Vleeptron_Z

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty Bare / okay okay I owe you 50,000 goddam trees, okay okay / in 28 days, bake & eat a pi(e)

2012-02-15T18:02:00.001-05:00

Click on images if you want to make any of them bigger.

e-mail to my nephew in Patagonia. Yes, he lives in Patagonia, Punta Arenas (Sandy Point) to be precise.

=======================

Hola D** y L***,

Once upon a time my response time to interesting and/or important communications was near-instantaneous, but as I have recently surpassed the 23741 day milestone, things is a-slowing down and I am easily distracted by all sorts of Alarums and Diversions and Hautboys in Another Part of the Forest.

Indeed, as you have so surprisingly brought to my attention,

[see topmost image above]

which, despite my careful calculation of the days I have been alive, escaped my attention -- and I love Prime Numbers the way normal people love chocolate and Lady Gaga.

The mathematician Hardy recalled of the self-taught number theorist Ramanujan

"Every positive whole number was one of his personal friends."

Everpresent at the fringes of Number Theory -- you can't get rid of it even if you use Lysol or Clorox or Dettol -- is Numerology, the conviction that within the Set of the Positive Whole Numbers lurks a powerful Sacred Magicke -- beginning with elementary crap like the number 13 (I am told some skyscrapers and office buildings are designed to have no 13th Floor, the elevator buttons just go 11 12 14 15), and then stuff like 666, but Numerology can get far more obtuse and arcane then that. Kabbalah may be the High-Water Mark of Numerology, and for about the last ten years this aberrant, verkakte bad neighborhood of Judaism has gone viral with the Celebrity Elite, chiefly Madonna, who is now an avowed Kabbalist. I got a pal in Lisboa who tells me her synagogue just hired a Kabbalist Rabbi, the whole joint now guides its adult and child members toward Kabbalah Truth, Wisdom and Sanctity.

The inventors of all modern Number Theory, the guys and gals who put it on the map, the Pythagoreans, were drunk on Numerology, so the Magickal Properties of Our Friends the Positive Whole Numbers has a very sexy and ancient provenance. One can only scoff at Numerology just so much, after which one is scoffing at The Master -- and The Master's adherents were so serious about this stuff that they flung a guy over a cliff to his death for proving that one of The Master's fundamental tenets was Wrong. (Such was their devotion to mathematical Truth that they notified the world of his discovery, but they were so pissed off that the moment he finished his blackboard demonstration, they hauled him out of the temple and threw him over the cliff.)

(Details of what The Master got wrong on request.)

So by what Engine or Craft did you discover that

[see topmost figure]

? My ability to program is currently Off-Line, so I had to resort to this cheesy site, and how they do it I haven't the foggiest notion.

When I was at Alice Deal Junior High School, my classmates and I were selected to be los Conejitos des Indies for an experimental curriculum which eventually became The New Math. There I learned the most amazing, bizarre Magicke Trick: The Sieve of Eratosthenes. This old dead Greek fart (c. 276 BC – c. 195 BC) cranked out a method to find all the Primes up to any desired number, and the goddam thang worked so goddam fast and so goddam well that the world's biggest supercomputers still use it to find huge primes and test themselves. Were you ever taught The Sieve? When the lightbulb dimly began glowing in my junior-high brain, I was just astonished, gobsmacked. This was One Very Smart Guy.

[see middle image]

Eratosthenes was no 1-Trick Pony. Using the lengths of shadows of sticks at Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan), he computed the first accurate circumference of the Earth. (Of course he, and all sailors, knew it was a sphere.) He was the Librarian of the Great Library and Museum at Alexandria, and a pen-pal of Archimedes in Syracuse.

Okay, at your slightest urging, I will be delighted to Prove To You that there is an Infinitude of Primes, that there exists no greatest Prime, beyond which there are no more primes. It's my fave Euclid proof. It's also a real gobsmacker.

[Abraham] Lincoln's birthday is coming up. For doing some electioneering for the local Illinois political boss, he was appointed a state surveyor -- a slight embarrassment, as he knew totally zilch about surveying. They gave him a theodolite and a crude Surveying Primer, and off he went to lay out Illinois' roads and county boundaries. (Most of his roads and boundaries remain as he surveyed them.)

He noticed that all over the Primer, on nearly every page, was

(cf. Euclid)

and he asked around about this Euclid guy, and was eventually lent a copy (in English) of "The Elements." Late in life he told an interviewer that he eventually completed every proof and demonstration and construction in Euclid, and that it was the most profound intellectual experience of his life. I've always been convinced that forcing himself to master Euclid (a feat best accomplished with a big bottle of aspirin) made him the undefeatable trial lawyer and debater he became.

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare,
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oh! Speaking of which -- you have 28 days to prepare for the world's most important fiesta:

[See bottom image]

which of course falls on 3/14 . (Traditionally you're supposed to bake and eat a pie.)

Unkie Munkie

Saturday 11 February 2012

Israeli reaches Chile plea deal to plant trees

(AP) SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile has settled its criminal case against an Israeli hiker accused of negligently causing a fire that destroyed much of the Torres del Paine national park.

Under Chile's obsolete Forests Law, pyromaniacs or negligent tourists can be fined no more than $300 for setting fires in national parks.

So instead of seeking a conviction, prosecutors worked out a deal with Israeli hiker Rotem Singer designed to restore much of the area destroyed after he allegedly set fire to toilet paper and it burned out of control.

The 23-year-old Singer has agreed to pay $10,000 and raise other money for an environmental group that will buy 50,000 native trees that will be used to replant the park by Chile's national forestry agency.

350+ prisoners die in Honduras prison fire

2012-02-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

Reuters (UK newswire)
Wednesday 15 February 2012

Honduras prison fire
kills more than
350 inmates

by Gustavo Palencia

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) -- A massive fire swept through an overcrowded prison in Honduras and killed more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

A senior official at the attorney general's office, Danelia Ferrera, said 357 people died in the blaze that began late on Tuesday night at the prison in Comayagua, about 75 km / 45 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

"It's a terrible scene ... Our staff went into the cells and the bodies are charred, most of them are unrecognizable," Ferrera told Reuters, adding that officials would have to use dental records and DNA in many cases to identify those killed.

It was one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America.

"We heard screaming from the people who caught on fire," one prisoner told reporters, showing the fingers he fractured in his escape from the fire. "We had to push up the roof panels to get out."

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, and there are frequent riots and clashes between rival street gangs in its cramped prisons.

But it was not yet clear if the prison fire was started during a riot or if it was an accident.

Worried and angry relatives surrounded the prison on Wednesday morning, at one point throwing rocks at police and trying to force their way inside the prison.

Police responded by firing shots into the air and shooting tear gas at protesters, most of whom were women.

President Porfirio Lobo said he suspended the director of the Comayagua prison and the head of the national prison system to ensure a thorough investigation.

He promised to "take urgent measures to deal with this tragedy, which has plunged all Hondurans into mourning".

There was confusion over the death toll, with some reports that more than 100 inmates had escaped and could have been mistakenly counted among the dead and others that the dead and missing totaled 402 people -- almost half the prison's inmates.

Lucy Marder, head of forensic services in Comayagua, said police reported that one of the dead was a woman who had stayed overnight at the prison and the rest were inmates, but she said some of the presumed dead could have escaped.

Local media reported that the Comayagua fire department chief also died in the blaze.

VIOLENT GANGS, DRUGS

Honduras' notoriously violent street gangs, known as 'maras', gained power inside Hispanic neighborhoods in the United States in the 1980s and then spread down into Central America. Their members wear distinctive tattoos and are involved in drugs and weapons trafficking, armed robbery and protection rackets.

The Comayagua prison housed more than 850 inmates -- well above its capacity. A local police chief read out the names of 457 survivors outside the prison, but relatives were not appeased.

"This is desperate, they won't tell us anything and I think my husband is dead," a crying Gregoria Zelaya told Canal 5 TV as she stood by a chain link fence.

Local firemen said they were prevented from entering the prison due to gunshots. But Daniel Orellana, head of the prison system, said there was no riot.

"We have two hypotheses, one is that a prisoner set fire to a mattress and the other one is that there was a short circuit in the electrical system," he said.

Across Honduras, prisons are filled to double their capacity with about 12,500 prisoners in jails meant to hold 6,000. More than 100 prisoners were killed in a fire in the textile manufacturing town of San Pedro Sula several years ago, and survivors said later that guards fired on prisoners trying to escape the blaze.

Honduras had more than 80 homicides per 100,000 people in 2009, a rate 16 times that of the United States, according to a United Nations report last year.

The country is a major drug trafficking transit point for South American cocaine moving north to consumers in the United States, and authorities say there is increasing presence of violent Mexican drug cartels in the country.

A political crisis ripped through Honduras in mid-2009 when a widely-condemned coup toppled the democratically elected president but the country has been trying to heal divisions since Lobo was elected later that year.

(Additional reporting by Cyntia Barrera and Mica Rosenberg in Mexico; Editing by Kieran Murray)
- 30 -

============
Wikipedia
============
Comayagua prison fire

    This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

Location     Comayagua, Honduras
Date     February 14–15, 2012
Ignition source     Suspected electrical fault or riot
Fatalities     357+

Between February 14 and 15, 2012, at least 357 inmates were killed in a fire in the National Prison of Comayagua in Honduras.[1] Many were trapped in their cells and either suffocated or were "burned beyond recognition".[2] The fire in the prison started late in the evening of February 14.[3] According to one prisoner, calls for help went out almost immediately and "for a while, nobody listened. But after a few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, a guard appeared with keys and let us out."[4] Rescue forces did not arrive until about 40 minutes later.[5]

Reuters termed the incident as "one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America."[6] The Associated Press added that this was "the world’s deadliest prison fire in at least a century."[4]

Casualties

There were 856 prisoners officially listed on the roster for the prison.[7] The Comayagua prison is considered a medium security facility, but of the inmates were being housed for serious crimes, such as murder and armed robbery.[4][5] Around 475 prisoners escaped, many through the roof of the facility, while 357 are missing and presumed dead.[2][4] According to firefighters, around 100 inmates burned to death or suffocated in their cells as the keys to release them could not be located.[7] Around 30 prisoners were transported to the capital to receive specialist treatment for severe burns.[2]

The chief of forensic medicine for the prosecutor's office stated that it would take at least three months to identify all of the victims, mainly from DNA samples.[8]
[edit] Cause

The exact cause of the fire is not yet know.[5] It was initially believed to have been the result of a riot, during which a mattress was ignited. This was denied by prison authorities who blamed it on an electrical fault.[9] Survivors reported that an inmate was responsible for the fire.[4] The unidentified man reported shouted "We will all die here!" and then set the place on fire.[4] His motives are unknown.[4]

Prison overcrowding, which is common in the region, has been cited as a contributing factor in death toll.[4] According to one survivor, 60 people were packed in a single cell.[4] Honduras has repeatedly been criticized for poor prison conditions by human rights groups in recent years.[4] The Comaygua fire is the fourth prison fire in Honduras since 1994 to result in 70 or more casualties.[4]
[edit] Aftermath

Relatives of the prisoners gathered outside the facility to discover the fate of the incarcerated, eventually leading to clashes with the police. Angry family members attempted to storm the prison to claim the remains of their loved ones and had to restrained with tear gas.[4] Some were seen hurling rocks at police officers.[4] The President of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, has demanded a full inquest into the disaster.[2]

whoopee Georgia USA gonna get 2 brand new nuclear power plants! Wheeeeeee! / There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!

2012-02-12T18:59:00.000-05:00

The USA Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just issued the first new nuclear power plant license -- two of them, in the Southern state Georgia -- since 1978.

Part of an exchange on the e-List Ionizing Radiation Affacionadi:

=================

Between issuing the first new USA nuclear power plant licenses since 1978, and the startup of any of these plants, there exist potential barriers that have proven effective many times in the past in preventing the startup of a new nuclear plant: massive construction cost overruns, and the increasingly unenthusiastic investors who react to the eventual disclosure of massive overruns.

These barriers are entirely independent of a poorly informed public, or assaults by anti-nuclear activist-ideologues.

The bottom line, figuratively and literally, is the willingness of investors to support the long and hyperexpensive construction process for several years. When, for any reason, sufficient capital ceases to fertilize the plant project, the plant dies, or begins to thrash around in an unfocused investment market that may involve bankruptcy and reorganization, or quick and bargain-basement sale to other entities.

There is also an ever-changing "weather" to nuclear power: The fluctuating regional market price of electricity generated by non-nuclear means. If it becomes significantly cheaper than the price the new nuclear plant would sell watts for, a collapse in demand for more expensive watts can kill the project.

Every new plant needs the blessings of the NRC and the federal authorities above it.

But they dwarf in significance compared to the blessings of Wall Street. When investors try to prophesy what their profits will be over the next 5 or 10 years, a historical absence of clear and accurate investment prophesy on billion-dollar-plus nuclear plant constructions can significantly dampen investor enthusiasm.

In the USA, the benchmark investment meltdown is (Wikipedia:)

The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor located adjacent to the Long Island Sound in East Shoreham, New York. The plant was built between 1973 and 1984 by the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), but never operated.

Eventually, LILCO sold the completed Shoreham plant to the state of New York for $1, and efforts were made to retro-convert the plant to a coal-burning generation facility -- with what success or investor satisfaction I don't know.

This list has been one of the Internet's most detailed and accurate chronicles of almost all aspects of the Fukushima incident. But one phenomenon this list has not discussed or "monitored" has been the behavior of the investment and capital market in the nuclear power industry for the decade before and the 11 months since Fukushima (commenced 11 March 2011). Surely this curve must be as interesting, significant and informative as ionizing radiation levels before and since Fukushima.

All investment takes and accepts risk, and runs the risk of partial or complete loss.

But some games in the casino are riskier and more volatile than others. (Best: blackjack. Worst: slots.)

One of the most stable and carefully monitored industries -- accurate government records date to at least the 18th century -- is Death, so in theory, investing in Death Futures should be the gold standard of stable prediction and investments.

About ten years ago, Canada's largest chain of funeral homes suddenly and without warning went bankrupt because of a freakishly mild winter. The vulnerable and the old die in usually predictable numbers during the stress of winter, and the funeral home chain had, as it always had, made its operating and purchasing plans on this known fact. When Canadians failed to die in the predicted numbers, the entire chain collapsed.

There's also a new "player" in town who wasn't playing the stock market the last time lots of nuclear plants were licensed and built in Western capitalist nations.

A huge amount of investing is now the result not of what humans think is a good bet, but is placed by computer programs, whose decisions to buy or dump huge blocks are triggered (within a hundredth of a second) by the behavior of dozens of fluctuating market conditions. This is called Programmed Trading. So a great deal of the behavior of the investment market results from the behavior of non-human intelligence. (We seem to be naturally and instinctively greedy; computers must be specifically instructed to try to make profit.) It's unlikely human investors can prophesy how computer programs will support the construction and eventual startup of a newly licensed nuclear power plant with much accuracy.

Bob / Massachusetts USA

----- Original Message -----
From: bcer_eh
To: GeigerCounterEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 9:05 PM
Subject: [GeigerCounterEnthusiasts] Re: 2 new nuclear plants in Georgia USA

You Americans. It wasn't mindless CNN drones that destroyed
chernobyl or Fukushima to prove that nuclear energy is not safe. It was highly-trained, highly-paid nuclear engineers. Not only did they prove that reactors are unsafe, they threatened the lives of millions of people and polluted the air and oceans.
Paranoia results in crazy thinking and bad decisions, not watching TV.

--- In GeigerCounterEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com, "jp2cbyou" wrote:
>
> Even if CNN is correct, and one is fully approved; it will be cancelled now because CNN informed their army of mindless drones followers. Expect P.I.T.A and N.A.M.B.L.A and the like crazies to show up at the construction site wearing suicide bomb vest to kill contractors and destroy equipment. Perhaps they will wait until the reactor is online to destroy it to prove nuclear energy is not safe. That is how they think.
>
> Justin

Murdoch scum tabloids settle phone-hacking lawsuits

2012-02-08T15:13:00.001-05:00

..............................Click photos to enlarge.

The Associated Press
USA newswire
Wednesday 8 February 2012

Rupert Murdoch's
tabloid empire
settles 9 more
hacking suits

by Raphael Satter

LONDON -- Rupert Murdoch's News International has settled nearly all the cases against the company in the first wave of lawsuits for phone hacking by its journalists, with a new round of apologies and payouts announced Wednesday in a London court.

But a potentially damaging claim lodged by British singer Charlotte Church is still headed to trial later this month and a wave of new lawsuits -- as many as 56 in all -- is looming, lawyers told London's High Court.

News International, a division of News Corp., has tried hard to keep phone hacking cases from going to trial, launching its own compensation program overseen by a respected former judge and paying out millions of pounds/dollars in all in out-of-court settlements for about 60 cases.

On Wednesday, lawyers announced that nine more lawsuits filed on behalf of about a dozen different people had been settled, including cases brought by comedian Steve Coogan, former soccer star Paul Gascoigne and maverick lawmaker George Galloway.

"This has never been about money," said Coogan, who received a settlement of 40,000 pounds (U$63,500). "Like other people who have sued, I was determined to do my part to show the depths to which the press can sink in pursuit of private information."

Gascoigne received 68,000 pounds ($108,000), while Simon Hughes, deputy leader of Britain's Liberal Democrat party, received 45,000 pounds ($71,500). Galloway, known for his uncompromising opposition to the Iraq war, received 25,000 pounds ($39,700) and an admission from News International lawyer Michael Silverleaf that the company had intercepted five of the lawmaker's voicemails around the time of the 2003 invasion.

Sally King, a friend of former British Home Secretary David Blunkett, received 60,000 pounds ($95,300), while her husband, Andrew, received 50,000 pounds ($79,400). Silverleaf acknowledged that a News of the World journalist even followed the pair to the U.S. as they tried to find refuge there from the press.

Her father and brother also received substantial damages, as did former Labour Party strategist Alastair Campbell and a series of other claimants.

After each settlement, Silverleaf said the Murdoch company had accepted responsibility and regretted the damage it had caused. The company also agreed to pay the claimants' legal fees.

The lawsuits stem from revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the now-defunct Murdoch tabloid, the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voicemails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops.

Murdoch closed the 168-year-old paper in July amid a wave of public revulsion over its 2002 interception of voicemails belonging to a missing 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. Murdoch and his company paid millions to the Dowler family.

But the lawsuit by Church, a former child singing prodigy, heads into court beginning 28 February. It is one of the more embarrassing cases for Murdoch, who had the angel-voiced singer perform at his wedding when she was 13.

Silverleaf said Church's lawsuit was "one of the more complicated cases, and one where the claimants have taken a particularly polarized view."

Last year Church testified before a British media ethics inquiry that Murdoch's newspapers and other British tabloids had spent years tormenting her, often while she was just in her teens, blowing her credibility "to bits" and damaging her career. She detailed how cameramen had tried to take photos up her skirt and how reporters had published details about her sex life when she was just 17.

Wednesday's arguments between Church's lawyer David Sherborne and Silverleaf largely focused on how the court would measure the toll that journalists' attention took on her mental health and her family's business.

A lawyer for the News of the World's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who Church is also suing, asked that the case be heard at least in part in secret to avoid prejudicing any potential criminal case against Mulcaire. Judge Geoffrey Vos, however, indicated such a move would be unlikely.

Vos said he was "extremely hostile" to imposing blanket reporting restrictions on the Church case because of the public interest in letting the facts be known. He said he might consider an "appropriate, limited order" at a later hearing.

Despite the latest Murdoch settlements, there's no end in sight yet to the scandal. Victims' lawyer Hugh Tomlinson told the court that six more people had decided to sue and that 50 others were at various stages in preparing their lawsuits.

At the same time, three parallel police investigations are under way into wrongdoing not only at the News of the World but also at two other Murdoch papers in Britain, The Sun and The Times. More than a dozen ex-Murdoch employees have been arrested and several executives have resigned.

British politicians and police also have been ensnared in the scandal, which exposed the cozy relationship between senior officers, top lawmakers and newspaper executives and the bribery of police for information.

The government-commissioned ethics inquiry is currently investigating British media practics and media links to police and politicians. Heather Mills, the former wife of musician Paul McCartney, is expected to testify before that inquiry Thursday.
..............- 30 -

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

anti-Planned Parenthood hatchetwoman Karen Handel resigns from Komen for the Cure [for breast cancer]

2012-02-07T13:51:00.000-05:00

Karen Handel

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
daily broadsheet, Atlanta Georgia USA
Tuesday 7 February 2012

Karen Handel resigns

from Komen for the Cure

by Jim Galloway, Political Insider

Karen Handel, the former GOP candidate for [Georgia] governor, just announced her resignation as a senior vice president for public policy of Susan G. Komen for the Cure -- one week after the breast cancer charity reversed itself on a decision to sever financial ties with Planned Parenthood.

Below is the letter. Note that Handel says she is declining the offer of a severance package from Komen -- which might have required her to keep silent.

=============================

February 7, 2012

The Honorable Nancy Brinker
CEO, Susan G. Komen for the Cure

VIA EMAIL
5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250
Dallas, Texas 75244

Dear Ambassador Brinker:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been the recognized leader for more 30 years in the fight against breast cancer here in the US -– and increasingly around the world.

    As you know, I have always kept Komen’s mission and the women we serve as my highest priority -- as they have been for the entire organization, the Komen Affiliates, our many supporters and donors, and the entire community of breast cancer survivors. I have carried out my responsibilities faithfully and in line with the Board’s objectives and the direction provided by you and Liz.

    We can all agree that this is a challenging and deeply unsettling situation for all involved in the fight against breast cancer. However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.

    I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.

    What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision -- one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact -- has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly.

    Just as Komen’s best interests and the fight against breast cancer have always been foremost in every aspect of my work, so too are these my priorities in coming to the decision to resign effective immediately. While I appreciate your raising a possible severance package, I respectfully decline. It is my most sincere hope that Komen is allowed to now refocus its attention and energies on its mission.

    Sincerely,

[Karen Handel]

1st Day Issue / Postalö Vleeptron / Bob's Birthday / Bob becomes an Entitlement schnorrer

2012-02-05T12:54:00.001-05:00

Click stamps to enlarge.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure (for breast cancer) plays stooge for right-wing anti-abortion whackos, then has to eat its words / right-wing whacko-in-chief Karen Handel

2012-02-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

As odd as it has seemed to me at the time, women and girls have asked me for advice about their women's health problems.

Knowing absolutely nothing about women's health, I've always sent them straight to Planned Parenthood. I know they'll be treated with excellence.

Now I'm amending my advice and telling all girls and women to stay far away from Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Komen plays footsie with right-wing fundamentalist women-enslaving politicians -- and would rather push a political agenda than help women and their health issues.

==================

The Associated Press
USA newswire
Friday 3 February 2012
Komen drops plans to cut

Planned Parenthood grants

NEW YORK -- The Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast-cancer charity on Friday abandoned plans to eliminate grants to Planned Parenthood. The startling decision came after three days of virulent criticism that resounded across the Internet, jeopardizing Komen's iconic image.

"We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives," a Komen statement said.

As first reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday, Komen had adopted criteria excluding Planned Parenthood from future grants for breast-cancer screenings because it was under government investigation, citing a probe launched by a Florida congressman at the urging of anti-abortion groups.

Komen said it would change the criteria "to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."

"We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants," the statement said.

Many of Komen's affiliates across the country had openly rebelled against the decision to cut the funding, which totaled $680,000 in 2011. One affiliate, in Aspen, Colo., had announced Thursday that it would defy the new rules and continue grants to its local Planned Parenthood partner.

In addition, Komen was inundated with negative comments via emails, on Twitter and on its Facebook page. Many of the messages conveyed a determination to halt gifts to Komen -- organizer of the popular Race for the Cure events -- because of the decision.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood was reporting an outpouring of support — donations large and small, triggered by the Komen decision, that it said surpassed $3,000,000 since the story broke. It has pledged to use the funds to maintain and expand its breast health services.

Planned Parenthood's president, Cecile Richards, thanked those donors Friday and welcomed Komen's change of heart.

"We are enormously grateful that the Komen Foundation has clarified its grantmaking criteria," Richards said. "What these past few days have demonstrated is the deep resolve all Americans share in the fight against cancer."

Through the Komen grants, Planned Parenthood says its health centers provided nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams and more than 6,400 mammogram referrals over the past five years.

Komen, in its statement, said it was immediately starting an outreach to its affiliates and supporters to get the charity back on track.

"We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue," Komen said. "We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics -- anyone's politics."

On Tuesday, when Komen's plans to stop funding Planned Parenthood were revealed, there was an immediate and powerful reaction. Anti-abortion activists, long opponents of Planned Parenthood, applauded the decision, and said that they would now be able to support Komen's activities.

But others decried what they considered a political act by a charity that had become ubiquitous in the fight against breast cancer.

A family foundation in Dallas made a $250,000 donation to Planned Parenthood, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a $250,000 matching pledge against future donations. In Washington, 26 U.S. senators -- all Democrats except for independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- signed a letter calling on Komen to reconsider its decision.

"It would be tragic if any woman -- let alone thousands of women -- lost access to these potentially lifesaving screenings because of a politically motivated attack," they wrote.

On Thursday, Komen's top leaders held their first news conference since the controversy erupted and denied that its decision was driven by pressure from anti-abortion groups.

"We don't base our funding decisions ... on whether one side or the other will be pleased," said Komen's founder and CEO, Nancy Brinker.

While previously Komen had said it had merely decided to bar grants to organizations under investigation, Brinker insisted there were additional factors, notably changes in the types of breast-health service providers it wanted to support.

A source with direct knowledge of decision-making at Komen's headquarters in Dallas gave a different account, saying the new policies were adopted with the deliberate intention of targeting Planned Parenthood. According to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, a driving force behind the move was Karen Handel, hired by Komen last year as vice president for public policy after losing a campaign for governor in Georgia in which she stressed her anti-abortion views and frequently denounced Planned Parenthood.

Brinker, in an interview with MSNBC, said Handel didn't have a significant role in the policy change.
- 30 -

===========

San Jose Mercury-News
daily broadsheet
San Jose, California USA
Friday 3 February 2012

Editorial:

Komen puts politics

before women's health

The Susan G. Komen Foundation revealed its true colors Tuesday, and there wasn't a hint of its trademark pink in sight. Komen put red-state, right-wing politics above low-income women's health, pure and simple, with its decision to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood to pay for breast cancer screenings.

It could be the most cowardly act by a health foundation in U.S. history.

Fortunately, the backlash has been powerful, particularly among the many professional women who until now have valued and supported both charities and suddenly feel betrayed. Their voices and their financial support need to remain strong on behalf of the women with no health insurance whose care makes up 97 percent of Planned Parenthood's work -- a fact often drowned out by the political static over the 3 percent involving abortions. In rural areas, Planned Parenthood health clinics often are the only places women can receive any type of health care.

Komen gave Planned Parenthood almost $700,000 in 2011 to provide poor women with breast cancer screenings who otherwise would not have received them; mammograms aren't free. About 170,000 women benefitted. Withdrawing the money and reducing the number of early detections of breast cancer will hand some of those women a death sentence. How pro-life is that?

Komen CEO Nancy Brinker, sister of the late Susan G. Komen, asserts that the decision wasn't political.

Give us a break. Brinker is a major Republican donor who was ambassador to Hungary in the George W. Bush administration. The foundation's relationship with Planned Parenthood was never a warm one. Then, in 2010, Brinker hired Karen Handel as senior vice president for public policy. When Handel ran for governor of Georgia, she drew the endorsement of Sarah Palin by describing herself as "staunchly and unequivocally pro-life."

At Komen, she immediately began a full review of the foundation's grants and declared a policy of denying funding to any organization under investigation by federal, state or local authorities. Imagine how shocked, shocked, she was when [Republican] Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns soon after announced a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood.

This is the same Stearns who was ridiculed this past spring for filing an amendment that forces all 9/11 first responders requesting compensation for injuries to first be checked against the terrorist watch list to make sure they're not terrorists. The Stearns whose stated goal is to strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding, "now and forever," even though the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding for abortions.

Planned Parenthood has meticulously kept any federal dollars as well as Komen grants separate from these services. The Health and Human Services inspector general and state Medicaid programs conduct audits of Planned Parenthood. The findings are a matter of public record. The congressional investigation is purely a political tool to cut health care for poor women.

Both Komen and Planned Parenthood over the years have saved lives and helped women who had no place else to turn for care. What a tragedy that right-wing politics has intervened in what should be common cause.

- 30 -

========================

The Baltimore Sun
daily broadsheet, Maryland USA
Friday 3 February 2012
Komen controversy puts

Maryland native in spotlight
Karen Handel criticized

amid Planned Parenthood flap

by Yvonne Wenger and Jill Rosen, The Baltimore Sun

As the funding controversy swirled around Susan G. Komen for the Cure this week, much of the criticism was directed not at the group's chief executive but at a Maryland native who serves as a senior policy adviser.

Karen Handel, who faced a hard-luck childhood in Prince George's County [a suburb of Washington DC], has been painted in the media as an architect of the group's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, and many critics took aim at her background as a candidate for Georgia governor in 2010. In the Republican primary race -- in which she was endorsed by both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin -- she showcased her anti-abortion philosophy and promised to cut state grants to Planned Parenthood.

Komen's founder and CEO, Nancy G. Brinker, in an interview with MSNBC [cable TV news channel], denied that Handel drove the organization's decision.

Still, some critics pointed to a comment Handel, Komen's vice president for public policy, made on the social media site Twitter.

After the Planned Parenthood news erupted, Handel, though not the original author, sent this message to her Twitter followers: "Just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river."

She later deleted the comment, but it was captured as a screen grab and widely circulated.

The spotlight of politics and the Komen debate seem an unlikely twist for Handel, 49, who has described a rough upbringing -- which led Palin to call her a "self-made, strong woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps."

During the 2010 campaign, Handel told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she left her family home in Upper Marlboro when she was 17 years old to get away from her mother, whom she described as an alcoholic who had pulled a gun on her.

Handel, whose maiden name was Karen Walker, graduated in 1980 from Frederick Douglass High School in Prince George's County. She then worked, taking college courses at nights and on weekends. She said she took the certified public accountant's exam without earning a degree.

"Remember the context of my life," she told the newspaper in 2010. "I'm on my own at 17. My first job was at AARP. I think I made $9,050 a year. The idea I could go to college at night, get enough credits in accounting and sit for the CPA, I was like, 'Wow, I can have a real life.'"

Neither Handel nor the Komen organization responded to a request from The Baltimore Sun for comment.

Handel has not been quoted in the major media since the Planned Parenthood controversy began.

Handel attended Prince George's Community College and the University of Maryland, according to the Journal-Constitution.

Rob Simms, a close friend who aided Handel's political career, said she relocated from the Washington metropolitan area to Georgia when her husband, Steve, accepted a job offer. The Handels have been married for about 20 years and have no children.

"I think Karen, as long as I've known her, felt a calling to serve and be an active participant in her community and her state," Simms said Friday. "Karen is a very driven, smart, independent person. I think those qualities and traits were certainly, in part, developed as she was growing up and dealing with what was not the best or ideal family situation."

After Handel lost the 2010 GOP primary to Nathan Deal, who went on to become governor, she weighed her options and found the breast cancer advocacy group to be a good fit, Simms said. Handel had worked as deputy chief of staff to Marilyn Quayle, wife of former Vice President Dan Quayle, as part of her breast cancer awareness outreach efforts.

That program, according to Handel's Facebook page, eventually led to the founding of Komen's Race for the Cure.

Simms said Handel now splits her time between Atlanta and Washington for her job with Komen.

He said that Georgia is home to Handel, but she still has family in the Washington region. And he noted that her Maryland upbringing helped shape who she is today, including her love for the National Football League's Colts, who were based in Baltimore before moving to Indianapolis.

Simms and Handel met about 12 years ago when they worked in Fulton County, Ga., the county in which Atlanta lies. He worked on her campaigns and served as her deputy after she was elected Georgia's
secretary of state. Simms is now chief of staff to Rep. Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican.

Handel moved to Georgia in the 1990s, and got her political start as chairwoman of the Fulton County Commission before becoming the state's first Republican secretary of state since the Civil War.

Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, said Handel is "quite conservative" and moved even further to the right when she became a statewide candidate.

Officials at Planned Parenthood in Georgia were taken aback by Handel's criticism as a gubernatorial candidate. Until then, she had been supportive of the organization's mission, sais Leola Reis, vice president of external affairs for Planned Parenthood Southeast.

Reis and others had previously applauded Handel, who had defended Georgia's funding of Fulton County breast cancer screenings and family-planning services when other lawmakers proposed cutting it.

"She had previously indicated an appreciation and an understanding of the work that Planned Parenthood does," Reis said. "Then she turned around and used it as a battle cry in her campaign."

Handel often spoke of her opposition of abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life was at risk. Even so, she came under fire from Georgia Right to Life, whose leadership did not find her to be "pro-life enough," according to the Journal-Constitution.

During the campaign, Handel also found herself embroiled in a controversy over her association with a group of gay and lesbian voters, known as the Log Cabin Republicans, according to the Journal-Constitution.

The former head of the GOP group released emails from 2002 and 2003 from Handel's address, while she was a candidate for Fulton County commissioner, that indicate she supported granting benefits to county employees in same-sex domestic partnerships, the newspaper reported.

Handel denied supporting same-sex partnerships and said that while on the commission she voted against a plan to extend benefits to domestic partners.

Bullock said the flap damaged her candidacy but wasn't its death knell, and Handel won the commissioner election.

If Handel takes the fall for the Planned Parenthood controversy, Bullock said, she could end up gaining. Conservatives might see her a "sacrificial lamb" and be eager to sign her up for a Republican cause.

Handel said in an April 12 statement, when she accepted the vice president's job, that the mission of Susan G. Komen for the Cure was extremely important, given the federal government's budget constraints.

According to the statement on the organization's website, she said: "It is imperative that Komen leads the charge with policymakers to help ensure access to crucial breast cancer screening and treatment programs for the millions of women around the country who need them."

ywenger@baltsun.com
twitter.com/yvonnewenger
jill.rosen@baltsun.com
- 30 -

ferry sinks off northeast coast of Papua New Guinea

2012-02-02T04:14:00.000-05:00

BBC News2 February 2012
Last updated at 02:48 ET

Papua New Guinea:
Many rescued after ferry sinks

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard: ''This is obviously a major tragedy''

"There are people floating in life jackets"
More than 200 people have been rescued from the sea off Papua New Guinea (PNG)'s north coast after a ferry sank with up to 350 on board, officials say.

Captain Nurur Rahman, from PNG's National Maritime Safety Authority (NMSA), told the BBC most people had been rescued from the water.

Efforts were continuing to pick up as many as possible before sunset, he said.

Australia PM Julia Gillard earlier said the incident was a "major tragedy".

Ms Gillard said the authorities were urgently trying to find out if any Australians were on board.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said the cause had yet to be confirmed, and he sent his sympathies to the families of those involved.

The MV Rabaul Queen, operated by PNG company Star Ships, was travelling between the towns of Kimbe and Lae.

It sent out a distress signal in the early hours of Thursday.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is assisting the PNG authorities, has confirmed that the vessel sank approximately 16km (9.9 miles) off Finschhafen.

Eight ships and three helicopters are at the scene helping with the rescue. Three Australian fixed-wing aircraft have also been sent, says the BBC's Duncan Kennedy in Sydney.

Earlier, Capt Rahman told the BBC he had reports of people floating in life jackets where the boat sank.

A Star Ships spokesman told the AFP news agency that "bad weather" was believed to have sunk the ship.

"[There are] survivors. At the moment rescuers from Australia are at the site. No fatalities have been reported yet," the spokesman said.

Star Ships is one of PNG's biggest ship operators.
- 30 -

Is this and this and this and this and this and this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? / Republican Hair Helmet / why Magyars are from Mars / why Callista is from Yobbo or Hoon

2012-02-02T00:16:00.001-05:00

Click stamps to enlarge.

United States Pustule Service
1st Day Issue / 6-sheet
Callista

Is it possible you don't know what, or who, this is?

Be patient, citizens of Papua New Guinea!

Just wait! Because there is an outside-outside off-off-Broadway left-field chance that this very odd image will be thrust in your faces 24/7 after the summer Republican Party convention (in Tampa, Florida).

And then there is an infinitessimal chance -- we're talking asymptotic here -- that in November, this very odd image will be the new First Lady, the wife of the new president of the United States.

(ATTENTION GAMBLERS: DO NOT PUT YOUR LIFE SAVINGS ON THIS LONG-SHOT. This is not a Sure Thing like Brasil in the World Cup was.)

There is very little TV or Internet evidence that she has a voice or can make audible noises. The campaign has her more gagged than the vault guards during the Brinx Robbery.

About 2.5 weeks ago, she pulled a Comet Halley and actually sat down with someone pretending to be a journalist and gave a Fiesta de Softbol which resembled a brief interview. I didn't see/hear it, so to me it's just an unsubstantiated rumor that she has a voice box and can make herself audibly understood.

Maybe YouTube keyword Callista or Callista speaks or voice of Callista.

Well anyway, Gawker got to the core of the question everyone in North America has been asking:

What the hell is all that crap north of her throat?

Because it's ALWAYS like that. There exist no public images of this honey where she has -- comment d'it on? -- let her hair down, no papparazo snap of her a half-mile down a beach with the wind whipping through natural human female hair. Perhaps holding hands with Newt, who is wearing surfer trunks, like Blaine wore when he briefly had a dalliance on the beach with Barbie.

When she's out the front door, this is what the world sees every time. (cf. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffmann.)

Lately S.W.M.B.O. and I have been irradiating ourself with unusually heavy doses of satellite (we got DirecTV) programs dealing with the cryptonormal or the xenobiological or the exobiotical, programs whose fundamental premise is whack jive nonsense, like that UFO Aliens inseminated Early Man and inserted into our DNA the lust for gold sufficient to keep digging and prospecting and mining it. In other words, Aliens have made us into their DNA-hypnotic Gold Slaves (because the Aliens love and value gold, but they don't like hard work, so they screwed with our DNA to make us do all the hard work for them. Get used to it. Buy a shovel).

Many experts in xenopolitical science or crypto- or exo-biopolitics believe Callista is not of our species, but is from Another World.

This would explain why she chats within microphone range so rarely -- her thick Xnvvvvvvvietto accent, which you can spot 4.71 light years away.

At Los Alamos in the late 1940s, there was a Theory, with many adherents and advocates, that Hungarians were actually Martians. The obvious evidence:

1. ethereal transcendent intellect

2. they move around a lot, they're always moving somewhere else

3. their lingo is totally unlike any of the other human languages surrounding Hungary

... so a very good case could be made that these hyper-brainy people are always changing countries and continents because they don't want to give the neighbors much time to get to know them -- and begin to suspect they're Martians.

As evidence to quash doubters, they would point around the cafeteria to Edward Teller or John von Neumann or Leo Szilard or about 6 other Magyars fundamentally important to making nuclear bombs go boom. The first humans to build a nuclear bomb were instructed largely by Magyars -- possibly because they'd had them on Mars for 94,000 years and knew all about how to design them.

So it is equally true, a fortiori, that this babe is from Outer Space -- could be from Planet Hoon, or Mollyringwald, maybe from Yobbo.

There is a way to verify this Theory. All of these species, the Hooners, the Mollyringwaldiattes, the Yobbooooo, fart concentrated gaseous nitromethane (CH3NO2). So if you sneak up behind one of them unsuspecting with a Bic, either nothing happens, or you level four city blocks. Then everyone would know this is a Theory.

But let's start with the thing on her head.

============================

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

============================

Callista, also can be spelt as Calista, Callistee, Kallista, Kalista or Kallistee comes from the Greek for "most beautiful (fem.)" (καλλίστη - kalliste).

As a name it is derived from the Greek name of a huntress in the myth of Callisto, who was loved by Zeus. The name Callisto was changed to the common Callista for use as a name because in Latin Callista is the feminine form.

==============================

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gawker

Owner    Gawker Media
Created by    Nick Denton (Publisher)
A.J. Daulerio (Editor-in-Chief)
Hamilton Nolan, Brian Moylan, Maureen O'Connor, Adrian Chen, Jim Newell, John Cook, Max Read (staff writers)
Launched    January 2003
Current status    Active

Gawker is a newsmagazine/blog based in New York City that bills itself as "the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip" and focuses on celebrities and the media industry.

Founded in 2003, Gawker is the flagship blog for Nick Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker has created other blogs, including Defamer, covering Los Angeles, and Valleywag covering Silicon Valley. Since folding those other blogs into Gawker.com itself, the site now uses the slogan "Gossip from Manhattan and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley".

*****************************
Bob's Birthday:
Sunday 5 February 2012
If you're not busy that day ...
*****************************
========================

Gawker
Wednesday 1 February 2012

The Secrets of the
Republican Hair Helmet

by Brian Moylan

This has been a remarkably entertaining Republican primary season. Amidst all the insanity, there is one thing that is so odd, unnatural, and reprehensible that it boggles my mind. No, I'm not talking about Rick Santorum. I'm talking about Callista Gingrich's hair. Her butter-blonde helmet is a feat of modern engineering. How does she get it just so?

Callista's hair is a thing of devious genius. It is also the only thing about New Gingrich that is grosser than he is asking for an open marriage. Still, her bob is exactly the same every time you see her before the camera: the indescribable height, the precise wave, the texture that simultaneously looks shellacked and like cotton candy. Callista's follicular fortress joins the ranks of other great Republican domes like Nancy Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's (who wasn't really a Republican, but come on). So how the hell does she do it?

I called up Michael Angelo, owner of Wonderland Beauty Parlor here in New York. He helped us figure out what was wrong with Donald Trump's hair so I figured he'd be able to help here.

"It's 2012," Mr. Angelo says. "If I was looking back I'd say it was rollers and back combing, but I'm thinking it must be set with a curling iron and combed out. There's no way it's done with a blow dryer and a round brush. I don't know how you get that out of a blow dryer alone."

Michael says that Maggie Thatcher thatched her roof with rollers, as you'll see in the (deplorably bad) movie The Iron Lady but using rollers is out of favor in the hair style world. He suggests that there is a mousse or gel in the hair for foundation and then it is set, combed out, sculpted, and hairsprayed within an inch of its life.

I ask him how he would give a client the "Callista Gingrich" if she was deluded enough to ask for it. "Someone who is not a drag queen? Like a real girl? I would have to start with the cut. It has to be short enough layers around the top where you can bulk it up high without having too much weight."

What is remarkable about her 'do is that it is precisely the same every time she is in public view. "The reality of a hairstyle like that is that it takes masterful skill," he says. "You have to know every quirk of a person's hair growth to get it to work and be exactly the same every time. You can't trust that to a random stranger. She must have someone full time or close to it." He adds that not only is she dying it probably every two weeks to keep from getting any roots whatsoever, but there is no way she is doing her hair on her own on a daily basis. Having her own (probably expensive) hairstylist on staff seems like it would be a White House spending scandal waiting to happen if (God forbid) Newt were to be elected President. Just remember the John Edwards $400 haircut fiasco? This would be even worse.

What is more scandalous than that, however, is the idea that a woman would favor a haircut that seems even more reactionary than her husband's politics. While Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are deplorable for their own reasons, at least Sarah's unfussy soccer mom updo's and Michele's natural-seeming cascade appear modern, effortless, and flattering. To liberals Callista looks like some sort of dead-eyed, Lego-haired Stepford Bible beater and after beauty queens like Palin, Bachmann, Ann Coulter, and S.E. Cupp, Callista looks a bit marmish and out of style. Even to conservatives.

With this haircut, Callista just seems so old fashioned, like her hair would be more suited to Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, or even Jackie Kennedy. Or maybe that's the thing? Maybe she's trying to weasel her way into our little minds by forcing us to associate her with a first lady just on her nostalgic noggin alone. She's winning votes one stealthy suggestion at a time.

Even Michael Angelo wonders what hair stylist would give her such an old-fashioned cut, unless she goes to the same D.C. salon as all the other out of touch GOP grande dames. (According to The New Yorker she gets it done at Sugar House in Old Town in Alexandria, Va., outside of D.C.). Or maybe it's something more sinister. Michael says, "I'm just wondering if there is some queen behind the chair laughing his ass off. 'Take this, you Republican bitch.'"

Contact Brian Moylan:

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Discussion Threads

TabithaIapetus
23 Jan 2012 4:47 PM
What trips me out about this chick is that she is 45-years old. And yet, she chooses to look 60+.

Excusado @TabithaIapetus
WHAT??!!!! NO WAY. No freaking way.

Paddington @TabithaIapetus
Geez, is she really? Wow.

pomolly @TabithaIapetus
It's amazing, isn't it.

gerbilsoutofexile @TabithaIapetus
Holy shit, how is it that I'm almost 50, and still have a more up-to-date do than her? That is frightening.

Liz the Whiz @TabithaIapetus
Woah! I didn't know that! She looks like she's in her 50's!!!

Newt probably orchestrated this so she wouldn't look like his child-bride. Since she looks older, he's hoping that people don't remember their vast age difference.

Tigrrl @TabithaIapetus
Whoa. I thought she was much older, at least a youngish looking 55. I would have said, hey, she looks okay for 55, but 45? Whoa.

Wren @TabithaIapetus
She chooses to look like Newt. It's the only way she might hold onto him, for his self-love knows no bounds or end. The same cannot be said for wives.

There's a Visine for that @TabithaIapetus
You just blew my mind. I assumed she was in her early 60s up until now.

There's a Visine for that @Tigrrl
I really don't think she looks okay for 55. My mom and her friends are all hovering around 55 and they look like svelte young things compared to Callista. Her skin looks rough, but I think styling might have a lot to do with how ruddy she looks. Like, her and Pelosi look like they'd tennis together.

ShuchitaJulisa @gerbilsoutofexile
I think it's deliberate. The hair, the makeup, the clothes. All to avoid acting as a constant reminder that Gingrich left Wife #2 for a much younger woman. THis way, she doesn't seem any younger than her does.
promoted by gerbilsoutofexile

hfool @Wren
I beg to differ. Newt's wives will be boundless and endless, should he get his way. And, in fact, he leaves a religion with each one, as a token of his love.

gerbilsoutofexile @ShuchitaJulisa
I think it's because she came from the factory like that.

Tigrrl @There's a Visine for that
I guess I was feeling generous, but she does look like crap. With all that effort it takes trying to repress the memory of how she stole another woman's husband that's eating away at her from inside, no wonder her skin looks so bad. edited for errant apostrophe
Edited by Tigrrl at 01/23/12 5:37 PM

TabithaIap… @gerbilsoutofexile HA!

Hickory @TabithaIapetus
Yup, it'stotal old lady hair.

Hickory @Liz the Whiz
Or maybe its some kind of Stockholm syndrome thing

TimotheaDadillac @TabithaIapetus
Look at older photos of her when her hair was longer and "free". She looked like a school-girl. She got into this relationship for one reason: to become the next First Lady. Personally I couldn't do that romping mound of lardo for all the power in the world.

sekushinonyanko @ShuchitaJulisa
I think it's deliberate as well. Like on Mad Men when Betty Draper got with the governor. She started dressing and styling her hair in a much more matronly, old-fashioned kind of way and it's easy to imagine she was trying to match her husband.

watchwhathappens @TabithaIapetus
yeah, she's my age. trust me, I look noooothing like that and it flips me out that she does. I don't even know how it's possible.

Sinister Dexter @TabithaIapetus
It's probably deliberate. I mean, if she looks that much closer to his age, then its easier to downplay the fact that Newt's a creeper perv who married a woman 23 years his junior.

Postalo Vleeptron commemorative: my pal Diedrick's 81st birthday! (less crappy v.2)

2012-01-30T00:38:00.002-05:00

Click stamp to enlarge.

the Ron Paul newsletters / using racism, homophobia and antisemitism as money-making tools

2012-01-28T01:32:00.001-05:00

Well, this is where I say farewell to Ron Paul.

As I wave goodbye, I can't do it without repeating my admiration for his promise -- if elected president of the United States -- immediately to end both the US war in Afghanistan and the US war in Iraq. In 2008, only Paul and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Democrat from Ohio) made that promise. In this campaign, Paul is the only candidate to make that promise.

But as Paul has shown surprising strength and popularity in his presidential campaign, the media has, very naturally and appropriately, looked deeper into the life and career of the Congressman from Texas -- nominally a Republican, but perhaps the most famous and most politically successful Libertarian in the USA.

Is he an anti-black racist? Is he antisemitic? Is he a homophobic gay-basher?

This very interesting and detailed history by The Washington Post suggests he's something else, something even more distasteful and more troubling.

Ron Paul is a guy who uses anti-black hatred, fear and bigotry, and antisemitism, and homophobia as resources, as tools to make money.

There was never a snowball's chance in hell that Ron Paul would win the Republican presidential nomination, and never a snowball's chance in hell that Ron Paul would become president of the United States.

But he has effectively stirred passions -- backed by an astonishing success at fund-raising, all of it
in small donations from ordinary citizens -- and forced his presence into a high position in the 2012 presidential race.

If The Post account is to be believed, Ron Paul seems to think that honesty and truth are less important than campaign success and whipping up a fear- and bigotry-driven environment to make his endeavors flourish.

African-Americans, homosexuals, Jews -- well, Ron Paul certainly didn't invent using them as
political scapegoats.

But his actions and his words put decent Americans (of any political party) on one side of a clear line, and Ron Paul very sadly and shamefully on the other side of the decency boundary.

As his nature and beliefs become clearer to the public, what should Ron Paul do?

That's not the question.

The question is: What should American voters do?

They should dump Ron Paul like radioactive slime. They should stop sending him money. They should stop voting for him.

Me, I'm not sorry I've praised his Stop The Wars Now promise. The wars suck, they're foot-shooting and hopeless, they're catastrophically expensive, they've killed thousands of our neighbors' children and maimed many thousands more. But almost no mainstream politicians with any national stature have had the courage to say it.

We need someone with character, with courage, with scrupulous honesty to help America shut down the Afghanistan War.

Someone with decency and character, someone with honesty -- so that lets Ron Paul out.

===================

The Washington Post
(USA daily broadsheet, Washington DC)
Friday 27 January 2012

Paul pursued strategy
of publishing controversial
newsletters, associates say

by Jerry Markon and Alice Crites

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian, has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, said three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product ... He would proof it," said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman’s.

The newsletters point to a rarely seen and somewhat opaque side of Paul, who has surprised the political community by becoming an important factor in the Republican race. The candidate, who has presented himself as a kindly doctor and political truth teller, declined in a recent debate to release his tax returns, joking that he would be “embarrassed” about his income compared with that of his richer GOP rivals.

Yet a review of his enterprises reveals a sharp-eyed businessman who for nearly two decades oversaw the company and a nonprofit foundation, intertwining them with his political career. The newsletters, which were launched in the mid-1980s and bore such names as the Ron Paul Survival Report, were produced by a company Paul dissolved in 2001.

The company shared offices with his campaigns and foundation at various points, said those familiar with the operation. Public records show Paul’s wife and daughter were officers of the newsletter company and foundation; his daughter also served as his campaign treasurer.

Jesse Benton, a presidential campaign spokesman, said that the accounts of Paul’s involvement were untrue and that Paul was practicing medicine full time when “the offensive material appeared under his name.” Paul “abhors it, rejects it and has taken responsibility for it as he should have better policed the work being done under his masthead,” Benton said. He did not comment on Paul’s business strategy.

‘I’ve never read that stuff’

Mark Elam, a longtime Paul associate whose company printed the newsletters, said Paul “was a busy man” at the time. “He was in demand as a speaker; he was traveling around the country," Elam said in an interview coordinated by Paul’s campaign. “I just do not believe he was either writing or regularly editing this stuff."

In the past, Paul has taken responsibility for the passages because they were published under his name.

But last month, he told CNN that he was unaware at the time of the controversial passages. “I’ve never read that stuff. I’ve never read — I came — was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written," Paul said.

A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.

“It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government," said the person, who supports Paul’s economic policies but is not backing him for president. “I’m not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman."

The articles included racial, anti-Semitic and anti-gay content. They claimed, for example, that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “seduced underage girls and boys"; they ridiculed black activists by suggesting that New York be named “Zooville” or “Lazyopolis”; and they said the 1992 Los Angeles riots ended “when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks."

The June 1990 edition of the Ron Paul Political Report included the statement: “Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

It is unclear precisely how much money Paul made from his newsletters, but during the years he was publishing them, he reduced his debts and substantially increased his net worth, according to his congressional and presidential disclosure reports.

In 1984, he reported debt of up to $765,000, most of which was gone by 1995, when he reported a net worth of up to $3,300,000 . Last year, he reported a net worth of up to $5,200,000 .

The newsletters bore his name in large print and featured articles on topics ranging from investment advice to political commentary. Frequently written in first person, they contained personalized notes, such as holiday greetings from Paul and his wife, Carol.

The Washington Post obtained dozens of copies of the newsletters from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Texas news outlets wrote about them in 1996, and the New Republic published extensive excerpts in 2008.

The issue resurfaced late last year, when Paul’s presidential campaign picked up momentum. The extent of Paul’s involvement and his business strategy had not been known.

Paul’s publishing operation began through a nonprofit organization he created in 1976, the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, which advocates for limited government and a free market. The group, founded the year Paul entered Congress, published Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, mostly a collection of his congressional speeches and commentaries.

Direct-mail, extreme views

In 1984, just before losing a Senate bid and leaving Congress, Paul formed Ron Paul & Associates. He soon began publishing the Ron Paul Investment Letter, initially offering mostly economic and monetary information. Texas tax records listed Paul as president of the business; his wife as secretary; his daughter, Lori Paul Pyeatt, as treasurer; and a longtime Paul associate, Lew Rockwell, as vice president.

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period and the two discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” were more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said that Crane’s account “sounds odd” and that Paul did not recall the conversation.

At the time, Paul’s investment letter was languishing. According to the person involved with his businesses, Paul and others hit upon a solution: to “morph” the content to capitalize on a growing fear among some on the political right about the nation’s changing demographics and threats to economic liberty.

The investment letter became the Ron Paul Survival Report -- a name designed to intrigue readers, the company secretary said. It cost subscribers about $100 a year. The tone of that and other Paul publications changed, becoming increasingly controversial. In 1992, for example, the Ron Paul Political Report defended chess champion Bobby Fischer, who had become known as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, for his stance on “Jewish questions."

Paul has said he wrote portions of the economic sections. The people familiar with his business said there was no indication that he wrote the controversial material.

Rockwell was the main writer of the racial passages, according to two people with direct knowledge of the business and a third close to Paul’s presidential campaign. Rockwell, founder of a libertarian think tank in Alabama, did not respond to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment. In 2008, he denied in an interview with the New Republic that he was Paul’s ghostwriter.

Paul “had to walk a very fine line," said Eric Dondero Rittberg, a former longtime Paul aide who says Paul allowed the controversial material in his newsletter as a way to make money. Dondero Rittberg said he witnessed Paul proofing, editing and signing off on his newsletters in the mid-1990s.

“The real big money came from some of that racially tinged stuff, but he also had to keep his libertarian supporters, and they weren’t at all comfortable with that," he said.

Dondero Rittberg is no longer a Paul supporter, and officials with Paul’s presidential campaign have said he was fired. Dondero Rittberg disputed that, saying he resigned in 2003 because he opposed Paul’s views on Iraq.

The 15 July 1994 issue of Survival Report exemplified how the newsletters merged material about race with a pitch for business. It contained a passage criticizing the rate of black-on-white crime when “blacks are only 12 percent of the population." That was accompanied by two pages of ads from Ron Paul Precious Metals & Rare Coins, a business Paul used to sell gold and silver coins.

“The explosion you hear may not be the Fourth of July fireworks but the price of silver shooting up," said one of the ads.

Hathway, the former Ron Paul & Associates secretary, said: “We had tons of subscribers, from all over the world ... I never had one complaint" about the content.

Paul a ‘hands-on boss’

Hathway described Paul as a “hands-on boss” who would come in to the company’s Houston office, about 50 miles from his home, about once a week. And he would call frequently. “He’d ask, ‘How are you doing? Do you need any more money in the account?’" she said.

The company also had an office in Clute, Texas, near Paul’s home, which it shared with Paul’s foundation and his campaigns at various points, Hathway and Dondero Rittberg said.

In 1996, as Paul ran for Congress again, his business success turned into a potential political liability when his newsletters surfaced in the Texas news media. Paul was quoted in the Dallas Morning News that year as defending a newsletter line from 1992 that said 95 percent of black men in the District are “semi-criminal or entirely criminal” and that black teenagers can be “unbelievably fleet of foot.”

“If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them,” the newspaper quoted Paul as saying.

Paul won reelection, then dissolved Ron Paul & Associates in 2001. His nonprofit foundation is still in operation.

Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
© The Washington Post Company
- 30 -

===================
from Wikipedia:
===================

Ron Paul newsletter controversy

On January 8, the day of the New Hampshire primary, The New Republic published a story by James Kirchick quoting from selected newsletters published under Paul's name.[67] The publications had various names bannering "Ron Paul" prominently in the title, such as The Ron Paul Survival Report. Kirchick said that the writings showed "an obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry", and were "saturated in racism", charges echoed by Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog.[68] Kirchick noted that one article referred to African-American rioters as "barbarians" and suggested that the Los Angeles riots of 1992 only stopped when it came time for "blacks to pick up their welfare checks". Other issues gave tactical advice to local militia groups and advanced various conspiracy theories.[69]

In 1996 the media inquired into these passages, having been brought to light by Paul's congressional opponent Charles "Lefty" Morris; Paul's congressional campaign countered the statements were taken out of context, and Paul responded by adding "If someone challenges your character and takes the interpretation of the NAACP as proof of a man's character, what kind of a world do you live in?" [70].[71] The newsletters, attributed to Paul, made statements such as "opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions," "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be", and referring to Martin Luther King as a "pro-communist philanderer" and to Martin Luther King Day as "hate Whitey day."[72][73] An issue from 1992 refers to carjacking as the "hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos."[74] In an article title "The Pink House" the newsletter wrote that "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."[73]

In 2001 Paul gave his own account of the newsletters, stating the documents were authored by ghostwriters, and that while he did not author the challenged passages, he bore "some moral responsibility" for their publication.[75] Paul's 2008 presidential campaign repeated these assertions when the challenged passages resurfaced again in Kirchick's January 2008 article.[76] Paul "never uttered such words and denounced such small-minded thoughts," saying Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks were personal heroes because they stood for individual rights, and that he had spoken highly about Parks in a 1999 floor speech in the House of Representatives.[77] Paul took the position that the Kirchick story was a "rehash" of a political attack received during his 1996 campaign.

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Paul asserted that racism is incompatible with his beliefs and that he sees people as individuals, not as part of collectives. He also dismissed the attack as an attempt to accuse him of racism by proxy, claiming that he has collected more money among African-Americans than any other Republican candidate. Blitzer stated that he was "shocked" by the newsletters, as they did not seem to reflect "the Ron Paul that I've come to know, and the viewers have come to know" over the course of several interviews during the campaign.[78]

Nelson Linder, president of the Austin chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), also defended Paul, though not in his official capacity under the NAACP: "Knowing Ron Paul's intent, I think he is trying to improve this country but I think also, when you talk about the Constitution and you constantly criticize the federal government versus state I think a lot of folks are going to misconstrue that ... so I think it's very easy for folks who want to take his position out of context, and that's what I'm hearing."[79]

Reason magazine contributing editor Matt Welch found numerous references to the newsletters in news coverage of the 1996 race, many showing a defense of the newsletters by Paul and his campaign.[71] But in 2001 Paul claimed he only said otherwise in 1996 because it was too confusing to explain in the fervor of a campaign.[75]

In 2011 Ron Paul again ran as a GOP presidential candidate, placing third in the Iowa caucuses and 2nd in the New Hampshire primary. Before the Iowa caucuses a variety of government officials, including Bush speech writers Michael Gerson and Marc Thiessen, Clinton advisor Dick Morris, and Bush United Nations ambassador John Bolton all appeared on FOX News or wrote op ed pieces for the Washington Post decrying Ron Paul as dangerous and crazy. James Kirchick, still affilated with The New Republic but now primarily employed by Radio Free Europe and also a fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which was also affiliated with a competing GOP presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, revisited the Ron Paul newsletter controversy in articles in The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, and the New York Times. Kirchick's associate at The New Republic, Jonathan Chait, also wrote articles critical of Paul based on the original newsletter story published in The New Republic and New York magazine. One of the original contentions was that the newsletters contained no bylines other than the collective mast head of "Ron Paul Newsletter." In January 2012, a television reporter, Cincinnati FOX19's Ben Swann, looked into the newsletters in a regular fact checking series called "Reality Check." Swann discovered that of the over 240 newsletters published, only 9 had racially inflected offensive language, and much of that was in one newsletter. That newsletter had been posted online by The New Republic via internet links for readers to peruse, but with half a page cut off. When Swann investigated it turned out that the omitted half page contained a byline by another author, James B. Powell. Attempts by Swann to contact Kirchick were initially ignored. It appears that Kirchick and The New Republic have not contacted or interviewed James B. Powell.[80]

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 恭喜发财！龙年快乐！ Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Dragon!

2012-01-20T23:45:00.001-05:00

Click postage stamp, it gets bigger.

Ron Paul (sort of) moves on to the USA's first presidential primary in New Hampshire

2012-01-07T18:11:00.000-05:00

CBS News (USA television network)
Saturday 7 January 2012

Is Ron Paul
in it to win it?

by Stephanie Condon

[photo: Ron Paul supporters Gigi and Ken Bowman of Long Island, N.Y., hold signs in support of Rep. Ron Paul outside an event for Mitt Romney, Jan. 7, 2012, in Derry, New Hampshire.] (Credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- Is this Ron Paul's moment? Does he want it to be?

Fresh off a strong, third place victory in the Iowa caucuses, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul promptly ... took a break. The Texas congressman raised some eyebrows when he paused his campaign this week rather than carrying his momentum straight to New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary on Tuesday.

To be sure, his rival Mitt Romney -- former governor of neighboring state Massachusetts -- has a hefty 20-point lead in New Hampshire. Still, there's potential for Paul: He's the only other candidate to break 20 percent in recent polls, and the "Live free or die" state -- where independents can vote in the primary -- is a natural fit for the libertarian-leaning candidate.

But while some may think Paul's time off suggests he's not serious about his campaign, it belies the fact that, aside from Romney's, Paul's campaign is the best prepared for a long nomination contest, with a large war chest and the organization to get on the ballot in states where other candidates couldn't. In New Hampshire, Paul has the support of around 30 New Hampshire state legislators, and he's campaigned in New Hampshire about as much as he has in Iowa.

And then, of course, Paul arguably has the most ardent supporters of any GOP candidate. But at times, his supporters seem to want a Paul presidency more than he does.

While other candidates have tacked their professionally-made signs into the ground across the Granite State, it's not unusual to see homemade Paul signs fluttering from highway overpasses, or Paul supporters in what appear to be homemade T-shirts. And while other candidates have been confronted by unimpressed voters -- see Romney's or Rick Santorum's recent uncomfortable moments -- Paul's crowds are typically enthusiastic and friendly.

When Paul showed up in Nashau on Friday, a crowd of hundreds was waiting for him, cramped in a small airplane hangar at Boire Field Airport. Buzzing with excitement, the group at times started spontaneously chanting "Ron Paul! Ron Paul!"

Ron Paul's son, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, dressed casually in a turtleneck and sweater, greeted the audience. "People ask me, 'Is campaigning fun?'" he says, loosening up the crowd. In the frank and honest style both Ron and Rand are known for, he answers that question by relating a time a woman grabbed him by the head, tugging to find out whether his curly tuft of hair was real.

Perhaps it's those trying moments that prompted Paul to lay low for a few days. But after the rally on Friday, Paul told the press, "I don't know if we took a couple of days off as much as we just stuck to our plan. We had a plan we would be here our last five days."

Breaks from the campaign trail may do minimal damage, when voters can so easily learn about candidates through other means. But there's no denying that shaking a few more hands could secure a few more votes. Brett Ferrell and Ryan Hall, both 20 years old, went to Paul's Friday event without much of an opinion about the congressman. They said they could be persuaded to vote for either for Paul or Romney.

What's more, after Paul canceled an event with college students scheduled for Friday morning, it left some wondering whether Paul is running a serious campaign or simply trying to shape the dialogue within the GOP.

Paul spokesman Gary Howard dismissed that notion. "No one has campaigned harder or smarter than Dr. Paul," he said. "We have a comprehensive plan to win the delegates necessary to be the nominee and have been working that plan hard. We will be campaigning hard through Tampa and beyond."

For Paul's most ardent supporters, his candidacy certainly isn't just about making a statement.

"If we want to get our country back on track, we need a president like Paul for at least 10 years," said Ed, a Manchester resident who declined to give his last name. "It is difficult to elect a libertarian president, but I think his showing has been very impressive. It shows a lot of people are thinking about the fiscal health of the country."

- 30 -

===========
COMMENTS
===========

by wirelessjohn January 7, 2012 5:39 PM EST
    The magic Paul has is the voice of the people. When we elect him president the congress will know that we are paying attention and they better respect us and our constitution. Ron Paul will be the next president of the USA and together with congress and our voices this country will be much better.

by VeteranCarl January 7, 2012 5:36 PM EST
    Why does the media keep asking Dr. Paul if he will run as an independent or a democrat? That is an insane question to a GOP candidate that is doing VERY well in the polls.

    Dr. Paul IS running for president which means that he WANTS to win. I know this because the man doesn't lie or mislead people. If the media's talking heads had 1/10th the integrity of Dr. Paul, he'd be our president right now. CNN changed poll results on the internet and got caught, FOX got busted changing the audience audio track track of one of his debate answers from cheers to boos. I can't understand why someone didn't go to jail for that???

    And if I hear another pundit say the word "un-electable" in reference to Congressman Paul (who has been elected 12 times) I'm gonna...ugh, I don't know what I'll do. To the media pundits, you don't get to decide elect-ability, that is the job of us voters. So butt-out and stop trying to give me my opinion.

    This country spends twice as much annually as it takes in revenue! There's one guy (only one) running for president who wants to fix that.

by ChiasmataX January 7, 2012 5:34 PM EST
    Youtube: Judge Napolitano: What if they're lying to you about Ron Paul? - Fox Business

by MacDerb January 7, 2012 5:28 PM EST
    He's another Ross Perot - Texas oil money...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot

    No Texan.

    They "surge" us into ruin.

by mstirner January 7, 2012 5:24 PM EST
    Well, I disagree that Ron Paul appeals only to the young... I'm an old geezer, and I'm going to vote for him... He's the only one who will keep our nation from falling for the neocon lies (remember the WMDs that pushed a weak President into a mindless, bloody and unconstitutional war with Iraq?). Only Paul has the courage and the will to stop the crazy desire of the corporate neocons for war with Iran.

by cntrygirl3 January 7, 2012 5:15 PM EST
    Dr. Paul is 70 years old, did it ever occur to anybody he needed a little rest. This is the most support he has ever had within the republican party but he still can't win the nomination. However this time he is strong enough for a third party run, probably his last shot. What is truly amazing with the tepid support for Romney (likely nominee) and at times for Mr. Obama (certain nominee) he might just be able to throw the next election into congress, now wouldn't that be interesting.

by josephle2k January 7, 2012 5:15 PM EST
    "No System of Government Last, without the True Voices and supports of its People..." -Unknown

    Through Dr. Paul "We the Peopl"" Will Prevail...

    While Establishmentarians attack and ignore the good Doctor out of fear of losing government-sanctioned power over its own People they supposedly represent. The Doctor continues on being, well the "The sound Doctor".

    Completely ignored by the corrupted Medias and the establishments are a salient, this should be a Warning Bell to Every American of great concerns.

    One way or another, their powers will come to an end. The Establishments should start taking notes when Dr. Ron Paul speaks, because the day of reckoning is on near...

by mt3355 January 7, 2012 5:12 PM EST
    Well done Stephane. Your story was fair and informative. Something Dr Paul doesn't see much.

by LeeMcD22 January 7, 2012 4:59 PM EST
    See Ron Paul in...Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Bank?: An Uncensored Investigation of the US Federal Reserve Banking Cartel--one of the most controversial institutions of our time...(Self-Serving its Country Since 1913)...

    http://www.youtube.com/user/BaitAndSwitchTV?feature=mhee#p/u/12/_M_Rh_fgKEQ

    Try SubPrimal Scream Therapy:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/BaitAndSwitchTV?%20%20feature=mhee#p/u/4/Ec3E0YLwcSU

    Also see: The Real Housewives of Tent City (A Hot New REALITY Show---Global Depression Edition) (Spoiler: This is about what the Federal Reserve has done--not the housewives! --watch to the end)...

    http://******/uCH1NY
    http://www.youtube.com/user/BaitAndSwitchTV?%20%20feature=mhee#p/u/2/NH_WqjgoJLY

    Or you might like Banking On It (New Republican Seinfeld-esque Comedy Series):

    http://www.youtube.com/user/BaitAndSwitchTV?%20%20feature=mhee#p/u/3/4gV_1rbOMWo

    And: this [short]: Neverminditol-The Great Recession Depression Drug and then get up and JOIN those not against capitalism but against rigged capitalism...

    http://******/rSlTi5

    Or at least see Chitty Chitty Bank Bank:

    http://******/cpptOf

    Important to consider Leveraged Buyouyts --LBOs vs jobs --Wall St Banks and private Equity firms that enacted a large scale Leveraged Buyout of America. See Lady Gaga Does LBOs [short]

    http://******/dV2BjA

    ...Lady Gaga reveals Private Equity and Investment Banking's upcoming Financial Tsunami (caused by Mitt Romney's Bain Capital along with other PE firms like KKR and Goldman Sachs--and the pending LBO credit crash and its impact on the US economy...then join those standing up for you and genuine capitalism--not rigged capitalism and all this cheating and looting of our economy for short term gain.

    And if you just want someone to blame, try The Blame Game:

    http://******/sQEwDD

    But if you want to return our crap money to its source, try fast free online game "Take That: A Federal Reserve Crap$hoot Stress Relief Game":

    http://******/gIHiYw

    http://www.baitandswitchtv.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127&catid=46&Itemid=26
    Reply to this comment

by toadaleigh January 7, 2012 4:51 PM EST
    What the GOP needs to realize is if Ron Paul is not the nominee, Barak Obama will be president. They need to decide if they want Paul or Obama as president. The reason being is because 80% of Paul supporters will not vote for any nominee except Paul. That is a big chunk of voters. They will either write him in or vote Gary Johnson or Buddy Roemer.

on-line ad for Ron Paul accuses Huntsman of 'Chinese values," features Huntsman's adopted Asian daughters

2012-01-07T02:44:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press (USA newswire)
Friday 6 January 2012
'ghost' pro-Paul ad
attacks Huntsman's
'Chinese values'

by Holly Ramer, Associated Press

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, who often speaks movingly of his adopted daughters while on the campaign trail, said Friday that Ron Paul's supporters were out of line in using the girls to argue that he is un-American.

An online ad posted by "NHLiberty4Paul" includes video footage of Huntsman, the former USA ambassador to China, with daughter Gracie when she was an infant. It also shows Huntsman holding Asha shortly after she was adopted from India.

"American values? Or Chinese?" the ad asks, ending with "Vote Ron Paul."

A message sent to the ad's creator was not immediately returned. Paul's New Hampshire spokeswoman, Kate Schackai, said Friday she didn't know who was behind the ad, but it wasn't anyone affiliated with the campaign.

"The video was utterly distasteful and no one who actually supports Dr. Paul's principles would have made it," she said.

In Concord, Huntsman said it was "stupid" to allege that he has Chinese values because he lived overseas and speaks Chinese.

"If someone wants to poke fun at me, that's OK," said Huntsman, whose campaign has posted several online ads attacking Paul as unelectable. "What I object to is bringing forward pictures and videos of my adopted daughters and suggesting there's something sinister there."

Huntsman and his wife have seven children, including Gracie, 12, who was abandoned at a Chinese vegetable market at two months of age, and Asha, 6, who was left to die on a roadside in India the day she was born.

Speaking to New England College's "College Convention," he called the two girls "a daily reminder that there are a lot of kids in this world who don't have the breaks that you do."

Huntsman, who skipped last week's Iowa caucuses and is counting on a strong finish in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary to continue with his campaign, also was asked by an audience member whether the other candidates have "clawed their way to the right," leaving him as the centrist in the race. Huntsman didn't accept the label but called himself a realist instead.

"We have to draw from ideas that are doable and not so outlandishly stupid that they create a lot of political infighting and finger-pointing and never, ever in 1000 years are going to get done," he said.

Despite his focus on New Hampshire, Huntsman still lags far behind front-runner Mitt Romney. Huntsman has been making the case that Romney lacks a "consistent core," a point he underscored Friday without mentioning Romney's name.

"I don't like to spend a lot of time posturing and being one thing during the pre-primary phase, then during the primary phase then the general (election)," he said.

He took another jab at Romney when an audience member asked "Are corporations people?" In August, Romney told an Iowa crowd, "Corporations are people."

Huntsman ignored the question and launched into a long answer to the second part of the man's question, which was about energy policy. But the next person he called on promptly reminded him that he hadn't answered in full.

"I think that's so self-evident, I'm not sure that needs to be answered," he said, then quickly continued as audience members groaned. "Of course corporations are not people. Who would say such an outlandish thing? I can't imagine anyone running for president would say something like that."

While Huntsman has been emphasizing his commitment to grassroots campaigning, television appearances and other media interviews consumed most of his day Friday. He was heading to northern New Hampshire in the evening for a house party and Chamber of Commerce dinner.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

- 30 -

Fer de lance and 1766 naval flag of Martinique / Lanzenschlange / Bothrops lanceolatus

2012-01-03T15:02:00.001-05:00

l'image de clic pour agrandir
(robot job)

1st Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron: Indian Pudding / Animal Fat / Sugar / African Slaves / Grandma's Molasses / Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with Slaves / Screech Rum / Fer-de-lance

2012-01-03T14:31:00.003-05:00

Click stamp to enlarge.

Postalö Vleeptron / First Day Issue
Indian Pudding

Regardless of what your heart and diabetes doctors and your dentist say, people in horribly cold places have always fought winter with Animal Fat and Sugar. At the emergency winter homeless shelter, we purposely cook unhealthy food -- the guests must spend the day outdoors in bitter cold, and the big doses of fat and sugar the guests crave help them survive the winter. For the homeless, Winter in New England is not a Heart-Smart veggie Mediterranean Diet season. They focus on living until March, and pay little heed to living until 2044. Some of them will be lucky to see who wins the November 2012 USA presidential election, Obama or the surprise winner of the Iowa Republican caucus, PeeWee Herman.

New England's First Peoples may have invented this dish and passed the recipe to the Puritan European settlers. (Bad navigation -- no one could determine Longitude in those days -- landed them in Massachusetts; they had contracted for a voyage to the much warmer Virginia colony, but the Mayflower captain refused to take the angry Puritans 600 miles south).

On a freezing winter evening, this stuff, served piping hot, is unimaginably delicious, and even brings happiness and fun to a bitter winter evening. It takes all day to cook, and fills the house with the most rich, delicious aroma.

This is not a haute-cuisine dish. It's very earthy, crude and primitive, from Grandma's kitchen wood stove. Restaurants don't serve it much because if cooked properly (very slowly), it hogs up the oven all day. But many New England restaurants and diners do make it a weekly special, and the folks really appreciate the rare chance to eat these concentrated toxins in January.

Today molasses and coarse-ground corn/maize meal are hard, but not impossible, to find. Corn meal is ground superfine in modern industrial mills, and only specialty firms use old millstones

... Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves ...

-- John Milton, "Samson Agonistes"

to grind the corn. (But they turn the old millstones with electric motors, not with slaves or water wheels.)

Molasses was an intermediate product of the 17th-18th century Atlantic trade of sugar and African slaves, who harvested the Caribbean sugar cane. (Rum -- fermented sugar cane juice -- was also a very popular product of the Triangle Trade. Keep your eye out for Newfoundland's "Screech" rum. You can run your lawnmower with it.) Tea with sugar had become a hugely profitable import industry in Europe. The sugar fields of one sugar island -- maybe Martinique -- is infested with the Fer-de-lance, one of the most poisonous snakes on Earth.

In an electric slow-cooker/crockpot, you can prepare this stuff the night before or in the morning, turn the crockpot to LOW, then leave the house to go to work, and your Indian Pudding will be perfectly cooked for dessert that night, and house will not have burned to the ground in your absence. Pick up a quart of vanilla ice cream on the way home.

I made some and we ate it New Years Day! And we're still nuking it and eating it! I gave myself extra insulin!

* * *

Hey RevJJ! Of course I did not delete a Comment of yours! Did you have more venom and spleen to aim at the the wicked loony Ron Paul? (I put in the Washington Post fact-checker article about Ron's old bulletins. Ron's excuse for these bulletins earns him 3 Pinocchio Noses, which I gather is less than the gold standard of politician Truthfulness.)

So whom should I vote for to end these Asian wars? (The African Sky War seems to have ended, but don't bet the farm on it.) Search Google News for Syria, Iran and Yemen for a whiff of the near American future.

I confess, I've become a Single-Issue Whore. I'm sick of dead and maimed American soldiers and dead and maimed Third-World civilians. T'ain't Christian. T'ain't rational.

Last election, only Kucinich and Ron promised to end these wars immediately. This year, only Ron is standing in an Iowa corn field with a sign that says

I WILL END FOREIGN USA WARS.

He's probably a terrible human being to have to be stuck with on a long bus ride.

Get A Kit / Make A Plan / Be Prepared

2011-12-31T13:59:00.000-05:00

Skip directly to search Skip directly to A to Z list Skip directly to navigation Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options

CDC Home

Emergency Preparedness and Response

Emergency Preparedness & Response

Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

The following was originally posted on CDC Public Health Matters Blog on May 16th, 2011 by Ali S. Khan.

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

A Brief History of Zombies

We’ve all seen at least one movie about flesh-eating zombies taking over (my personal favorite is Resident Evil), but where do zombies come from and why do they love eating brains so much? The word zombie comes from Haitian and New Orleans voodoo origins. Although its meaning has changed slightly over the years, it refers to a human corpse mysteriously reanimated to serve the undead. Through ancient voodoo and folk-lore traditions, shows like the Walking Dead were born.

A couple dressed as zombies - Danny Zucco and Sandy Olsson from the movie Grease walking in the annual Toronto Zombie Walk.

In movies, shows, and literature, zombies are often depicted as being created by an infectious virus, which is passed on via bites and contact with bodily fluids. Harvard psychiatrist Steven Scholzman wrote a (fictional) medical paper on the zombies presented in Night of the Living Dead and refers to the condition as Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome caused by an infectious agent. The Zombie Survival Guide identifies the cause of zombies as a virus called solanum. Other zombie origins shown in films include radiation from a destroyed NASA Venus probe (as in Night of the Living Dead), as well as mutations of existing conditions such as prions, mad-cow disease, measles and rabies.

The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”
Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too!

Better Safe than Sorry

Some of the supplies for your emergency kit.

So what do you need to do before zombies…or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen? First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp (or in the event of a natural disaster, it will buy you some time until you are able to make your way to an evacuation shelter or utility lines are restored). Below are a few items you should include in your kit, for a full list visit the CDC Emergency page.

Water (1 gallon per person per day)
Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription meds)
Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member and blankets)
Important documents (copies of your driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate to name a few)
First Aid supplies (although you’re a goner if a zombie bites you, you can use these supplies to treat basic cuts and lacerations that you might get during a tornado or hurricane)

Once you’ve made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan. This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your door step. You can also implement this plan if there is a flood, earthquake, or other emergency.

Family members meeting by their mailbox. You should pick two meeting places, one close to your home and one farther away.

Identify the types of emergencies that are possible in your area. Besides a zombie apocalypse, this may include floods, tornadoes, or earthquakes. If you are unsure contact your local Red Cross chapter for more information.
Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home…or your town evacuates because of a hurricane. Pick one place right outside your home for sudden emergencies and one place outside of your neighborhood in case you are unable to return home right away.
Identify your emergency contacts. Make a list of local contacts like the police, fire department, and your local zombie response team. Also identify an out-of-state contact that you can call during an emergency to let the rest of your family know you are ok.
Plan your evacuation route. When zombies are hungry they won’t stop until they get food (i.e., brains), which means you need to get out of town fast! Plan where you would go and multiple routes you would take ahead of time so that the flesh eaters don’t have a chance! This is also helpful when natural disasters strike and you have to take shelter fast.

Never Fear – CDC is Ready

Get a Kit, Make a Plan, Be Prepared

If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work).
To learn more about what CDC does to prepare for and respond to emergencies of all kinds, visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/cdc/orgs_progs.asp
To learn more about how you can prepare for and stay safe during an emergency visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/
To download a badge like the one above that you can add to your social networking profile, blog, website, or email signature visit:
http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies.asp

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A-Z Index

Ceci n'est pas une horloge / Eloi 0, Morlocks 388 (final) / if you know more than I do about Time, seek professional help promptly / Leap Second tonight? Is the Universe running slow or fast?

2011-12-31T13:47:00.001-05:00

Click images, they probably get bigger.
Maybe they will even make more sense.

A Christmukkah/Solstice Gift for the household finally arrived a couple of days after Christmas, and Lo! The fucking thing works like a champ, and now we know EXACTLY what time it is in the upstairs bathroom. (Which is nearly always the exact time in other parts of the house and Earth and the Solar System and, for all I know, the Universe).

(Previously we relied on a $5 piece of crap from Target that reliably told us the Wrong Time. It was of very little comfort to know that it was perfectly correct twice a day.)

One of Vleeptron's first PizzaQ's was about my strange clock, which worked great whenever I took trips into the Far Future (to see the big football match between the Morlocks and the Eloi), but if I took it back to 1880, or the Paleozoic Era, the fucking thing had no clue what time it was, it was useless.

What kind of verkakte clock works great in the future, but doesn't work at all in the past?

Well of course that's because these thingies aren't clocks at all. They're radios, designed to listen for a special computerized government radio signal, and automatically decode it.

When you install its battery, at first it just sits there confused and clueless, and sulks and won't tell time or do anything. It is doing a perfect impersonation of a broken, useless clock that you will soon have to repackage and send back to the Atomic Clock store, with an annoyed complaint.

But if you just leave it alone overnight (the government signal travels best and strongest at night -- it's an ionosphere thing), eventually it will automatically acquire the WWV radio signal, decode it, and then the hour and minute hands do this crazy whack dance around and around, until finally the hands arrive on the EXACT TIME. And stay there.

It's almost worth standing in front of the clock for hours waiting for the hands to do their whirly whacky dance.

This is my third atomic clock. (They keep getting cheaper and simpler.) I don't know why I love these gizmos -- in elementary and junior high school we had a phrase: "Fun for the feeble-minded."

I think it's because you sort of maybe think you sort of maybe know what time it probably is or might be.

But I REALLY know what time it is. In a million years, I won't be more than one second late for a dentist appointment.

* * *

an e-mail to SW.M.B.O. about the new muy starwarz dingus, the clock which is not a clock. (She loves it.) This is not a clock.

* * *

Them machines on the right count the natural vibrations of [a specific isotope of] the cesium atom, and that keeps time to some astonishing precision, like 1 second every million years. As my audio engineer pals were wont to say: Close enough for rock n roll!

(In my Army helicopter repair factory, everyone would say "Close enough for government work," and toss the piece of precision machinery into a bin.)

On the left is the format the radio station uses to broadcast the time, date, and a whole bunch of other arcana, like sunspot and radio interference predictions. Mostly the only thing in the signal anybody cares about is the Time and Date (and of course if it's Daylight Savings Time or Whatever).

UTC refers to

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is one of several closely related successors to Greenwich Mean Time. Computer servers, online services and other entities that rely on having a universally accepted time use UTC for that purpose. If only limited precision is needed, clients can obtain the current UTC time from a number of official internet UTC servers. For sub-microsecond precision, clients can obtain the time from satellite signals. Time zones around the world are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC, as in this list.

Coordinated Universal Time is based on International Atomic Time (TAI), a time standard calculated using a weighted average of signals from atomic clocks located in nearly 70 national laboratories around the world.^[1] The only difference between the two is that UTC is occasionally adjusted by adding a leap second in order to keep it within one second of UT1, which is defined by the Earth's rotation. In the 50 years up to and including 2011, a total of 34 leap seconds have been added.
The UTC standard was officially standardized in 1961 by the International Radio Consultative Committee, after having been initiated by several national time laboratories. The system was changed several times over the following years, until leap seconds were adopted in 1972. A number of proposals have been made to replace it with a new system, which would eliminate leap seconds, but no consensus has yet been reached to do so.

... but its close friends just call it Greenwich Mean Time or Zulu Time. If you know the precise differences between UTC, Greenwich and Zulu, then you know way too much about systems of time measurement.

We're usually UTC - 5 , because UTC originates at the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, so they're 5 hours ahead of us. Their motto is "The place where time begins," and they ain't jivin'. (For a brief time the Paris Observatory claimed that time began there, not with those filthy English pig astronomers, but eventually Greenwich won out.)

Schoolchildren and your husband like to skip over an illuminated line in the sidewalk and jump from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere, and then back again. This is a source of endless mirth, thrill and delight.

I don't know if we're adding a Leap Second tonight. I don't know if the Universe is running fast or slow.

It's an awfully dreamy campus, designed by Christopher Wren, surrounded by a gorgeous big park, and down the hill you can see the Thames and Queens House, which is by Inigo Jones. One night Halley, the Astronomer Royal (and career Naval officer), got drunk with Peter the Great, and they pushed each other all over the place in a wheelbarrow.

Ships in the Thames can look up at the Observatory tower and, EXACTLY at noon, see the metal Time Ball drop, and thus the ship could precisely set its own on-board chronomometer, a setting which would keep the sailors from perishing no matter how far around the world they sail. If you can see the Time Ball drop, you'll always know the exact time, and consequently you can always compute the exact longitude.

(Before this system, shipwrecks, and weeks lost far from fresh water, were common.)

The wonderful Harrison Chronometers, by which the self-taught clockmaker solved the Longitude problem, are still at the Observatory ticking away like ... well, clockwork. The hearts of the clock mechanism are not metal, but gears of self-lubricating lignum vitae wood.

Ron Paul and his newsletter's racist homophobic remarks (which Paul claims he didn't write)

2011-12-27T23:57:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post

fact-checker blog

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Ron Paul and the racist newsletters (Fact Checker biography)

Posted by Josh Hicks at 06:02 AM ET, 12/27/2011

(Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column will be the first in a series of four columns this week examining how factual Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has been in describing his career in politics. Reporter Josh Hicks has spent weeks examining Paul’s statements and deciding which ones best represent how Paul talks about his past. Hicks has previously examined biographical statements by Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.
— Glenn Kessler

******

“I’m not a racist. As a matter of fact, Rosa Parks is one of my heroes, Martin Luther King is a hero — because they practiced the libertarian principle of civil disobedience, nonviolence.”
— Ron Paul, responding during a Jan. 10, 2008, CNN interview to questions about racially charged articles published in the “Ron Paul Political Report” during the 1990s.

“I never read that stuff. I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written, and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this.”
— Ron Paul, responding to more questions about the newsletters during an interview with CNN, Dec. 21, 2011

Accusations of racism against Paul first surfaced during the candidate’s 1996 congressional campaign, when Democratic opponent Lefty Morris unveiled racially tinged quotes from a newsletter the Texas libertarian had published during his 12-year hiatus from public office.

The national media latched onto the issue during Paul’s 2008 presidential bid, after the New York Times and the New Republic highlighted derogatory statements about blacks and gays from the bulletins.

The issue resurfaced as Paul moved to the front of the GOP pack in recent weeks, and the congressman appeared to be fed up with the matter as he walked away from an interview in which a CNN reporter pressed for more answers. (See the video below).
We won’t be the judge of whether Paul is a bigot, but we can examine the extent to which he had control over his publications. Are we to believe he never reviewed the newsletters that bore his name? Would he have eliminated the messages if he’d seen them?

THE FACTS

Paul helped form the Ron Paul & Associates corporation in 1984, and the now-defunct company, for which he served as president, began publishing newsletters the following year. The monthly publications included Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report, the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.
Columnist Jonathan Chait noted in a recent column for New York magazine that statements of racist paranoia appeared regularly in Paul’s newsletters, representing a “consistent ideological theme.”

Many of the derogatory comments came from a 1992 commentary in the Political Report titled “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism.” The article blames African American men for the L.A. riots, saying, “The criminals who terrorized our cities — in riots and on every non-riot day — are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are.”

Another passage from the article tries to explain how the tumult finally ended, saying, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.” The writer gives no credit to police, state troopers or soldiers from the National Guard and Army and the Marines who helped end the chaos.

That wasn’t an isolated incident with Paul’s newsletters. A separate article from the Survival Report said, “If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”

The Paul publications also criticized homosexuals, saying gays “enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick,” referring to AIDS.

The articles contain no bylines and no signatures, just Ron Paul’s name in giant letters on the publications’ mastheads. This leaves a tiny bit of wiggle room for the Texas congressman to defend himself. That’s what he’s done, telling the media he has “no idea” how the inflammatory comments made it into print.

“I honestly do not know who wrote those things,” he told CNN in January 2008.
Paul has compared himself to a major publisher who had little time to review every article that went to press, even though his newsletters came out monthly — and were thin at that. He claims he was too busy practicing medicine and giving speeches across the country to pay attention to the bulletins.

“It’s been rehashed for a long time, and it’s coming up now for political reasons,” Paul told CNN in January 2008. “Everybody in my district knows I didn’t write them, and I don’t speak like that. Nobody has ever heard me say anything like that.”

Certain passages in the newsletters suggest that Paul, or at least someone using his persona, wrote for the publications. One article from October 1992 refers to the congressman’s hometown, saying, “even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense, for the animals are coming.”

In an article earlier that year, the author — writing in the first person — announced his decision to chair the economic advisory committee for Pat Buchanan’s presidential bid, a post Paul took up at the time.

The libertarian magazine Reason cited an anonymous source close to the 2008 Paul campaign attributing much of the content from Political Report to Lew Rockwell, founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian economics center.

Rockwell, whose name appears on the newsletters under the title of contributing editor,
told the New Republic that he did not write the controversial articles. He said that there were “seven or eight freelancers involved at various stages” during his tenure with the publishing outfit.

As for Paul’s comments about Rosa Parks, the candidate didn’t show much love for his “hero” when he voted against a measure to award a Congressional Gold Medal to the civil rights icon in 1999. To be fair, he opposed giving the medal to Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II as well, so it doesn’t appear race had anything to do with his stance.

Paul has generally applauded lawmakers for wanting to issue the Gold Medal, but he insists they should put up their own money instead of asking taxpayers to foot the bill, which typically runs about $30,000 for each award.

As for King, a 1992 Ron Paul newsletter referred to the civil rights leader as a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours.”

THE PINOCCHIO TEST

Paul offers implausible explanations for why so many derogatory statements made it into his publications, insisting he knew nothing about them. It’s hard to believe that a man who wants to oversee the entire U.S. government — albeit a smaller version — would provide zero oversight of his publications, or even bother to read them from time to time.

The Texas congressman has to take responsibility for the newsletters that bear his name, or at least acknowledge negligence as the former head of the company that produced them. He earns three Pinocchios for failing to do so.

THREE PINOCCHIOS

(About our rating scale)

less than 1 week until the past becomes the future!

2011-12-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

Click Einstein-Minkowski Time Cone to enlarge.

Here it is again, updated, Vleeptron's Cliche-Free New Year's Greeting!

response to previous post & comments / Ron Paul the Goofy & Screwy / Bush & Obama the Really Dangerous

2011-12-22T11:40:00.001-05:00

Yo Christian Divine -- Merry Christmas! Peace on Earth, Good Will to All!

Yo Atheist -- Happy Solstice! Wear a warm pullover!

Okay, here is the deal about Ron Paul.

He's nuts -- albeit a nut-case whose Texas Gulf Coast constituents have been re-electing to the US House of Representatives a gazillion times.

So I start by a short scientific description of this odd kind of psychiatric disorder -- accompanied by tens of thousands of adult voters who all believe the same loony things which the central nutcase espouses. Most nutcases have to wander though the psychiatric ward alone or accompanied by one or two hospital orderlies. Ron has tons of adoring unsupervised companions and adoring fans every 2 years.

Oh, after the Air Force flight surgeon time, Ron changed specialties and became an obstetrician. His US House of Representatives website proudly announces he has delivered something on the order of 3000 babies.

So if political doom were ever to befall Ron and he lost his cushy congressman gig, he has this other day job skill he can fall back on, in a world with no shortage of pregnant females. As for his obstetrical expertise, I would gladly refer my pregnant wife, daughter, granddaughter, or mistress named Tiffani to his care.

The book calls Ron a Republican, and indeed it is the Republican nomination for the US presidency which Ron is running for -- and leading the field in the Iowa Caucus (the big pre-election popularity contest in a few days).

But Ron is not and never has been a Republican.

Ron is a Hard-Core Red Meat Doctrinaire Ideologue Libertarian.

It's all about Freedom for Ron. Freedom from Government. Freedom from government-commanded laws. Freedom from Cops. (He will immediately, on taking office, end The War On Drugs.)

In Congress they call him "Doctor No," because he votes NO on ANY BILL which calls for the federal government to spend 1 penny of tax dollars.

He wants the USA immediately to get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank (USA semi-autonomous public-private Central Bank), and then return to the Gold Standard. Every single fucking dollar in the USA economic system must be backed by a piece of gold of some weight or the other. (We stopped doing that around 1933. Cf. William Jennings Bryant's famous "Cross of Gold" speech.)

Ron is muy loopy -- and knows it and is proud of it, and so's his mom. (We also have 1 Socialist in the USA Senate, Bernie Saunders from Vermont. Bernie describes himself as an "Independent.")

His newly elected US Senator son, Tea Partier Rand Paul, has expressed interest aloud, in front of live microphones, of returning the legal right to discriminate on the basis of skin color. Just like 1955. Just like 1840, for that matter.

I would love to spend a Paul Family 3-day Christmas weekend. The unique treats and traditions of Christmas on Planet Paul. (I like his part of the country, very close to Corpus Christi, Texas, where I was gifted with 1 free year, and enjoyed the crap out of it and its hospitable people. Great ocean beaches! Hot gun-totin' babes! Magnifico Food y Musica! Flaco Jimenez el Rey de Tex-Mex!)

By the way, Ron in 2008 and now, is a stellar fund-raising champion. And not millions from big corporations and slime like the evil gazillionaire Koch Brothers. It's ALL some poor schlub's crumpled $10 bill stuffed in an envelope with FOR RON writ large on it. The Ron Paul campaign has many eery resemblences to a Secret Kult (although the campaign scrupulously discloses every crumpled 10-spot to the election authorities).

All that said and acknowledged -- and if you don't believe my defamations and diagnoses, just call Ron's office yourself, and if you get U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (Republican, Texas) on the other end of the line, he'll tell you everything I just did -- and more.

Would I ever want Ron Paul as the President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and (this is a media title, it's not original) Leader of the Free World?

Hahahahhahahaha of course not.

But ..................

How much worse could President Ron do, to the world, to America, than the last two "respectable" loopydoopies? George W. Bush Jr. (Republican) and Barack Obama (Democrat). How much worse could Ron Paul, M.D., OB-GYN, screw the pooch than these violent psychos?

Ron Paul's Promise: ZERO USA FOREIGN WARS. (Bob's Corrolary: ZERO DEAD AND MAIMED COMBAT DEATHS.)

Is this too a symptom of Ron Paul's psychiatric disorders? Is this what we have been educated to believe? Vote for the War Guy! Nuke Iran! Victory in Afghanistan! Vaporize the Heathen Towelheads!

And the No-War Guy -- marginalize that whacko, he's just too weird, too dangerous.

msnbc's Chuck Todd tells some funny jokes about our silliest presidential candidate: The guy who promises to end our American wars

2011-12-21T14:39:00.001-05:00

The only way I can find to contact msnbc cable TV news host Chuck Todd is via Twitter.

Try as I might, I could not shrink my message to him into 144 ASCII characters or less.

So I'll post my letter here, and hope somehow he stumbles across it.

If he doesn't, but you do, stop watching Chuck Todd's show on msnbc and stop buying all products which advertise on it.

====================

Chuck Todd
msnbc

On Monday 19 December in a panel discussion about the Republican presidential candidates, you gave dismissive short shrift to Ron Paul despite his surprising poll strength in Iowa. You parotted the "responsible journalist" line that Paul is a marginalized, unrealistic, unimportant candidate.

I will not debate Rep. Paul's chances of winning the presidency.

But while you publicly laugh at and heap ridicule on his candidacy, I must point out that Paul alone has pledged an immediate end to the USA's foreign wars.

Your stance is a prestigious, high-profile cog in the political machine that has killed 4500 of my neighbors' sons and daughters in Iraq, killed 1860 of my neighbors' children in Afghanistan, and has maimed thousands of these young soldiers, Marines, Navy and Air Force personnel, and physically and psychologically destroyed what remains of their lives.

America, as you perceive, accept and report it, kills its children in uniform, and that is the proper and correct way America conducts its foreign policy. You publicly label any presidential candidate who stridently promises to end these deaths and maimings a marginal flake good only for joke value.

I served honorably in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War -- the first of our foot-shooting Asian long wars which left us with military defeat and 52,000 dead American servicemen and servicewomen.

A few of them were my high school friends.

I note from your on-line biography that you have never served in an American military uniform. So like our decision-making political elite, you are highly paid and professionally praised for playing War Poker with other peoples' chips.

By your reckoning, it's okay for other Americans to risk and die in useless overseas wars. No one you know, and no one in your family, is at risk. You explain to a vast television audience why it's a sad but necessary thing for these distant strangers to risk and die, and why any candidate who objects is a silly, dismissable flake.

Republican or Democrat, you help explain to the American people why our next president will keep sending our neighbors' children to overseas wars, and will be their commander-in-chief when their flag-draped coffins return to Dover Air Base.

I do not ask for your support for Ron Paul, nor for your re-assessment of his chances for campaign success.

But I would ask you to consider which candidate clearly stands for the lives and the safety of our troops, and which candidates make foot-shooting "liar's and scoundrel's war" (Congressman Lincoln's description of Polk's Mexican War) the jingo vote-getting centerpiece of their foreign policies.

And in future, clearly tell your audience which is the only candidate who has promised to end these wars the day he assumes office, and commence no more.

With great anger and disgust,

Robert Merkin
Chesterfield, Massachusetts
SP5, U.S. Army, 1969-1971

conservative minister bans Muslim women's face coverings for Canadian citizenship ceremony / Canada takes a dive away from freedom of religion

2011-12-15T15:54:00.001-05:00

Well, this sucks. The conservative regime of Canada is telling Muslims they aren't free to practice their religious traditions if they want to become Canadian citizens.

=================

The Associated Press
(newswire USA)
Wednesday 14 December 2011

Canada bans burqa
at citizenship swearing in
by Rob Gillies

TORONTO (AP) -- New Canadian citizens must remove any face coverings, such as the Islamic niqab or burqa, while they take the oath of citizenship, the country's immigration minister said Monday.

Jason Kenney said most Canadians have misgivings about Islamic face coverings and said new Canadians should take the oath in view of their fellow citizens. He said he has received complaints from lawmakers and citizenship judges who say it's difficult to ensure that individuals whose faces are covered are actually reciting the oath.

The Conservative minister called the issue a matter of deep principle that goes to the heart of Canada's identity and the country's values of openness and equality. He said women who feel obliged to have their faces covered in public often come from a cultural milieu that treats women as property rather than equal human beings

"I do think that most Canadians find that disquieting to say the least," Kenney said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

"Most Muslim Canadian women I know find the practice of face covering in our society disturbing, indicative of an approach to women that is not consistent with our democratic values," Kenney added.

Kenney made the announcement in the French-speaking province of Quebec, which has experienced heated debates over how much Canada should bend to accommodate newcomers.

Kenney said his government would not go further by drafting laws to ban women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public. France became the first country to enact a law designed to forbid face-covering veils such as the niqab or burqa anywhere in public. Violators risk fines or being ordered to take citizenship classes.

"We shouldn't have the state using its power to dictate what people choose to wear in their private lives, but when there are important points of intersection with the state in obtaining state services I think it's entirely reasonable for people to show who they are," Kenney said.

There are no laws banning veils or headscarves in the U.S., though there have been unsuccessful attempts in some states to ban "Sharia law." The sponsor of such a bill in Oklahoma wanted to prohibit women from wearing headscarves in driver's license photos. The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in 2010 banned veils that obscure the face for security reasons, but later changed it to accommodate Muslim women.

The burqa is a head-to-toe gown with a mesh-like panel over the face that allows a woman to see and breathe. The niqab is a veil that leaves only the eyes exposed.

The new Canadian rule takes effect immediately. Kenney defended it by saying it has nothing to do with religious freedom, and said when Muslim women make a pilgrimage to Mecca they're required to show their face.

"So, the notion that this is somehow a religious obligation, I don't accept," he said.

Kenney said he raised the issue during a recent meeting of citizenship judges in Ottawa and was told it was a widespread problem.

About 940,000 Muslims live in Canada, about 2.8 percent of the Canadian population. It is the fastest growing religion in Canada. Over the last decade Canada has naturalized between 150,000 and 180,000 new citizens a year.

Ihsaan Gardee, the acting executive director of The Canadian Council of American-Islamic Relations, said the decision will have a damaging effect on Canadian democracy because it forces those who wear the veil to choose between their religious convictions and adopting Canadian citizenship. Gardee said a young, veil-wearing woman, who was scheduled to take part in a citizenship ceremony Tuesday, called his office and was no longer sure if she would attend.

But the Muslim Canadian Congress welcomed the new regulation, urging the Canadian government to go even further and ban the burqa and niqab from all public places in Canada.

The rule also takes effect as the Supreme Court of Canada hears the case of a woman who wants the right to wear a niqab while facing her accused rapists in court. Kenney said the timing of Monday's announcement was a coincidence.

Lawyer David Butt, who represents the woman, said he expects the rule to be challenged in court but he said it puts anybody who challenges it in an impossible situation as it would jeopardize their citizenship.

Butt said Canada's version of the bill of rights protects the right to wear the niqab or burqa.

- 30 -

soft-core Vleeporn, topless saint beheaded / Saudi woman beheaded for witchcraft & sorcery / Chop Chop Square in Riyadh

2011-12-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

Click image to enlarge.

Leave a Comment if you

want more photos of

beheadings in Saudi Arabia.

BBC News Middle East
Monday 12 December 2011

Saudi woman executed for
witchcraft and sorcery

A Saudi woman has been executed for practising "witchcraft and sorcery," the country's interior ministry says.

A statement published by the state news agency said Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded on Monday in the northern province of Jawf.

The ministry gave no further details of the charges which the woman faced.

The woman was the second person to be executed for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia this year. A Sudanese man was executed in September.

'Threat to Islam'

BBC regionalist analyst Sebastian Usher says the interior ministry stated that the verdict against Ms Nasser was upheld by Saudi Arabia's highest courts, but it did not give specific details of the charges.

The London-based newspaper, al-Hayat, quoted a member of the religious police as saying that she was in her 60s and had tricked people into giving her money, claiming that she could cure their illnesses.

Our correspondent said she was arrested in April 2009.

But the human rights group Amnesty International, which has campaigned for Saudis previously sentenced to death on sorcery charges, said it had never heard of her case until now, he adds.

A Sudanese man was executed in September on similar charges, despite calls led by Amnesty for his release.

In 2007, an Egyptian national was beheaded for allegedly casting spells to try to separate a married couple.

Last year, a Lebanese man facing the death penalty on charges of sorcery, relating to a fortune-telling television programme he presented, was freed after the Saudi Supreme Court decreed that his actions had not harmed anyone.

Amnesty says that Saudi Arabia does not actually define sorcery as a capital offence. However, some of its conservative clerics have urged the strongest possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to Islam.

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Thailand's psycho Lese-Majeste Law tosses USA citizen blogger into Thai prison / fight for free speech, overthrow King Bhumibol today

2011-12-09T01:05:00.001-05:00

Click the King, he 

gets larger, you get 

thrown in Thai prison

The Financial Times
Thursday 8 December 2011
US citizen jailed for
insulting Thai monarch

by Gwen Robinson in Bangkok

[photo] A Thai-born US citizen Joe Gordon, 55, looks on from inside a cell
A former Colorado car salesman has been sentenced to 5 years in a Thai prison for translating an unauthorised biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and posting it on his blog while at home in the US.

Joe Wichai Commart Gordon, a Thai-born US citizen, was arrested and detained in May, during a holiday in Thailand. He was charged under both the country’s strict lese-majesty law, under which it is illegal to insult the monarchy, and computer crimes act.

His lese-majesty arrest and conviction is believed to be the first of a foreign citizen for activities outside Thailand.

Mr Gordon, 55, pleaded guilty in October to translating and posting excerpts of The King Never Smiles, a 2006 biography, which has been banned in Thailand. The Thai Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced him to five years but halved the jail term, citing his guilty plea.

A US embassy spokesman in Bangkok, Walter Braunohler, said Washington was “deeply troubled” by the conviction and other recent prosecutions under the lese-majesty laws, which he said were “not consistent with international standards of freedom of expression”.

“The US has utmost respect for the Thai monarchy”, Mr Braunohler added.

Mr Gordon’s case has intensified the debate over Thailand’s lese-majesty laws. “Where is justice?” one Thai asked on Facebook. “Why don’t they arrest the author of the book?”

Last month a retired Thai truck driver, Ampon Tangnoppaku, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for allegedly sending text messages that insulted Queen Sirikit. In a case that drew strong protests from ordinary Thais, Mr Ampon wept in court and denied the charges.

“No one should be charged, tried, or imprisoned under these laws, and those already affected should be freed,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Asia researcher for Amnesty International.

Particularly troubling, he added, is the provision that enables anyone to bring a charge of lese-majesty against anyone else.

The way the law is applied in Thailand is “clearly problematic and susceptible to abuse”, said Nicholas Grossman, chief editor of the new biography King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life’s Work.

“Many Thais try to protect the king,” Anand Panyarachun, a former Thai prime minister, said at the launch of Mr Grossman’s book. “In fact, we are doing a lot of damage to the monarchy, or even to the King himself”.

King Bhumibol, who turned 84 this week, has himself spoken out against the laws and regularly pardoned Thais convicted of lese-majesty. Legal experts estimate that nearly 480 charges of lese-majesty were sent to Thailand’s lower court last year, with the conviction rate running at more than 90 per cent.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

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These disease-causing toxic products are part of your child's healthy balanced breakfast

2011-12-08T17:41:00.000-05:00

Click Top Ten Worst

Kids' Cereals to enlarge.

Environmental Working Group

USA NGO / children's health research advocate

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Kids’ Cereals Pack More Sugar Than Twinkies and Cookies

More than three-quarters of the cereals assessed fail proposed federal nutrition standards

CONTACT: Sara Sciammacco: 202.667.6982 or ssciammacco@ewg.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 7, 2011

Washington, D.C. – Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands.

Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, at nearly 56 percent sugar by weight, leads the list of the 10 worst children’s cereals, according to EWG’s analysis. In fact, a one-cup serving of the brand packs more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie, and one cup of any of the 44 other children’s cereals has more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! cookies.

In response to the exploding childhood obesity epidemic and aggressive food company advertising pitches to kids, Congress formed the federal Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children to propose standards to Congress to curb marketing of kids’ foods with too much sugar, salt and fat.

But EWG has found that only one in four children’s cereals meets the government panel’s voluntary proposed guidelines, which recommend no more than 26 percent added sugar by weight. EWG has been calling for an even lower cap on the maximum amount of sugar in children’s cereals.

“When I went to medical school in the 1960s, the consensus view was sugar provided ‘empty calories’ devoid of vitamins, minerals or fiber,” said health expert Dr. Andrew Weil. “Aside from that, it was not deemed harmful. But 50 years of nutrition research has confirmed that sugar is actually the single most health-destructive component of the standard American diet. The fact that a children's breakfast cereal is 56 percent sugar by weight – and many others are not far behind – should cause national outrage.”

“Cereal companies have spent fortunes on convincing parents that a kid’s breakfast means cereal, and that sugary cereals are fun, benign, and all kids will eat,” said noted NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle. “The cereals on the EWG highest-sugar list are among the most profitable for their makers, who back up their investment with advertising budgets of $20 million a year or more. No public health agency has anywhere near the education budget equivalent to that spent on a single cereal. Kids should not be eating sugar for breakfast. They should be eating real food.”

“As a mom of two, I was stunned to discover just how much sugar comes in a box of children’s cereal,” said Jane Houlihan, EWG’s Senior Vice President of Research. “The bottom line: most parents would never serve dessert for breakfast, but many children’s cereals have just as much sugar, or more.”

Studies suggest that children who eat breakfasts that are high in sugar have more problems at school. They become more frustrated and have a harder time working independently than kids who eat lower-sugar breakfasts. By lunchtime they have less energy, are hungrier, show attention deficits and make more mistakes on their work.
About one in five American children is obese, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has reported that childhood obesity has tripled over the past 30 years.

“It has been said that exploding rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes in today's children will lead them to be the first in American history to have shorter lifespans than their parents,” Weil said. “That tragedy strikes me as a real possibility unless parents make some dramatic changes in their children's lives.”

“Nearly 20 percent of our children and one-third of adults in this country are obese. Our children face a future of declining health, and may be the first generation to have a shorter lifespan than their parents. We must provide consumers with the information they need to make healthier choices and prevent misleading claims about the nutritional contents of food,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).
“Cereal is a prime example of this—we know that children do better in school if they have breakfast. But we also know that the type of breakfast matters. And yet, as the Environment Working Group’s report shows, many children’s cereals have sugar content levels that are above 40 percent by weight. Our children deserve better, and it is critical that we take action to combat America’s obesity epidemic.”

Congresswoman DeLauro serves on the appropriations subcommittee responsible for the Food and Drug Administration and agriculture, where she oversees drug and food safety.

10 Worst Children’s Cereals Based on percent sugar by weight
1.) Kellogg’s Honey Smacks	55.6%
2.) Post Golden Crisp	51.9%
3.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallow	48.3%
4.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s OOPS! All Berries	46.9%
5.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch Original	44.4%
6.) Quaker Oats Oh!s	44.4%
7.) Kellogg’s Smorz	43.3%
8.) Kellogg’s Apple Jacks	42.9%
9.) Quaker Oats Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries	42.3%
10.) Kellogg’s Froot Loops Original	41.4%

Some cereals are better than others. Nutrition expert Marion Nestle recommends:

Cereals with a short ingredient list (added vitamins and minerals are okay).
Cereals high in fiber.
Cereals with little or no added sugars (added sugars are ingredients such as honey, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, corn sweetener, sucrose, lactose, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup and malt syrup).

Among the best simple-to-prepare breakfasts for children are fresh fruit and high-fiber, lower-sugar cereals. Better yet, pair fruit with homemade oatmeal.

Jews News: The True Jews of Israel tell the Fake Jews of the Diaspora to go fuck themselves and stop abducting and violating the True Israeli Jews

2011-12-03T00:54:00.004-05:00

Click map to enlarge.

It comes as only a slight surprise to Vleeptron that a major agency of the Israeli government believes only Israeli Jews have worth and value, and Jews who are nationals of the USA are -- well, not real Jews, not kosher people.

God may have warm and fuzzy feelings for American Jews -- but the only Jews the Hebrew God truly loves and divinely connects with are Israelis.

Us Diaspora Jews, we're just low-rent, less holy Jews.

And we should know that and acknowledge that.

We should certainly stop trying to violate and contaminate Israelis of child-bearing age, and drag them to unholy Diaspora realms, and force the kids to live our pagan, unholy Christmukkah ways.

Probably Diaspora Jews who have chosen not to move to Israel and become Israeli citizens aren't REAL Jews at all. (Quite a few big orthodox rabbis in Israel preach that and try to enforce it in Israeli citizenship and marriage/divorce/custody law.)

I think somebody dropped this Israeli government agency on its head when it was a baby.

Okay, to reference a little theology ...

Yes, once upon a time, a long long time ago, the central rituals and sacrifices of Judaism were performed exclusively in Jerusalem, by two specific tribes of priests.

Jews who had strayed (or been abducted) far from Jerusalem could not receive the full extent of God's blessings and protections.

But the State of Israel / Eretz Yisrael, founded in 1948, no longer has central theological significance for Jewish worship. Geographical and political Israel is no longer central to the relationship between a Jew and God.

Ain't no priesthood anymore. Ain't no Temple anymore.

A Jew is equal in the eyes of God (if you believe in that kind of judgmental, personally responsive God) if he or she worships in Israel, Sheboygan Wisconsin, Sydney Australia, Salzburg Austria, Antarctica, or Low Earth Orbit.

Doubtless these lovely television ads were broadcast in Hebrew/Ivrit, and have been widely posted on YouTube by now, even though the Israeli government has withdrawn them.

This news story from the Israeli English-language daily newspaper Ha-aretz (The Land) contains the controversial government television advertisements.

Which Einstein came up with the plan guaranteed to make Jews all over the world hate and despise Israeli Jews? Was this the scheme of some future Prime Minister of Israel?

================

Agence France-Presse
newswire founded 1835
Earth's oldest news agency
Friday 2 December 2011

Israel pulls
'Don't Marry a USA Jew'
TV advertisements

The Israeli government has withdrawn an ad campaign after a rare backlash from major USA Jewish groups for appearing to urge [Israeli] expatriates not to marry American Jews or raise children in the United States.

The ads struck a nerve in a community that has long debated the nature of the Jewish identity and struggled with issues of assimilation, intermarriage and tensions between religious and secular Jews.

The first ad showed a young Israeli woman wincing after her American boyfriend mistakes candles and music marking Israel's solemn memorial day for a romantic night in.

A narrator intoned: "They will always remain Israelis. Their partners won't always understand what that means. Help them return to Israel."

A second ad showed shock flashing across the faces of a pair of Israeli grandparents when their granddaughter shouted "Christmas" in English when asked what holiday she was celebrating during a video chat.

This time the narrator said: "They will always remain Israelis. Their children won't."

The ad campaign -- which also included billboards in Hebrew urging Israelis to come home before their children started calling them "Daddy" instead of the Hebrew term "Abba" -- rippled through social media sites and was picked up by the Jewish Channel and a number of influential blogs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the ads be pulled "immediately" and a statement released by the Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said the premier "deeply values the American Jewish community."

Ambassador Oren issued an apology for "any offense" caused by the ads, noting that while the campaign had the "laudable" aim of encouraging Israelis to return home, it "did not take into account American Jewish sensibilities."

It was also conducted "without the knowledge or approval of the prime minister's office or of the Israeli embassy in Washington," he said after the ads triggered outrage.

"I don't think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads," wrote Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine.

Gal Beckerman in the Jewish Daily Forward [New York City] said: "The worst part about this campaign is that it points to something deeply defective in the Israeli psyche: the notion that fear is the only motivating factor that anyone can come up with for selling the country."

The Jewish Federations of North America sent a letter of protest to the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption calling the campaign's "messages that American Jews do not understand Israel deeply insulting and simply outrageous."

"We fear this campaign will only backfire, and rather than simply bringing Israelis back, will alienate and divide Diaspora Jews from Israel," wrote the umbrella group which represents 157 Jewish federations and over 300 network communities.

The campaign also drew the ire of the Anti-Defamation League, another prominent Jewish organisation.

"We find these videos heavy-handed, and even demeaning," national director Abraham Foxman said in a statement.

"While we appreciate the rationale behind the Israeli government's appeal to its citizens living in the US to return to Israel, we are concerned that some may be offended by what the video implies about American Jewry."

The ministry initially defended the decision to launch a campaign "touching the fine nerves of Israelis and their identity."

In a statement issued to AFP late Thursday, it said that the campaign was not directed at the Jewish community in the United States or any other diaspora. It did not, however, directly address the implied insult.

"The recent claims, according to which the Israeli government is attempting to intervene in the personal choices of US Jews or to discount their lifestyle, has no connection to reality," the ministry said.

"The Immigration Absorption Ministry cherishes and values the Jewish community in the US, and acknowledges its strong bond with Israel. The ministry respects the right of each individual to their personal choices, and does not consider them its business."

- 30 -

You got hosed, and the Fed and the Big Banks fought to keep it secret from you / They're laughing all the way to the bank

2011-11-30T14:12:00.000-05:00

Every penny which the US Federal Reserve Bank loaned secretly to these giant private-sector for-profit "too-big-to-fail" banks is US taxpayer money -- and yet when Bloomberg News sought the amounts and details of these secret loans under the Freedom of Information Act, the Fed claimed, all the way to the US Supreme Court, that it had the right to keep these massive cut-rate cash loans secret from the American public.

It's your money. It's none of your fucking business whom the Federal Reserve Board gives it to, and under what circumstances.

Who the fuck are you, a taxpayer? Who gives a shit? The Fed works for the giant banks.

=================

Bloomberg News

financial/investment-oriented newswire USA
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Banks made billion$ 

on secret Federal

Reserve loans
by Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun, Phil Kuntz

The Federal Reserve [USA central bank] and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. 

Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required emergency loans of a combined U$1,200,000,000,000 [U$1.2 trillion] on 5 December 2008, their single neediest day.

Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated U$13,000,000,000 of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market interest rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the 2007-2010 bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

While Fed officials say that almost all the loans were repaid without losses, details that emerge from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

Dwarfed TARP loans

The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court battle against the Fed and a group of the biggest banks called Clearing House Association LLC. The amount of money the central bank parceled out dwarfed the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

Few people were aware of this, partly because bankers didn't disclose the extent of their borrowing.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon told shareholders in March 2010 that his bank used the Fed's Term Auction Facility "at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system."

He didn't say that the bank's total TAF borrowings were almost twice its cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48,000,000,000 came more than a year after the program's creation.

On Nov. 26, 2008, Bank of America's then-CEO Kenneth Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed "one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world." He didn't say that Bank of America owed the Fed $86,000,000,000 that day. Bank of America's borrowing peaked at $91,400,000,000 in February 2009.

Spokesmen for JPMorgan and Bank of America declined to comment.

Shoring up banks

The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben Bernanke, has been lending money to banks since just after its founding in 1913. Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, it created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities.

By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to financial firms that couldn't get short-term loans from their usual sources.

"Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme market stress is a core function of central banks," said William English, director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs. "Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses."

The central bank initially released lending data in aggregate form only. Who borrowed and how much were kept from public view.

The six biggest U.S. banks, which received $160 billion of TARP funds, borrowed as much as $460 billion from the Fed, measured by peak daily debt. Morgan Stanley was the top borrower with a peak of $107,000,000,000 on 28 September 2009.

That was eight days after then-CEO John Mack said the firm was "in the strongest possible position." Mark Lake, a spokesman for the bank, declined to comment.

With the help of the Fed's secret loans, America's largest financial firms got bigger during the crisis. Part of the boost came from a hidden subsidy -- the Fed's below-market interest rates. The subsidy can be estimated using a figure banks call "net interest margin."

It's the difference between what they earn on loans and investments and their borrowing cost. To calculate how much banks stood to make, Bloomberg multiplied their tax-adjusted net interest margins by their average Fed debt during the time they took emergency loans.

The 190 firms for which data were available would have produced income of $13,000,000,000, assuming all of the bailout funds were invested at the margins reported, the data show. Citigroup Inc. would have taken in the most, with $1,800,000,000 .

Assets grew
Total assets held by the six biggest U.S. banks increased 39 percent to $9.5 trillion on 30 September 2011, from $6.8 trillion on the same day in 2006, according to Fed data.

The big six -- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley -- took 63 percent of the Fed's emergency-loan money as measured by peak daily borrowing, the data show.

Combined, the six spent $29,400,000 on lobbying in 2010, a 33 percent increase from 2006, according to OpenSecrets.org. Lobbying by the American Bankers Association, a trade organization, increased at about the same rate, OpenSecrets.org reported.

Lobbyists argued that bigger banks are more stable, better able to serve large companies and more competitive internationally, and breaking them up would cause "long-term damage to the U.S. economy," according to a November 2009 letter to Congress from the Financial Services Forum, an advocacy group made up of the CEOs of 20 of the largest financial firms.

Then-Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., countered that some banks are so big that their failure could trigger a chain reaction in the financial system.

So-called too-big-to-fail banks have an advantage over smaller firms: Their borrowing costs are lower because lenders believe the government won't let them go under. The perceived safety net creates what economists call moral hazard -- the belief that bankers will take greater risks because they'll enjoy any profits while shifting losses to taxpayers.

- 30 -

This is not a PizzaQ / Ceci n'est pas une PizzaQ

2011-11-26T18:53:00.000-05:00

Cliquez dans la fiche.

last nuclear waste train from France to Germany generates physical, political heat

2011-11-26T13:36:00.002-05:00

Click image to enlarge.

After the Fukushima nuclear plant accident in Japan, Angela Merkel guided Germany to end nuclear power generation within a few years. But those nuclear power facilities that remain still require activities associated with the nuclear fuel cycle, including the transport by rail of nuclear waste to reprocessing facilities in France, and then the return trip to Germany to store the waste.

These infrared (heat) images of CASTOR nuclear material containers were taken by Greenpeace recently of a nuclear waste transport train on its way back from France to Germany. The whole "point" of nuclear power is that fissile material -- uranium and plutonium -- generates heat, which boils water, which spins turbines. Even after the fuel rods are spent and reprocessed, the fissile material remains quite hot -- in the case of some isotopes, for many thousands of years. Governments and international agencies must design policies, facilities, and transport systems (land and sea) to take into account the chemical and physical behavior of these materials for millennia.

In parliamentary elections a few days ago, Greenpeace made its strongest showing in 20 years, and has emerged as the third party which will have the power to approve or block the next federal ruling coalitions. DE Greenpeace has also broadened its focus beyond environmental concerns to economic policy reform as the EuroZone experiences major difficulties with the economies of several of its member nations.

As Germany sunsets its nuclear program, France leads the world in reliance on nuclear power generation. In free market nations, calculating the cost per kilowatt of nuclear power generation rarely, if ever, takes into account the cost of police and military protection against political protests.

=============

Deutsche Welle (television)
Saturday 26 November 2011

German protesters rally
against nuclear waste train

[photo:] Police carry away an anti-nuclear protester. There were clashes between protesters and riot police
A train carrying radioactive atomic waste from France has entered Germany despite efforts by anti-nuclear protesters to block the transport. The train is headed to a storage site which activists say is unsafe.

A train carrying 150 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste from northern France arrived in the northern German state of Lower Saxony on Saturday after meeting with protests and clashes along the way.

The train, on its way to a storage facility in northern Germany, was delayed by anti-nuclear protesters for more than 24 hours on the French side of border.

Several protests took place as the train made its progress through Germany. On one occasion, 200 activists occupied the rails to block the train's further progress. Police reported that they had cleared the tracks in a "largely peaceful" manner, although several arrests were made.

Jochen Stay, a spokesman for the anti-nuclear group "Ausgestrahlt" (Irradiated), told public television that there would be more attempts to block the train as it neared its destination in Gorleben, northeastern Germany.

"There will of course be action taken to block it when it approaches," he said from Dannenberg, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Gorleben, where the waste will be stored. "People will block the tracks and the roads," he warned.

"But we do not want this to escalate. We want the police to act sensibly and appropriately with people."

Fierce protests

[photo:] A policeman in riot gear covered in paint. Police were the targets of bottles and paint bombs in Lower Saxony.

A total of 19,000 police officers have been deployed to secure the "Castor" (Cask for Storage and Transport Of Radioactive material) transport carrying 11 containers of nuclear waste.

Protests began near the train’s destination, the temporary storage facility at Gorleben, long before the train had even crossed into Germany.

On Thursday evening, and again in the early hours of Saturday morning, police used a water cannon to break up a camp of hundreds of protesters who were blocking a crossing, throwing rocks, paint bombs and small fireworks in the town of Wendland in the northern German state of Lower Saxony.

There were several other, peaceful protests in the states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate, and along other possible routes for the Castor train.

Last delivery

This shipment of German nuclear waste reprocessed in France is to be the last of its kind, due to the German government's decision to phase out its use of atomic energy following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station earlier this year.

A train carrying 11 castor containers of nuclear wasteThe train crossed the border near Saarbrücken

German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shut down eight of Germany's nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and later said all its remaining nuclear capacity would be taken off the grid by 2022.

Starting in 2012, no German nuclear waste will be sent to France for reprocessing, with the waste simply being stockpiled instead. Nuclear waste reprocessing extracts reusable elements like plutonium and uranium, but does not reduce the radioactivity of the waste.

Germany's anti-nuclear movement is considered one of Europe's strongest. Protesters oppose the transport on several grounds, saying it poses a threat to residents and the environment near the train's path in the event of an accident or an attack.

They also say such transports draw attention to what they see as atomic energy's biggest unsolved problem: the disposal of waste. The waste being transported to the site at Gorleben will remain potentially hazardous for thousands of years.

A delaying action

A year ago, at the height of a furious debate over nuclear power in Germany, tens of thousands turned out to protest against the shipment, managing to delay the train by a whole day.

An estimated 50,000 opponents of nuclear power staged a series of demonstrations along the route of an earlier transport, delaying the delivery of the radioactive waste by almost two days. Arrests and allegations of excessive police force brought the issue more strongly into the public consciousness.

Anti-nuclear organizations have said they expect around 20,000 people to join the protests against this year’s delivery.

On Saturday morning, the train was stopped again for less than an hour near Friedland, just across the state border of Lower Saxony from Hesse, where 100 demonstrators squatting on the rails had to be removed by police, news agency dpa reported.

Authors: Richard Connor, Stuart Tiffen (AFP, dapd, dpa, Reuters)
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar

- 30 -

========================

CASTOR (nuclear waste)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CASTOR (cask for storage and transport of radioactive material) is a trademarked brand of dry casks used to store spent nuclear fuel (a type of nuclear waste). CASTORs are manufactured by GNS, a German provider of nuclear services.

wedding notice! Sonia Jacobs, 64, Peter Pringle, 73

2011-11-23T18:23:00.000-05:00

Click photo to enlarge.

The New York Times
Friday 18 November 2011

by Vincent M. Mallozzi

MOST married couples will tell you that the things they hold in common helped cement their relationships. For Sonia Jacobs, 64, and Peter Pringle, 73, married in New York last Sunday, common ground was the decade and a half each had served on death row before their convictions were overturned for the murders that they steadfastly maintained they did not commit.

“We have each lived a nightmare,” Ms. Jacobs, in a gold dress and matching pearls, whispered to a friend minutes before marrying Mr. Pringle, his snow-white beard aglow against the backdrop of a black suit and matching bow tie. “Now it’s time to live our fairy tale.”

Once upon a darker time, Ms. Jacobs and her second husband began serving death sentences for two murders in Florida. She entered solitary confinement inside Broward Correctional Institution as a “28-year-old vegetarian hippie,” she said, and exited prison as “a 45-year-old orphan, widow and grandmother.”

Ms. Jacobs, known as Sunny, was born in Queens. She was living in Los Angeles in 1998 when she first encountered Mr. Pringle in Galway, Ireland, at an Amnesty International event she had spoken at that April.

Mr. Pringle said he remembered being riveted as she reeled out the story of how a February 1976 car trip she had taken with Jesse Tafero, her second husband, landed the couple on death row. Behind the wheel, she said, was Walter Norman Rhodes Jr. (who had befriended Mr. Tafero during an earlier prison stint for both men). He was giving the couple a ride from Miami to the home of friends in West Palm Beach, Fla. Also in the car was Christina, the couple’s 10-month-old daughter and Eric, Ms. Jacobs’s 9-year-old son from her first marriage.

At a rest stop off Interstate 95 in Broward County, a state trooper and his friend, a Canadian constable, pulled alongside their vehicle for a routine stop, which ended in a blaze of gunfire.

Both officers were killed.

Ms. Jacobs, who said that she and the children had been asleep in the backseat, contended that it was Mr. Rhodes who shot the two officers and then forced all of them, at gunpoint, to participate in his attempted getaway.

“Jesse and I were stunned, and my son actually slipped in the pool of blood,” Ms. Jacobs said. “At that point, we were hostages.”

A short time later, the police captured all three suspects and charged them with murder. Mr. Rhodes, who testified against the couple, plea-bargained with authorities, reducing his sentence to life.

Mr. Tafero and Ms. Jacobs (her case further damaged by a cellmate who said that she had overheard Ms. Jacobs confess) were sentenced to death.

In 1981, Ms. Jacobs won an appeal and the Florida Supreme Court changed her sentence from death to life in prison. But her spirits were dealt a blow in July 1982 when her parents, who were raising her two children, died in the crash of Pan Am Flight 759 in Kenner, La.

“It was the most devastating time in my entire life,” said Ms. Jacobs, who wears her mother’s wedding ring, which was salvaged in the wreckage.

Her children were cast into the foster care system, but Ms. Jacobs still had her husband, with whom she exchanged prison letters.

“Anything he touched, or that he wrote on, or that he licked with his tongue, I was keeping,” she said. “I existed on those letters.”

But on May 4, 1990, with Ms. Jacobs still in prison, Mr. Tafero was put to death in a Florida electric chair.

“The world had become a place I didn’t know anymore,” she said.

Nevertheless she continued to fight for her release, which came in 1992, nearly 17 years after her arrest, when her conviction was overturned on appeal. (Along the way the jailhouse informant recanted and Mr. Rhodes confessed to murdering the two officers.)

As she told her story in Galway that day, she noticed that a man sitting in the room began to cry. “I was blown away by the horror of what had happened to her,” Mr. Pringle said. “I knew I had to speak to her.”

They were eventually introduced, and Mr. Pringle, who had served a long stretch in Portlaoise Prison in Ireland, offered Ms. Jacobs a ride to her next day’s speaking engagement, a five-hour drive to Quark, Ireland.

She agreed, and then Mr. Pringle made her a more unusual offer. He invited her for a swim in Galway Bay, which she accepted.

“The sea has such a cleansing power about it,” he said to her.

As they crossed the Shannon River the next morning, Mr. Pringle revealed to Ms. Jacob that he, too, was once sentenced to death, and that he, too, had cleansed himself in the waters of Galway Bay, in May 1995, after serving a 15-year prison term.

“At that moment, I knew that the universe had put us together for a reason,” Ms. Jacobs said.

He said that he had been 41 and the divorced father of four when, in July 1980, he was accused of being one of three men who had murdered two police officers following a bank robbery in Ballaghaderreen, Ireland.

He continued telling her that after his conviction he had been sentenced to be hanged. (At the time, killing a police officer in Ireland was a capital crime, though Ireland has since abolished the death penalty.)

His lawyers won a stay of his original Dec. 19, 1980, execution, which was then reset for June 8, 1981.

His hanging was only weeks away when, on May 27, 1981, Ireland’s president commuted Mr. Pringle’s sentence to 40 years without parole.

Mr. Pringle, who is originally from Dublin and dropped out of school when he was 13, decided to serve as his own counsel.

“I became something of a jailhouse lawyer,” he said. Mr. Pringle was eventually able to prove that an interrogating officer had written down his alleged confession before any interrogation had actually taken place. He said that in May 1995, “the case was quashed by the court of criminal appeal on the grounds that my conviction was unsafe and unsatisfactory.”

At the end of her Irish journey, Ms. Jacobs returned to Los Angeles but made an effort to remain long-distance friends with Mr. Pringle, whom she said she found to be “a very honorable man.”

Six months passed before Mr. Pringle invited her back, this time to give a talk during a local concert he arranged in Galway. “During that visit, we fell in love,” she said.

“We didn’t just share a past, we had a vision for a future,” said Ms. Jacobs, who has since spoken at schools, churches and other places across the United States and over a dozen other countries, alongside Mr. Pringle, on human rights and abolishing the death penalty.

“Sure, Peter and I were also physically attracted to one another, but it was deeper than that,” she said. “You know what happens to attractive, it becomes wrinkled and fat.”

In December 2001, she left Los Angeles to live with him in what he described as “a seaside cottage at the end of the road, by the sea, where we grow our own vegetables.”

“Sunny teaches yoga, I live on a pension,” Mr. Pringle said. “We have two hens, two ducks and eight goats. We both milk the goats and Sunny makes cheese. It’s really a nice, simple life.”

Ms. Jacobs re-established contact with her children and a granddaughter, who have scattered to Nevada and Australia; Mr. Pringle reconnected with his brood, who all live in Ireland.

He said, however, that the past could not and would not be forgotten. “We will always feel each other’s pain,” he said.

Nearly a year after Ms. Jacobs moved to Ireland, her story, along with those of five other wrongfully convicted death row inmates, became “The Exonerated,” a play put on by the nonprofit theater Culture Project that had its Off Broadway debut in October 2002.

Ms. Jacobs was first portrayed by Jill Clayburgh, and 28 actresses have since played the role of Ms. Jacobs, a list that includes Mia Farrow, Lynn Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Kathleen Turner, Brooke Shields, Marlo Thomas and Amy Irving.

None of the couple’s children attended Ms. Jacobs’s and Mr. Pringle’s Nov. 13 wedding at Guastavino’s restaurant in Manhattan. (“My mom and Peter’s lives have been a very rocky road,” the bride’s son wrote in an e-mail. “I am overjoyed to see them both so happy together.”)

Ms. Shields, Ms. Thomas and Ms. Irving, however, were front and center.

“Playing Sunny was so claustrophobic for me,” Ms. Shields said, her eyes welling with tears, “You felt her powerlessness, this was a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, the same for Peter.

“But despite everything they have been through, they are not bitter or jaded, they never closed their hearts. They are two people who are at peace with themselves and with the world. They could not have been more fated and meant to be with one another.”

As Ms. Jacobs and Mr. Pringle exchanged wedding vows and Irish Claddagh rings before Robin E. Cofer, a Hindu priest, the three actresses, all holding hands, inched closer to Ms. Jacobs.

When Ms. Jacobs was asked, “Will thou love, honor and cherish him, do thou so declare?” the actresses replied on cue: “We do.”

- 30 -

How can I be stupider? What news media should I plug into to know less?

2011-11-22T16:54:00.000-05:00

Click on Fox News Channel to know less.

Fairleigh Dickinson University is New Jersey's largest private institution [of higher education] with 12,000+ students. The institution has two main campuses located in New Jersey: the College at Florham in Madison ... and the Metropolitan Campus located close to New York City ...

The following is a university press release describing the results of a political science poll conducted by FDU.

==========

Monday 21 November 2011

==========

According to the latest results from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll, some news sources make us less likely to know what’s going on in the world. In the most recent study, the poll asked New Jerseyans about current events at home and abroad, and from what sources -- if any -- they get their information. The conclusion:

Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.

Among other topics, New Jerseyans were asked about the outcome of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East this past year. While 53% of New Jerseyans know that Egyptians were successful in overthrowing the government of Hosni Mubarak, 21% say that the uprisings were unsuccessful, and 26% admit they don’t know.

Also, 48% know that the Syrian uprising has thus far been unsuccessful, while 36% say they don’t know, and 16% say the Syrians have already toppled their government.

But the real finding is that the results depend on what media sources people turn to for their news. For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour
cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news
sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors). Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.

"Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by
Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News," said Dan Cassino, a
professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind
Poll. "Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that
leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at
all."

By contrast, some media sources have a positive effect on political knowledge. For example, people who report reading a national newspaper like The New York Times or USA Today are 12-points more likely to know that Egyptians have overthrown their government than those who have not looked at any news source. And those who listen to the non-profit NPR radio network are 11-points more likely to know the outcome of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

However, the best informed respondents are those that watched Sunday morning news programs: leading to a 16-point increase in the likelihood of knowing what happened in Egypt and an 8-point increase in the likelihood of knowing what happened in Syria.

"Sunday morning news shows tend to spend a lot more time on a single issue than other
news broadcasts, and they are less likely to degenerate into people shouting at each
other," said Cassino. "Viewers pick up more information from this sort of calm discussion
than from other formats. Unfortunately, these shows have a much smaller audience than
the shouters."

New Jerseyans are not necessarily more likely to be knowledgeable about domestic politics than international events. Just 47% are able to identify the Occupy Wall Street protesters as predominantly Democratic: 11 % think they are Republicans. Viewers of cable news on MSNBC are the most likely to think the protestors are Republicans.

Watching the left-leaning MSNBC news channel is associated with a 10-point increase in the likelihood of misidentifying the protesters.

Exposure to Sunday morning news shows helps respondents on this question: seeing these programs leads to an 11-point increase in the likelihood of getting the answer right. Listening to NPR also helps, but the biggest aid to answering correctly is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart [broadcast by the Comedy Central cable network], which leads to a 6-point decrease in identifying the protestors as Republicans, and a 12-point increase in the likelihood of giving the correct answer.

"Jon Stewart has not spent a lot of time on some of these issues," said Cassino. "But the results show that when he does talk about something, his viewers pick up a lot more information than they would from other news sources."

Only 55% of New Jerseyans are able to name correctly either Mitt Romney or Herman Cain as the Republican candidates most recently leading in the polls, with 37 % saying that Romney is ahead, and 18% saying that Cain is. Watching Fox News didn't help or hurt respondents on this question. MSNBC, however, helped: Watching MSNBC was associated with a 10-point increase in identifying Romney as the leader, and a 5-point
drop in the likelihood of identifying Cain compared to those who got no exposure to
news at all.

"Given the amount of time and effort the media spent covering these candidates, the fact that only about half of the public can name one of the front-runners is embarrassing," said Cassino. "The fact that Fox News, the preferred media outlet for many of the candidates, doesn't do better in informing viewers is very surprising."

Those who listen to talk radio are the most likely to answer the question correctly. People who tune in to that generally conservative format are 17-points more likely to say that Herman Cain is at the top, and 15-points more likely to be able to name either of the leaders.

"The amount of time spent on an issue, and the depth to which it's discussed, makes a difference," said Cassino. "Whatever its flaws may be, talk radio has spent a lot of time
talking about the nomination, and the basic facts seem to have gotten through."

The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll of 612 adults statewide was underwritten by WFDU-FM Radio and conducted by telephone using both landlines and cell phones from Oct. 17 through Oct. 23, 2011, and has a margin of error of +/-3.5 percentage points.

==========

For more details of the Fairleigh Dickinson poll:

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/

30 years later, top Khmer Rouge leaders stand trial for genocide

2011-11-20T23:42:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press
(USA newswire)
Sunday 20 November 2011

Top Khmer Rouge leaders'
trial opens in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Three top Khmer Rouge leaders accused of orchestrating Cambodia's "killing fields" went on trial Monday before a U.N.-backed tribunal more than 30 years after some of the 20th century's worst atrocities.

Judge Nil Nonn declared the trial open Monday and read the names of the three senior Khmer Rouge leaders who are defendants in the tribunal in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

The charges against the surviving inner circle of the communist movement -- all now in their 80s -- include crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture stemming from their 1975-79 reign of terror.

An estimated 1,700,000 people died of execution, starvation, exhaustion or lack of medical care as a result of the Khmer Rouge's radical policies, which essentially turned all of Cambodia into a forced labor camp as the movement attempted to create a pure agrarian socialist society. Intellectuals, entrepreneurs and anyone considered [opposed to the Khmer Rouge order] were imprisoned, tortured and often executed.

On Sunday, relatives of the victims wept as they chanted and burned incense near a glass case filled with skulls at Choeung Ek Genocide Center, a memorial built in a Phnom Penh field where the Khmer Rouge staged mass executions.

"I want to remind the victims and ask them to push this trial to find justice for those who were killed by the Khmer Rouges regime," 80-year-old Chum Mey, one of the only two survivors from the notorious S-21 prison, said at Sunday's ceremony.

Tribunal spokesman Huy Vannak called the proceedings beginning Monday "the most important trial in the world" because of the seniority of those involved.

"It sends a message that the trial, which survivors have been waiting more than three decades for, finally begins," he said.

The defendants, who sat side by side with their lawyers, are 85-year-old Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist and the No. 2 leader behind the late Pol Pot; 80-year-old Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state; and 86-year-old Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister.

A fourth defendant, 79-year-old Ieng Thirith, was ruled unfit to stand trial last week because she has Alzheimer's disease. She is Ieng Sary's wife and served as the regime's minister for social affairs.

The regime's supreme leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 in Cambodia's jungles while a prisoner of his own comrades, who after being toppled from power fought a guerrilla war that did not fully end in the late 1990s.

The U.N.-backed tribunal, which was established in 2006, has tried just one case, convicting Kaing Guek Eav, the former head of the regime's notorious S-21 prison, last July and sentencing him to 35 years in prison for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other offenses.

That case was seen as much simpler than the current case, which covers a much broader range of activities and because Kaing Guek Eav confessed to his crimes. Those going on trial Monday have steadfastly maintained their innocence. The prison chief was also far lower in the regime's leadership ranks than the current defendants.

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

- 30 -

PizzaQ! Gauche au droit, Who the heck are these Holy Guys? (Because -- blow me down! -- they're NOT The Apostles!)

2011-11-15T18:17:00.000-05:00

Click on Cathedral-Basilica to enlarge.

Like a bolt from the blue, a few weeks ago I got an e-mail from the University of Toronto Press asking permission to use the above photo in an upcoming high-class coffee-table book (and its e-book avatar), which will be published (Good Lord willin' and the crik don't rise) this coming Spring entitled "Religions of Canadians."

In 2008 I trekked to Montreal on a train, stayed a night or two in the hotel above the big train station, and then hopped the 23-hour train to Halifax.

By total accident, this was the view out my hotel room window.

It's a Roman Catholic Cathedral, so those guys on the roof are The Apostles, right?

Who the heck else could they be? The Toronto Bluejays? The Rockettes dancing an Easter pageant? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

I never gave it a second thought.

Until today.

I had suggested that the editor also identify and credit the sculptor, and she did.

Well, blow me down and knock me over with a feather! They're NOT The Apostles!

* * *

Hiya A***** --

Your identification of the sculptor led me to surf

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Olindo_Gratton

and discover that the statues are NOT the Apostles, but are

À la cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde (Montréal)

    Saint Antoine de Padoue et l'Enfant-Jésus (1898)
    Saint Vincent de Paul et un enfant trouvé (1893)
    Saint Hyacinthe tenant une statuette de la Vierge (1899)
    Saint Thomas d'Aquin (1900)
    Saint Paul (1898)
    Saint Jean l'Évangéliste (1893)
    Saint Jacques-le-Majeur (1892)
    Saint Joseph et l'Enfant-Jésus (1899)
    Saint Jean Baptiste (1899)
    Saint Patrice (1899)
    Saint Ignace d'Antioche (1893)
    Saint Charles Borromée (1899)
    Saint François d'Assise (1898)

(I found no indication of left-right order, of who is which.)

This headache at the altar of accuracy now belongs to you and T******* F**. In my defense, I was just a camera-toting tourist passing through, and woefully ignorant of hagiography to boot.

Bob

* * *

Which brings us to today's PizzaQ -- 13 slices of French-bread Pizza.

Using your (hopefully superior) knowledge of the Christian and Roman Catholic Saints, can you identify these statues correctly, from left to right? (Gauche au droit, I guess.)

DO NOT TELEPHONE

OR E-MAIL THE CATHEDRAL.

That's cheating, and it's very possible they won't know for sure. The most recent statue went up in 1900, and 111 years is a lot of time to forget which saint is which.

They probably won't let you ask the Archbishop directly. And if they let you, he will probably insist you chat en francaise/Quebecois.

So this PizzaQ is really a test of how expert you are at Christian hagiography. For those who didn't snore or read Green Lantern comic books through Sunday School or Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, there should be lots of little clues in the statues to identify each one. That's always been the deal with Christian art -- it's filled with signs and symbols and tipoffs to know who's who.

I already screwed up this Holy Rooftop Lineup ignorantly and badly, so surely there exists a spiritually educated reader who can do better than I did.

And 13 slices of French Bread Pizza is not chopped liver!

Vleeptron_Z

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Ron Paul (sort of) moves on to the USA's first presidential primary in New Hampshire

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Ron Paul and his newsletter's racist homophobic remarks (which Paul claims he didn't write)

The Washington Post

fact-checker blog

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Ron Paul and the racist newsletters (Fact Checker biography)

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msnbc's Chuck Todd tells some funny jokes about our silliest presidential candidate: The guy who promises to end our American wars

conservative minister bans Muslim women's face coverings for Canadian citizenship ceremony / Canada takes a dive away from freedom of religion

soft-core Vleeporn, topless saint beheaded / Saudi woman beheaded for witchcraft & sorcery / Chop Chop Square in Riyadh

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More than three-quarters of the cereals assessed fail proposed federal nutrition standards

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This is not a PizzaQ / Ceci n'est pas une PizzaQ

last nuclear waste train from France to Germany generates physical, political heat

CASTOR (nuclear waste)

wedding notice! Sonia Jacobs, 64, Peter Pringle, 73

How can I be stupider? What news media should I plug into to know less?

30 years later, top Khmer Rouge leaders stand trial for genocide

PizzaQ! Gauche au droit, Who the heck are these Holy Guys? (Because -- blow me down! -- they're NOT The Apostles!)

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 恭喜发财！龙年快乐！ Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Dragon!