My head is spinning around…again. This time it’s over the Political Correct Police’s efforts to eliminate the terms B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini) from textbooks and other reference books…
“ALBANY, N.Y. -- In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out.
The terms "B.C." and "A.D." increasingly are shunned by certain scholars. Educators and historians say schools from North America to Australia have been changing the terms "Before Christ," or B.C., to "Before Common Era," or B.C.E., and "anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord") to "Common Era." In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E.”
There are clearly a number of people out there that have way to little to do with their time. The modern calendar works quite well, in my opinion, and just like the government’s force feeding Americans the metric measurement system in the 1970’s, I think that this effort will be doomed to failure. (Being an engineer, I am quite comfortable with the metric system, by the way.)
But there is more…
“The terms B.C. and A.D. have clear Catholic roots. Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot in Rome, devised them as a way to determine the date for Easter for Pope St. John I. The terms were continued under the Gregorian Calendar, created in 1582 under Pope Gregory XIII.
Although most calendars are based on an epoch or person, B.C. and A.D. have always presented a particular problem for historians: There is no year zero; there's a 33-year gap, reflecting the life of Christ, dividing the epochs. Critics say that's additional reason to replace the Christian-based terms.
"When Jews or Muslims have to put Christ in the middle of our calendar ... that's difficult for us," said Steven M. Brown, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
The new terms were introduced by academics in the 1990s in public elementary and high school classrooms.”
So they want to replace “Christian based terms in our calendars” and “academics” have already introduced the terms into public elementary schools and high school classrooms?
What I want to know is…
WHO THE HELL APPROVED THIS BRAINSTORM?
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?
What are they teaching your kids in our government schools? I don’t have any kids myself, but this really pisses me off.
Why don’t we just throw out the calendar all together. Let’s toss out the alarm clock while we’re at it.
Let’s just re-number everything as before Clinton (BC) and after Clinton (AC.)
Or how about using the terms before gay marriage (BGM) and after gay marriage (AGM)?
Let’s have a calendar that completely skips the birthdays of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and eliminates Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. There would just be a blank square on the page with no number and no title—just a big smiley face or a picture of a condom.
I know...lets design a clock that runs backwards and only chimes on Martin Luther Kings’ birthday, Earth Day, and Gay Pride Day? Let’s eliminate the minimum wage and pay everyone $20 an hour to stay home and smoke dope and watch Public Television.
I’ll see y’all, I’m moving to Costa Rica.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
Preaching To The Choir
It seems that liberals are expanding their strategy of “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Rankled by the success and reach of conservative talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Neil Boortz, last spring they started their own liberal talk radio network called Air America.
Air America only has one problem—no one is listening to their whining, mean-spirited whimps like Al Franken. They are ranked somewhere down in the twenties in number of listeners in New York City, their primary market. They are not fairing much better in Los Angeles, their number two market.
Why the poor ratings? Because if you want to listen to the liberal viewpoint, all you have to do is tune in to the Clinton News Network (CNN), or ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.
Liberal talk radio is redundant. An Oxymoron...heavy emphasis on the moron part...
This NY Times story says that now the mainstream media and hollywood types are trying their hands at blogging.
"LOS ANGELES, April 23 - Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere.
Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.
She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls "the most creative minds" in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion. It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the clock. It is to be introduced May 9.
Having prominent people join the blogosphere, Ms. Huffington said in an interview, "is an affirmation of its success and will only enrich and strengthen its impact on the national conversation." Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman."
Walter Cronkite and Clinton’s black soul-brother lawyer friend Vernon Jordan blogging?
I’m laughing my butt off.
Why don’t they include OJ Simpson…he could continue his search for his wife's killer(s) online…
“But unlike the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post will be interactive, offering news as well as commentary from famous people and allowing the masses to comment too, although not always directly with the celebs.”
Of course they won’t allow comments or force these morons to actually live with and answer to their readers.
When are the hollywood idiots going to learn that just because you can stick your boobs and pretty face or pectorals and penis on a TV or movie screen doesn't mean that anyone gives a damn what you think about politicts?
This won’t be a blog, it will be on-line newspaper—probably with more of the same leftist drivel.
Rankled by the success and reach of conservative talk radio shows like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Neil Boortz, last spring they started their own liberal talk radio network called Air America.
Air America only has one problem—no one is listening to their whining, mean-spirited whimps like Al Franken. They are ranked somewhere down in the twenties in number of listeners in New York City, their primary market. They are not fairing much better in Los Angeles, their number two market.
Why the poor ratings? Because if you want to listen to the liberal viewpoint, all you have to do is tune in to the Clinton News Network (CNN), or ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC.
Liberal talk radio is redundant. An Oxymoron...heavy emphasis on the moron part...
This NY Times story says that now the mainstream media and hollywood types are trying their hands at blogging.
"LOS ANGELES, April 23 - Get ready for the next level in the blogosphere.
Arianna Huffington, the columnist and onetime candidate for governor of California, is about to move blogging from the realm of the anonymous individual to the realm of the celebrity collective.
She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls "the most creative minds" in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion. It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the clock. It is to be introduced May 9.
Having prominent people join the blogosphere, Ms. Huffington said in an interview, "is an affirmation of its success and will only enrich and strengthen its impact on the national conversation." Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman."
Walter Cronkite and Clinton’s black soul-brother lawyer friend Vernon Jordan blogging?
I’m laughing my butt off.
Why don’t they include OJ Simpson…he could continue his search for his wife's killer(s) online…
“But unlike the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post will be interactive, offering news as well as commentary from famous people and allowing the masses to comment too, although not always directly with the celebs.”
Of course they won’t allow comments or force these morons to actually live with and answer to their readers.
When are the hollywood idiots going to learn that just because you can stick your boobs and pretty face or pectorals and penis on a TV or movie screen doesn't mean that anyone gives a damn what you think about politicts?
This won’t be a blog, it will be on-line newspaper—probably with more of the same leftist drivel.
Are You This Stupid?
I grew up in a fairly rural area in south Alabama where you could actually see the night sky. Not just the Moon and a few major planets like Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, but back in the 60’s you could see the Milky Way on a clear winter night.
Now that we live on an island located on the Atlantic Ocean, we have an excellent view of the night sky, particularly looking to the east. One of my favorite websites is Spaceweather.com. I get a regular E-mail update from them each week that tells me about things like sunspots, eclipses, and meteor showers.
The Perseid and the Leonid Showers occur in August and November each year and have, in recent history, provided a spectacular display of “shooting stars” if you were willing to stay up late or get up early to watch.
There was a minor meteor shower predicted for this past weekend—the Lyrid Meteor Shower, caused by the earth passing through debris from the tail of a comet. There apparently were a bunch of DUMB ASSES up in New England that are not used to being able to see anything in the sky other than the moon, airplanes, and UFO’s.
"BOSTON (AP) - A meteor shower Sunday night sparked a flurry of frantic phone calls to police departments across New England from people who saw bright lights moving in the sky, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The meteor shower was seen as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Long Island. Some witnesses apparently mistook the meteor shower for a plane crashing in Connecticut, the FAA's Holly Baker said.
"We've checked all around. There are no aircraft unaccounted for," she said."
I just have two questions…
Are these people are allowed to vote?
Are they allowed to have kids?
(I bet if they voted at all, they voted for John sKerry)
Now that we live on an island located on the Atlantic Ocean, we have an excellent view of the night sky, particularly looking to the east. One of my favorite websites is Spaceweather.com. I get a regular E-mail update from them each week that tells me about things like sunspots, eclipses, and meteor showers.
The Perseid and the Leonid Showers occur in August and November each year and have, in recent history, provided a spectacular display of “shooting stars” if you were willing to stay up late or get up early to watch.
There was a minor meteor shower predicted for this past weekend—the Lyrid Meteor Shower, caused by the earth passing through debris from the tail of a comet. There apparently were a bunch of DUMB ASSES up in New England that are not used to being able to see anything in the sky other than the moon, airplanes, and UFO’s.
"BOSTON (AP) - A meteor shower Sunday night sparked a flurry of frantic phone calls to police departments across New England from people who saw bright lights moving in the sky, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The meteor shower was seen as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Long Island. Some witnesses apparently mistook the meteor shower for a plane crashing in Connecticut, the FAA's Holly Baker said.
"We've checked all around. There are no aircraft unaccounted for," she said."
I just have two questions…
Are these people are allowed to vote?
Are they allowed to have kids?
(I bet if they voted at all, they voted for John sKerry)
Try this Test
I'm still learning about Blogging. I'm also still learning about myself. I did this posting mainly to test installing HTML tables in my blog. Guess what? It WORKS!
I got the link from Gut Rumbles. (Careful if you go there, he's bites I hear...)
You can go to the website and find out which American Cities Best Fit You?
I'll agree with Honolulu, somebody buy me a one way ticket and I'm there. Same for Miami.
Already done Atlanta for 27 years, and whoever thinks that I'd live in Austin, Texas or hang around in the rain with the liberal panty-waists in Seattle has clearly lost too many brain cells.
I got the link from Gut Rumbles. (Careful if you go there, he's bites I hear...)
American Cities That Best Fit You: |
| 70% Honolulu |
| 60% Atlanta |
| 60% Miami |
| 55% Austin |
| 55% Seattle |
You can go to the website and find out which American Cities Best Fit You?
I'll agree with Honolulu, somebody buy me a one way ticket and I'm there. Same for Miami.
Already done Atlanta for 27 years, and whoever thinks that I'd live in Austin, Texas or hang around in the rain with the liberal panty-waists in Seattle has clearly lost too many brain cells.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword
(The flying fickle finger of fate..)
Remember the Tylenol Scare?
If you are younger than 30 you probably don’t. It makes me feel old when I looked up the Tylenol tampering story and found out that it happened in 1982. Seems like just yesterday…
Just to refresh you memory, in the fall of 1982 some moron took Tylenol capsules off the shelves of grocery stores in the Chicago area and replaced the contents of some capsules with Cyanide poison. The idiot ended up killing seven people and causing a recall of all of Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol products, ultimately costing the company over $100 million.
The only positive outcome was an industry wide change in the packaging of pharmaceuticals and many food items that continues today. There were a number of copycats that tried the same thing after the initial story broke and they never caught the person(s) that did the initial poisoning, but a second idiot, James Lewis, was arrested for claiming responsibility and demanding money in return for information to prevent further deaths.
Mr. Lewis finished serving thirteen years of a twenty year sentence for extortion in the late 1990’s. HE GOT LESS THAN HE DESERVED, IN MY OPINION.
This brings me to the recent story of Miss Anna Ayala of Las Vegas, Nevada--the Wendy's "finger-in-the-chili extortionist.
I hate to point this out, but Miss Ayala could be getting a raw deal in this situation since they can’t absolutely prove that she put the severed human finger in her bowl of chili, but since she has a past history of filing lawsuits asking for money over stupid circumstances I guess that I can't blame the authorities.
Like Johnson & Johnson, Wendy’s has taken a huge hit financially and can do little to prove that the finger didn’t originate in their chili—other than proving that none of their employees and suppliers are missing any fingers.
As for Miss Ayala, I have some advice…When you live by the sword, you risk dieing by the sword.
Know what I mean?
Remember the Tylenol Scare?
If you are younger than 30 you probably don’t. It makes me feel old when I looked up the Tylenol tampering story and found out that it happened in 1982. Seems like just yesterday…
Just to refresh you memory, in the fall of 1982 some moron took Tylenol capsules off the shelves of grocery stores in the Chicago area and replaced the contents of some capsules with Cyanide poison. The idiot ended up killing seven people and causing a recall of all of Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol products, ultimately costing the company over $100 million.
The only positive outcome was an industry wide change in the packaging of pharmaceuticals and many food items that continues today. There were a number of copycats that tried the same thing after the initial story broke and they never caught the person(s) that did the initial poisoning, but a second idiot, James Lewis, was arrested for claiming responsibility and demanding money in return for information to prevent further deaths.
Mr. Lewis finished serving thirteen years of a twenty year sentence for extortion in the late 1990’s. HE GOT LESS THAN HE DESERVED, IN MY OPINION.
This brings me to the recent story of Miss Anna Ayala of Las Vegas, Nevada--the Wendy's "finger-in-the-chili extortionist.
I hate to point this out, but Miss Ayala could be getting a raw deal in this situation since they can’t absolutely prove that she put the severed human finger in her bowl of chili, but since she has a past history of filing lawsuits asking for money over stupid circumstances I guess that I can't blame the authorities.
Like Johnson & Johnson, Wendy’s has taken a huge hit financially and can do little to prove that the finger didn’t originate in their chili—other than proving that none of their employees and suppliers are missing any fingers.
As for Miss Ayala, I have some advice…When you live by the sword, you risk dieing by the sword.
Know what I mean?
Give Me A Break
You can tell when there are too many lawyers in a given society by the number of frivolous lawsuits. Of course it takes a few stupid people to form the basis of the litigation, but when people make a living by suing McDonalds for selling hot coffee or get caught trying to sue Wendys for putting fingers in bowls of chili, you can be pretty sure that things are out of hand.
I'm proposing that we might be facing a similar over-supply of psychiatrists since they've recently started running around offering counseling to people doing genealogical research.
"LONDON -- Genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history.
Britain's Society of Genealogists is one of several organizations concerned that amateur historians are not sufficiently prepared for the secrets they might uncover in their family records and could need counseling to help them through the emotional process."
So finding out that your family tree doesn't have any branches is considered stressful?
I'm offering some advice of my own...
GET A GRIP AND DEAL WITH IT.
I'm proposing that we might be facing a similar over-supply of psychiatrists since they've recently started running around offering counseling to people doing genealogical research.
"LONDON -- Genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history.
Britain's Society of Genealogists is one of several organizations concerned that amateur historians are not sufficiently prepared for the secrets they might uncover in their family records and could need counseling to help them through the emotional process."
So finding out that your family tree doesn't have any branches is considered stressful?
I'm offering some advice of my own...
GET A GRIP AND DEAL WITH IT.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Everything But The Kitchen Sink
I own some property in nearby Brunswick, Georgia—a duplex and some adjacent vacant lots on which I intend to build some small houses in the future. I screwed around last summer and let the back yard of the duplex and the lots grow up with weeds head high because I didn’t have a lawnmower and the energy to operate same and I was too cheep to actually hire someone to knock down the growth.
I’ve decided to get ahead of the game this season and have our Condo’s landscaper, Ozzy, clean everything up and keep ahead of the growth this year. Ozzy went by yesterday to look at the situation and calculate a price for the work. When he reported back to me he had some bad news…someone had broken into the vacant duplex.
I was dressed, in my truck, toolbox in hand, within thirty minutes of hearing the news. I was pissed off that my property had been violated AGAIN and I was fearful of what I would find inside once I got there.
This was the second time in three months that someone has entered this same rental unit through the same door. The first time they broke in they just kicked the door open and looked around inside. Since the unit was unoccupied and there was nothing to steal but bathroom fixtures, an old stove, refrigerator, and the kitchen sink, I guess that they were disappointed. I fixed the door by putting on a new slide bolt and installing a reinforcing plywood panel.
This second forced entry again found the unit unoccupied, containing the bathroom and kitchen fixtures. The only difference in the two events?
THEY STOLE MY KITCHEN SINK!!!!
Really, the side door was open and everything inside was intact, except the crappy kitchen cabinet, countertop, and sink was missing—pipes and all. There is a spot on the floor where the linoleum stops and an outline of where the cabinet was, but no cabinet…
And no sink.
I think that I’ve seen everything now.
I’ve decided to get ahead of the game this season and have our Condo’s landscaper, Ozzy, clean everything up and keep ahead of the growth this year. Ozzy went by yesterday to look at the situation and calculate a price for the work. When he reported back to me he had some bad news…someone had broken into the vacant duplex.
I was dressed, in my truck, toolbox in hand, within thirty minutes of hearing the news. I was pissed off that my property had been violated AGAIN and I was fearful of what I would find inside once I got there.
This was the second time in three months that someone has entered this same rental unit through the same door. The first time they broke in they just kicked the door open and looked around inside. Since the unit was unoccupied and there was nothing to steal but bathroom fixtures, an old stove, refrigerator, and the kitchen sink, I guess that they were disappointed. I fixed the door by putting on a new slide bolt and installing a reinforcing plywood panel.
This second forced entry again found the unit unoccupied, containing the bathroom and kitchen fixtures. The only difference in the two events?
THEY STOLE MY KITCHEN SINK!!!!
Really, the side door was open and everything inside was intact, except the crappy kitchen cabinet, countertop, and sink was missing—pipes and all. There is a spot on the floor where the linoleum stops and an outline of where the cabinet was, but no cabinet…
And no sink.
I think that I’ve seen everything now.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
One Hell Of A Commute
(A Day in The Life Of My Girl)
As my long time readers already know, my girlfriend, Patricia, lives with me here on St. Simons Island Georgia, but her primary job function is located in Elgin, Illinois. She is, as I write, on her way back home tonight after spending two nights working in her “other office” in Elgin. Only a select few seasoned business travelers know what she actually goes through each week in accomplishing her duties.
I lived ten years spending several hours each day commuting to and from work in the Atlanta metropolitan area. It’s a wonder that I didn’t have a stroke or a heart attack dealing with the ingrates and morons I faced in traffic each day.
I also spent another ten years driving all over the Southeastern US and flying to points unknown selling my air-pollution-control/energy-recovery products and systems to everybody that had a smokestack on their property. I thought that I knew everything about business travel.
I WAS WRONG.
If you haven’t traveled every week for a living, you probably believe that traveling is a fun, glamorous, wonderful ritual. Well, it is…for about six months…after that…
YOU ARE SO MISTAKEN.
Here is how your life works when you travel for a living…
Tuesday morning 4:00 AM--The alarm clock goes off…time to wake up. Dutiful boyfriend (that would be me,) having been awake on the living room sofa for three or four hours blogging and reading news on the internet, steps in to verify that the alarm has done it’s job and that a position of verticality is being assumed.
After wiping the sleep from your eyes, you step into the shower while dutiful boyfriend (DB) places English muffin in toaster and pours glass of orange juice. DB also fires up clothes iron and presses slacks and blouse while checking internet web sites for air traffic control conditions and weather on each end of the ensuing journey.
The Internet is a wonderful, yet aggravating asset when you travel for a living. The FAA maintains this site that provides pseudo-real-time information about the delays and flow of air traffic on a regional and national basis. We use the site every time Pat travels. The only problem is, when your flight leaves at 6:10 AM the system doesn’t have a chance to receive any bad news when it comes to weather or equipment delays, it is often useless at that time of the morning.
Next we look at the local weather on St. Simons and the weather at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Based on the weather reports, I pick out the over coats and gloves that Pat will carry with her.
Over the past few weeks, the temperature in Chicago has been equal to if not greater than that here on the Georgia coast. In the winter, however, she has seen temperature swings of over fifty degrees F in the six hours it takes to make the trip from Brunswick/Glynn County Airport, through Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, to Chicago’s O’Hare. The shock of going from 60 degrees to 20 degrees is obvious.
After arrival at O’Hare and struggling through a mile of passenger terminals and picking up her luggage at baggage claim, she boards a rental car bus at “ground transportation” and wanders off to a strange motor vehicle. When she is driving solo, they inevitably give her a SUV or mini-van. When she is meeting a group of three or four “super-sized” co-workers, they get the Toyota four door sedan.
Go Figure?
The good news is that the Hotel in Elgin treats Pat like a Queen and they even reserve the same two or three rooms (not all at once) for her when she is in town, so she can at least get on the elevator on each trip and know where she is going after dinner and a few drinks in the Bennegan’s Restaurant located in the lobby.
So, she works for two or three or four days, packs up her luggage, and does everything in reverse. IF the weather is OK and IF the airplanes all work and IF there isn’t some other unforeseen circumstance, she gets back to our little island home about 11:30 on Thursday night. If there is a problem, she gets home on Friday sometime between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM, having spent a harrowing night in a hotel in the Atlanta area. IT SUCKS.
The good news is, she just called me from the Brunswick airport and she’ll be here in 20 minutes.
LIFE IS GOOD ON THE ISLAND AGAIN.
As my long time readers already know, my girlfriend, Patricia, lives with me here on St. Simons Island Georgia, but her primary job function is located in Elgin, Illinois. She is, as I write, on her way back home tonight after spending two nights working in her “other office” in Elgin. Only a select few seasoned business travelers know what she actually goes through each week in accomplishing her duties.
I lived ten years spending several hours each day commuting to and from work in the Atlanta metropolitan area. It’s a wonder that I didn’t have a stroke or a heart attack dealing with the ingrates and morons I faced in traffic each day.
I also spent another ten years driving all over the Southeastern US and flying to points unknown selling my air-pollution-control/energy-recovery products and systems to everybody that had a smokestack on their property. I thought that I knew everything about business travel.
I WAS WRONG.
If you haven’t traveled every week for a living, you probably believe that traveling is a fun, glamorous, wonderful ritual. Well, it is…for about six months…after that…
YOU ARE SO MISTAKEN.
Here is how your life works when you travel for a living…
Tuesday morning 4:00 AM--The alarm clock goes off…time to wake up. Dutiful boyfriend (that would be me,) having been awake on the living room sofa for three or four hours blogging and reading news on the internet, steps in to verify that the alarm has done it’s job and that a position of verticality is being assumed.
After wiping the sleep from your eyes, you step into the shower while dutiful boyfriend (DB) places English muffin in toaster and pours glass of orange juice. DB also fires up clothes iron and presses slacks and blouse while checking internet web sites for air traffic control conditions and weather on each end of the ensuing journey.
The Internet is a wonderful, yet aggravating asset when you travel for a living. The FAA maintains this site that provides pseudo-real-time information about the delays and flow of air traffic on a regional and national basis. We use the site every time Pat travels. The only problem is, when your flight leaves at 6:10 AM the system doesn’t have a chance to receive any bad news when it comes to weather or equipment delays, it is often useless at that time of the morning.
Next we look at the local weather on St. Simons and the weather at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Based on the weather reports, I pick out the over coats and gloves that Pat will carry with her.
Over the past few weeks, the temperature in Chicago has been equal to if not greater than that here on the Georgia coast. In the winter, however, she has seen temperature swings of over fifty degrees F in the six hours it takes to make the trip from Brunswick/Glynn County Airport, through Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, to Chicago’s O’Hare. The shock of going from 60 degrees to 20 degrees is obvious.
After arrival at O’Hare and struggling through a mile of passenger terminals and picking up her luggage at baggage claim, she boards a rental car bus at “ground transportation” and wanders off to a strange motor vehicle. When she is driving solo, they inevitably give her a SUV or mini-van. When she is meeting a group of three or four “super-sized” co-workers, they get the Toyota four door sedan.
Go Figure?
The good news is that the Hotel in Elgin treats Pat like a Queen and they even reserve the same two or three rooms (not all at once) for her when she is in town, so she can at least get on the elevator on each trip and know where she is going after dinner and a few drinks in the Bennegan’s Restaurant located in the lobby.
So, she works for two or three or four days, packs up her luggage, and does everything in reverse. IF the weather is OK and IF the airplanes all work and IF there isn’t some other unforeseen circumstance, she gets back to our little island home about 11:30 on Thursday night. If there is a problem, she gets home on Friday sometime between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM, having spent a harrowing night in a hotel in the Atlanta area. IT SUCKS.
The good news is, she just called me from the Brunswick airport and she’ll be here in 20 minutes.
LIFE IS GOOD ON THE ISLAND AGAIN.
One Less Thing To Worry About
I often lay awake at night, or get up and wander around the condo and outside because I can’t sleep longer than four to six hours at a time any more. I use this time to mentally solve national problems and worry about a lot of things that might be of no interest to a lot of people. Call it a curse…
I’m pleased to report that we all have one less problem to worry about because "experts" have solved the mystery of unpopped popcorn.
For all of us that enjoy straining our jaws and chipping our teeth on the partially popped “old maids”, I’m thinking about coming out with my own “Crappy Pop” brand of microwave popcorn.
99% partially popped kernels…
Each bag will come complete with a discount coupon for a new crown on the tooth of your choice.
I’m pleased to report that we all have one less problem to worry about because "experts" have solved the mystery of unpopped popcorn.
For all of us that enjoy straining our jaws and chipping our teeth on the partially popped “old maids”, I’m thinking about coming out with my own “Crappy Pop” brand of microwave popcorn.
99% partially popped kernels…
Each bag will come complete with a discount coupon for a new crown on the tooth of your choice.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Environmental Mental Illness
There were some new environmental rumblings coming out of the United Nations last week. They’re lecturing us about the Ozone layer…AGAIN..
Any time the UN starts talking about the environment, you better hold onto your wallet or purse because changes are likely coming as a result of their astute misconceptions that will ultimately cost Americans money.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the renowned champions of the Earth’s arch enemy--Global Warming, just released their newest report entitled ”Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and the Global Climate System: Issues Relating to Hydrofluorocarbons and Perfluorocarbons.”
Now don’t let your eyes glaze over with hydro-technico-mumbo-jumbo here. I’m going to keep this discussion simple.
You remember the Ozone Layer, don’t you? You know—Ozone—the stuff that resides way up high in the atmosphere and that is supposed to protect the Earth from excess solar radiation and prevent us from all getting skin cancer. Yeah, that’s right—O-Z-O-N-E.
Ozone was the number one climate issue that the “experts” and the media instructed school children and adults alike to worry about back in the 1980’s before they had Global Warming to toss out on the world environmental stage to spark the guilt of all of us evil capitalists.
Subsequent to the UN holding a conference in Vienna, Italy in 1985 and another in Montreal Canada in 1987, the UN adopted and the United States ratified the Montreal Protocol Treaty. In short, this agreement caused everyone here in the US to change the type of refrigerant used in their car air conditioners, changed the kind of aerosol propellants used in hairspray and deodorant, and made expensive, intrusive changes in industries like insulation and foam manufacturers—all in the name of “protecting the Ozone Layer.”
Eighteen years after the fact, the IPCC is still screwing around making recommendations and reviewing their progress and guess what they have found and reported? Some of the things they asked us to do apparently have had absolutely no effect on the Ozone layer and some may have had an adverse effect.
That is, if you happen to believe that anything that humans do actually has any affect at all on the amount of Ozone in the Stratosphere.
AP-France has this to say about the report:
“International scientists have called for more cuts in the chemicals used in refrigerators, air conditioning units and plastic foams, and better recycling in an attempt to reduce their harmful impact on climate.
The recommendation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) came in a report that aims to address conflicting efforts to restore the ozone layer agreed 18 years ago, and more recent measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Chemicals used to replace substances harmful to the Earth's protective ozone layer in products like refrigerators under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, as well as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) they substituted, are greenhouse gases that many scientists say cause climate change.
The reports says many of these chemicals are regarded as far more powerful than carbon dioxide, whose emissions are the focus of cuts under the Kyoto Protocol climate change treaty, which came into force in February.
"There can be no trade-offs between saving the ozone layer and minimising climate change," says Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN environmental agency UNEP.”
So they have us in a catch-22 here. They say that we have to do something to fix the Ozone Layer, that what we have done so far has been ineffective or might have been harmful (even though they told us to do it,) and that whatever we do in the future has to be done in a manner that will not further contribute to Global Warming.
I have some news for you folks…
HUMAN ACTIVITIES HAVE VIRTUALLY NO EFFECT ON THE OZONE LAYER.
It is the ultimate arrogance to believe that we can control the dynamics of the earth’s atmosphere. If we could accomplish such feats, we should get busy stopping tornadoes and hurricanes and start a little rain falling in Saharan Africa.
With that thought in mind, look at what these scientists are saying about the influence of the Sun on the Ozone Layer:
“The gigantic solar storms of November 2003 severely depleted the ozone layer above the Arctic for as long as eight months, suggest newly released satellite observations. Ozone levels had reduced to just 40% of normal spring levels in 2004.
"We have never seen ozone close to this level in the northern hemisphere," says Cora Randall, a researcher with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and one of the study team.
Ozone in Earth's stratosphere protects the planet against harmful ultraviolet radiation. Most of the gas lies in the lower- and mid-stratosphere, where observations have shown a thinning above the poles caused mainly by man-made chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Now, Randall and her team have used seven satellites to study ozone in the upper region of the stratosphere, which contains about one-fifth of the stratosphere's supply and lies at an altitude of about 40 kilometres. Their observations show that nature can mimic manmade damage by increasing levels of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, which lead to the breakdown of ozone.”
So, I ask you—who are you going to believe? What are you going to believe? They can’t make up their minds what to tell us…the sun did it…no, wait, it is a man-made problem.
I am so tired of the United Nations and the self proclaimed “environmentalists” using inadequate data to scare old people and children and pass unnecessary laws and treaties designed to regulate my life.
These people DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
We didn’t even know that the ozone layer existed until the 1900’s and we had no way to measure it until we launched some satellites the late 1970’s. As a result, how can they tell us anything except what has been happening over the past 30 years? Suppose that the ozone layer was non existent in the 1400’s or that it was twice as dense in the 1700’s?
How in God’s name can these overeducated pseudo-scientists at the UN tell us that human activity since the industrial revolution or that our activities here in America since the age of the automobile and fossil fuel has one single thing to do with the Ozone layer?
Just like we can’t control volcanic eruptions that have possibly contributed to the 1 degree global temperature rise over the past 100 years, we most definitely can’t tell the Sun to stop having sunspots and shooting solar flares.
Do you understand where I’m coming from?
Any time the UN starts talking about the environment, you better hold onto your wallet or purse because changes are likely coming as a result of their astute misconceptions that will ultimately cost Americans money.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the renowned champions of the Earth’s arch enemy--Global Warming, just released their newest report entitled ”Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and the Global Climate System: Issues Relating to Hydrofluorocarbons and Perfluorocarbons.”
Now don’t let your eyes glaze over with hydro-technico-mumbo-jumbo here. I’m going to keep this discussion simple.
You remember the Ozone Layer, don’t you? You know—Ozone—the stuff that resides way up high in the atmosphere and that is supposed to protect the Earth from excess solar radiation and prevent us from all getting skin cancer. Yeah, that’s right—O-Z-O-N-E.
Ozone was the number one climate issue that the “experts” and the media instructed school children and adults alike to worry about back in the 1980’s before they had Global Warming to toss out on the world environmental stage to spark the guilt of all of us evil capitalists.
Subsequent to the UN holding a conference in Vienna, Italy in 1985 and another in Montreal Canada in 1987, the UN adopted and the United States ratified the Montreal Protocol Treaty. In short, this agreement caused everyone here in the US to change the type of refrigerant used in their car air conditioners, changed the kind of aerosol propellants used in hairspray and deodorant, and made expensive, intrusive changes in industries like insulation and foam manufacturers—all in the name of “protecting the Ozone Layer.”
Eighteen years after the fact, the IPCC is still screwing around making recommendations and reviewing their progress and guess what they have found and reported? Some of the things they asked us to do apparently have had absolutely no effect on the Ozone layer and some may have had an adverse effect.
That is, if you happen to believe that anything that humans do actually has any affect at all on the amount of Ozone in the Stratosphere.
AP-France has this to say about the report:
“International scientists have called for more cuts in the chemicals used in refrigerators, air conditioning units and plastic foams, and better recycling in an attempt to reduce their harmful impact on climate.
The recommendation by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) came in a report that aims to address conflicting efforts to restore the ozone layer agreed 18 years ago, and more recent measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Chemicals used to replace substances harmful to the Earth's protective ozone layer in products like refrigerators under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, as well as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) they substituted, are greenhouse gases that many scientists say cause climate change.
The reports says many of these chemicals are regarded as far more powerful than carbon dioxide, whose emissions are the focus of cuts under the Kyoto Protocol climate change treaty, which came into force in February.
"There can be no trade-offs between saving the ozone layer and minimising climate change," says Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN environmental agency UNEP.”
So they have us in a catch-22 here. They say that we have to do something to fix the Ozone Layer, that what we have done so far has been ineffective or might have been harmful (even though they told us to do it,) and that whatever we do in the future has to be done in a manner that will not further contribute to Global Warming.
I have some news for you folks…
HUMAN ACTIVITIES HAVE VIRTUALLY NO EFFECT ON THE OZONE LAYER.
It is the ultimate arrogance to believe that we can control the dynamics of the earth’s atmosphere. If we could accomplish such feats, we should get busy stopping tornadoes and hurricanes and start a little rain falling in Saharan Africa.
With that thought in mind, look at what these scientists are saying about the influence of the Sun on the Ozone Layer:
“The gigantic solar storms of November 2003 severely depleted the ozone layer above the Arctic for as long as eight months, suggest newly released satellite observations. Ozone levels had reduced to just 40% of normal spring levels in 2004.
"We have never seen ozone close to this level in the northern hemisphere," says Cora Randall, a researcher with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and one of the study team.
Ozone in Earth's stratosphere protects the planet against harmful ultraviolet radiation. Most of the gas lies in the lower- and mid-stratosphere, where observations have shown a thinning above the poles caused mainly by man-made chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Now, Randall and her team have used seven satellites to study ozone in the upper region of the stratosphere, which contains about one-fifth of the stratosphere's supply and lies at an altitude of about 40 kilometres. Their observations show that nature can mimic manmade damage by increasing levels of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, which lead to the breakdown of ozone.”
So, I ask you—who are you going to believe? What are you going to believe? They can’t make up their minds what to tell us…the sun did it…no, wait, it is a man-made problem.
I am so tired of the United Nations and the self proclaimed “environmentalists” using inadequate data to scare old people and children and pass unnecessary laws and treaties designed to regulate my life.
These people DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
We didn’t even know that the ozone layer existed until the 1900’s and we had no way to measure it until we launched some satellites the late 1970’s. As a result, how can they tell us anything except what has been happening over the past 30 years? Suppose that the ozone layer was non existent in the 1400’s or that it was twice as dense in the 1700’s?
How in God’s name can these overeducated pseudo-scientists at the UN tell us that human activity since the industrial revolution or that our activities here in America since the age of the automobile and fossil fuel has one single thing to do with the Ozone layer?
Just like we can’t control volcanic eruptions that have possibly contributed to the 1 degree global temperature rise over the past 100 years, we most definitely can’t tell the Sun to stop having sunspots and shooting solar flares.
Do you understand where I’m coming from?
Sunday, April 17, 2005
More Environmental Insanity
(Boring local news)
Like many coastal areas of the United States, Glynn County Georgia was historically an attractive location for industries like paper mills and chemical plants which built facillities here in the early 1900’s. Cheep land and abundant sources of water, along with local government’s willing to “sell their souls to the devil” provided ample tax breaks in return for the many high paying jobs offered to the citizens of the formerly rural, mostly agricultural and fishing based communities like the city of Brunswick.
The bad news is that these new industries were not good stewards of our lands and waterways—dumping tons of toxic chemicals like dioxin, PCB’s and industrial solvents into the environment.
Basically, depending on your definition of what is toxic waste, the entire area of Glynn County can be considered as a low level toxic waste dump. Everyone that has lived here for any length of time knows this fact, which is why I am so amazed at this story in The Brunswick News.
“Students at Goodyear Elementary School won't be spending any more playtime on the school grounds this April and May.
A federal government report raising questions about the possible presence of toxic chemicals in the soil around Goodyear has prompted school officials to confine physical education activities to the gymnasium and a public park on Parkwood Drive, about a half-mile from the school.
The decision to abandon the playground comes after elevated levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, large quantities of which may lead to cancer, were discovered in the soil at the school, located at the corner of Parkwood Drive and U.S. Highway 17. A precise source of the chemicals was not identified.
The playground will be closed as a precautionary measure until further tests are performed on the soil, said Jim Weidhaas, public information director for Glynn County's schools. More testing will likely be conducted during summer break, he said.
The decision to keep students inside was made this week by interim school superintendent Delacy Sanford and Goodyear Principal Carla Hall.
It follows a recently released report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which characterizes Goodyear Elementary as an "indeterminate public health hazard." The report is based on analysis of soil testing performed in 2002”
Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not proposing that we allow the school kids to play in a soup of toxic waste, but let’s look at the details of this story.
In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency came in and sampled the dirt in the playground. Almost three years later, when they finally get around to reporting their findings of “an indeterminate public health hazard,” the school officials loose their minds and close the playground until “further testing” can be done.
If further testing is so darned important, why doesn’t the EPA jump in and do it now? If it is imperative that the kids be protected, why doesn’t the School Board pay for independent testing now rather than waiting until this summer? I bet that they could have the results back in ten days. The kids have been playing on the renovated playground since 1997, so what difference is two months going to actually make in the big picture?
And what was the offending chemical agent the EPA found? Something called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH.) According to the ATSDR web site, PAH’s are actually more than one chemical.
“Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of over 100 different chemicals that are formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil and gas, garbage, or other organic substances like tobacco or charbroiled meat. PAHs are usually found as a mixture containing two or more of these compounds, such as soot.
Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons usually occurs by breathing air contaminated by wild fires or coal tar, or by eating foods that have been grilled. PAHs have been found in at least 600 of the 1,430 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”
Notice that the emphasis is on ingestion through the air? We found PAH’s in our playground dirt. So what is the big deal? Are the kids out their eating the dirt? I guess that some might—but I suspect that there is more bird and cat poop in the dirt than PAH’s so the little dirt hog will probably die of E. Colli before the PAH’s get them.
It would also appear that PAH’s are not necessiarly man made, but instead occur as a natural form of “background pollution,” since the ATSDR web site says:
“PAHs enter the air mostly as releases from volcanoes, forest fires, burning coal, and automobile exhaust.”
PHA’s have been in the news before. Remember a few years ago when we were told by the media that I was going to die from using my Weber Kettle Charcoal grill?
Now even some grill manufacturers are getting in on the scare tactics:
“Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) such as Pyrene and Benzopyrene are known carcinogens. They are formed when burning charcoal (in the case of charcoal grills) and by the combustion of grease and oils in flames. Paula Davis McCallum, M.S., R.D., L.D. from the Cleveland Clinic states that, "fat that drips from grilled meats causes smoke to rise from the coals, wood chips, heating elements, and/or flames. The smoke coming in contact with the food can be carcinogenic. Therefore, use foil or a pan to catch the drippings and help eliminate the smoke during grilling." These PAHs are contained in the black smoke produced by grease dripping into and igniting in the flames of a gas barbecue grill. Not all smoke contains PAH. The white smoke produced when grease vaporizes without flames does not contain PAH.”
You know what? I’m still a charcoal grill man no matter what they say. I hate propane.
So any way, my point here is this...
How about using a little BALANCE AND JUDGMENT, People?
Don’t respond with hysteria and knee jerk reactions to newspaper storys and EPA reports. The EPA took almost three years to get the testing done, so closing the playground isn’t the worst idea in the world, but getting the testing done next week and verifying if there is a problem would be an even better solution in my opinion.
Like many coastal areas of the United States, Glynn County Georgia was historically an attractive location for industries like paper mills and chemical plants which built facillities here in the early 1900’s. Cheep land and abundant sources of water, along with local government’s willing to “sell their souls to the devil” provided ample tax breaks in return for the many high paying jobs offered to the citizens of the formerly rural, mostly agricultural and fishing based communities like the city of Brunswick.
The bad news is that these new industries were not good stewards of our lands and waterways—dumping tons of toxic chemicals like dioxin, PCB’s and industrial solvents into the environment.
Basically, depending on your definition of what is toxic waste, the entire area of Glynn County can be considered as a low level toxic waste dump. Everyone that has lived here for any length of time knows this fact, which is why I am so amazed at this story in The Brunswick News.
“Students at Goodyear Elementary School won't be spending any more playtime on the school grounds this April and May.
A federal government report raising questions about the possible presence of toxic chemicals in the soil around Goodyear has prompted school officials to confine physical education activities to the gymnasium and a public park on Parkwood Drive, about a half-mile from the school.
The decision to abandon the playground comes after elevated levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, large quantities of which may lead to cancer, were discovered in the soil at the school, located at the corner of Parkwood Drive and U.S. Highway 17. A precise source of the chemicals was not identified.
The playground will be closed as a precautionary measure until further tests are performed on the soil, said Jim Weidhaas, public information director for Glynn County's schools. More testing will likely be conducted during summer break, he said.
The decision to keep students inside was made this week by interim school superintendent Delacy Sanford and Goodyear Principal Carla Hall.
It follows a recently released report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which characterizes Goodyear Elementary as an "indeterminate public health hazard." The report is based on analysis of soil testing performed in 2002”
Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not proposing that we allow the school kids to play in a soup of toxic waste, but let’s look at the details of this story.
In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency came in and sampled the dirt in the playground. Almost three years later, when they finally get around to reporting their findings of “an indeterminate public health hazard,” the school officials loose their minds and close the playground until “further testing” can be done.
If further testing is so darned important, why doesn’t the EPA jump in and do it now? If it is imperative that the kids be protected, why doesn’t the School Board pay for independent testing now rather than waiting until this summer? I bet that they could have the results back in ten days. The kids have been playing on the renovated playground since 1997, so what difference is two months going to actually make in the big picture?
And what was the offending chemical agent the EPA found? Something called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH.) According to the ATSDR web site, PAH’s are actually more than one chemical.
“Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of over 100 different chemicals that are formed during the incomplete burning of coal, oil and gas, garbage, or other organic substances like tobacco or charbroiled meat. PAHs are usually found as a mixture containing two or more of these compounds, such as soot.
Exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons usually occurs by breathing air contaminated by wild fires or coal tar, or by eating foods that have been grilled. PAHs have been found in at least 600 of the 1,430 National Priorities List sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”
Notice that the emphasis is on ingestion through the air? We found PAH’s in our playground dirt. So what is the big deal? Are the kids out their eating the dirt? I guess that some might—but I suspect that there is more bird and cat poop in the dirt than PAH’s so the little dirt hog will probably die of E. Colli before the PAH’s get them.
It would also appear that PAH’s are not necessiarly man made, but instead occur as a natural form of “background pollution,” since the ATSDR web site says:
“PAHs enter the air mostly as releases from volcanoes, forest fires, burning coal, and automobile exhaust.”
PHA’s have been in the news before. Remember a few years ago when we were told by the media that I was going to die from using my Weber Kettle Charcoal grill?
Now even some grill manufacturers are getting in on the scare tactics:
“Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) such as Pyrene and Benzopyrene are known carcinogens. They are formed when burning charcoal (in the case of charcoal grills) and by the combustion of grease and oils in flames. Paula Davis McCallum, M.S., R.D., L.D. from the Cleveland Clinic states that, "fat that drips from grilled meats causes smoke to rise from the coals, wood chips, heating elements, and/or flames. The smoke coming in contact with the food can be carcinogenic. Therefore, use foil or a pan to catch the drippings and help eliminate the smoke during grilling." These PAHs are contained in the black smoke produced by grease dripping into and igniting in the flames of a gas barbecue grill. Not all smoke contains PAH. The white smoke produced when grease vaporizes without flames does not contain PAH.”
You know what? I’m still a charcoal grill man no matter what they say. I hate propane.
So any way, my point here is this...
How about using a little BALANCE AND JUDGMENT, People?
Don’t respond with hysteria and knee jerk reactions to newspaper storys and EPA reports. The EPA took almost three years to get the testing done, so closing the playground isn’t the worst idea in the world, but getting the testing done next week and verifying if there is a problem would be an even better solution in my opinion.
A New Direction
Since I started writing my blog in mid-August last year, I have rarely chosen to risk boring my national and international readers (yes, I know that you are out there hiding in Europe, Asia, and other points unknown), beyond my normal level of every-day boredom, with stories about local news from here in our tiny little part of this planet called Glynn County Georgia.
You should not assume, however, that I do not have an active life on St. Simons Island reading the local news, flapping my gums and pounding the keyboard about some incredibly stupid and petty local issues that until recently seemed unworthy of commenting about in my blogs.
The local newspaper, The Brunswick News, just published my sixth editorial last week in their letters to the editor section. I’m proud to say that they’ve only rejected two of my writings so far.
There are most definitely some serious issues which are, in my opinion, inadequately addressed. Our local media consists of one major print newspaper, a couple of second tier print rags full of coupons and ads, and a couple of radio stations. Oh, and did I mention that our local TV broadcasts come from Jacksonville, Florida and Savannah, Georgia—each city at least an hour away by automobile? I guess that you get my point.
My commentary about local issues online is about to change with the introduction of a new, yet to be named, local issues blog, but rest assured that this blog, “What I’d Liked To Have Said,” is going to continue forward as a national political/current events forum until the last reader drops off of the internet.
Thank you so much for your support thus far.
The reason that I’m starting the local blog is that I see a “niche” market for news analysis and commentary that is not being fulfilled in the current publications. The Brunswick News tends to be centrist-to-conservative in editorial content, but their coverage of the details of the local politics seems to be a bit on the side of “milk toast” while being guilty of publicly smirking at the details of the stories that they print.
I think that they like to print some of my rants every now and then because I can make a lucid argument for moving our local government and school board forward a few steps while the elected officials are all tumbling down the hill head over heels backwards. I believe that they secretly agree with most of what I say, they just don’t have the guts to say what I say in writing so they let me do it.
The “freebie” alternative papers are another story entirely. They typically have the standard liberal/rabid-barking-moon-bat conspiracy slants with little factual content to back up their arguments. Lots of blaa, blaa, blaaaaa, blaa, blaaa, blaa, blaa.
Can you say preaching to the ill informed, liberal masses? B-o-r-i-n-g…
So stay tuned and you might see some interesting stuff, originally reported, as I attend city council and school board meetings, and aim my pencil and “big stick” at the insanity around my home here on the Georgia Coast.
You'll be the first to find out about my new efforts and I hope that you will enjoy following my new adventures in blogging.
Regards Y’all
You should not assume, however, that I do not have an active life on St. Simons Island reading the local news, flapping my gums and pounding the keyboard about some incredibly stupid and petty local issues that until recently seemed unworthy of commenting about in my blogs.
The local newspaper, The Brunswick News, just published my sixth editorial last week in their letters to the editor section. I’m proud to say that they’ve only rejected two of my writings so far.
There are most definitely some serious issues which are, in my opinion, inadequately addressed. Our local media consists of one major print newspaper, a couple of second tier print rags full of coupons and ads, and a couple of radio stations. Oh, and did I mention that our local TV broadcasts come from Jacksonville, Florida and Savannah, Georgia—each city at least an hour away by automobile? I guess that you get my point.
My commentary about local issues online is about to change with the introduction of a new, yet to be named, local issues blog, but rest assured that this blog, “What I’d Liked To Have Said,” is going to continue forward as a national political/current events forum until the last reader drops off of the internet.
Thank you so much for your support thus far.
The reason that I’m starting the local blog is that I see a “niche” market for news analysis and commentary that is not being fulfilled in the current publications. The Brunswick News tends to be centrist-to-conservative in editorial content, but their coverage of the details of the local politics seems to be a bit on the side of “milk toast” while being guilty of publicly smirking at the details of the stories that they print.
I think that they like to print some of my rants every now and then because I can make a lucid argument for moving our local government and school board forward a few steps while the elected officials are all tumbling down the hill head over heels backwards. I believe that they secretly agree with most of what I say, they just don’t have the guts to say what I say in writing so they let me do it.
The “freebie” alternative papers are another story entirely. They typically have the standard liberal/rabid-barking-moon-bat conspiracy slants with little factual content to back up their arguments. Lots of blaa, blaa, blaaaaa, blaa, blaaa, blaa, blaa.
Can you say preaching to the ill informed, liberal masses? B-o-r-i-n-g…
So stay tuned and you might see some interesting stuff, originally reported, as I attend city council and school board meetings, and aim my pencil and “big stick” at the insanity around my home here on the Georgia Coast.
You'll be the first to find out about my new efforts and I hope that you will enjoy following my new adventures in blogging.
Regards Y’all
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Pasta Machine
If you are considering buying one--Don't.
If you already have one, buy a rope or chain, take it to the lake or ocean, and use it for a boat anchor.
I'll explain more later...
If you already have one, buy a rope or chain, take it to the lake or ocean, and use it for a boat anchor.
I'll explain more later...
Just Shut Up and Pay Up
Look at this Associated Press story about anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. When I first noticed the headline yesterday, I passed it up as just more Asian-Asian hatred that was being hyped by the politically correct community here in the US.
The guys over at Powerline pointed out that I was wrong...
"SHANGHAI, China - Chanting "Japanese pigs get out," protesters threw stones and broke windows at Japan's consulate and Japanese restaurants in China as some 20,000 people defied government warnings to protest Tokyo's wartime history and its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.
Peaceful protests were reported in two other cities. Beijing remained calm. Police stood guard on Tiananmen Square to block a planned demonstration in the heart of the capital, a day ahead of a visit by Japan's foreign minister. Paramilitary police surrounded the Japanese Embassy, where protesters smashed windows last weekend.
Japan's Embassy said two Japanese were injured in Shanghai after being surrounded by a group of Chinese, Kyodo News agency reported. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known.
The third weekend of anti-Japanese protests erupted despite government demands for calm. The nation's communist leaders apparently worry that the protests might do more damage to relations with Tokyo, which are at their lowest point in decades, or encourage others to take to the street to protest corruption or demand political reforms."
Although there are other issues, the main reason for the protests seems to be the Japanese requesting admission as a permanent member of the powerful UN Security Council.
As I wrote in late December in Nearly 1.5 billion down a rat hole,
"The title of this post tells you everything you need to know about the United Nations. Their 2004 operating budget is actually $1.483 billion, of which the US’s “assessment” was $363 million and Japan’s “assessment” was $280 million. Together, the US and Japan pay 43.4% of the total operating budget (24.5% and 18.9% respectively.) The other 189 member nations pay the remaining 56.4% of the budget, with Germany (8.4%), the UK (5.9%), and France (5.9%) making up the balance of the top five “assessment” payers.
Well isn’t that special? But what about Russia and China, two of our number one detractors in all issues Iraqi as permanent members of the UNSecurity Council (excuse the pun?) China, home of 1.3 billion people, pays just $29 million (2%) annually. I couldn’t find Russia’s numbers, but they are less than the number fifteen “assessment” payer Switzerland’s 17 million (1.1%.)"
So China pays ten percent of the amount that Japan pays to the UN in assessments, but China would deny Japan, a major, balanced player on the world stage since the US kicked a lot of sense into them in the 1940's, a seat at the table on the only UN committee that really means anything.
As my title says, China's attitude must be "Just Shut Up and Pay UP."
The guys over at Powerline pointed out that I was wrong...
"SHANGHAI, China - Chanting "Japanese pigs get out," protesters threw stones and broke windows at Japan's consulate and Japanese restaurants in China as some 20,000 people defied government warnings to protest Tokyo's wartime history and its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.
Peaceful protests were reported in two other cities. Beijing remained calm. Police stood guard on Tiananmen Square to block a planned demonstration in the heart of the capital, a day ahead of a visit by Japan's foreign minister. Paramilitary police surrounded the Japanese Embassy, where protesters smashed windows last weekend.
Japan's Embassy said two Japanese were injured in Shanghai after being surrounded by a group of Chinese, Kyodo News agency reported. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known.
The third weekend of anti-Japanese protests erupted despite government demands for calm. The nation's communist leaders apparently worry that the protests might do more damage to relations with Tokyo, which are at their lowest point in decades, or encourage others to take to the street to protest corruption or demand political reforms."
Although there are other issues, the main reason for the protests seems to be the Japanese requesting admission as a permanent member of the powerful UN Security Council.
As I wrote in late December in Nearly 1.5 billion down a rat hole,
"The title of this post tells you everything you need to know about the United Nations. Their 2004 operating budget is actually $1.483 billion, of which the US’s “assessment” was $363 million and Japan’s “assessment” was $280 million. Together, the US and Japan pay 43.4% of the total operating budget (24.5% and 18.9% respectively.) The other 189 member nations pay the remaining 56.4% of the budget, with Germany (8.4%), the UK (5.9%), and France (5.9%) making up the balance of the top five “assessment” payers.
Well isn’t that special? But what about Russia and China, two of our number one detractors in all issues Iraqi as permanent members of the UNSecurity Council (excuse the pun?) China, home of 1.3 billion people, pays just $29 million (2%) annually. I couldn’t find Russia’s numbers, but they are less than the number fifteen “assessment” payer Switzerland’s 17 million (1.1%.)"
So China pays ten percent of the amount that Japan pays to the UN in assessments, but China would deny Japan, a major, balanced player on the world stage since the US kicked a lot of sense into them in the 1940's, a seat at the table on the only UN committee that really means anything.
As my title says, China's attitude must be "Just Shut Up and Pay UP."
Scientists Find Bubbaosaurus
Most kids are dinosaur nuts. I was.
When I was in grade school I literally read every book in our school library about dinosaurs—all ten of them. Ok, maybe there were fifty or so books—about a shelf and a half.
Now they’ve gone and changed the name of a bunch of animals and re-arranged the looks of a lot of things since I was paying close attention, but they continue to find the remains of "new" ancient monsters out in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and over in Europe and the middle east.
I often wondered why we didn’t we have our own snuff dipping, tobacco chewing, pickup truck driving southern dinosaur yet? I used to dig around in my back yard and at the beach and on my grandfather's farm with delusions of finding some frightening fossilized head or teeth or something, but other than a few arrowheads and some petrified sharks teeth and coral fragments I got nada as a result of my efforts.
I’m about to bust with pride as a result of reading this story about scientists discovering our own dinosaur right here in South Georgia and Alabama.
“Paleontologists have identified a new dinosaur species, an early relative of the more-famous Tyrannosaurus rex, that likely roamed what is now the southeast some 77 million years ago.
David R- Schwimmer of Columbus State University and two colleagues made the identification from hundreds of fossilized fragments collected mostly in Montgomery County, Alabama, and southwestern Georgia.
They named the new dinosaur Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, which means "the Appalachian lizard from Montgomery County." It roamed the earth ten (m) million years before Tyrannosaurus rex and was smaller, more primitive and had a narrower snout.
Schwimmer, Thomas Carr of Carthage College of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science were credited with the discovery recently when the dinosaur's name was officially recognized by the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Schwimmer said -- quote-- "We've been finding teeth and odd bones from this animal for 20 years and it's nice to finally have a name for it." …
The researchers say Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis was buried in mud at the bottom of a shallow sea about 77.8 million years ago after it was carried out by currents.”
It figures that Bubbaosaurous would be smaller than T-Rex, he probably stunted his growth drinking Georgia moonshine and sitting on the sofa watching NASCAR races.
When I was in grade school I literally read every book in our school library about dinosaurs—all ten of them. Ok, maybe there were fifty or so books—about a shelf and a half.
Now they’ve gone and changed the name of a bunch of animals and re-arranged the looks of a lot of things since I was paying close attention, but they continue to find the remains of "new" ancient monsters out in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and over in Europe and the middle east.
I often wondered why we didn’t we have our own snuff dipping, tobacco chewing, pickup truck driving southern dinosaur yet? I used to dig around in my back yard and at the beach and on my grandfather's farm with delusions of finding some frightening fossilized head or teeth or something, but other than a few arrowheads and some petrified sharks teeth and coral fragments I got nada as a result of my efforts.
I’m about to bust with pride as a result of reading this story about scientists discovering our own dinosaur right here in South Georgia and Alabama.
“Paleontologists have identified a new dinosaur species, an early relative of the more-famous Tyrannosaurus rex, that likely roamed what is now the southeast some 77 million years ago.
David R- Schwimmer of Columbus State University and two colleagues made the identification from hundreds of fossilized fragments collected mostly in Montgomery County, Alabama, and southwestern Georgia.
They named the new dinosaur Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, which means "the Appalachian lizard from Montgomery County." It roamed the earth ten (m) million years before Tyrannosaurus rex and was smaller, more primitive and had a narrower snout.
Schwimmer, Thomas Carr of Carthage College of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science were credited with the discovery recently when the dinosaur's name was officially recognized by the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Schwimmer said -- quote-- "We've been finding teeth and odd bones from this animal for 20 years and it's nice to finally have a name for it." …
The researchers say Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis was buried in mud at the bottom of a shallow sea about 77.8 million years ago after it was carried out by currents.”
It figures that Bubbaosaurous would be smaller than T-Rex, he probably stunted his growth drinking Georgia moonshine and sitting on the sofa watching NASCAR races.
Do-It-Yourself Terrorism
On the very day that Americans are coming to grips with their individual financial costs of living in the good old USA, we find out that the US College of Pathologists has mistakenly shipped out “test kits” containing a deadly Flu virus to 3,700 labs located in seventeen countries, including LEBANON.
“Outside America, labs in 17 countries received the test kits and though twelve disposed of their samples, the remainder - Bermuda, Brazil, Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia - have either not destroyed them or may have never received them.
Two labs in Mexico and Lebanon had been listed as not receiving the samples, Mr Stohr said.
The H2N2 virus is similar to the 1957 flu virus that killed between one and four million people across the globe.”
So let me see if I have this situation straight in my ever balding, ever swelling, painfully throbbing head.
The rocket scientists over at the US College of Pathologists dropped a few thousand UPS packages on their loading dock destined for places like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. These packages, destined to ride in “the big brown truck” or whatever means of conveyance in which one ships vials of flue virus, contained some pretty angry little microbes. The wrong microbes.
How the heck do the wrong microbes get tossed into that many packages? One or two packages, maybe, but 3,700 packages? Where is my big stick…it’s around here somewhere and someone needs a butt whipping over at the College of Pathologists.
So any way, after they realized their mistake, they asked that the samples be returned or destroyed, but some have mysteriously come up missing. Did they say “pretty please?” When they are told that the packages have been destroyed, did they ask for any proof that the foreign lab didn’t throw our little tiny friends in the dumpster in the back yard?
And regarding the lost shipments, besides going on the internet to search with the tracking number or calling up the shipping dispatcher, I want to know what the hell they are actively doing about finding and retrieving these flue virus packages. Probably nothing.
Ain’t this just like the imperial federal government funded morons--we’re spending billions in the middle east to find weapons of mass destruction and a bunch of liberal egg-heads right here at home go and mail out do-it-yourself terrorism kits to God knows who.
You heard me, they sent H2N2 Flu Virus to LEBANON. I gotta go throw up now…
“Outside America, labs in 17 countries received the test kits and though twelve disposed of their samples, the remainder - Bermuda, Brazil, Israel, Japan, and Saudi Arabia - have either not destroyed them or may have never received them.
Two labs in Mexico and Lebanon had been listed as not receiving the samples, Mr Stohr said.
The H2N2 virus is similar to the 1957 flu virus that killed between one and four million people across the globe.”
So let me see if I have this situation straight in my ever balding, ever swelling, painfully throbbing head.
The rocket scientists over at the US College of Pathologists dropped a few thousand UPS packages on their loading dock destined for places like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. These packages, destined to ride in “the big brown truck” or whatever means of conveyance in which one ships vials of flue virus, contained some pretty angry little microbes. The wrong microbes.
How the heck do the wrong microbes get tossed into that many packages? One or two packages, maybe, but 3,700 packages? Where is my big stick…it’s around here somewhere and someone needs a butt whipping over at the College of Pathologists.
So any way, after they realized their mistake, they asked that the samples be returned or destroyed, but some have mysteriously come up missing. Did they say “pretty please?” When they are told that the packages have been destroyed, did they ask for any proof that the foreign lab didn’t throw our little tiny friends in the dumpster in the back yard?
And regarding the lost shipments, besides going on the internet to search with the tracking number or calling up the shipping dispatcher, I want to know what the hell they are actively doing about finding and retrieving these flue virus packages. Probably nothing.
Ain’t this just like the imperial federal government funded morons--we’re spending billions in the middle east to find weapons of mass destruction and a bunch of liberal egg-heads right here at home go and mail out do-it-yourself terrorism kits to God knows who.
You heard me, they sent H2N2 Flu Virus to LEBANON. I gotta go throw up now…
While We're All Busy Signing Tax Forms...
There is one more form that we all need to sign.
My likeminded Blog friend RomeoCat over at Cathouse Chat is asking that we all join the campaign to send pens and pencils to Senator John sKerry in an effort to help him sign standard military form SF-180 allowing his military records to be released for the scrutiny of the media and the public.
Here is a link to an online petition asking that Senator sKerry do the same thing that president Bush did.
I bet he will never do it. What a high paid, pompous, ultra-maroon.
My likeminded Blog friend RomeoCat over at Cathouse Chat is asking that we all join the campaign to send pens and pencils to Senator John sKerry in an effort to help him sign standard military form SF-180 allowing his military records to be released for the scrutiny of the media and the public.
Here is a link to an online petition asking that Senator sKerry do the same thing that president Bush did.
I bet he will never do it. What a high paid, pompous, ultra-maroon.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Test Drive
About a third of the drivers here on St. Simons Island are over the age of one hundred.
No, really, it just seems that way. Maybe they are younger than one hundred years old, but we do have a lot of senior citizens living here that really should not be driving.
Our neighbor, Dr. Jim, is a little guy in his mid eighties that is a menace on the highway. He drives a big old Lincoln Towncar and all you see when he drives by is the top of his head and his white knuckles on the steering wheel. A few months ago he pulled out into traffic on the island causeway and was t-boned by another car and we all thought that Dr. Jim’s driving days were over with. He wasn’t injured in the accident, but it took weeks to fix the Lincoln and he borrowed a car and kept right on terrorizing his fellow coastal Georgia drivers.
I know that mobility is important to everyone and access to things like the drug store and the grocery store is a necessity, but I believe that drivers of all ages should have to take a competency test—every five years let’s say—to ensure that their auto operating skills and abilities are up to snuff.
Take a look at this story about a woman who hits her husband, a car salesman, a tree, a wall, and another car—all in one wreck--DURING A TEST DRIVE.
I wonder why she needed a new car in the first place? An accident perhaps?
I rest my case your honor…
Update: 3:19 PM
Sorry about the HTML coding problems...they're repaired.
Help For "Working Moms"
Check out this story about a woman running a daycare center and an escort service out of the same building.
"Authorities said Coretta Battle, who is a mother of two young girls, ran the Family Battle Day Care as well as Prestige Escorts, where day-care clients allegedly sold sex, Local 6 News reported.
Battle was videotaped being arrested at her home Thursday.
"We had information that led us to believe that she was watching or taking care of the children of her employees while they were out doing these acts of prostitution," Brevard County police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez said. "Battle was driving her minivan, her family vehicle, to and from hotels where she would be soliciting sex. Our officers went undercover and basically solicited from the escort services.""
Talk about giving working moms a break.
"Authorities said Coretta Battle, who is a mother of two young girls, ran the Family Battle Day Care as well as Prestige Escorts, where day-care clients allegedly sold sex, Local 6 News reported.
Battle was videotaped being arrested at her home Thursday.
"We had information that led us to believe that she was watching or taking care of the children of her employees while they were out doing these acts of prostitution," Brevard County police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez said. "Battle was driving her minivan, her family vehicle, to and from hotels where she would be soliciting sex. Our officers went undercover and basically solicited from the escort services.""
Talk about giving working moms a break.
The Tax Man Comeith
This from the former commissioner of the IRS:
"Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.
"Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.
The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.
The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.
The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.
As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.
The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.
I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."
T. Coleman Andrews. Andrews Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service for three years, from 1953 until 1955.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
The Little Italian Communist Is A Proven Liar
OK, I was up early this morning, having a pretty good day, then Atlanta radio talk show Neil Boortz’s web site pointed out this story to me.
Now my head is spinning around…again.
It seems that the report from joint investigation into the shooting of the little Italian communist reporter Giuliana Sgrena was released on Wednesday:
“U.S. military officials told NBC News that a joint American-Italian investigation found the soldiers acted properly in firing on a car bearing a just-freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and an intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari.
The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded.”
As I wrote last month in Are They Just Plain Stupid, I Was Right, They Were Just Stupid, and What Is There To Not Understand, it was fairly obvious that the Italians screwed up and it cost their security agent his life. Better his than that of some 19 year old kid from Kansas.
Then last night, CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday, home of the Dan Rather forged document “Memogate” scandal, gave Sgrena a chunk of national airtime to continue telling her lies…
"Sgrena says she was less than a half-mile from the airport, when the shooting began: "Seven hundred meters more, and we are in the airport, and we will be safe and we will be in the airport. And in the same moment, started the shooting...
The Pentagon declined to talk with 60 Minutes Wednesday, but the Army issued this statement on the night of the shooting: “Vehicle traveling at high speed refused to stop at a check point.” [The soldiers] “attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots…when the driver didn’t stop the soldiers shot into the engine block which stopped the vehicle.”
"I think that is a lie," says Sgrena.
"Let's take this piece by piece," says Pelley. "Vehicle was speeding."
"No," says Sgrena.
"Attempted to warn the driver by hand signals," says Pelley.
"No," says Sgrena.
"Arm signals. Flashing white lights," says Pelley. "Firing warning shots."
"Nothing at all," says Sgrena.
"What you’re saying in this interview is that none of those things happened?" asks Pelley.
"Nothing. No," says Sgrena. "I'm sure." "
Let me just tilt back my head and offer a great big old international shout of Bullshit to Ms. Sgrena.
I've got to tell you people, if you continue to watch CBS News, other than for the entertainment value of watching a car accident or a train wreck, if you actually believe anything that they say, YOU’RE NUTS.
Now my head is spinning around…again.
It seems that the report from joint investigation into the shooting of the little Italian communist reporter Giuliana Sgrena was released on Wednesday:
“U.S. military officials told NBC News that a joint American-Italian investigation found the soldiers acted properly in firing on a car bearing a just-freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, and an intelligence officer, Nicola Calipari.
The car was about 130 yards from a checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights to get it to stop. They fired warning shots when the car was within 90 yards of the checkpoint, but at 65 yards, they used deadly force. Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded.”
As I wrote last month in Are They Just Plain Stupid, I Was Right, They Were Just Stupid, and What Is There To Not Understand, it was fairly obvious that the Italians screwed up and it cost their security agent his life. Better his than that of some 19 year old kid from Kansas.
Then last night, CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday, home of the Dan Rather forged document “Memogate” scandal, gave Sgrena a chunk of national airtime to continue telling her lies…
"Sgrena says she was less than a half-mile from the airport, when the shooting began: "Seven hundred meters more, and we are in the airport, and we will be safe and we will be in the airport. And in the same moment, started the shooting...
The Pentagon declined to talk with 60 Minutes Wednesday, but the Army issued this statement on the night of the shooting: “Vehicle traveling at high speed refused to stop at a check point.” [The soldiers] “attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand and arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots…when the driver didn’t stop the soldiers shot into the engine block which stopped the vehicle.”
"I think that is a lie," says Sgrena.
"Let's take this piece by piece," says Pelley. "Vehicle was speeding."
"No," says Sgrena.
"Attempted to warn the driver by hand signals," says Pelley.
"No," says Sgrena.
"Arm signals. Flashing white lights," says Pelley. "Firing warning shots."
"Nothing at all," says Sgrena.
"What you’re saying in this interview is that none of those things happened?" asks Pelley.
"Nothing. No," says Sgrena. "I'm sure." "
Let me just tilt back my head and offer a great big old international shout of Bullshit to Ms. Sgrena.
I've got to tell you people, if you continue to watch CBS News, other than for the entertainment value of watching a car accident or a train wreck, if you actually believe anything that they say, YOU’RE NUTS.
They Cat Be Serious
I’ve followed this story about the potential legalization of hunting feral cats in the state of Wisconsin and resisted commenting thus far--until my girlfriend Pat asked me to write something about it.
As I’ve previously stated, I’m a gun owner--three rifles and two shotguns. I believe in our Constitutional right to bear arms and in responsible gun ownership. I enjoyed roaming over my grandfather’s three hundred fifty acre farm in south Alabama when I was a youth. Today we lament poachers illegally hunting deer on our property, but legal hunting in the US is a right I will defend until my death.
Government intervention in the form of hunting laws has helped species like the wild turkey and the alligator recover from predicted untimely demises.
That’s a good thing.
When I was a kid it used to be an exciting event to actually see a wild turkey, but in the past ten years I’ve watched wild turkeys stop traffic on Johnson Ferry Road during rush hour in east Cobb County Georgia. Yesterday I read this news story about a dog saving its owner from an alligator in Tampa, Florida. The dog died, unfortunately. By the way, I believe that Alligators are going to become an even larger menace as a result of human encroachment into their territory in the next few years. We have some twelve-footers here in the marshes at St. Simons.
Which brings me back to my topic—WHO THE HELL THINKS IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO START SHOOTING STRAY CATS? Not me.
Why do these morons want to legalize cat hunting? Because Morris and Tiger and Kitty Mewmew kill…
“Some experts estimate that 2 million wild cats roam Wisconsin, and the state says studies show feral cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds a year.
South Dakota and Minnesota both allow wild cats to be shot.”
My answer?
Well at least wild cats do what cats are supposed to do—they hunt and kill their own food. They aren’t like stray dogs that spend all of their time “poaching’ food out of your trash cans and dumpsters. North Georgia is filled with “nuisance” black bears that pillage campsites and home sites and yet bear hunting is severely limited if not outlawed.
What if we declare open season on stupid-assed little kids (like I once was) with new BB guns? How many songbirds are killed each year by little idiots with shiny new Daisy and Crossman products which they got as Christmas presents? Is killing and eating a bird a crime punishable by the death penalty if killing and leaving a dead bird in your neighbors’ back yard is just a “phase” in growing up?
I guess I am intellectually astride the fence here, but I have a hard time supporting a “LEGAL” hunting season on any species that humans have already interjected their influence into the spread of the population. If every pet owner maintained their pet by controlling their breeding habits or having them spayed/neutered, there wouldn’t be a need for “dog (im)pounds” and “shelters” in the first place.
With the demise of the Florida Panther and the Bobcat here in the south, there are a number of species like Raccoons, Opossums, and Armadillos that are trashing everyone’s yards and rummaging through everything in sight looking for a free meal. The deer in the state parks in north Georgia are stripping everything within eight feet of the ground bare and they are literally starving to death.
I’m not a big animals’ rights activist and I think that the PETA people are basically crazy, but my old cat friends Buddy, Patches, Hoover, Mr.-T and my Mom’s cat Tom deserve a better fate than a load of #6 shot or a 22 bullet from some camouflaged hunter stalking them from a distance of 25 feet when their only crime is that they slipped out the back door unnoticed.
Know what I mean?
As I’ve previously stated, I’m a gun owner--three rifles and two shotguns. I believe in our Constitutional right to bear arms and in responsible gun ownership. I enjoyed roaming over my grandfather’s three hundred fifty acre farm in south Alabama when I was a youth. Today we lament poachers illegally hunting deer on our property, but legal hunting in the US is a right I will defend until my death.
Government intervention in the form of hunting laws has helped species like the wild turkey and the alligator recover from predicted untimely demises.
That’s a good thing.
When I was a kid it used to be an exciting event to actually see a wild turkey, but in the past ten years I’ve watched wild turkeys stop traffic on Johnson Ferry Road during rush hour in east Cobb County Georgia. Yesterday I read this news story about a dog saving its owner from an alligator in Tampa, Florida. The dog died, unfortunately. By the way, I believe that Alligators are going to become an even larger menace as a result of human encroachment into their territory in the next few years. We have some twelve-footers here in the marshes at St. Simons.
Which brings me back to my topic—WHO THE HELL THINKS IT’S A GOOD IDEA TO START SHOOTING STRAY CATS? Not me.
Why do these morons want to legalize cat hunting? Because Morris and Tiger and Kitty Mewmew kill…
“Some experts estimate that 2 million wild cats roam Wisconsin, and the state says studies show feral cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds a year.
South Dakota and Minnesota both allow wild cats to be shot.”
My answer?
Well at least wild cats do what cats are supposed to do—they hunt and kill their own food. They aren’t like stray dogs that spend all of their time “poaching’ food out of your trash cans and dumpsters. North Georgia is filled with “nuisance” black bears that pillage campsites and home sites and yet bear hunting is severely limited if not outlawed.
What if we declare open season on stupid-assed little kids (like I once was) with new BB guns? How many songbirds are killed each year by little idiots with shiny new Daisy and Crossman products which they got as Christmas presents? Is killing and eating a bird a crime punishable by the death penalty if killing and leaving a dead bird in your neighbors’ back yard is just a “phase” in growing up?
I guess I am intellectually astride the fence here, but I have a hard time supporting a “LEGAL” hunting season on any species that humans have already interjected their influence into the spread of the population. If every pet owner maintained their pet by controlling their breeding habits or having them spayed/neutered, there wouldn’t be a need for “dog (im)pounds” and “shelters” in the first place.
With the demise of the Florida Panther and the Bobcat here in the south, there are a number of species like Raccoons, Opossums, and Armadillos that are trashing everyone’s yards and rummaging through everything in sight looking for a free meal. The deer in the state parks in north Georgia are stripping everything within eight feet of the ground bare and they are literally starving to death.
I’m not a big animals’ rights activist and I think that the PETA people are basically crazy, but my old cat friends Buddy, Patches, Hoover, Mr.-T and my Mom’s cat Tom deserve a better fate than a load of #6 shot or a 22 bullet from some camouflaged hunter stalking them from a distance of 25 feet when their only crime is that they slipped out the back door unnoticed.
Know what I mean?
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Senators Still Stepping in Stinky Stuff
In an effort to force you to follow Barbara Boxer's crappola over in the Senate Affairs Committee hearings, I found this little item,
"During questioning on John R. Bolton's nomination to be President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton and members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee referred to "Mr. Smith" as one official among several who were involved in a dispute over what Democrats asserted was Bolton's inappropriate treatment of an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him.
"During questioning on John R. Bolton's nomination to be President Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, Bolton and members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee referred to "Mr. Smith" as one official among several who were involved in a dispute over what Democrats asserted was Bolton's inappropriate treatment of an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him.
"We referred to this other analyst at the CIA, whom I'll try and call Mr. Smith here, I hope I can keep that straight," Bolton said at one point.
Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., both mentioned a name, Fulton Armstrong, that had not previously come up in public accounts of the intelligence flap.
It is not clear whether Armstrong is the undercover officer, but an exchange between Kerry and Bolton suggests that he may be."
And we're paying these people over $170,000 a year each to act like this on CSPAN?
This Just In
Scientists Create Remote-Controlled Flies
"Yale University researchers say their study that used lasers to create remote-controlled fruit flies could lead to a better understanding of overeating and violence in humans.
Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells, researchers say they were able to make the flies jump, walk, flap their wings and fly.
Even headless flies took flight when researchers stimulated the correct neurons, according to the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Cell.
Scientists say the study could ultimately help identify the cells associated with psychiatric disorders, overeating and aggressiveness."
And in other news, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean announced that the DNC had perfected a process to use the headlights of a 1972 Ford Pinto to control his brain, along those of party leaders Ted Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barbara Boxer.
They are optimistic that the process can be extended to all disenfranchised Democratic voters in Florida and Ohio in time for the 2008 elections.
SorryFolks, just kidding…
"Yale University researchers say their study that used lasers to create remote-controlled fruit flies could lead to a better understanding of overeating and violence in humans.
Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells, researchers say they were able to make the flies jump, walk, flap their wings and fly.
Even headless flies took flight when researchers stimulated the correct neurons, according to the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Cell.
Scientists say the study could ultimately help identify the cells associated with psychiatric disorders, overeating and aggressiveness."
And in other news, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean announced that the DNC had perfected a process to use the headlights of a 1972 Ford Pinto to control his brain, along those of party leaders Ted Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barbara Boxer.
They are optimistic that the process can be extended to all disenfranchised Democratic voters in Florida and Ohio in time for the 2008 elections.
SorryFolks, just kidding…
Monday, April 11, 2005
Shut Up And Drive
I just got done writing yet ANOTHER essay about gas prices—this one to our little local newspaper, The Brunswick News. They have published five of my writings over the past year.
I won’t bore you with the entire text of my “Letter to the Editor”… let’s just say that it was written in response to the newspaper’s call for president Bush to emulate his father, George H.W. Bush, in releasing some of the oil stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help reduce gas prices.
Are you one of the people that actually believe that such government intervention would help gas prices?
OK, sit down and let me go through this again.
TODAYS GAS PRICES ARE NOT RECORD HIGHS!!!!!
You got that? No?
Well let’s look at a little history contained on the Department of Energy Web Site.
As this graph shows, the price of unleaded regular gas hit $2.85, adjusted for inflation, in 1980 during the Carter administration. Last time I checked, we’re forty or fifty cents below that right now.
Another thing the graph shows is this trend:
Year...Price then...Price 2004 dollars...Year...Price Then...Price 2004 dollars
1920....$0.298.........$2.812.................1970.....$0.357..........$1.737
1930....$0.200.........$2.256.................1980.....$1.245..........$2.853
1940....$0.184.........$2.479.................1985.....$1.165............$2.044
1950....$0.268.........$2.099.................1990.....$1.127..........$1.629
1960....$0.311...........$1.986.................1995.....$1.109..........$1.373
...........................................................2000.....$1.486..........$1.629
I know that the government’s inflation figures make most peoples eyeballs roll back in their head, but look at that chart with me for just a minute.
In 1920, when Henry Ford’s Model T was bringing autos to the average Joe's driveway, gas cost 29 cents a gallon. What was that number, adjusted for inflation? $2.81?
In 1960, right after my dad traded his 56 Chevy two door in for a Chevy Nomad station wagon, gas cost 31 cents a gallon. What was that number, adjusted for inflation? $1.98 ?
Except for a period in the 1990’s, it looks to me like the price of gas has always tended to hover within 25 cents higher or lower of the equivalent of $2.00.
So yes, things are a little high now, but it hardly could be defined as a national emergency. In my opinion, gas prices are not president Bush’s fault and there is little he can do on a short term basis that will have much effect on them.
Dumping all the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would buy us about 31 days of driving, based on our current consumption of 9 million barrels of oil per day in automobiles. We better start drilling in ANWAR, looking at other domestic sources of oil, and build a few new refineries, or things are just going to get worse.
So like I said earlier...SHUT UP AND DRIVE.
I won’t bore you with the entire text of my “Letter to the Editor”… let’s just say that it was written in response to the newspaper’s call for president Bush to emulate his father, George H.W. Bush, in releasing some of the oil stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help reduce gas prices.
Are you one of the people that actually believe that such government intervention would help gas prices?
OK, sit down and let me go through this again.
TODAYS GAS PRICES ARE NOT RECORD HIGHS!!!!!
You got that? No?
Well let’s look at a little history contained on the Department of Energy Web Site.
As this graph shows, the price of unleaded regular gas hit $2.85, adjusted for inflation, in 1980 during the Carter administration. Last time I checked, we’re forty or fifty cents below that right now.
Another thing the graph shows is this trend:
Year...Price then...Price 2004 dollars...Year...Price Then...Price 2004 dollars
1920....$0.298.........$2.812.................1970.....$0.357..........$1.737
1930....$0.200.........$2.256.................1980.....$1.245..........$2.853
1940....$0.184.........$2.479.................1985.....$1.165............$2.044
1950....$0.268.........$2.099.................1990.....$1.127..........$1.629
1960....$0.311...........$1.986.................1995.....$1.109..........$1.373
...........................................................2000.....$1.486..........$1.629
I know that the government’s inflation figures make most peoples eyeballs roll back in their head, but look at that chart with me for just a minute.
In 1920, when Henry Ford’s Model T was bringing autos to the average Joe's driveway, gas cost 29 cents a gallon. What was that number, adjusted for inflation? $2.81?
In 1960, right after my dad traded his 56 Chevy two door in for a Chevy Nomad station wagon, gas cost 31 cents a gallon. What was that number, adjusted for inflation? $1.98 ?
Except for a period in the 1990’s, it looks to me like the price of gas has always tended to hover within 25 cents higher or lower of the equivalent of $2.00.
So yes, things are a little high now, but it hardly could be defined as a national emergency. In my opinion, gas prices are not president Bush’s fault and there is little he can do on a short term basis that will have much effect on them.
Dumping all the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would buy us about 31 days of driving, based on our current consumption of 9 million barrels of oil per day in automobiles. We better start drilling in ANWAR, looking at other domestic sources of oil, and build a few new refineries, or things are just going to get worse.
So like I said earlier...SHUT UP AND DRIVE.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
US Border "Morones"
Enrique Morones, the founder of the group Border Angels was on FOX News Heartland program tonight, hosted by Blogger diva Michelle Malkin.
I missed the name of the other guest who was invited on the program, but he was invited to represent citizen groups like The Minuteman Project that are attempting to prevent illegal aliens from crossing the US border with Mexico.
In spite of media and “activist” predictions of disaster and destruction as a result of average Americans defending our territory, things have run very smoothly over the first week of the Minuteman mobilization that began last weekend.
I feel sorry for Senior Morones because in my estimation his last name—unfortunately close to the English word “Morons”—represents an apt description of his group’s public agenda.
Here’s my own somewhat wordy illustration of why their efforts are counterproductive:
Suppose I want to move to England. Rather than applying for a visa, packing my luggage, and buying an airline ticket, instead I choose to steal a 20’ fishing boat with a 40 gallon gas tank. As a result of insanity or stupidity or just plain desperation, I choose to bring along no food, no water, no cell phone, and no marine radio. I just start driving my little boat from St. Simons Island, due east across the Atlantic toward Europe.
Upon departing on my “grand immigration adventure,” I know that there are no gas stations in the middle of the ocean, that it will take days if not weeks to make the trip, and I’m liable to get hungry and thirsty after the first 12 hours has elapsed. Details be damned, I want to see the Queen and new Lady Boyles.
After about six hours I have covered a little over one hundred miles of ocean, the seas are getting rough, and I’m out of gas. Unless I was incredibly lucky and happened to be seen by another passing vessel, I would die a horrible death of dehydration, starvation, and drowning, or some combination thereof.
Since I’m a mean old middle aged white libertarian, there would be little note of my passing, except with my family and possibly in the local media.
If I were a potential “guest worker,” immigration activists like Senior Morones would be rushing to set up a new web site and start a campaign to raise funds to place gas cans in the middle of the ocean and supply buoys with containers of water and food to prevent my demise. They would be sponsoring rescue patrols to look for other boaters like me, trying to cross the Atlantic to that Utopia that the liberals call Europe.
Here is what his Web site says about what exactly Senior Morones’ group is doing:
"Founded by Enrique Morones in 2001, Border Angels is a non-profit organization supporting humanity. The organization consists of extraordinary volunteers who want to stop unnecessary deaths of individuals traveling through the Imperial Valley desert areas and the mountain areas surrounding San Diego County, as well as the areas located around the United States and Mexican border. The high percentage of unnecessary deaths have been results of extreme heat and cold weather conditions, in addition some have sadly been the results of racial-discrimination crimes.
Steps Needed To Be TakenSpring and Summer Months: With horrifically hot temperature conditions, three hundred and forty water stations are installed in the Imperial Valley Desert and surrounding areas. Temperatures reaching as high as 127 degrees, water is critical for survival. Volunteers maintain stations each weekend throughout the spring and summer months.
Fall and Winter Months: Critical life-saving stations are established throughout the San Diego Mountain areas. Winter clothing, food and water are placed in winter storage bins to help decrease negative health results from being exposed to the incredibly freezing temperature changes that exists in the San Diego County mountain areas during the Fall and Winter."
It’s not bad enough that we have millions of illegal potential “guest workers” streaming across the borders at the easy to cross areas where our immigration officials are concentrating their enforcement efforts, but Senior Morones is out there trying to make the inhospitable Imperial Valley an oasis for those IDIOTS THAT ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE BORDER IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT.
Ever heard of the concept of survival of the fittest?
I’ve got to go now and get in my boat to go look for some offshore gas and water buoys.
Wish me luck...
I missed the name of the other guest who was invited on the program, but he was invited to represent citizen groups like The Minuteman Project that are attempting to prevent illegal aliens from crossing the US border with Mexico.
In spite of media and “activist” predictions of disaster and destruction as a result of average Americans defending our territory, things have run very smoothly over the first week of the Minuteman mobilization that began last weekend.
I feel sorry for Senior Morones because in my estimation his last name—unfortunately close to the English word “Morons”—represents an apt description of his group’s public agenda.
Here’s my own somewhat wordy illustration of why their efforts are counterproductive:
Suppose I want to move to England. Rather than applying for a visa, packing my luggage, and buying an airline ticket, instead I choose to steal a 20’ fishing boat with a 40 gallon gas tank. As a result of insanity or stupidity or just plain desperation, I choose to bring along no food, no water, no cell phone, and no marine radio. I just start driving my little boat from St. Simons Island, due east across the Atlantic toward Europe.
Upon departing on my “grand immigration adventure,” I know that there are no gas stations in the middle of the ocean, that it will take days if not weeks to make the trip, and I’m liable to get hungry and thirsty after the first 12 hours has elapsed. Details be damned, I want to see the Queen and new Lady Boyles.
After about six hours I have covered a little over one hundred miles of ocean, the seas are getting rough, and I’m out of gas. Unless I was incredibly lucky and happened to be seen by another passing vessel, I would die a horrible death of dehydration, starvation, and drowning, or some combination thereof.
Since I’m a mean old middle aged white libertarian, there would be little note of my passing, except with my family and possibly in the local media.
If I were a potential “guest worker,” immigration activists like Senior Morones would be rushing to set up a new web site and start a campaign to raise funds to place gas cans in the middle of the ocean and supply buoys with containers of water and food to prevent my demise. They would be sponsoring rescue patrols to look for other boaters like me, trying to cross the Atlantic to that Utopia that the liberals call Europe.
Here is what his Web site says about what exactly Senior Morones’ group is doing:
"Founded by Enrique Morones in 2001, Border Angels is a non-profit organization supporting humanity. The organization consists of extraordinary volunteers who want to stop unnecessary deaths of individuals traveling through the Imperial Valley desert areas and the mountain areas surrounding San Diego County, as well as the areas located around the United States and Mexican border. The high percentage of unnecessary deaths have been results of extreme heat and cold weather conditions, in addition some have sadly been the results of racial-discrimination crimes.
Steps Needed To Be TakenSpring and Summer Months: With horrifically hot temperature conditions, three hundred and forty water stations are installed in the Imperial Valley Desert and surrounding areas. Temperatures reaching as high as 127 degrees, water is critical for survival. Volunteers maintain stations each weekend throughout the spring and summer months.
Fall and Winter Months: Critical life-saving stations are established throughout the San Diego Mountain areas. Winter clothing, food and water are placed in winter storage bins to help decrease negative health results from being exposed to the incredibly freezing temperature changes that exists in the San Diego County mountain areas during the Fall and Winter."
It’s not bad enough that we have millions of illegal potential “guest workers” streaming across the borders at the easy to cross areas where our immigration officials are concentrating their enforcement efforts, but Senior Morones is out there trying to make the inhospitable Imperial Valley an oasis for those IDIOTS THAT ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE BORDER IN THE MIDDLE OF A DESERT.
Ever heard of the concept of survival of the fittest?
I’ve got to go now and get in my boat to go look for some offshore gas and water buoys.
Wish me luck...
They Put The "Mental" In Environmental
I’ve spent a couple of days wondering about and spent the past day fuming about the news headlines about Senator Barbara Boxer having a public temper tantrum about the Environmental Protection Agency’s CHEERS program.
Here is one highlight:
"On Thursday, Sens. Bill Nelson (search) of Florida and Barbara Boxer (search) of California expressed their "shock and disappointment" Thursday in Johnson's failure to stop the program.
They said that until he agrees to cancel the program, they're placing a hold on Johnson's nomination, preventing him from getting a vote on the Senate floor.
"If EPA can get away with testing babies, infants, then they can get away with anything when it comes to human testing of toxics," said Boxer, who added that when she questioned Johnson about the program and whether he would agree to cancel it, Johnson flatly refused.
"This is sick, it's a sick, sick thing," she said."
Even FOX news can't resist screwing up the reporting:
"Boxer and Nelson said the EPA's Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (search) offers to pay parents of a baby nearly $1,000 if they agree to expose their child to household pesticides over a two-year period. The study was being done in Duval County, Fla., in the Jacksonville area, a geographic location that appealed to the EPA because of its year-round use of indoor pesticides."
How many times do I have to say it? The idiot parents out there in "Anytown USA" are already spraying roach killer and Lysol and Ajax and you name it all over the place in their houses and the little rugrats are crawling through the poison residue on their way to getting a snack out of the dog's food dish. What is the matter with the EPA looking over their shoulders to see what is actually happening on a day to day basis and trying to figgure out what it might be doing to the kids?
But nooooo, that can't happen when there are political points to be scored.
You know the template--A Democratic Politician wants to keep their name in the media. Said Democratic politician from the same Democratic Party that promotes themselves as the official “Champions of all things Minority” goes out and kills a perfectly legitimate program designed to look at the effects of every day household chemicals on young children.
I had finally about cooled off on the subject, then I read what the “(dis)honorable” Ms. Boxer had to say today on her web site.
Here is what I wrote as an E-mail to “Ms.” Boxer this morning:
“Mrs. Boxer, I find your public misstatements about EPA director nominee Mr. Stephen Johnson and the EPA’s CHEERS program to be reprehensible. On your official Web site you are quoted as saying:
“I am very pleased that Mr. Johnson has recognized the gross error in judgement (sic) the EPA made when they concocted this immoral program to test pesticides on children.
The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harm’s way.
I will continue to oppose policies that lead to the testing of toxins on humans.”
In my opinion, the only “gross error in judgment” regarding this issue is the manner you and Florida Senator Nelson have misrepresented this program to a gullible media and the general public
The only “reprehensible idea” I find here is the disservice you and fellow Democrats are doing to your uninformed minority and immigrant constituents.
Mr. Johnson was not in fact conducting an “immoral program to test pesticides on children” as you have indicated.
As you should know, under the CHEERS program the EPA was simply requesting permission to enter a number of Florida homes to look for correlations between any potential illnesses and the chemicals the children were normally exposed to in their daily lives.
No one at the EPA, as you have suggested, was proposing that helpless toddlers be sprinkled and sprayed with toxins like DDT, cloradane, and dioxin while researchers stood by with a clipboard--watching the test subject spasm and die as a result of the study.
If anyone is placing children in harms way, it is the uninformed parents of the Duval County Florida children that either intentionally or un-intentionally use perfectly legal chemicals and pesticides like roach spray and household cleaners in their homes every day.
Perhaps the larger contributors to childhood illnesses of these types are partisan hacks like you and Senator Nelson that continue to demagogue and pander to immigrant and minority voters while intentionally harming their best interest in your deplorable efforts to score political points in the national media.
I, personally, cannot believe that you do not know the fallacy of your very public position in this matter.
If, in fact, you don’t know the truth, you are seriously misinformed and you need to hire some new staff to help you determine the facts before you again open your mouth on the public stage (not to mention hiring a Web staff that can spell the word “judgment.”)
It is truly a shame to see a US Senator conduct herself in the manner you choose.”
Can you believe that she actually came out and said what she said on her Web site? Here is a link to the EPA site telling what the CHEERS program actually was going to do.
All I know is that California Senator Barbara Boxer is a lying bitch, and I, for one, am calling her on it.
Senator Nelson got a similar letter.
Am I over reacting here? What do you think?
Here is one highlight:
"On Thursday, Sens. Bill Nelson (search) of Florida and Barbara Boxer (search) of California expressed their "shock and disappointment" Thursday in Johnson's failure to stop the program.
They said that until he agrees to cancel the program, they're placing a hold on Johnson's nomination, preventing him from getting a vote on the Senate floor.
"If EPA can get away with testing babies, infants, then they can get away with anything when it comes to human testing of toxics," said Boxer, who added that when she questioned Johnson about the program and whether he would agree to cancel it, Johnson flatly refused.
"This is sick, it's a sick, sick thing," she said."
Even FOX news can't resist screwing up the reporting:
"Boxer and Nelson said the EPA's Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study (search) offers to pay parents of a baby nearly $1,000 if they agree to expose their child to household pesticides over a two-year period. The study was being done in Duval County, Fla., in the Jacksonville area, a geographic location that appealed to the EPA because of its year-round use of indoor pesticides."
How many times do I have to say it? The idiot parents out there in "Anytown USA" are already spraying roach killer and Lysol and Ajax and you name it all over the place in their houses and the little rugrats are crawling through the poison residue on their way to getting a snack out of the dog's food dish. What is the matter with the EPA looking over their shoulders to see what is actually happening on a day to day basis and trying to figgure out what it might be doing to the kids?
But nooooo, that can't happen when there are political points to be scored.
You know the template--A Democratic Politician wants to keep their name in the media. Said Democratic politician from the same Democratic Party that promotes themselves as the official “Champions of all things Minority” goes out and kills a perfectly legitimate program designed to look at the effects of every day household chemicals on young children.
I had finally about cooled off on the subject, then I read what the “(dis)honorable” Ms. Boxer had to say today on her web site.
Here is what I wrote as an E-mail to “Ms.” Boxer this morning:
“Mrs. Boxer, I find your public misstatements about EPA director nominee Mr. Stephen Johnson and the EPA’s CHEERS program to be reprehensible. On your official Web site you are quoted as saying:
“I am very pleased that Mr. Johnson has recognized the gross error in judgement (sic) the EPA made when they concocted this immoral program to test pesticides on children.
The CHEERS program was a reprehensible idea that never should have made it out of the boardroom, and I am just happy that it was stopped before any children were put in harm’s way.
I will continue to oppose policies that lead to the testing of toxins on humans.”
In my opinion, the only “gross error in judgment” regarding this issue is the manner you and Florida Senator Nelson have misrepresented this program to a gullible media and the general public
The only “reprehensible idea” I find here is the disservice you and fellow Democrats are doing to your uninformed minority and immigrant constituents.
Mr. Johnson was not in fact conducting an “immoral program to test pesticides on children” as you have indicated.
As you should know, under the CHEERS program the EPA was simply requesting permission to enter a number of Florida homes to look for correlations between any potential illnesses and the chemicals the children were normally exposed to in their daily lives.
No one at the EPA, as you have suggested, was proposing that helpless toddlers be sprinkled and sprayed with toxins like DDT, cloradane, and dioxin while researchers stood by with a clipboard--watching the test subject spasm and die as a result of the study.
If anyone is placing children in harms way, it is the uninformed parents of the Duval County Florida children that either intentionally or un-intentionally use perfectly legal chemicals and pesticides like roach spray and household cleaners in their homes every day.
Perhaps the larger contributors to childhood illnesses of these types are partisan hacks like you and Senator Nelson that continue to demagogue and pander to immigrant and minority voters while intentionally harming their best interest in your deplorable efforts to score political points in the national media.
I, personally, cannot believe that you do not know the fallacy of your very public position in this matter.
If, in fact, you don’t know the truth, you are seriously misinformed and you need to hire some new staff to help you determine the facts before you again open your mouth on the public stage (not to mention hiring a Web staff that can spell the word “judgment.”)
It is truly a shame to see a US Senator conduct herself in the manner you choose.”
Can you believe that she actually came out and said what she said on her Web site? Here is a link to the EPA site telling what the CHEERS program actually was going to do.
All I know is that California Senator Barbara Boxer is a lying bitch, and I, for one, am calling her on it.
Senator Nelson got a similar letter.
Am I over reacting here? What do you think?
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Throwing The Baby Out With The Bath Water
For those of my readers that don’t really know me, I’ll just be real blunt here.
I consider myself to be a blanking (fill in your own curse word) Rocket Scientist compared to most of the so called “experts” that form our national policy, write our laws, and whose opinions are thrown at the public through main stream news stories on a daily basis.
I wasn’t always the most dedicated student, but I did manage to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology after a stint at Georgia Tech and a number of years of night school at Southern Tech after I made the mistake of getting married and buying a house—thereby having to actually work for a living prior to finishing my degree.
I can fix almost anything you got that breaks and the things I don’t actually fix I can do research and understand how they work—I just choose to not spend the time learning the intricate details of things like magneto hydrodynamics and plasma field generation because at the ripe old age of 45 the economic cost versus benefit curve is not to my liking
The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are both egregious examples of how government and politics can emasculate an organization’s ability to actually accomplish anything involving any real science. Both organizations have been systematically invaded by hoards of over-educated, panty waist, bed wetting, leftist, liberal morons, many of them outright communists, whom use the organizations to attack America in general and our system of capitalism specifically.
If you ask the CDC, no American should ever be allowed to own a gun. What a bunch of idiot doctors and so-called scientists. But the CDC’s ineptness isn’t really my point this afternoon.
My head is spinning around about this Associated Press story about the EPA, aptly filed under the title of politics, not science.
EPA Cancels Controversial Pesticide Study
“The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency's new head.
Stephen Johnson, as EPA's acting administrator, ordered an end to the planned study, a reversal from the agency's position just a day earlier when it said it would await the advice of outside scientific experts.
The aim of the study, Johnson said, was to fill data gaps on children's exposure to household pesticides and chemicals. He suspended it last November after ethical questions were raised by scientists within EPA and by environmentalists.
Over the study's two years, EPA had planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., in what critics of the study noted was a low-income minority neighborhood….
(The) EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million "Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study" from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.
"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review. EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy," Johnson said Friday. "I am committed to ensuring that EPA's research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., in demanding the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson's nomination by President Bush.
Now think about this with me for just a minute. In spite of what the title says, do you really believe that the EPA and the American Chemical Council were planning on running down to south Florida and injecting black and Mexican children with DDT and Chlordane? Were they going to replace the parents table salt with Amdro Fire ant poison and sit back to see what happened?
Not no, but HELL NO….THEY WEREN’T GOING TO DO ANY SUCH THING.
The EPA was simply going to spend two years looking at the household chemicals already being used by these teenaged and other underprivileged minority parents in their homes in an effort to determine what effects, if any, they had on the kids.
It seems that Barbra Boxer and Bill Nelson are playing their normal partisan, bullshit games with confirmation of President Bush’s nominees, and they’re tossing in a liberal (excuse the pun) dose of political correctness for good measure.
What kills me is that the AP idiot reporters don’t have the guts or the ability to actually tell you what I just told you—that the EPA wasn’t going to poison kids. If the EPA was going to test mainly white kids on Sea Island, GA or in Beverly Hills, CA I suppose that the CHEERS study would have been OK, but studying minority children that already are disproportionately injured by home environmental risks is a no-no?
And here is the final thing that really got my blood boiling in this story:
Johnson, an EPA employee for a quarter-century and the first person with a science background to be nominated to lead the agency, has been acting administrator since Mike Leavitt left the agency in January to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. He was nominated in March.
You with me here?
STEPHEN JOHNSON IS THE FIRST PERSON WITH A SCIENCE BACKGROUND TO BE NOMINATED TO LEAD THE EPA……EVER.
Does that make any sense whatsoever?
What I want to know is--who the hell has been running the EPA the past 25 years, pastry chefs and wallpaper hangers? AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh GOD help us all…
I’ve got to go to the pool now and cool off..
I consider myself to be a blanking (fill in your own curse word) Rocket Scientist compared to most of the so called “experts” that form our national policy, write our laws, and whose opinions are thrown at the public through main stream news stories on a daily basis.
I wasn’t always the most dedicated student, but I did manage to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology after a stint at Georgia Tech and a number of years of night school at Southern Tech after I made the mistake of getting married and buying a house—thereby having to actually work for a living prior to finishing my degree.
I can fix almost anything you got that breaks and the things I don’t actually fix I can do research and understand how they work—I just choose to not spend the time learning the intricate details of things like magneto hydrodynamics and plasma field generation because at the ripe old age of 45 the economic cost versus benefit curve is not to my liking
The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are both egregious examples of how government and politics can emasculate an organization’s ability to actually accomplish anything involving any real science. Both organizations have been systematically invaded by hoards of over-educated, panty waist, bed wetting, leftist, liberal morons, many of them outright communists, whom use the organizations to attack America in general and our system of capitalism specifically.
If you ask the CDC, no American should ever be allowed to own a gun. What a bunch of idiot doctors and so-called scientists. But the CDC’s ineptness isn’t really my point this afternoon.
My head is spinning around about this Associated Press story about the EPA, aptly filed under the title of politics, not science.
EPA Cancels Controversial Pesticide Study
“The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday canceled a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides after Democrats said they would block Senate confirmation of the agency's new head.
Stephen Johnson, as EPA's acting administrator, ordered an end to the planned study, a reversal from the agency's position just a day earlier when it said it would await the advice of outside scientific experts.
The aim of the study, Johnson said, was to fill data gaps on children's exposure to household pesticides and chemicals. He suspended it last November after ethical questions were raised by scientists within EPA and by environmentalists.
Over the study's two years, EPA had planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., in what critics of the study noted was a low-income minority neighborhood….
(The) EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million "Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study" from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.
"I have concluded that the study cannot go forward, regardless of the outcome of the independent review. EPA must conduct quality, credible research in an atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy," Johnson said Friday. "I am committed to ensuring that EPA's research is based on sound science with the highest ethical standards."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., had joined with Sen. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., in demanding the study's cancellation as a condition for confirming Johnson's nomination by President Bush.
Now think about this with me for just a minute. In spite of what the title says, do you really believe that the EPA and the American Chemical Council were planning on running down to south Florida and injecting black and Mexican children with DDT and Chlordane? Were they going to replace the parents table salt with Amdro Fire ant poison and sit back to see what happened?
Not no, but HELL NO….THEY WEREN’T GOING TO DO ANY SUCH THING.
The EPA was simply going to spend two years looking at the household chemicals already being used by these teenaged and other underprivileged minority parents in their homes in an effort to determine what effects, if any, they had on the kids.
It seems that Barbra Boxer and Bill Nelson are playing their normal partisan, bullshit games with confirmation of President Bush’s nominees, and they’re tossing in a liberal (excuse the pun) dose of political correctness for good measure.
What kills me is that the AP idiot reporters don’t have the guts or the ability to actually tell you what I just told you—that the EPA wasn’t going to poison kids. If the EPA was going to test mainly white kids on Sea Island, GA or in Beverly Hills, CA I suppose that the CHEERS study would have been OK, but studying minority children that already are disproportionately injured by home environmental risks is a no-no?
And here is the final thing that really got my blood boiling in this story:
Johnson, an EPA employee for a quarter-century and the first person with a science background to be nominated to lead the agency, has been acting administrator since Mike Leavitt left the agency in January to become secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. He was nominated in March.
You with me here?
STEPHEN JOHNSON IS THE FIRST PERSON WITH A SCIENCE BACKGROUND TO BE NOMINATED TO LEAD THE EPA……EVER.
Does that make any sense whatsoever?
What I want to know is--who the hell has been running the EPA the past 25 years, pastry chefs and wallpaper hangers? AHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh GOD help us all…
I’ve got to go to the pool now and cool off..
Pooped of Public Pomposity
Between the "zoot suits" worn by the Swiss Royal guards at the Pope's funeral and the funky hats on all of the royal muckity mucks at Prince Charles and Lady Homewrecker...er..Camilla Parker Boyles wedding, I've about had it with displays of Public Pomposity this week.
I never thought I'd say this, but give me a good dose of some old fashoned Bush and Kerry bashing and a few swift boat veterans thrown in for good measure, please. If I see one more big purple hat or dude running around in elf shoes--I'm gonna puke.
I never thought I'd say this, but give me a good dose of some old fashoned Bush and Kerry bashing and a few swift boat veterans thrown in for good measure, please. If I see one more big purple hat or dude running around in elf shoes--I'm gonna puke.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Free Blogging
Blogger.com is driving me crazy. Apparently their server was down last night for a while because I had trouble publishing the Pork Post and I must have rewritten it three times before I finally gave up and went to bed.
Almost half the time I write a posting in the Blogger software I have trouble. I should know better and always use MS Word instead. I just can't justify paying Typepad or someone to host to the tune of $10.00 a month when I get MOST of what I need for free.
Almost half the time I write a posting in the Blogger software I have trouble. I should know better and always use MS Word instead. I just can't justify paying Typepad or someone to host to the tune of $10.00 a month when I get MOST of what I need for free.
Have You Got Your Fair Share?
Of what you might ask?
You know…GOVERNMENT PORK!
The Citizens Against Government Waste have just released their new 2005 Congressional Pig Book. Are you and your fellow state citizens getting your fair share?
Here is a listing of Federal spending by state. I’m proud to say that Georgia is number 49 out of 51. At first glance one might be inclined to say that Georgians should be angry at Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and that Glynn County should be voting Representative Jack Kingston out of office.
I’m proud that Georgia didn’t consume more of this indigestible “pork” than we did. While the national average for “pork spending” is $33.03, all of us rednecks in Georgia only gobbled up an average of $14.83 each.
I notice a couple of strange things about the basis of the survey. Why is it that the states with low populations like Alaska ($645,502,000), the District of Columbia ($257,171,000), and Hawaii ($573,926,000) were numbers 1, 2 and 3, while big states like California ($237,593,250) and Texas ($65,301,250) are numbers 50 and 51?
Perhaps the most telling statistic is that lowly West Virginia, land of Robert KKK “pretty pretty” Byrd, was the number four benefactor on the list, obtaining $398,622,250 of US tax dollars for its 1.8 million population. That works out to a little over $219 for every man, woman, and child in the coal mine state.
I remember that Byrd once funded the construction of a new FBI lab building in West Virginia (bearing his own name) and had to wait over a year to legislate funding to be able to actually afford to hire some people to work in the new facility. What a farce.
I’m not going to be as simplistic in thought as to suggest that such a method is possible, but if our Congress could keep federal spending on a per capita basis to that of Texas ($2.90) this year, the budget would be reduced by $8.85 trillion dollars from the current $9.7 trillion dollar level.
And by the way, isn’t it interesting that beleaguered House Speaker Tom Delay’s Texas is at the bottom of the list?
Can you say Democratic retaliation?
Just wondering…
You know…GOVERNMENT PORK!
The Citizens Against Government Waste have just released their new 2005 Congressional Pig Book. Are you and your fellow state citizens getting your fair share?
Here is a listing of Federal spending by state. I’m proud to say that Georgia is number 49 out of 51. At first glance one might be inclined to say that Georgians should be angry at Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson and that Glynn County should be voting Representative Jack Kingston out of office.
I’m proud that Georgia didn’t consume more of this indigestible “pork” than we did. While the national average for “pork spending” is $33.03, all of us rednecks in Georgia only gobbled up an average of $14.83 each.
I notice a couple of strange things about the basis of the survey. Why is it that the states with low populations like Alaska ($645,502,000), the District of Columbia ($257,171,000), and Hawaii ($573,926,000) were numbers 1, 2 and 3, while big states like California ($237,593,250) and Texas ($65,301,250) are numbers 50 and 51?
Perhaps the most telling statistic is that lowly West Virginia, land of Robert KKK “pretty pretty” Byrd, was the number four benefactor on the list, obtaining $398,622,250 of US tax dollars for its 1.8 million population. That works out to a little over $219 for every man, woman, and child in the coal mine state.
I remember that Byrd once funded the construction of a new FBI lab building in West Virginia (bearing his own name) and had to wait over a year to legislate funding to be able to actually afford to hire some people to work in the new facility. What a farce.
I’m not going to be as simplistic in thought as to suggest that such a method is possible, but if our Congress could keep federal spending on a per capita basis to that of Texas ($2.90) this year, the budget would be reduced by $8.85 trillion dollars from the current $9.7 trillion dollar level.
And by the way, isn’t it interesting that beleaguered House Speaker Tom Delay’s Texas is at the bottom of the list?
Can you say Democratic retaliation?
Just wondering…
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Four Years Ago
I thought about posting about this for a while this week and I have been undecided. I've been sorta bummed out about it and thus the dearth of writing, but any way...here goes.
I grew up around fire. My family had a fireplace in our basement that we used regularly for heat and to provide "atmosphere" to our evening socializing. We had central heat and ultimately added a central air conditioning unit in the late 1960's, but the fireplace was a major feature of our home as I grew up.
My mother's father's house had three fireplaces, the house being built in the 1930's by hand from lumber cut and sawn off of his farm. As a child I remember the cold nights and the primary fireplace in his family room being a source of heat and community gathering when the family was there together.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and a friend of mine was the designated "troupe arson" because Mickey could light a fire better than anyone we knew. Fire is your friend when you are a kid and you're camping out and you need to get warm or cook dinner or need something to goof around with--within certain limitations.
I had a fireplace in my first two houses. I also had a chainsaw and I cut wood and stoked those fireplaces full and loved every minute of it until 1994. That was the year that I gave my ex-wife my second house and the fireplace. She could have cared less about my fireplace--but I loved it.
I have lived without my own fireplace ever since. I had a house since then, but I didn't have a fireplace...and I had a fire, and that caused a big problem. You see, I bought my third house in the summer of 1997 and happily lived there after my divorce until April 5, 2001 when I came home from work and my house had burned up.
If you have never experienced a house fire on an up close and personal basis, I hope you never have to because there is no way for you to understand what happens to your life. There was a police tape wrapped around it and there was water running down the driveway and almost everything I owned except my Snapper mower and my Webber Charcoal grill and my Nissan Maxima and the Chevy Suburban that I happened to be driving that day was toast.
Worst of all, the police want to talk to you and treat you like some kind of criminal because YOU are the number one suspect when your house burns down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the cause of my fire was obvious--a crappy, cheep, surge suppressor/power strip on my fancy smancy 110 watt per channel Bose surround sound TV system.
Never again.
Go in your home office, go in your bedrooms, go in your living rooms, and look at what you have plugged into the surge protectors and wall outlets. Do you have an "octopus" of electrical wires? DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME AND FIND YOUR FRONT DOOR CHOPPED IN AND POLICE TAPE ACROSS YOUR FRONT PORCH? Do you want to see everything you've worked for, possibly your plants and your pets, cooked into ashes?
No?
Then think about what you are connecting to the electrical circuits in your house and get some help if you have any doubts and don't end up like me that day, moving into a motel room, dragging along what few of your possessions you can scrounge out of the rubble, smelling of smoke and dripping soot and water, stinking up your car parked out in the parking lot.
It really sucks......don't let it happen to you...
OK?
I grew up around fire. My family had a fireplace in our basement that we used regularly for heat and to provide "atmosphere" to our evening socializing. We had central heat and ultimately added a central air conditioning unit in the late 1960's, but the fireplace was a major feature of our home as I grew up.
My mother's father's house had three fireplaces, the house being built in the 1930's by hand from lumber cut and sawn off of his farm. As a child I remember the cold nights and the primary fireplace in his family room being a source of heat and community gathering when the family was there together.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and a friend of mine was the designated "troupe arson" because Mickey could light a fire better than anyone we knew. Fire is your friend when you are a kid and you're camping out and you need to get warm or cook dinner or need something to goof around with--within certain limitations.
I had a fireplace in my first two houses. I also had a chainsaw and I cut wood and stoked those fireplaces full and loved every minute of it until 1994. That was the year that I gave my ex-wife my second house and the fireplace. She could have cared less about my fireplace--but I loved it.
I have lived without my own fireplace ever since. I had a house since then, but I didn't have a fireplace...and I had a fire, and that caused a big problem. You see, I bought my third house in the summer of 1997 and happily lived there after my divorce until April 5, 2001 when I came home from work and my house had burned up.
If you have never experienced a house fire on an up close and personal basis, I hope you never have to because there is no way for you to understand what happens to your life. There was a police tape wrapped around it and there was water running down the driveway and almost everything I owned except my Snapper mower and my Webber Charcoal grill and my Nissan Maxima and the Chevy Suburban that I happened to be driving that day was toast.
Worst of all, the police want to talk to you and treat you like some kind of criminal because YOU are the number one suspect when your house burns down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the cause of my fire was obvious--a crappy, cheep, surge suppressor/power strip on my fancy smancy 110 watt per channel Bose surround sound TV system.
Never again.
Go in your home office, go in your bedrooms, go in your living rooms, and look at what you have plugged into the surge protectors and wall outlets. Do you have an "octopus" of electrical wires? DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME AND FIND YOUR FRONT DOOR CHOPPED IN AND POLICE TAPE ACROSS YOUR FRONT PORCH? Do you want to see everything you've worked for, possibly your plants and your pets, cooked into ashes?
No?
Then think about what you are connecting to the electrical circuits in your house and get some help if you have any doubts and don't end up like me that day, moving into a motel room, dragging along what few of your possessions you can scrounge out of the rubble, smelling of smoke and dripping soot and water, stinking up your car parked out in the parking lot.
It really sucks......don't let it happen to you...
OK?
