny Grenada in 1983. From the beginning, he enthusiastically promoted the MX missile, deployed in 1986 and cynically renamed the “Peacekeeper” – the most accurate and deadly multi-warhead nuclear weapon ever built. Reagan’s officials insisted, and he himself may have believed, that our missiles and bombs were peaceful and defensive, while theirs – they were, after all, the “evil empire” – were aggressive and offensive. Other nations did not find this distinction credible.

    The idea that President Reagan stood for freedom, peace and disarmament would be an especially tough sell to the people of Central America. His election in November 1980 was widely, and correctly, seen as offering a green light for right-wing terrorism. The region was deeply troubled by long-standing internal problems, but the Reagan administration saw it only as a cold war battleground where it hoped to score easy victories against the USSR. That view was basically false and the “victories” imaginary, but the cost to the people who lived there was all too real. [8]

    From its first day in office, the Reagan team conspired to destroy the Nicaraguan revolution. At that time, the new Sandinista government had achieved major progress against illiteracy and the ills of extreme poverty, as attested by both UNESCO and WHO. The rural poor, released from the Somoza dictatorship, enjoyed new hope that their lives could be better. But led by the “great liberating spirit” (Diggins) of Ronald Reagan, the United States rejected peaceful coexistence with Nicaragua and subjected its people to devastating economic warfare and years of bloody terrorism from the CIA’s “contra” army, a campaign that cost at least 50,000 lives. The CIA even intervened directly, violating international law by mining Nicaragua’s harbors. When Congress objected to all this, the Reagan team secretly sold missiles to Iran and used the payments, together with drug-running profits, to continue funding the counterrevolution. Ronald Reagan called the contras “freedom fighters” and compared them to US founding fathers, but the US attacks and proxy war were condemned by the World Court of Justice, which ordered the United States to halt its aggression and pay Nicaragua billions of dollars in reparations. The UN General Assembly also overwhelmingly repudiated the US intervention. Those judgments, representing basic international law and world opinion, were contemptuously ignored by Mr. Reagan’s government.

    Elsewhere in the region, the United States intervened with massive military and economic support to prop up the ruling military-led junta in El Salvador. “Disarmament” indeed! The Reagan team repeatedly lied about appalling massacres and murders there to keep the aid flowing after Congress demanded that abuses be controlled. Honduras and Guatemala were encouraged to become “national security states” where military and police ruled arbitrarily with little concern for law or human rights. Even in Costa Rica, the United States undermined the democracy it claimed to admire, trying to involve that nation in the US campaign against Nicaragua. In the name of anti-communism, Mr. Reagan’s government backed highly repressive regimes throughout the Americas, and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives at the hands of military and paramilitary forces financed and armed, and sometimes also organized and trained, by the United States.

    The Central American wars were only one ugly facet of the Reagan administration’s world impact, but they were hardly an exception to the overall trend. Whatever Professor Diggins and the others believe was in Ronald Reagan’s heart and mind, during his years in office, the United States stood for “freedom, peace, [and] disarmament” only in the administration’s rhetoric. The reality – the spectrum of actual policies behind that image – was tragically different. The Reagan legacy must be remembered as it really was – so that its crimes will not be repeated.

  Notes:

    [1] “The Reagan Diaries” (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), reviewed by Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker of May 28, 2007.

    [2] “Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History” (Norton, 2007). I have read parts of the book plus a summary article by Diggins himself in “The Chronicle of Higher Education” (“The Review,” February 2, 2007). Diggins’s conclusion that Ronald Reagan was a “truly great president” is not supported by his book’s factual content.

    [3] See Russell Baker, “Reconstructing Ronald Reagan,” The New York Review of Books, March 1, 2007. Time magazine added to the confusion with its cover story of 3/26/07.

    [4] “The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008″ (HarperCollins, 2008).

    [5] May 12, 2008, pages 36-38. While Wilentz certainly counts as a liberal in US political terms, he hardly represents “the Left.”

    [6] See Reagan’s New York Times obituary, June 6, 2004, page 1.

    [7] Donald Regan, “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington” (Harcourt, 1988).

    [8] For example, see the author’s “What Are We Afraid Of? An Assessment of the ‘Communist Threat’ in Central America” (South End Press, 1988).

I work 40 hours a week to be this poor

 

 

There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS

on duplicating, publishing or distributing the

files on KeelyNet!

 

April 4, 1991

 

100DYING.ASC

——————————————————————–

 

100 Ways to Avoid Dying

By: Tim Clark

MS-Dos Version By: Peter Schwab

Article from: 1990 Farmer’s Almanac

 

Doctors and scientists  are  always  telling us ways to live longer. Usually they involve a healthier diet  or lifestyle: that is, eating less fat and more vegetables and fruits, getting more  exercise,  or giving up smoking.

 

We wholeheartedly endorse  these  rigorous and unpleasant methods of extending life, but our research  into  centuries  of  American folk wisdom has turned up 100 EASY ways of avoiding death  by observing afew simple rules in everyday situations. These beliefs come from all over this country   and  were  actually  collected  by  students  of folklore and anthropology.

 

None of them were made up. Just remember:  if  you  fail  to observe these rules, we won’t be responsible for the consequences!

 

HOUSEKEEPING HINTS

 

1. Don’t take ashes out of the fireplace or wood stove between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

2. Never place a broom on a bed.

3. Close umbrellas before bringing them into a house.

4. Avoid sweeping after sundown.

5. You mustn’t wash clothes on New Year Day.

6. Don’t shake out a tablecloth after dark.

7. Never wash a flag.

8. Don’t turn a chair on one leg.

9. Keep cats off piano keys.

10. Don’t hang a dishcloth on a doorknob.

11. Sweeping under a sick person’s bed will kill him or her.

12. Don’t ever, ever rock an empty rocking chair.

 

RENOVATION AND DECORATING

 

13. Never add-on to the back of your house.

 

14. You mustn’t cut a new window in an old house; the only way to avoid fatal consequences is to toss your apron through the new window, and then jump through it yourself.

 

15. Never drive a nail after sunset.

16. Don’t move into an unfinished house.

 

17. Avoid carring axes, shovels, and other sharp-edged tools through a house;

if you must take one inside, always take it out by the same door.

 

18. If you move out of a house, don’t move back into it for a year.

19. Don’t hang your sweetheart’s picture upside-down.

20. If a picture falls from the wall, don’t pick it up.

21. Never carry a peacock’s feather into a house.

22. Keep cut flowers out of bedrooms overnight.

23. Don’t ever carry a bouquet of wildflowers indoors before May 1.

 

SEWING AND FASHION

 

24. If you cut out a new dress on Friday, you must finish it that same day.

25. Don’t make new clothes between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

26. Never hold a stick in your mouth while sewing.

27. Always sew cross-stich on your underwear.

28. Don’t walk around in one shoe.

29. If you see a will-o’-wisp while out walking at night, turn your coat inside-out.

30. Never wear another’s new clothes before they have worn them.

31. A woman who makes her own wedding dress will not live to wear it.

 

COOKING AND TABLE MANNERS

 

32. Never set three lamps on a table at the same time.

33. Don’t set the table backwards.

34. Never serve 13 at a table.

35. Avoid drinking coffee at 5 o’clock.

36. You mustn’t write on the back of a dish.

37. Never return borrowed salt.

38. Don’t ever cross knives while setting the table.

39. Be sure that someone else cooks your birthday dinner.

40. Don’t put two forks at one place setting.

41. Never, never turn a loaf of bread upside down.

 

SLEEPING

 

42. Sleeping with your head at the foot of the bed is surely fatal.

43. Don’t sing in bed.

44. If you hear a dog howl at night, reach under the bed and turn over a shoe.

45. Don’t count stars.

46. A man should never dream of a naked woman; a woman should never dream of a naked man. (You know who you are…)

 

PERSONAL HYGIENE

 

47. Never rub soap on your skin on a Friday.

48. Don’t look into a mirror over another’s shoulder.

49. Avoid combing your hair after dark.

50. Absolutely no haircuts in March.

51. Let a baby’s hair and fingernails grow until their 1st birthday.

52. Don’t let two people comb your hair at once.

53. Never shave at night.

54. NEVER, EVER share a razor used by a dead man.

 

FUNERAL ETIQUETTE

 

55. Never hold a funeral on a Friday.

56. When a person dies in a house, you must immediately cover all mirrors and stop all clocks.

57. Children should not pretend to have funerals.

58. Don’t ever try on a mourning veil.

59. Always remove a dead body from a house feet first.

60. Never ride in a hearse, unless you are the driver.

61. Don’t count the cars in a funeral motercade.

62. Avoid wearing new clothes to a funeral, especially new shoes.

63. Pull the shades in a room where a funeral service is takingface: if the sun hits a mourner’s face, he is the next to die.

64. When walking in a funeral procession, don’t look backwards.

65. Never point at a grave.

66. Try not to step across a grave.

67. Never leave a grave open overnight.

68. Don’t ever be the first to leave the graveyard after a funeral.

69. If a corpse lies unburied on Sunday, another in town will surely die soon.

70. Wait a year before putting up a tombstone for a family member;

if you don’t, another family member will go before the year has ended.

 

GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS

 

71. Drink May rainwater.

72. When sick, don’t look in mirrors.

73. Don’t give a person a peony.

74. Never measure your own height.

75. Try not to imagine it’s Saturday when it’s not.

76. Don’t count cars on a passenger train.

77. Never whistle in a coal mine.

78. Avoid measuring a person who is lying down.

79. Don’t walk backwards.

80. You mustn’t allow a candle to burn itself out.

81. Never sell a dog.

82. Try not to kill a crow; but if you do, be sure to bury it while wearing black.

83. If you transplant a cedar tree, you will die by the time it is big enough to shade a grave.

84. The same is true of a willow tree (as in 83)

85. Don’t ever hang your hoe on a tree branch.

86. Don’t skip a row when planting corn or beans.

87. If you watch a person out of sight, you’ll never see them again.

88. Avoid stepping over a person who is lying down.

89. When your name is called, don’t answer the first time-it may be the Devil calling you.

90. Never shake hands through a window or over a fence.

91. Try not to sit with your back to the fire.

92. Don’t burn sassafras wood.

93. If you walk with your hands locked behind your head, it will kill your mother.

94. Don’t even THINK of mocking an owl.

95. Don’t store your shoes above your head.

96. Never kill a locust.

97. Never kill a lizard.

98. If you hear a hen crow, you must kill the hen.

99. If you are on a train when a woman boards, dressed in black,get off.

100.Whatever you do, don’t let a lizard count your teeth.

 

Hoped you liked this!

 

-Peter Schwab

 

——————————————————————–

This file placed on KeelyNet, courtesy of Ron Barker.

——————————————————————–

 

If you  have comments or other information relating to such topics as  this paper covers,  please   upload to KeelyNet or send to the Vangard  Sciences  address  as  listed  on the  first  page.

Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.

 

Jerry W. Decker………Ron Barker………..Chuck Henderson

Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet

about time

Step Away From the Vehicle

The Supreme Court imposes long-overdue limits on car searches.

Jacob Sullum | April 29, 2009

In August 1999 police saw Rodney Gant pull into the driveway of his Tucson home and arrested him for driving with a suspended license. After handcuffing Gant and locking him in a cruiser, Officer Todd Griffith searched his car, finding a bag of cocaine in the pocket of a jacket on the backseat. When he was asked at an evidentiary hearing why he searched the car, Griffith replied, “Because the law says we can do it.”

Not anymore. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court said police may no longer routinely search the vehicles of recently arrested people. It was a refreshing departure from a long line of cases in which the Court has whittled away at the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures to make the war on drugs easier to wage.

Among other things, the Court has ruled that a search warrant can be granted based on information from an anonymous (and perhaps nonexistent) informant; that evidence obtained with an invalid search warrant can be used in court as long as police acted in “good faith”; that police do not need a warrant to monitor homes and backyards from low-flying helicopters; that police may use dogs to inspect luggage and cars without probable cause; and that government employees and public school students may be subjected to random drug testing.

The rule that police may search a vehicle without a warrant whenever they arrest someone who has recently been in the vehicle also came from a drug case. In a 1981 decision that, like Gant’s case, involved cocaine found in a jacket, the Court declared, “When a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.”

That broad rule had the advantage of clarity, but it went well beyond the goals the Court had cited in allowing warrantless “searches incident to arrest”: preventing arrestees from grabbing weapons or hiding evidence of their crimes. Neither concern is plausible when an arrestee, like Gant, has been handcuffed and locked up before the search takes place.

Yet that is by far the most common scenario when police search the vehicles of people they’ve arrested. In other words, for 28 years police throughout the country have been routinely conducting searches that are completely unconnected to their constitutional rationale.

Last week, in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court said police may “search a vehicle incident to a recent occupant’s arrest only when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment at the time of the search.” It added that a search also can be justified if police are looking for evidence of the crime that led to the arrest—a rationale that did not apply to Gant and does not apply to the millions of other Americans who are arrested for traffic violations each year.

“A rule that gives police the power to conduct such a search whenever an individual is caught committing a traffic offense…creates a serious and recurring threat to the privacy of countless individuals,” Stevens wrote for the five-justice majority, noting the danger of “giving police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private effects.”

Notably, Stevens’ opinion was joined by Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, two justices who are often unfairly portrayed as hostile to civil liberties. In fact, Scalia wrote a concurrence that was less generous to the police than the majority opinion, calling routine car searches “plainly unconstitutional” and saying the Court should abandon the “charade” of pretending they’re necessary to protect officers from hidden weapons, since “police virtually always have a less intrusive and more effective means of ensuring their safety”—i.e., restraining the arrestee.

This is the sort of case that should make leftish civil libertarians rethink their reflexive antipathy to Scalia and make law-and-order conservatives rethink their reflexive support of the police.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.

© Copyright 2009 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

lmao

From time to time, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (aka the drug czar’s office) sends out friendly emails called “Anti-Drug Parenting Tips.” The latest, sent July 14, urges parents to talk to their kids about drugs and includes a link to a set of guidelines for “making a case against pot.”

Apparently, our government believes that the way to keep teens off drugs is to lie to them. If parents stick to the White House script what they will teach their kids is that they can’t trust a thing adults tell them. Let’s examine a few of the White House’s talking points:

If your kid says: “Marijuana is a natural plant; how harmful could it be?”

The White House wants you to say: “Smoking marijuana is at least as bad as smoking cigarettes, and you already know how dangerous tobacco is to your health.”

The truth: Actually, there is incontrovertible evidence that smoking tobacco increases your risk of getting cancer of the lungs, throat and other tissues that come into contact with smoke. But, despite decades of trying, no such link has ever been established with marijuana. Indeed, in one 60,000-patient study, marijuana smokers had lower rates of lung cancer than nonsmokers did. How can that be? In part, it’s probably because marijuana smokers typically smoke a lot less than cigarette smokers. But there is also abundant evidence that marijuana’s active components, called cannabinoids, suppress tumor growth. A review of recent research in the October 2003 issue of the journal Nature Reviews stated flatly, “cannabinoids kill tumor cells,” adding that “cannabinoids have a favorable drug safety profile.” Unlike tobacco, marijuana use has never been shown to increase mortality rates.

If your kid says: “Marijuana is not addictive.”

The White House wants you to say: “Sixty percent of teens currently in drug treatment are dependent on marijuana. More youth enter drug treatment with a primary diagnosis of marijuana dependence than for all other illicit drugs combined.”

The truth: According to the government’s own figures, most of those teens in treatment for “marijuana dependence” are there because they were arrested. They were caught with a joint, offered a choice of treatment or jail, and – big surprise – chose treatment. In other words, we arrest kids for smoking marijuana, force them into treatment and then use those treatment admissions as “proof” that marijuana is addictive. Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling. In reality, marijuana is about as addictive as coffee. The Institute of Medicine, in a report commissioned by the White House, noted, “Although few marijuana users develop dependence, some do. But they appear to be less likely to do so than users of other drugs (including alcohol and nicotine), and marijuana dependence appears less severe than dependence on other drugs.”

If your kid says: “Marijuana only makes you mellow.”

The White House wants you to say: “Not always. Sometimes it makes people violent. Kids who use marijuana weekly are four times more likely to engage in violent behavior than those who don’t.”

The truth: This statement is so blatantly, deliberately misleading that it should make even Karl Rove cringe. Yes, a tiny percentage of people – mostly individuals with preexisting mental illness – become disturbed or violent when they use marijuana, just as a few people react badly to any drug. But – despite the attempt in the second sentence above to confuse cause with effect – overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that marijuana does not cause violence. A review published last year in the journal Addictive Behaviors noted, “Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship. … Cannabis reduces the likelihood of violence during intoxication.” Teens aren’t morons. Those who haven’t smoked marijuana probably know people who do, and have seen with their own eyes that marijuana does not make users violent, crazed or criminal. If adults claim it does, their kids will laugh at them – and should.

If your kid says: “If I smoke marijuana, I’m not hurting anyone else.”

The White House wants you to say: “Marijuana trafficking is a big, international, often violent business. The people behind it are criminals. If you’re smoking pot, you could be hurting other people.”

The truth: Once again, teens aren’t morons. Most are bright enough to understand that the reason the marijuana trade is in the hands of sometimes-violent criminals is because it’s illegal. If marijuana production and sales were brought into a legally regulated system, the violence and criminality now associated with it would disappear instantly, and any teen whose IQ exceeds their age can figure that out – even if federal officials can’t.

It is increasingly clear that U.S. government anti-drug efforts have nothing to do with any sort of rational strategy for keeping kids out of danger and everything to do with an ideological crusade – a crusade that is utterly divorced from science, logic or common sense. And when zealotry replaces truth and honesty, it’s our kids who will pay the price.

Bruce Mirken is a recovering health journalist who now serves as communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

EVE’S SIDE OF THE STORY

After three weeks in the Garden of Eden, God came to visit Eve. ‘So, how is everything going?’ inquired God. 

‘It is all so beautiful, God,’ she replied. ‘The sunrises and sunsets are breathtaking, the smells, the sights, everything is wonderful, but I have just one problem. 

It’s these breasts you have given me. The middle one pushes the other two out and I am constantly knocking them wth my arms, catching them on branches and snagging them on bushes. They’re a real pain.’ 

And Eve went on to tell God that since many other parts of her body came in pairs, such as her limbs, eyes, ears, etc. She felt that having only two breasts might leave her body more ‘symmetrically balanced’. 

‘That’s a fair point,’ replied God, ‘But it was my first shot at this, you know. I gave the animals six breasts, so I figured that you needed only half of those, but I see that you are right. I will fix it up right away.’ 

And God reached down, removed the middle breast and tossed it into the bushes  

Three weeks passed and God once again visited Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

‘Well, Eve, how is my favorite creation?’ 

‘Just fantastic,’ she replied, ‘But for one oversight. You see, all the animals are paired off. The ewe has a ram and the cow has her bull. All the animals have a mate except me. I feel so alone.’ 

God though for a moment and said, ‘You know, Eve, you are right How could I have overlooked this? You do need a mate and I will immediately create a man from a part of you. Let’s see….where did I put that useless boob?’ 

Now doesn’t THAT make more sense than all that crap about the rib? 

Send to men with a sense of humor & women who figure this makes sense.  HAHA

Peter Pan

Second to the right, and then straight on till morning

by Jennifer Kesler on March 19, 2005

I just watched a movie version of Peter Pan last night, and it was so interesting I had to start reading the book. The psychological implications – of a boy who refuses to grow up even after being changed by love – are almost impossible to ignore. But I got something else out of it I never had before, and it’s all to do with Wendy.

Wendy, having no desire to grow up, follows Peter to Neverland where she won’t have to. Eventually, she realizes she does want to grow up, and leaves. But as much as she’s come to mean to Peter, he refuses to leave behind the freedom and adventure of childhood to come with her.

But why does Wendy decide to grow up? Maybe because nearly the first thing that happens upon her arrival in Neverland is the Lost Boys – other perpetual children Peter has collected – ask her to become their mother. The boys make her into “Mother” and Peter into “Father”. As soon as she gets to the world of perpetual childhood, she’s asked to take on the adult role. Her choice then becomes: go home and really grow up, or stay in Neverland, but be cast as an adult against her wishes, by males who refuse to see her any other way.

The fact is, there are both male and female Peter Pans. People who refuse to accept some or all of the responsiblities defined as “adulthood”. But as we all know, society tends to see it as more acceptable for males than females.

If you’re female, can you remember a period of adolescence in which you refused the same responsiblities as your brothers or your male friends? For a time, the boys were right there with you, backing you up. Then suddenly, they were all backing each other up, but not you. Suddenly, they realized you really did have a responsibility to do dishes – they may even have told you this with a straight face. Meanwhile, they all ran off in a stolen car together to Neverland.

People ask men to grow up and take responsibility. When it comes to women, they just hand her the dishrag and assume she’ll take care of it.

The real reason Peter doesn’t want to grow up is fear of failure. Wendy can’t fear failure because there’s nothing for her to fail at as a grown-up. If you’re not allowed to do anything significant, you really can’t mess it up. This is why we’re supposed to be impressed if a man grows up into a decent, responsible creature but it’s the minimum expectation for women.

Massachusetts police chiefs legalize marijuana

January 6, 1:00 PM

Police chiefs in towns like Auburn and Clinton, Massachusetts would undoubtedly deny that they have any interest in legalizing marijuana, but that’s what they’re about to effectively accomplish. Bent out of shape by the details of Question 2, the decriminalization measure that voters passed in November, those law-enforcement officials have announced that they won’t bother issuing tickets to people caught smoking marijuana.

The new law, in effect since Friday, replaces criminal penalties with a $100 fine for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. The text of the law also forbids any repercussions whatsoever, from denial of student loans to inclusion in a criminal record to consideration during applications for status as an adoptive parent.

But in what is likely a clever sleight of hand by legalization advocates, the law, by pulling arrest off the table as an option, deprives police officers of any means to compel people caught with marijuana to show identification. Anybody willing to say “Donald Duck” to a cop who nabs him with a joint and asks for a name can escape even the $100 fine.

And that’s a good thing.

Marijuana is now not only de facto legal in a few Massachusetts communities because police find the requirements of decriminalization too demanding, it is now effectively sanction-free in the entire state for anybody willing to face down a cop.

The added benefit is that the state will not be collecting much revenue from those fines. Anything that denies resources to the government is a good thing.

Governments never had the right to tell consenting adults what they can and can’t buy from and sell to each other, or put into their own bodies. We’re not quite at the point where politicians are willing to concede that point. But we’re getting closer when police simply throw up their hands and effectively allow people to exercise their rights unmolested.

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” ~ Harvey Fierstein

Gay Kentucky Students: “You Can’t Pee Here”

By Michelle Garcia

Fifteen students protested outside a Frankfort, Ky., high school on Friday after an official allegedly sent a notification to teachers advising them to bar gay students from leaving class to use the restroom.

The reported e-mail was sent by Franklin County High School assistant principal Karen Buzard after two female students were reportedly seen kissing in a bathroom, according to the Kentucky Equality Federation. 

A statement on the school’s website says that students have not been singled out, but the directive was “that certain students should not be allowed to leave the classroom during class because they had been in violation of school rules. All students have time between classes to use the facilities.”

Protesters waved rainbow flags and signs that read, “Honk if you’re gay” and “We have a right to pee,” the State-Journal reports.

Wayne Dominick, communications coordinator for the school district, said administrators are figuring out how to address students’ concerns.

You Are Going To Hell If You….

---

* eat fruit from a tree less than five years old. [Lev. 19:23]
* cross-breed animals. [Lev. 19:19]
* grow two different plants in your garden. [Lev. 19:19]
* wear a cotton-polyester blend T-Shirt. [Lev. 19:19]
* read your horoscope. [Lev. 19:26]
* consult a psychic. [Lev. 19:31]
* cut your hair. [Lev. 19:27]
* trim your beard. [Lev. 19:27]
* are tatooed. [Lev. 19:28]
* plant crops for more than seven years. [Lev. 25:4, Ex. 23:10-13]
* bear a grudge. [Lev. 19:17]
* collect interest on a loan. [Ex. 22:24]
* insult a leader. [Ex. 22:27]
* mistreat a foreigner. [Ex. 22:21, 23:9]
* spread false rumors. [Ex. 23:1] (Sorry, Pat Robertson!)
* drive a Mercury. [Ex. 23:13] (Look it up.)

The Five Types Of Period Panties

 

Posted by: Jessica | Filed in: Sex
11:00AM, Tuesday April 07th 2009

Every woman’s got ‘em: the panties ruined by Nature’s special, beautiful, magical gift to your ladyparts.  You might be thrilled that Bingo’s tadpoles didn’t penetrate the love glove, but that still doesn’t mean you aren’t pissed your white, lacy Victoria’s Secret thong looks like a Jackson Pollack painting.

Typically, girls wear sexy underwear at all times because, even if we know no one is going to see them, we just feel better about ourselves when we know we look pretty underneath.  But the three to seven days of the month when all we do is cry and eat Cherry Garcia is an exception!  Whether they were formerly-cute panties sneak attacked by Aunt Flo or nasty knickers you bought just to stain, here’s the five types of period panties every woman’s got: 

The Panties You Already Bled On: Maybe they were granny panties.  Maybe they were the Princess Tam Tam knickers you splurged on.  But regardless, those stains didn’t come out no matter how hard you tried.  You keep them hidden far, far away in the darkest corner of your underwear drawer, only to see the light of day at that time of that month.

The Panties That Your Mom Put In Your Christmas Stocking That Are Too Ugly To Be Caught Dead Wearing: Mom means well; she knows her baby always needs clean underwear and socks.  Perfect Christmas stocking stuffer, right?  But Mom’s just a hot mess when it comes to buying appropriately-cute drawers.  There’s no way you’d want a police officer or EMT—let alone someone you’re hooking up with!—to see these.  And you kinda feel bad for Dad now.

The Panties With Holes In Them: How does a gal get holes in her drawers, anyway?  It’s not like we have anything sharp down there!  (Except for those of us with vagina dentata…evil laugh.) But sometimes, a hole rips up your boyshorts and this is God telling you that you’ve got a new pair of period panties.

The Panties Where The Elastic Waistband Is Shot: Too many cycles in the washing machine—or maybe it’s too many Cinnabuns—will shoot an elastic waistband to hell.  Sure, they can be a little too baggy and uncomfortable to wear, but the sad truth is, you likely feel so bloated, you don’t even notice the elastic band is missing.

The Panties You Wore Yesterday: Gross but true: an informal poll of staffers found that some of us do wear our panties two or more days in a row when we’re on the rag.  Yeah, it’s disgusting from a hygiene standpoint.  But if you wear and throw away pads instead of leaky tampons, it’s not really that gross.  Right?  Right?!?  RIGHT?!?!?!

Supreme Court Obsessed With Sex; Healthy Americans Lose Rights

For a half-century, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has had the right to decide which words and pictures are excluded from the Free Speech guarantees all Americans enjoy.

The FCC’s criterion for this cruel abridgment of the Bill of Rights is material that involves “sexual and excretory functions.” This sounds clearer than it actually is. For example, do the words “dickhead” and “buttface” refer to sexual or execretory functions (controlling whether you’re allowed to watch South Park or The Daily Show)? Are plain buttocks (not the anus, just the cheeks) a sexual organ? (The FCC recently ruled they are.)

The FCC’s attitude, especially under the Bush regime, has been ‘when in doubt, throw it out’. And so Saving Private Ryan was unavailable to many viewers last Memorial Day, as stations feared punitive fines for airing this testament to the (salty-mouthed) soldiers who died to preserve democratic institutions (like the FCC).

So the FCC is obsessed with sex, seeing it everywhere, and attempting to exclude depictions of or references to it—no matter how indirect or esoteric.

This week the Supreme Court affirmed that it, too, sees sex wherever it looks. First it affirmed the FCC’s right to banish and therefore punish the occasional coarse word fleeting across your TV screen—say, Bono exclaiming something is “fucking brilliant” or Paris Hilton noting the difficulty of getting “cow shit out of a Prada purse.”

Days later, the Supreme Court challenged a lower court ruling that the 1/2–second glimpse of Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2004 Superbowl halftime show should not be punished.

In both rulings, the Supreme Court sought to “protect” Americans from “sexual” words or images that would either harm them, offend them, or undermine the country’s “morality.” Justice Scalia and colleagues offered absolutely no science to support their fear. Indeed, Scalia conveniently omitted the fact that the rates of sexual violence, divorce, and child molestation have remained stable since 300 million American eyeballs were seared with the horrifying image of the Jackson tit 5½ years ago.

Indeed, Scalia himself warned, in his scathing dissent in the case that de-criminalized gay sodomy (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003), that the majority decision would end the government’s ability to legislate based on “morality.” His anxiety about what he quaintly calls “the f-word” seems to have separated him from his own beliefs.

The obsession with seeing sex where it doesn’t exist isn’t limited to media issues.
Author Sally Wendkos Olds reminds us about those who successfully demand that mothers who breastfeed on airplanes or other public places stop or cover up—because breasts are sexual, and immature adults have a right to be “protected” from seeing them.

There are lots of fascinating technical arguments about these FCC cases, which legal writer Mark Kernes [possibly NSFW] explains quite clearly.

But the real question is: why are people like Justice Scalia, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly more concerned about protecting the sensibilities of some people than the Constitution of everybody?

“Seven Blunders of the World”

“Seven Blunders of the World” 1. Wealth without work 2. Pleasure without conscience 3. Knowledge without character 4. Commerce without morality 5. Science without humanity 6. Worship without sacrifice 7. Politics without principle —Mahatma Gandhi

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle-Class

Discussion Group Report

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle-Class

November 2006

By Bob Mayhew

You cannot be middle-class if you earn the minimum wage in America today says Thom Hartman, author of Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle-Class.

The American dream and the American reality have collided. In America we have always said that if you hard and play by the rules you can take care of yourself and your family. But the minimum wage is just $5.15 per hour. With a 40-hour work week, that comes to a gross income of $9,888 per year. Nobody can support a family, own a home, buy health insurance, or retire decently on $9,888 per year!

What’s more, 30 million Americans, one in four U.S. workers, make less than $9 per hour, or just $17, 280 a year. That’s not a living wage either.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s statistics for 2004 show the official poverty rate at 12.7 percent of the population, which puts the number of people officially living in poverty in the United States at 37 million. For a family of four, the poverty threshold was listed as $19,307. If the head of that family of four were a single mother working full-time for the government-mandated minimum wages she couldn’t even rise above the government’s own definition of poverty.

Becoming middle-class in America today is like scaling a cliff. Most middle-class Americans are clinging to the edge with their fingernails, trying not to fall. In the 1950′s, middle-class families could live comfortably if just one parent worked. Today more than 60 percent of mothers with children under six are in the work force. Not only do both parents work but often at least one of those parents works two or more jobs.

Conservatives argue that we have to choose between having high wages and having low prices. They are wrong.

Take the case of Wal-Mart. According to the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), Wal-Mart could pay each employee a dollar more per four if the company increased its prices by a half-penny per dollar. For example, a $2 pair of socks would then cost $2.01. This minimal increase would add up to $1800 annually for each employee.

I wouldn’t mind paying more for a pair of socks if it meant that my fellow Americans would bee able to pay for good health care. That would save me money because right now Wal-Mart’s uninsured employees run up hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills at emergency treatment centers when their problems often could have been solved more cheaply and with better results had they been caught earlier at a doctor’s office.

Here’s what all the talk about wages really comes down to: Would you rather pay 10% more at Wal-Mart and get 30 percent more in your paycheck, or would you rather have lower prices and an even lower paycheck? That’s the real choice: We are either spiraling up into a strong middle-class, or we’re spiraling down toward serfdom.

Looking at the arc of U.S. history, we discover we’ve been on a downward spiral ever since Ronald Reagan declared war on working people in 1981. Companies cut prices and then cut wages so they can still turn a hefty profit. Folks whose wages have been cut can’t afford to shop at midrange stores like Macy’s, so they have to go to low-wage discount stores like Wal-Mart. That drives more midrange stores out of business and increases pressure on discount stores to set their prices even lower. To compensate for lower prices, they lower wages so they can still turn a hefty profit. On and on it goes until the people working those jobs are no longer middle-class and have to work two or three jobs to survive.

Our choice is not between low prices at Wal-Mart and high prices at Wal-Mart. Its between low prices at Wal-Mart with lousy paychecks and no protection for labor, and the prices Wal-Mart had when Sam Walton ran the company and nearly everything was made in the United States and people had good union jobs and decent paychecks.

Today America is regressing; middle-class income has stopped growing. The net worth of those who earn less than $15,000 per year (which includes everybody from the working poor) to the highest end of the most well-off of the middle-class is down by 0.6 percent. The problem is not the economy. Corporations are making more money than ever. The real income of people whose net worth exceeds $100 million is doubling.

What’s happening is simple: The rich are getting richer and the entire spectrum of the middle-class is disappearing.

We can easily trace this decline to Reagan’s first public declaration of war on the middle-class when he went after the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981. He broke the back of the air-traffic controllers’ union and began the practice of using the Department of Labor traditionally the ally of workers against organized labor and working people.

Workplaces are not democracies “n the United States they’re run more like kingdoms. Employers have the power to hire and fire, to raise or lower wages, to change working conditions and job responsibilities, and to change hours and times and places. Workers have only the power to work or to not work (known as a strike.) The strike is a tool that can effectively be used only by organized labor is the only means by which workers can address the extreme imbalance of power in the workplace. And because organized labor is a democracy leadership is elected and strike decisions and contracts are voted on. Unions bring more democracy to America. We spend about half of our waking lives at work; at least we can have some democracy in the workplace, and a democracy means a strong middle-class.

The conservatives have almost succeeded in throttling American democracy by screwing over the middle-class. To fight back we must recognize and reclaim the government programs that create a middle-class:

• Return to the American people our ownership of the military, the prison system, and the ballot box.
• Fight for free and public education that encourages critical thinking, historical knowledge, and a love of learning in each child. Combat the No Child Left Behind Act and the belief that education is a commodity that can be tested.
• Fight for a national single-payer health-care system based on Medicare.
• Fight for Social Security and do not let it be privatized or co-opted
• Fight for progressive taxation: reinstate a rate of 35 percent on corporations and a rate of 70 percent on the wealthiest 5% of Americans and use the money to pay back the Social Security system and to fund an economic investment program.
• Fight for a living wage and for the right of labor to organize.
• Fight for a national energy program that puts people and the planet, not Big Oil first.

When America has a strong middle-class, democracy will follow. The opposite is also true. To fight back, we must also make use of the ballot box. We can achieve the economic programs that make the middle-class possible by using the power of our democracy to vote for those politicians who support the middle-class. We’ve been conned for long enough. It is time to take back America.

–Bob Mayhew

Jerome, Arizona

City/Town: Jerome
County: Yavapai
State: Arizona
Congressional District: (click to contact Rep.) 1

Population (2000 Census): 329
Date Passed: 08/12/03

A Resolution of the Town of Jerome, Yavapai, Arizona Expressing the Commitment of hte Town of Jerome to Civil Rights and Liberties and Establishing a Civil Liberties Safe Zone

Approved by: Jerome Town Council

WHEREAS, following the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, the Congressed passed the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act (PL 107-56) on October 26, 2001; and

WHEREAS, the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act expand on the authority of the federal government to detain and investigate citizens and non-citizens, engage in electronic surveillance of citizens and non-citizens, perform searches and seizures without demonstrating evidence of probable cause and without timely showing a relevant warrant; and

WHEREAS, many people throughout communities across the nation, including Jerome, are concerned that certain provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act, Executive Orders and other post 9-11 legislation threaten civil rights and liberties guaranteed under the United States Constitution; and

WHEREAS, the Town of Jerome has been, and remains committed to the protection of civil rights and liberties for all people as expressed in the Untied States and Arizona Constitutions; and

WHEREAS, the policy of the Jerome Police’s Department is that all detentions or stops must be supported by reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or is about to be committed, and that all arrests and searches of person and/or property by officers in Jerome must be conducted in compliance with the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution; and the Mayor, and Chief of Police have confirmed to the Council that this policy is and will remain in full force and effect; and

WHEREAS, the policy of the Jerome Police Department is, further, that officers shall not consider ancestry, race, ethnicity, national origin, color, age, sex sexual orientation, gender variance, marital status, physical or mental disability or religion as a sole basis for establishing reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or basis for requesting consent to search, and the Mayor, and Chief of Police have confirmed to the Council that this policy is and will remain in force.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE TOWN COUNCIL OF THE TOWN OF JEROME, YAVAPAI OCUNTY, ARIZONA:

Section 1. That the Town of Jerome has been and remains, firmly committed to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties for all people.

Section 2. That the Town of Jerome affirms the following principles: (1) every person has the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, (2) neither steps nor arrests may be made without establishing reasonable suspicion or probable cause that a crime has been committed or is about to be committed, (3) every person has a right to equal protection under the law and the right not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and (4) every person has the right to free speech and freedom of association as provided for under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and court opinions thereon.

Section 3. That when the Town of Jerome engages in public safety intelligence gathering as part of law enforcement and of national security, the Town of Jerome intends that such intelligence gathering comply with the following policy: No information about political, religious or social views, associations or activities may be collected.

Section 4. That the Town of Jerome reaffirms Jerome’s commitment to human and civil rights as outlined in the Town of Jerome Ordinance Prohibiting Discriminatory Practices and its commitment to unbiased policing as expressed in the policies of the Jerome Police Department. The Town of Jerome firmly adheres to the principle that no law enforcement agency, or other town agency, may provide or discriminate against any person solely on the basis of ancestry, race, ethnicity, national origin, color, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender variance marital status, physical or mental disability or religion, nor shall the Town of Jerome agencies assist other agencies in practice or religion, nor shall Town of Jerome agencies assist other agencies in practices that violate these policies.

Section 5. That the Town of Jerome affirms its strong opposition to terrorism, but also affirms that any effort to end terrorism not be waged at the expense of essential civil rights and liberties of the people of Jerome, the United States and the World.

Section 6. That Staff is directed to send copies of the resolution to President George W. Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard, U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S. Representative Scott McGinnis, Governor Janet Napolitano, U.S. Senator John Kyl and U.S. Senator John McCain, State Representative Tom O’Halleran, Yavapai County Board of Supervisors, and the Yavapai Sheriff’s Office.

Anti-Rape Female Condom

Posted in March 27th, 2007

by Ronin in Women’s Defense Tips

Take a Bite Out of Crime!

Forsaking the more traditional means of self defense. Many women who are “at risk” of being raped, can’t spare the time or sweat and aggravations that can pop up while training in self defense classes, taking instructions and getting licensed to carry a firearm. They won’t even use more humane deterrents such as Mace or personal alarms – they’ve taken to using “Rapex” anti-rape, female condoms.

The anti-rape condom is designed to stop the rapist by hooking onto his penis which subsequently hurts him badly and disables him. The anti-rape condom is made from latex in the form of a sheath. It is held firmly by shafts of sharp, inward-facing microscopic barbs. It is to be worn by a woman in her vagina like a tampon. If an attacker attempts to rape an “equipped” lady, the penis then penetrates the latex and is hooked by the barbs, causing severe pain while giving the victim time to escape. The condom would slide off and remain attached to the attacker’s penis and can only be removed through surgery, which would of course, alert hospital staff and the police. The Rapex anti-rape condom would also act as a regular condom, reducing chances of impregnation or STD infections. (a bonus!) This device made it’s debut in South Africa in 2005.

Both male and female critics alike have objected to the invention as “medieval” and “vengeful, horrible, and disgusting” and are planning on stopping it’s sale in drugstores. Since it’s impossible to detect (except the hard way), there’s no visible deterrent in the eyes of an attacker Although this makes it even more surreptitious and simple to trick attackers – this only seem to fuel criticism that the device is vindictive. Concern for the well-being of a violent rapist has sparked an outcry of even harsher responses from proponents of the condom. The device has caused concern that it could be worn for consensual sex as part of an malicious act of revenge or cruelty. While, still others fear that use of the Rapex would only anger the attacker and further jeopardize the victim. I rather doubt that unless there are more than one attacker.

I have tried to follow the track record of Rapex sales but can only find information regarding the squabbles regarding it’s inhumane “human bear-trap” types and those who support it. Oddly enough, for all of the steps we take to keep our women safe from rape, the Rapex female “anti-rape condom” is taking a lot more shots for stopping it’s use than support. Odd indeed…I thought?  How about you?

Disturbing the Peace

On the inalienable right to “excessively noisy sex”

Brendan O’Neill | May 11, 2009

“Unlike Winston, [Julia] had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship.”

So wrote George Orwell in 1984, his dystopian vision of a future world where mankind’s every thought, desire, and bodily tingle would be policed by the powers-that-be. Orwell imagined a Junior Anti-Sex League that spied on kissing and cavorting adults, and a ruling Party that sought to squash the “sex impulse.” The heroes of his nightmarish tale—Winston and Julia—had to sneak off to a wood in order to explore each other bodies in a bit of peace and quiet.

It turns out that Orwell was suffering from premature speculation. It was not in 1984 that a major Western government made the “sex impulse”—the grunting, groaning sex instinct—into a police matter; it was in 2009. Here in the U.K., to add to our already-existing panoply of Orwellian measures—5 million CCTV cameras that watch our every move; “speaking cameras” that warn us to pick up litter or stop loitering; the government’s attempt to recruit child spies to re-educate anti-social adults—we now have the bizarre and terrifying situation where a woman has been arrested for having sex too loudly.

Yes, in modern-day Britain even the decibels of our sexual moaning can become the subject of a police investigation.

At the end of April, Caroline Cartwright, a 48-year-old housewife from Wearside in the north east of England, was remanded in custody for having “excessively noisy sex.” The cops took her in after neighbors complained of hearing her “shouting and groaning” and her “bed banging against the wall of her home.” Cartwright has, quite reasonably, defended her inalienable right to be a howler: “I can’t stop making noise during sex. It’s unnatural to not make any noises and I don’t think that I am particularly loud.”

Pleasurable groaning and bed-banging are common noises in crowded towns and cities across the civilized world. Most of us deal with them by sticking a CD in the stereo. Those who complain are normally told to stop being prudish or to have a discreet chat with the creators of the offending sex sounds. So how did Cartwright’s expressions of noisy joy become a police case, which later this month will be ruled on at Newcastle Crown Court, one of the biggest courts in the north of England?

Because, unbelievably, Cartwright had previously been served with an Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO)—a civil order that is used to control the minutiae of British people’s behaviour—that forbade her from making “excessive noise during sex” anywhere in England.

That’s right, going even further than Orwell’s imagined authoritarian hellhole, where at least there was a wood or two where people could indulge their sexual impulses, the local authorities in Wearside made all of England a no-go zone for Cartwright’s noisy shenanigans. If she wanted to howl with abandon, she would have to nip over the border to Scotland or maybe catch a ferry to France. It was because she breached the conditions of her Anti-Social Behaviour Order, the civil ruling about how much noise she can make while making love in England, that Cartwright was arrested.

This case sheds harsh light not only on the Victorian-style petty prudishness of our rulers, who seriously believe they can make sexually expressive women timid again by dragging them to court, but on the tyranny of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders themselves. Introduced by our authoritarian Labour government in 1998, anyone can apply for an ASBO to stop anyone else from doing something that they find irritating, “alarming,” or “threatening.”

Local magistrates’ courts issue the orders, sometimes on the basis of hearsay evidence (which is permissible in “ASBO cases”). In short, the applicant for an ASBO does not have to go through the normal rigors of the criminal justice system in order to get a civil ruling preventing someone he doesn’t like from doing something that he finds “alarming” or “dangerous.” Once you have been branded with an ASBO, if you break its conditions—by having noisy sex in your own home, for example—you are potentially guilty of a crime and can be imprisoned.

The ASBO system has turned much of Britain into a curtain-twitching, neighbor-watching, noise-policing gang of spies. The relative ease with which one can apply to the authorities for an ASBO positively invites people to use the system to punish their foes or the irritants who live in their neighborhoods. ASBOs have been used to prevent young people in certain areas from wearing hoods or hats (they look “threatening”), to ban a middle-aged couple from playing gangsta rap (the expletives offended workers and children at a nearby kindergarten), and to prevent a 10-year-old boy from having contact with matches until he turns 16, after he was found to have started a fire.

And now, prudish people who previously would have been told to “put up or shut up” over their neighbors’ noisy sex have been empowered to turn one woman’s private affairs into a very public trial. This, too, is Orwellian: the creation of new layers of spies and inter-communal suspicion.

In Orwell’s dystopia, “the sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion.” So it is in Wearside in 2009, where the excessively noisy exploits of Cartwright and her possibly very talented partner are a form of rebellion against the arbitrary and interventionist nature of the ASBO-wielding powers-that-be. They are screwing for liberty.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked in London.

Quaker statement on gay marriage – a bit old but still valid

Published – Friday, October 20, 2006

Quaker statement on gay marriage
By DAVE CHAKOIAN | Viroqua, Wis.

.

On November’s ballot, Wisconsin will vote on a constitutional ban on same-gender marriages. We of Religious Society of Friends believe the movement to isolate and scapegoat homosexuals, to promote hatred against them, and to impose in law one group’s religious beliefs on us all, is blatantly immoral and contrary to Jesus’ teachings.

With half of marriages ending in divorce, unquestionably the right thing to do is to strengthen marriages. But diverting the question to whether two people of the same sex can have legal rights together completely loses track of the problem of frail marriages.
The proposed constitutional amendment really has nothing to do with marriage; it is a thinly veiled attack on gays and lesbians, part of a pattern of discrimination and institutionalized hatred. It is a strategy of power practiced by would-be tyrants throughout history.

Some have portrayed persecution and hatred of gays as a Christian thing to do. We can find nowhere that Jesus said anything about homosexuality. Nor did Jesus ever suggest encoding Christian teachings into a Sharia-like law to force religious beliefs on society.

We believe that God loves us all equally, and that we are called to treat each other with the same love in which God created us. We have no need to hate, or to discriminate against, any group for any reason. It is simply not Christian to do so.

David Chakoian is clerk of the Kickapoo Valley Monthly Meeting, Religious Society of Friends (Quaker).

Debunking Conspiracy Theorists Paranoid Fantasies About Sept 11 Distract From the Real Issues

Debunking Conspiracy Theorists Paranoid Fantasies About Sept 11 Distract From the Real Issues

by Gerard Holmgren, 9 January 2003

Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 9 2003.
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From: EcoNews Service <econews@ecologynews.com>
Date: Sunday, February 16, 2003 1:05 PM

 http://www.ratical.org

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one, often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. “The CIA killed Hendrix” “The Pope had John Lennon murdered”, “Hitler was half Werewolf”, “Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone”, etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is — sadly — a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis. One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they “hate our freedoms.”

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.

Normally I don’t even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories. These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped them if it had been able.

Blindly ignoring the stand down of the US air-force, the insider trading on airline stocks — linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly 2 hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the US intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do. The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.

It’s difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more.

This technique is known as “the fruit loop” and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions. According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,knives,box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.

The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren’t any Arabs on the planes. If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.

However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have got on board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage. “Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?” “A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get.” “Very strange”, thinks the security officer. “That’s the fourth Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess…”

Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane? But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist

tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis.They will allege that the hijackers’ passports were found at the crash scenes. “So there!” they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of questionable sanity. Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them?

However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated,and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, “Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!” And so the whole loop starts again. “Well, why aren’t they on the passenger lists?” “You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!” And so on…

Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story. “Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers? “

The answer of course is that its just one of those strange co- incidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen…

This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The “improbability drive”, in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).

There is a principle called “Occam’s razor” which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam’s razor. Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes. Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking.

Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four.

At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive. So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah. Apart from their psychotic hatred of “our freedoms”, it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar -really impeccable Islamic behavior — and then got up at 5am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.

This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find. It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.

Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there’s nothing left of the planes.

Anybody who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash. Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and mange to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane?

This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along. There weren’t any explosives. It wasn’t an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine,and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosine — let alone the boiling point — which is what would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there’s about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine.

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as “mumbo jumbo”. This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, this very minute.

Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins. “Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact.” they state with pompous certainty. “Watch any Bruce Willis movie.” “Care to provide any documented examples? If it’s a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation — other than Bruce Willis movies?”

At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip. “Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there’s no way of telling.” they counter with a sly grin.

Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not vapourized into nothing. “But not big planes, with that much fuel “, they shriek in hysterical denial. Or that much metal to vapourize. “Yes but not hijacked planes!”

“Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?” “Now you’re just being silly”. Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs planted aboard them, and don’t vapourize into nothing. What’s so special about a tower that’s mostly glass?

But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. “Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact.” Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a “well known fact” and that “its never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to”, the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves ( if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit. loop…

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant veritcal collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosine. For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy.

You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper’s steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.

When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn’t make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is enough to: completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft: have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel ): still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all through the building.

This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosine lamps out camping. One moment you’re there innocently holding the lamp — the next — kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.

These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C, without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics. Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.

Since they’re already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way?

The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object, dropped from that height, meaning that its physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors. But according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11.

It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.

Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why. “Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir” “No miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except for my passport.” “You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms.”

Or perhaps they misunderstood the term “creative science” and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework. The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can’t be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn’t really required, 100C will generally do the job.)

This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city. That’s right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft.

You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but one identified by DNA testing.

So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you’re in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you’re trying to sell at any particular time. This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space inbetween. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring. The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat circular hole of about a 12 ft diameter through three rings ( six walls).A little later

a section of wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly physically impossible.

But hey, we’ve already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell — why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well? I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is “mumbo jumbo”. It conflicts with the delusion that they’re hooked on, so it “must be wrong” although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavour.

Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned.They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it’s exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior. (That’s a wonderful fruit loop.)

Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the wings — here’s where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.

When it suits them, they’ll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an “irrecoverable angle.”

How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in stupidity. Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance.

The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.

As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it’s not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.

At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in “retaliation” are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged.

Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia. Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.

A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil’s Storehouse of Human Knowledge

A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil’s Storehouse of Human Knowledge

Who decided women should shave their legs and underarms?

February 6, 1991

Dear Cecil:

Why do women shave their legs and underarms? When did this custom begin? If it’s for hygienic reasons, why don’t men to it too? Is it all a big conspiracy by the razor companies? I’ve heard some European women don’t shave. Please clarify this mystery.

— A., Chicago

Dear A.:

I knew if I procrastinated long enough on this often-asked question somebody would eventually do the legwork for me. Sure enough, Pete Cook of Chicago has sent me a 1982 article from the Journal of American Culture by Christine Hope bearing the grand title “Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture.”

The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915. (Leg hair came later.) The aim of what Hope calls the Great Underarm Campaign was to inform American womanhood of a problem that till then it didn’t know it had, namely unsightly underarm hair.

To be sure, women had been concerned about the appearance of their hair since time immemorial, but (sensibly) only the stuff you could see. Prior to World War I this meant scalp and, for an unlucky few, facial hair. Around 1915, however, sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit.

According to Hope, the underarm campaign began in May, 1915, in Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust. The first ad “featured a waist-up photograph of a young woman who appears to be dressed in a slip with a toga-like outfit covering one shoulder. Her arms are arched over her head revealing perfectly clear armpits. The first part of the ad read ‘Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair.’”

Within three months, Cook tells us, the once-shocking term “underarm” was being used. A few ads mentioned hygiene as a motive for getting rid of hair, but most appealed strictly to the ancient yearning to be hip. “The Woman of Fashion says the underarm must be as smooth as the face,” read a typical pitch.

The budding obsession with underarm hair drifted down to the proles fairly slowly, roughly matching the widening popularity of sheer and sleeveless dresses. Antiarm hair ads began appearing in middlebrow McCall’s in 1917. Women’s razors and depilatories didn’t show up in the Sears Roebuck catalog until 1922, the same year the company began offering dresses with sheer sleeves. By then the underarm battle was largely won. Advertisers no longer felt compelled to explain the need for their products but could concentrate simply on distinguishing themselves from their competitors.

The anti-leg hair campaign was more fitful. The volume of leg ads never reached the proportions of the underarm campaign. Women were apparently more ambivalent about calling attention to the lower half of their anatomy, perhaps out of fear that doing so would give the male of the species ideas in a way that naked underarms didn’t.

Besides, there wasn’t much practical need for shaved legs. After ris