The Spaceport Bar

Been a strange day here

2010-11-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

In the local area there have been a series of killings, all unrelated.

In Bonne Terre, a small town of 4000 just Southwest of where I live, there was s Murder Suicide after a young couple decided to break up. The 19 year old woman was attempting to break up with her boyfriend. She had moved in, bring her baby, with her mother and step-father. It began with a chilling 911 call, with a female caller screaming that someone was trying to kick down the door of their duplex. By the time the Chief of Police arrived, a male subject, apparently the boyfriend, was seen running towards a highway. when confronted by other officer responding, the male subject apparently turned the gun on himself. He died at the scene. The 19 year old mother, was gravely wounded, apparently defending her baby, and was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The mother and stepfather died at the scene. Survived was a three year old at the scene and the baby in the car in the driveway where the mother was found. There was also a 10 year old brother of the 19 year old who was at school who also survived.

In another incident, at a funeral of a man in North St. Louis, notorious as gang territory, shots rang out and two people were killed in that incident, with another being left in critical condition in the hospital. The gentleman whose funeral was so rudely interrupted, was the victim of a shooting that at this point remains unsolved. The police escorted the hearse to the cemetery where family members were not permitted to attend.

An Eight Year old boy was shot on the night of the 29th, and was injured but is in the hospital, after the car he was riding in with his father was shot at by unknown assailants. The boy was hit in the back and the father drove to the nearby Juvenile Detention Facility where the boy was then take to a local hospital. Police believe that the father was the target of the shooting due to the fact that he has a long criminal record. The father was also injured, but refused medical treatment.

A man was found shot in the head in Route 66 State Park, a short distance from where I live. A vehicle seen leaving the scene was linked to a standoff at a local comic book store in South St Louis in October where police confronted a man who was being arrested for statutory rape and other charges. The vehicle was last seen leaving the park heading back towards St. Louis.

And last, but not least, on the Illinois side of the river in East St. Louis, a grandmother was strangled in a house where she lived alone. Apparently she surprised an intruder who had broken into her home. There are no suspects.

Everything seems senseless when life is given such value. Petty arguments are settled with firearms. The senselessness of all of this appalls me. This is not a typical day of killing in our area, but is not atypical of any American city. There have been nights of gangland carnage on the Northside, where upwards of ten kids get shot to death in gang turf wars. But this is spread over a large area and affects all demographics and people of color and non-color. A woman defending her child, a senseless argument at a funeral of a man who was gunned down senselessly, a man gunned down for no apparent reason in a place of peace, a young life which was almost taken out and his potential removed from the world and an innocent old woman who was doing nothing more than trying to exist in an apparently insane world. Now I know why one would want to retreat to the mountains to get away from a world of violence.

I am wet.

2010-11-25T07:02:00.000-08:00

This from the weather service yesterday:

000
SXUS73 KLSX 250731 CCA
RERSTL

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ST LOUIS MO
130 AM CST THU NOV 25 2010

...A MAXIMUM DAILY RAINFALL RECORD SET AT ST. LOUIS MO...

A RECORD RAINFALL OF 3.08 INCHES WAS SET AT LAMBERT INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT IN ST LOUIS MO ON WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 24TH. THE PREVIOUS
RECORD WAS 1.73 INCHES IN 1987.


$$

The Brown "Bailout"

2010-11-17T04:40:00.000-08:00

I came across something recently that has troubled me. Knowing something and seeing something are two very different things. There is a new provision in the FAA Authorization Act which will change the way the labor negotiations are conducted for Air Express package companies. Instead of the Federal Railway Labor Act which has been used to govern most airline companies, the provision requires the use of the National Labor Relations Act.

Since Federal Express is primarily a non-union company they have began a campaign to oppose this provision labeling the campaign "Oppose the Brown Bailout." In tiny letters at the bottom of the page, it states that the web page is "brought to you by Fed Ex Express."

UPS is primarily a union company. What Fed Ex apparently objects to is the fact that the bill will according to one article: "language in the House version of the bill that would make it easier for certain FedEx Express workers to form local union bargaining units. It has spent millions on its lobbying effort, as has UPS, which supports the provision." This will benefit not only UPS, but all union based Trucking and shipping companies who use Air Express services.

Fed Ex is using its corporate might to promote what is clearly an anti-union stance which will result in keeping the status quo vis a vie union organization in shipping services. With the new Republican Congress, it is unlikely that the provision will be considered in the lame duck session. Yet, Fed Ex has sponsored a campaign to block this legislation and has apparently been successful.

Another corporation has used its might to cripple union organization and negotiation capacity.

UPS Explains their position here and I have been a little clumsy in explaining it. What I have a problem with is a major corporation campaigning against a provision which allows union organization. Fed Ex functions on a company wide basis as far as union organization is concerned. UPS, since it started as a primarily trucking based company functions as a group of individual Union provisions at each terminal. Fed Ex has none of those limitations.

In the commentary below I can further amplify my opposition to Fed Ex's corporate clout, but it is clear that UPS and Fed Ex are two very different operations.

On the vunerability of Air Cargo

2010-10-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

The recent incident about bombs being aboard a UPS cargo plane has brought additional scrutiny to the problem the holes in Air Cargo which might allow a terrorist to get a bomb on a plane. Meanwhile, here in STL, they have been telling us over the boob tube that a Jewish center in Chicago was targeted and was actually sent some cartridges. Apparently they were intercepted in wither England or Dubai. While UPS was featured in the news, a Fed Ex plane was detained in Dubai as well. A couple of UPS planes were detained and searched in the US. Air Cargo has always been a big hole where terrorists can get hold of a plane. There was an incident where a guy shipped himself to DFW on Pilot Air which was a forwarder. I worked in Freight Forwarding for many years and the assumption is that any screening is done by the shipper which has to pass a security check every so often by the TSA. Essentially a forwarder picks up the freight, then transfers it to the best way to get it there at the customers request. that can either be a commercial airline, (like Southwest, American, Delta, Etc) cargo airline (like UPS, Fed Ex, Etc) or through any of a number of Ground companies.

Several years ago, an employee shipped himself in a crate to DFW using Kitty Hawk Airlines which was the major airline we used as a cargo airline. Pilot Air only became suspicious when the guy opened the crate at the destination when he arrived. One only has to remember Fed Ex 705 where a disgruntled Fed Ex Employee flying standby tried to take over his plane by executing the flight crew. (His intention was to crash the aircraft in order to collect on his life insurance so that he would be able to send his kids to college. He was slated to be fired because he had falsified some of his resume when he was hired). It was only recently that all Air Freight slated for shipment on passenger aircraft were subject to the same screening given to luggage. Being out of the industry, I am not sure how this is working out. I know that while we screened our freight well since we shipped for a lot of major companies, it would have been easy to slip something in the freight if one had been a trusted shipper previously shipping with us. I can only hope its much different now.

I worked in Air Cargo for years and while the "trusted shipper" protocol has worked, it has its vulnerabilities. Once one establishes a relationship with a forwarder, one can ship as much as they want without further scrutiny. The onus is on the forwarder to guarantee if the shipment is safe. While it is required that parcels which are on passenger aircraft be screened, the just-in-time nature of forwarding, in which freight arrives sometimes literally just before the plane takes off, allows little time for screening and inspection.

The nature of the packaging leaves little to be desired as well. I have picked up auto shipments where bolts were leaking out of a box that wasn't prepared properly by the forwarder due to a lack of time. I had to wonder if those bolts could have gotten into some vital system on the aircraft, unlikely as it was. This whole system deserves a LOT more scrutiny.

It appears now that this incident is bringing more scrutiny to a recent crash of a UPS 747 in Dubai last month. Before the crash, the pilots, who were the only causalities, reported a fire on board. This may change how the just-in-time screening process is done and may change how freight is handled. It may end up being a boon to the charter industry since many factories cannot abide delays if they can't make a flight due to increased scrutiny.

Cost is going to be the factor that drives this debate. Just to give you an idea, I was asked once to get a bid for a charter flight for a truck frame to California from Louisville to guarantee its arrival. To charter a DC-9 from our contractor that we used the most was $32,000. I had to wonder that every time we were unloading a DC-9 charter for Ford, it was costing them not only the $32,000 they were charged by the Air Charter company, but an additional cost of maybe $3000 to offload and transport the freight to the plant which was on the other side of the airport. How much this will add to the cost of doing business is what will be weighed against the threat to the public. As always with these things, it will probably take a great loss of life before the industry finally hunkers down and allows inspections.

On the vunerability of Air Cargo

2010-10-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Political Ads on my page

2010-10-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

I have noticed of late that there has been a number of ads on my Multiply page for political candidates. Among the ones who have appeared are Roy Blunt, Ed Martin, and Christine O'Donnell. I have a feeling that Google keywords these things or since I post that I am from Missouri, they key on the candidates that I am likely to be voting for in the election. Now I detest all these candidates and after having been bombarded with them on my television, I have to have them here too? This isn't right.

Most ads seem to have been sponsored by BIPAC which stands for the Business Industry Political Action Committee which promotes a so-called "prosperity agenda" according to their website. Their board of directors reads like a mid level collection of companies fro lumbering or oil. The VP for "Government Affairs" of Haliburton sits on the board. BIPAC is among the established groups that have benefited from the "Citizens United" ruling which have allowed virtually unlimited monies into the political process, with shadowy groups and individuals contributing large amounts of money to the process without any public disclosure.

Now I commented to Google asking the ad to be removed. I was given several choices so I picked the one I thought appropriate:

This ad contains pornographic, sexual or other adult content.
This ad promotes violence or advocates against an organization, person, or protected group
I don't trust the advertiser to deliver on their claims
This ad appears to violate AdWords policies in other ways

I chose the third one since I don't think any of the advertisers can deliver on any claims.

RIP Paul

2010-10-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have been privy to the news concerning Paul the psychic octopus. For the uninitiated, Paul was an ordinary octopus who lived in an aquarium in Germany. He gained international fame and fortune by predicting most of the winners of the World Cup Football (Soccer to those Americans who are quite convinced that game in which a ball thrown in the air is called "football") competition this year. He was a hero of song and story.

Sadly, last night I heard that Paul had finally succumbed to the mortality that will seize us all. Paul passed away last night. Having lived a full life, Paul will best be remembered for his love of the game and his penchant for prediction by eating his dinner.

Rest in Peace, you tentacled prognosticator.

Flash

2010-10-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

I had to drive in DFW last week. The people there are INSANE and they mostly love BIG cars, trucks and SUV's and they think that no traffic rule applies to them. Especially those dealing with speeding, swerving in front of each other and the like. Needless to say I was glad to get back to Missery where at least I know the crazies here. Anyway, I will tell more, but I am sorry I didn't have time to tell anyone.

I drove down to Texas to pick up a cat and a couple of other things a friend of mine down there was giving me. I got a nice BIG TV set. (Its still in the back of the Blazer. I think I will wait a couple of days to clear a spot out for it). Some DVD Gifts and one cat plus his items.

Flash is a 3 year old male cat. he's 17 pounds and HUGE! Flash is named as such because if he trusts you really nice he will lay on his back and let you rub his belly. He's a sweet little guy. I had to let him out of the carrier in Muskogee because I just didn't feel right with him confined and he was getting hot. I cranked the air up to Full and he got cooled off and I was freezing. He has the benefit of a fur coat and I don't.

Flash was a freeloader at my friend Stephanie's house. He used to belong to her neighbor who when he got divorced, kicked his wife's cats out. The wife never bothered to pick the animals up and they have been out for over a year an a half. Flash is declawed, which means he couldn't defend himself. He suffered through the winter in which the DFW Metro had more snow than St. Louis. He suffered through DFW's oppressive heat. This summer was particularly awful. So, Steph talked me into having a cat. I was a little trepadatious because its a long trip after all. I didn't want to fly him because I didn't want to trust him to a plane. Its a long drive, about 12 hours. Still, I figured I could make it.

So I wend down and spent a night asleep and then got all the stuff loaded and helped Steph prepare for a garage sale so she could get rid of some stuff as well. We took some furniture to Goodwill and then I slept again for the trip back.

I left about 9:30, a little later than I wanted to, but I needed the sleep. Flash was pretty comfortable in his carrier and he spend the first third of the trip in the front seat inside the carrier. I got misdirected when I got off at the wrong exit. I turned and some of the stuff in the back tumbled over so I had to pull over and rearrange it. Flash was a little worried because he started talking. I kept telling him I wasn't gonna leave him and after rearranging and calling for directions I got myself set up on the right highway to eventually get out of town. Flash was pretty calm thanks to some tranquilizers Steph got from her vet. Steph was also kind enough to get Flash all his shots and get him chipped so if he gets lost at least someone will know where he came from.

So I start to head north on US 75 toward Muskogee, OK and eventually north on US 69 to Interstate 44 at Big Cabin, OK. From there its a straight NE shot to St. Louis. I promised Steph I would stop every 4 hours to see if he wanted to potty. About 4 and a half hours later I am in Muskogee, OK and sitting in a Walmart parking lot (yeah I know, I am so ashamed). Anyway, I went in to get me a leash to see if I could get him out of the kitty carrier and let him move about the cabin as it were. After getting back to the car I noticed he was pretty overheated in spite of being in the car for only a few minutes. I definitely will not make that same mistake again! It was pretty comfortable in the car, with the thermometer reading only 86 degrees on my weather radio I keep in the truck. However, the anxiety of the trip combined with all the new activity and no place to hide must have got him overworked in spite of the tranquilizers. I had to wonder what he would have been like without them. But I have found Flash to be a pretty laid back cat so this was him at his most anxiety prone.

I cranked up the air and tried to get him to drink some water out of a self waterer I had just bought. He didn't drink so I thought it best to get back on the road ASAP to get the journey over with so he would get less anxious. So, no potty and no water and he is wandering all over the truck. Eventually he settled down and laid down behind me on top of my took box I keep in the truck. Its a footlocker sized thing I keep safety equipment in and he was looking pretty comfortable.

I passed through Checotah, OK as many of you will remember from when I drove the Victor/Victoria down there was the place where my humble car blew a head gasket on my last trip. The Blazer was running a little warmer than I'd like, but she was holding together pretty well considering.

Next stop was Mc Alister, OK with $2.59 cent gas. I wasn't going to pass up that price as it was 10 cents a gallon cheaper than every other station I was passing by on the way. So I stopped and Flash started talking and looking around. He was a little anxious but stayed put while I got out to pay for the gas. He laid back down and went back to sleep. I have to wonder if it was the medicine or if he had traveled before.

Tank topped off and I continued down. Since Flash didn't eat, I resolved not to either since we were sharing the hardships of the trip. I had to drink though or else I would get sleepy from dehydration. So I drank some water and some green tea I had from my little porta fridge. I kept forgetting to turn the thing on after I started up after Mc Alister so my drinks became tepid. (I had to shut it down to keep the power surges from ruining it).

I stopped at Big Cabin to get the toll booth receipt and then stopped at the toll booth on 44 to pay the Oklahoma Turnpike authority their $2.00 to maintain the highway, which they do a good job at doing. After that, I enjoyed a relatively quick trip to Joplin since I can go 75 on that stretch. I had kept my rear view turned down so I could keep an eye on Flash when I turned it up I noticed a cop following me. The truck next to us was preventing him from being able to pass as I had started to pass a big rig, so I increased my speed slightly and let him pass with a wave.

The Flying J in Joplin was my next stop to top off on Gas. Flash was a little woke up and looking around, but very well behaved. I topped off and noticed a map sale. I got me a bunch of maps for 4 bucks. Never know when those things might be handy.

I resolved to press on since Flash wasn't using the facilities at all. I figured I better get going since I had to get to work that night and I wanted to be on time. I stopped in Rolla, MO to give Flash one last chance to use the box. He tried to get out and was really talkative. I know he wanted to go, but probably had an anxiety about people seeing him using the facilities. So after a few minutes of him wandering around the truck, we finally settled on him getting back to where he was and us getting back on the road.

We got to St. Louis and I got him a litter box set up and he used it first thing after I left to get him some baby proofing stuff to keep him from getting into the cabinets.

I got to work on time and all worked out. Well I got to get. More later on Flash and his acclimation to my life.

A courageous man takes a stand

2010-10-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

I caught this on Facebook and the original video is going viral and I will link it here. I hope you can view this video. Everyone should view this video. I know this man may pay for his honesty, but his story is compelling and deserves viewing.

By the by, if anyone wants to link to this video, please link to the original on YouTube here. I am not going to say anything else except that this is a courageous man who has decided to take a stand on an important issue and he deserves our respect and support.

You Might be a Republican if

2010-10-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

By Bruce Linder

You Might be a Republican If..........

1) You believe George W. Bush's redistribution of middle-class tax cuts to the top 1% of tax-payers was good for America, but Obama's plan to return it to the middle class is 'socialism.'

2) You believe stem cells are living human beings, but thousands of Iraqi children are 'expendable collateral damage.'

3) You believe tax cuts for billionaires is a great idea, yet you wonder why the economy has stalled, your job just got outsourced to India, and oil company executives receive $400,000,000.00 retirement packages.

4) You believe the surge worked because the violence in Iraq is back to 2006 levels, which is only horrible, compared to what it was in 2007; intolerable. Besides, Brit Hume said so.

5) You think trial lawyers are harmful to America, yet you support prosecuting some guy in Muncie Indiana who burned his 99� American flag that was made in China by forced child labor.

6) You're all for the 'rule of law' when it's applied to Bill Clinton for lying about his infidelity, but not for prosecuting Karl Rove and Scooter Libby for committing treason.

7) You think George W. Bush is actually a really smart guy, but his folksy manner just makes him seem dumber than he really is.

8) You believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own, and that those who are born to poverty and never have opportunities for advancement, got what they deserved.

9) You believe Ronald Reagan was a great president who had complete control of all aspects of government, but the Iran-Contra Affair was an insignificant scandal that went on without his knowledge.

10) You believe Democrats tax and spend, but George W. Bush was a fiscal conservative.

11) You believe Oliver North, who was CONVICTED of perjury, obstruction of justice, destroying evidence and accepting bribes, is a patriot. But John Kerry, who saved a man's life while under enemy fire in Vietnam is a coward.

12) You believe George W. Bush kept us safe from terror, and the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks were Clinton's fault.

13) You actually believe Fox News is fair & balanced.

14) You still believe Saddam had truckloads of WMDs, and that he somehow managed to sneak them into Syria, right under our noses.

15) You believe Terri Schiavo was sentient all along, and Bill Frist had the ability to diagnose her condition by watching a 5 second video of her sleeping.

16) You're in favor of stronger prison sentences for drug users, yet your favorite radio personality is Rush Limbaugh.

17) You complain about having to press 1 for English, yet you hire undocumented workers to mow your lawn because they're cheaper than hiring the kid next door.

18) Homosexuality is abhorrent to you, except when a Republican senator, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and a planted White House journalist get caught having sexual affairs with gay men. Then you suddenly feel sorry for them.

19) The war in Iraq makes perfect sense to you, but any suggestion by Barack Obama that we target al Qaeda specifically is 'dangerous and reckless.'

20) You don't mind that president Bush tortured men who were never charged with a crime, yet you're horrified by the wrath of al Qaeda when they capture one of our guys.

21) You believe the 1/10 of 1% of scientists who claim global warming is a hoax, and reject the 99.9% who say it's real, because Sean Hannity and his friends in the oil industry have convinced you that science is a part of a greater liberal conspiracy.

22) You believe patriotism means you should support your government right or wrong ... unless a Democrat's in power, then it's your patriotic duty to call him a closet Muslim, challenge his birth certificate, expose his sex life and impeach him.

23) You're proud of your party's 'culture of life.' Yet you support the death penalty for minors, you believe 600,000 dead Iraqis is justified because one of them was Saddam Hussein, and you oppose confronting the genocide in Darfur because they don't have oil.

24) You support prayer in school, as long as your kids aren't subjected to Muslim prayers.

25) You think Darwin's theory of evolution is a loony fairy tale, and mankind actually began with two naked teenagers, a magic apple and a talking snake.

26) You think $35 billion spent on health care for children is a waste of taxpayer's money, but $1.7 trillion spent on a catastrophic war that has isolated us from our allies, decimated our economy and made us less safe was money well spent.

27) You believe embargoing communist Cuba is sound foreign policy, but trading with China is just good business.

28) You believe Bill Clinton was an immoral cad, but Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were faithful husbands (and Larry Craig just has a wide stance).

29) You fervently defend the Constitution, but when president Bush got caught monitoring 300 million phones without a warrant, politicizing our justice system, hyping evidence for going to war and pardoning a convicted perjurer who just happened to be on his staff, then it's okay, because he was 'protecting America.'

30) You were outraged when a gallon of gasoline went from $1.29 to $1.40 during the two terms of the Clinton presidency, but you didn't seem to mind when prices tripled under George W. Bush, the "oil man."

31) You were furious when Bill Clinton pardoned international commodities trader Marc Rich, who was convicted of tax evasion, but applauded when George W. Bush exonerated Scooter Libby for obstructing justice to protect Dick Cheney from a treason indictment.

32) With no evidence whatsoever, you complained of 'voter fraud,' and demanded that thousands of blacks be scrubbed from voting lists during the 2004 election in Ohio, yet when Rush Limbaugh asked his audience to illegally claim to be Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton during the Ohio Primary in February to "stir up trouble," a FELONY, you were okay with that.

33) You believe Barack Obama should be held accountable for every sermon that Jeremiah Wright ever gave, but John McCain, who sought the endorsement of anti-Semitic, xenophobic, openly racist and homophobic pastors should be given a pass.

34) You believe Barack Obama is either a secret Muslim, was actually born in Kenya, and his parents forged a fake birth certificate when he was born - just in case he should ever run for president, or that his father's nationality disqualifies his son from being president, all because you read that on the Internet.

35) You believe the 8 consecutive years of prosperity and strong economic growth from 1993 - 2001 was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but today's recession is all Clinton's and Obama's fault.

36) You laugh at how much better Barack Obama speaks with a TelePrompTer than without one, yet you never mention the fact that even with a TelePrompTer, every time George Bush opened his mouth, gibberish tumbled out.

37) You still believe Barack Obama has somehow succeeded in fooling every government and independent examination with his "obviously Photoshopped" documents. Instead, you rely on Internet gossip, WorldNetDaily and Jerome Corsi as your sources for "truth."

38) Your conservative media spent more air time discussing Michelle Obama touching the queen of England's arm than on the economy, the environment, terrorism and health care combined.

39) You believe that we should get out of Afghanistan because Obama is "nation building," yet for eight straight years of Bush's bumbling incompetence there, you kept mum. Therefore, attacking Iraq makes sense, even though they never threatened us, but finishing off the job of finding Osama bin Laden; the terrorist who killed 3,000 Americans -- Bush's original task -- is a dumb idea.

40) You were furious that Barack Obama admitted in France that Americans have occasionally been "arrogant, dismissive and derisive," but you cheered them on when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were arrogant, dismissive and derisive.

41) You believe that Obama's $3.6 trillion budget is an outrage, but never once complained that George Bush turned Bill Clinton's $300 billion surplus into a $1.3 trillion deficit. And it never once occurred to you that Bush deliberately omitted the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from those statistics, which means Bush's TRUE deficit was $3.1 trillion.

42) You supported Gov. Sarah Palin, partly because you believed she kept a good Christian home. This, despite the fact that her seventeen year old unmarried daughter was knocked up, her son was accused of vandalizing 44 school buses (cutting the brake lines of school buses - HELLO!!?) and was given the choice of going to jail or join the military, and Palin herself was found guilty of abusing the power of her office. But Barack Obama can't possibly be a true Christian, because his father was a Muslim, and his middle name is Hussein. (Besides, he's black, and everybody knows that Jesus was a blond haired blue eyed white man.)

43) You believe the only solution to gun violence is to make sure everybody is armed to the teeth. That way, when some crazy person goes on a killing spree, right-thinking people will take out the killer, and tranquility will prevail throughout the land.

44) You believe the mainstream news anchors are crazy, biased and filled with hate, but Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are rational, accurate and informative.

45) You defend Rush Limbaugh's right to wish for Obama to fail, and therefore, the failure of our republic, yet you call Democrats the "blame America first crowd."

46) You claim that the economic crisis is the fault of the Democrats, but never mention that it was the Reagan administration that massively deregulated the banking industry in 1982, and it was Phil Gramm - McCain's choice for economic advisor - who completed the task for his pals in the banking industry in 1999.

47) You believe the failure of the US automobile industry is primarily the fault of the unions, and not because management of the three corporations insisted on producing vehicles that nobody wanted. And you're angry with the $28.00 per hour average wage of the work force, but you believe that the multimillion dollar salaries of the men who bankrupted the industry are perfectly reasonable.

48) You believe Barack Obama is a "narcissistic megalomaniac," because you heard Glenn Beck call him that once, but Beck himself is a humble man, concerned only for your welfare (brought to you by Goldline!).

49) You believe anybody who doesn't subscribe to Orly Taitz' birther movement is a RINO, and those who do, are carrying the torch of Reaganism.

50) You think this list is mean-spirited and biased, and even though you privately acknowledge to yourself that it's all true, you believe the Democrats are just as bad. Here's a bulletin: Nobody has ever been this bad.

(51) You praise Reagan as your tax-cutting, anti-spending role model while conveniently forgetting that Reagan RAISED taxes in 1982, 1983,1984, and 1986 while spending more that all the Presidents before him COMBINED.

(52) If you believe that "we cannot abandon Baghdad..." because its our God-given mission to "liberate Iraq", but its OK to leave the American citizens of New Orleans stranded on their rooftops, let to die in their own waste following hurricane Katrina because "there were a lot of bad people in New Orleans..."

(53) If you claim you want smaller government with less power but support repealing the 17th Amendment which would give the government the power to hand pick Senators and take the right of we the people from voting for the candidate of our choice.

(54) You keep calling everyone who had their job outsourced by the policies of the last administration of being lazy bums who should just go get a job and stop stealing your tax dollars.

(55) You think we can pay our doctors with a chicken, that there are be-headings all over the Arizona border, Sharia Law has been put into effect anywhere within the United States borders and that scientists have transplanted human brains into mice.

I have to love it

2010-10-13T03:55:00.000-07:00

If you aren't aware, I live in the 2nd Congressional District in Missouri. Here we have two candidates vying for the position of filling the seat in this election. The incumbent, Congressman Russ Carnahan is a nice guy and a very good fellow to know. Decent man whom I have met on a few occasions.

His competitor is a man by the name of Ed Martin. Ed's a lawyer and according to the Committee on Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington, he is one of the 12 sleaziest politicians vying for elective office in the country. Yes, that's right THE COUNTRY. Needless to say, Ed is supported by the Tea Party crowd.

However someone has a sense of humor. Some soul put a home made sign in support of Ed on Interstate 55 south of St. Louis so that all could see it from the highway. Gracing a Hill the sign read:

Now comes the humor part. Some other well meaning soul decided to alter the sign slightly:

Ahhh, the dirty politics. I can promise you I was not the soul who altered the sign. However, Given sufficient time, motivation and an indication of the location of said sign, I might be convinced to embark on such an undertaking. Someone beat me to it.

Phuket Air

2010-10-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

In my irregular series of aviation blogs I though I might inject a little humor here. As many of you know, there is a resort city in Thailand called Phuket. Its a wonderful resort which suffered at the ravages of the 2005 Tsunami in which 230 people were killed on the island of Phuket. Anyway, in 1999 Vikrom Aisiri, a Thai multimillionaire and his wife got together to form an Airline which they named Phuket Air. They started by leasing a few 737's and I started to notice after they got a few 747's from KLM. To see the word Phuket painted in huge letters on the side of a plane was sure to bring laughter to all of use in the air Cargo business and pretty soon the work was about in our office that if we just didn't want a piece of cargo to go anywhere we could just ship it on Phuket Air, using an exaggerated American pronunciation of the phonetics of the word. OK, Just day Fuckit Air and you get the drift.

Phuket Air eventually overexpanded and with the result was banned from flights to Europe due to safety and maintenance concerns. That airline stopped flying revenue passengers in 2005 and now serves as a wet-lease company flying overflow passengers for other airlines in the region and supplying air service to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj.

Where do Right and Left merge?

2010-10-04T07:39:00.000-07:00

Remember the old saying that two wrongs don't make a right but three do? I have heard recently that the some right wingers consider Hitler a leftist since his party was called the National SOCIALIST Workers Party. I learned in school that eventually the political systems merge in a great circle and can be expressed as such.

Once you get to a certain point, the two sides merge, rightist authoritarian, and leftest authoritarian. To argue that Hitler was a Leftist is idiotic. The Right wing in this country is using the same propagandist tactics that Hitler and Goebbels used in their rise to power and having the same coalition of business elites and conservative socialites in order to consolidate their power. The Right is characterized by authoritarian and increasingly dictatorial need to control what the citizenry does. Rights are supposedly respected up to a point where it interferes with the control of peoples lives and habits.

I had an economics professor state to me once that the only really true socialist state was Jesus Christ and his disciples. In that, I think he meant that they cared for one another in a socially beneficial way.

The idea of the conservative in small government means that we are to have limited government services provided by a for profit, private industry with the benefits going to the industry and not the people. That's the way health care in this country has worked as an example. While most "socialist" countries in Europe manage their health care systems for the benefit and use by the people, in our country, the health care system is managed for the benefit of only those that can afford it or afford the insurance premiums. The medical-insurance-pharmaceutical complex is geared to develop maximum profit without benefit to the people. While we have great advances in health care, those benefits only trickle down to a relative few who can afford expensive, experimental procedures that insurance companies refuse to cover. The insurance industry is geared to return profits at the expense of peoples lives by denying coverage when a patient causes the company to loose money.

I have had many friends who have had their coverage denied or eliminated because they cost the companies too much money. The only death panels that exist are those at the insurance companies which deny coverage for people that have become too sick to make a profit. These panels at the insurance companies kill thousands each year by denying coverage to people at worst, at best they cost the taxpayers billions by forcing people to the state rolls for health care.

If we want to talk a nanny state, then the Right in this country wants a nanny state that regulates our sexuality, our birth and death patterns, where and how we shop, and a state of regulations where business is allowed to run rampant throughout the economy doing anything to make a buck regardless of the hurt it costs the people. An example of this is the lack of financial regulation promulgated by the right wing which, after dismantling the market regulations and controls promoted by the New Deal, caused the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. We are poised now to reelect the same group back to government in this country which caused the problems we are only now recovering from and will take several years to get back to any semblance of solvency.

Stolen from Sharon - Questions and answers

2010-10-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

1. Were You Named After Anyone? I have 4 brothers. My Mom got all our names from the Bible. I have a brother named David, Peter and Paul. My name Stephen is after the first Christian Martyr which kinda gives me a complex... ;-)

2. Do You Like Handwriting? I can't write very long. I prefer typing.

3. What Is Your Favorite Lunch Meat? Smoked Turkey and smoked ham. I loathe Baloney, but will eat it.

4. Have Kids? Who would want to bring a kid in this world? Really I don't have anyone to have kids with anyway.

5. If You Were Another Person, Would You Be Friends With You? Good Question. I can be a good friend. Someone has to interest me to be a friend and I am very fascinating.

6. Do You Use Sarcasm A Lot? Yes I love Sarcasm.

7. Do You Still Have Your Tonsils? Yes I think so. I don't remember.

8. Would You Bungee Jump? I like keeping the contents of my bladder inside thank you very much.

9. What Is Your Favorite Cereal? Rasin Bran.

10. Do You Untie Your Shoes Before You Take Them Off? No.

11. What Is Your Favorite Ice Cream? Marshmallow Swirl

12. What Is The First Thing You Notice About People? I tend to notice personality. The attitude is what people project.

13. Red or Pink? Red. are you kidding?

14. Who Do You Miss The Most? I don't know.

15.What Is The Least Favorite Thing About Yourself? I'm overweight.

16. What Color Shoes Are You Wearing? none. Socks. I am in front of the computer so I am at home.

17. What Was The Last Thing You Ate? I had a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches a couple of hours ago.

18. What Are You Listening To Right Now? ABC's Americas Funniest Home videos.

19. If You Where A Crayon, What Color Would You Be? Blue

20. Favorite Smells? Forrest tree scent or Sea breeze

21. Who Was The Last Person You Talked To On The Phone? Stephanie

22. Do You Like The Person Who Sent This To You? Of course. That's a stupid question.

23. Favorite Sports to Watch? I am really not a sports fan. I see most of them as a bunch of overpaid idiots with overinflated egos.

24. Hair Color? Brown

25. Eye Color? Brown One girlfriend said I had intense brown eyes.

26. Do You Wear Contacts? No

27. Favorite Food? Fried Chicken.

28. Scary Movies Or Happy Endings? Happy endings. I like Romantic comedies with a good dialogue and wonderful by play between the characters.

29. Last Movie You Watched? Clash of the Titans (2010)

30. What Color Shirt Are You Wearing? White

31. Summer Or Winter? I have a conflict here. I hate being too hot and being too cold. I prefer Fall and Spring.

32. Hugs Or Kisses? Hugs if they are a friend. Kisses if they are a good girl friend.

33. Favorite Dessert? Chocolate cake

34. Most Likely To Respond? Who knows who cares.

35. Least Likely To Respond? See above

36. What Book Are You Reading Now? God I have too many.

37. Where Would You Like To Go On Vacation? Cook Islands or the Kennedy Space Center.

38. Where is the most different place you ever went on vacation? Haven't really had a "Different" vacation. I went to Montana once, but ended up having to help someone move. Not a fun vacation.

39. What Is On Your Mouse Pad? No mouse pad I have a trackball mouse.

40. Favorite Sound? The ocean or a forest with birds tweeting.

41. Rolling Stones Or Beatles? Do I have to choose? I was never really a fan of either

42. What Is The Farthest You Have Been From Home? Montana

43. Do You Have A Special Talent Music? I love listening to it, but no real talent for playing it.

I want you to stop being afraid

2010-09-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

See the original at : http://www.divshare.com/download/12641420-a57

I want everyone to stop being afraid of everyone else. I want the Tea Partiers to stop being afraid of Mexicans, Muslims, progressives, and President Obama. I want Progressives to stop being afraid of Tea Partiers and Republicans. I want this country the way it used to be when we got together to solve problems instead of screaming at each other.

Maybe I am being delusional. Maybe it WILL end up in a civil war. God help us if it does, but I seriously doubt that things are going to be pretty.

Our Future - the Rollerball/Robocop scenario

2010-09-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

This country is starting to sound like Rollerball. The 1970's version that was really a criticism of the corporatization of America. In that world the corporations WERE the government and Rollerball was the game that kept the masses in line. It provided cheap fodder where the violence of the game was only outdone by the indifference of their corporate masters.

By the way, the film was critized at the time for being extremely violent. Indeed, some of the scenes are difficult to watch but are tame compared to what is being offered on today's movie screens.

The other film is Robocop. This is where an indifferent corporation in a world of corporations where government has been rendered impotent by violence the governments turn to Corporate industry to provide security and other "unprofitable" ventures. How soon will this world come about?

13 things overheard during a colonoscopy exam

2010-09-22T06:04:00.000-07:00

Things overheard at a colonoscopy

A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominantly male) while he was performing their Colonoscopies.

1. "Take it easy Doc, you're boldly going where no man has gone before!
2. "Find Amelia Earhart yet?"
3. "Can you hear me NOW?"
4. "Oh boy! That was sphincterrific!"
5. "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
6. "You know in Arkansas we're now legally married."
7. "Any sign of the trapped miners Chief?"
8. "You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out..."
9. "Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!"
10. "If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!"
11. "Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity."
12. "You used to be an executive at Enron didn't you?"

And the best one of them all...

13. "Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is, in fact, not up there."

What I did to get international fame -Tthe 10 hour work day

2010-09-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am now internationally famous. Last night, as usual, I was driving around in my truck and I heard my name on the radio! That's not something that normally happens. Plus I was listening to our local NPR station's rebroadcast of the BBC World Service which makes it doubly interesting. Apparently I am now internationally famous as my words were read over the air far and wide for all the world to hear. The wonderfully inflected British accent pronounced my name with a more Germanic sounding inflection and called St. Louis (which locally is pronounced Lewis) as "Looie," but it was me because I recognized the words I wrote.

Whats the story behind this international turn of events? Well I am a big fan of Lucy Kellaway's commentaries which are featured regularly on the World Services' Business Daily report on Monday Nights here locally. She writes a rather cynical column for the UK's Financial Times newspaper. Her humorous take on the sometimes bizarre practices of the business world provide constant fodder for her column's.

On July 2 of this year, she wrote a column dedicated to the idea that businesses should eliminate Fridays for a variety of reasons. While I am sure she meant in as a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that nothing really gets done on Fridays. Her commentary was repeated on the BBC on 23 August of this year.

However, I had given the matter serious thought and I posted my thoughts on the BBC website. I wish I had saved the link, because I can't find it now! You may listen to and download the podcast for the next week or so at the following link. Click on the link for the 20th and my comments are read at the end of the broadcast. It might be available for longer at the following link which is up for good I hope.

Anyway, the gist of my comment was that we could eliminate Fridays by going to a 40 hour week/10 hour day. This would leave the last three days of the week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, free for leisure time and worship as most of the world's major religions worship on one of those three days. I emphasized that the savings in commuting times, energy usage and the like would be considerable. Productivity would increase since we would have essentially two shifts for many jobs. The "weekend" shift would be correspondingly smaller since these would be part time workers, or said workers could be given the option of coming in on any of the other four "working days" and complete a 10 hour shift to have a full 40 hours. Most people could have a lot more leisure time since a three day weekend gives one a lot more time to do home projects and recreation.

Granted the 10 hour day might be a bitch, but then it would be able to have more productivity since we will be working longer in the day and services would be available longer. On a three shift job, we might still have the same 8 hour day, as the times don't match up really. I was thinking on some jobs an "on-call" arrangement might be floated or for others, an overlapping of shifts might be necessary or some might be filled by "weekenders" working partial shifts to cover for those intervening times. Few workplace regulations in the US would change since a minimum of 4 hours is required in some jobs for pay. If you get called in you have to be paid 4 hours no matter what. Of course, the big one would be the 8 hour day.

Overtime would be at twice pay because we don't want people working too much of a day. Many jobs ask you to come in early to set up and some violate regulations by not paying for that set up time. This shift would give adequate time for that set up with four hours a day down time in dome factory jobs. Most would work 9am to 8 pm with an hour allowed for lunch and that hour would always be time off required by law. Now some people would not adapt to this because of the fact that commuting distances have increased in the US especially, but this might encourage the use of trains or other public transit to get people into work. It might also encourage people to live closer to work since a schedule like this would discourage long commuting times. Another idea would be to require a 3 day work/10 hour day and make a fourth day "floating" be it by choice or schedule as long as positions were filled for those long commuters. Also, it might encourage telecommuting for workers who are able to take advantage of that kind of situation.

I wasn't able to provide much detail on my proposal as I have done above, but essentially that is it as depicted above. With the increased lack of leisure time this would be a more accurate reflection on the kind of efficiencies that business today utilizes.

I'd appreciate any commentary on this proposal and what one might think about it.

Its 12:12. Do you know where your bodies are?

2010-09-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't talked much about work in my blog. Officially, I am not supposed to on pain of termination. However, I will refrain from presenting this in a negative light as much as possible. I only wish to point out the comedic aspects of this.

There has been controversy of late concerning a proposed exhibit which will visit my Mall. In the wake of the wave of business bankruptcies in 2008, the Mark Shale store, a 12,000 square foot hunk of retail clothing space, closed down. The North End of Death as I like to call it, has claimed another victim. (Stores on the North End of the mall seem not to last long as there is little parking on that end. However, this has changed slightly as some of the newer stores have lasted longer than most have in the past). This leaves a large space a the North End of the Mall unoccupied.

Last year, the space was occupied by a store styled by the name "Halloween Express." Normally this seasonal store occupied the empty Blockbuster space across the street from the mall. Last year I guess they decided to move up a notch and the large space gave them ample space to display their wares. Such included fake cadavers, zombies, witches and other full scale Halloween paraphernalia.

This year, I suppose they decided to try something different. Seems the mall has rented out the space to a company entitled Premier Exhibitions. Premier has several traveling road shows going on including one about the Titanic. However, the subject of the exhibition at our mall has little to do with the mysteries of the sea. No, our exhibition has to do with the Human Body. The exhibit is of various configurations of the Human Body with organs and muscles preserved through a process of plastification. The bodies are posed with the organs showing, the muscles stretching in various sports poses and the like. Needless to say this is somewhat creepy.

Last night, 4 tractor trailers arrived loaded with 250 plasticized cadavers. Then the heavens started to open up. Like a scene from a horror movie, lightening started to crackle and rain started to fall. Eventually they started to unload the trucks in this deluge. Eventually they unloaded the trucks and put all 250 plastic people in the space.

This whole exhibit has led to some bizarre speculation on our part as these are the preserved remains of real people. Since I work nights, the creepiness factor increases. One has the vision of zombies wandering the mall shopping. Lets hope that Michael Jackson's Thriller is mere speculation and not actual fact.

The only controversy the exhibit has engendered has been concerning the origin of the bodies in question. A conservative congressman from a district to the North of St. Louis has threatened to take legal action against the exhibit and its promoters because of the Chinese origin of the bodies. He believes that the bodies are from Chinese prisoners who have been tortured and thus exhibiting them would be cruel. While I think it is creepy and not cruel, the exhibition will now carry, thanks to an agreement between the exhibitors and the State of Missouri, a disclaimer stating that the origin of the bodies cannot be verified. Nice.

Anyway, if you hear of me in the coming zombie Apocalypse running through the mall, I will be calling the police and heading for my home, thank you very much.

Please understand that none of this represents the official opinion of the management of St. Louis Galleria or the company I work for, Valor Security.

What would you do if you saw a tree filled with money

2010-09-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

Remember when your parents said that money didn't grow on trees? Amy Krouse Rosenthal wondered what people would do if they saw a tree filled with money. She and a few friends got together and put $100 on a tree on a busy street. What happened was very suprising. The reactions of people were telling about how we notice things.

My memories of 9-11

2010-09-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

My best friend in Texas had 5 friends die that day who worked for Bank of America. My supervisor at work was a Paramedic with a local company. He volunteered and went to NYC and worked for as long as he could till work called him back to St. Louis. I remember this day as the day everything was quiet.

I worked at an air cargo company in Louisville, KY. For those who are not aware, Louisville is the hub for UPS, the worlds largest shipper. WorldPort is running 24 hours a day with 747's and Shorts Skyvans taking off at all hours of the day and night. At night the planes come in from all over the world and the sky is filled with airplanes. I lived in apartment complex across the highway from Runway 35R at the airport. I am well aware of airport noise and that was the day everything became quiet.

I was at work when one of our drivers came in and said that he heard on the radio that a plane had just dived into the World Trade Center. I got on the internet which was jammed and saw a picture of the burning building. Then we got the call, that they shut the skies down and every airplane in the air around Louisville came there to roost. Airlines which never had landed there did do and those passengers were stranded, with no way to get home.

I called people I loved. Not sure why I did it, but I did, just to be sure they were OK. Apparently thousands of others thought the same way because it was a wonder I got through. Eventually I went home and watched the aftermath.

Then I noticed the quiet. The planes had all landed so the airport was shut down. But then I noticed the highway was quiet too. Like a Sunday, with no traffic. Everyone was at home, just like me, glued to the Television or surfing the net and watching the aftermath.

I remember Sting watching the live broadcast of his song Fragile and looking at the TV and watching the rain falling on the rescuers and wondering at the words he was singing.

s

Can you get married in Heaven?

2010-08-17T03:18:00.000-07:00

CAN YOU GET MARRIED IN HEAVEN?

On their way to get married, a young Catholic couple is involved in a fatal car accident.

The couple find themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they begin to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven?

When St. Peter showed up, they asked him.

St. Peter said, 'I don't know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out,' and he leaves.

The couple sat and waited, and waited. Two months passed and the couple are still waiting. As they waited, they discussed that if they were allowed to get married in Heaven, what was the eternal aspect of it all. 'What if it doesn't work?' they wondered, 'Are we stuck together forever?'

After yet another month, St. Peter finally returns, looking somewhat bedraggled.

'Yes,' he informs the couple, 'you can get married in Heaven.'

Great!' said the couple, 'But we were just wondering, what if things don't work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?'

St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slammed his clipboard onto the ground.

'What's wrong?' asked the frightened couple.

'OH, COME ON!', St. Peter shouted, 'It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have any idea how long it'll take me to find a Lawyer?!'

Conservapedia: E=mc2 Is A Liberal Conspiracy | TPMMuckraker

2010-08-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/conservapedia_founde...

How long will it be before these imbeciles think the Law of Gravity is against the Bible! This is really going too far, WAY too far. First its evolution, now its physics. Einsteins precepts have been accepted and confirmed by observation since relativity was first proposed. THIS has got to stop!

Whats next? Are we going to say the Earth is the center of the universe? This is asinine. I will never, ever understand this.

This ones for the Girls - Our Children are changing..

2010-08-09T13:22:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a little mellow when I wrote this so I may repost a better version later. But I wanted to get the thought down while it was still in my head.

In the headlines today it has been revealed that increasing numbers of girls are reaching puberty earlier, sometimes as early as the second grade. The cause is not really known, but the obesity epidemic may have something to do with it. Also cited is the plastic used in some bottles has been known to mimic estrogen. Another factor is fertilizers and other things used in food processing may mimic estrogen and cause this as well.

The consequence of this is a generation of girls with low self esteem as those girls which develop early are know to have such issues. There is also cancer risks later in life of increase Brest and Uterine cancers. And last but not least is, thanks to the hypersexualization of young girls in our media today.is an increased sexual activity at a younger age.

The study cited the trend highest among African American females at almost 12-15 percent with decreasing rates among Hispanic and finally Caucasian females.

We are breading a generation of mutants. Who knows that the dangerous things we put into our water and air have whatever deleterious effects on our children? We are changing ourselves in ways we cannot predict and imagine. Coupled with these changes physically will cause unprecedented changes socially, politically, spiritually, what have you.

What the Tea Party is like to me.

2010-08-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

I think most everyone who is alive now in the United States or my age remembers "The Twilight Zone." If not, they probably saw the remakes in the late 1980's and early 90's. The show was perfect as Science Fiction as modern parable, telling of the fears of technological, social or political change. Such was a show in the first incarnation called "Its a Good Life."

This episode dealt with a child named Anthony who has godlike powers. He can wish for anything and its granted. If you don't think good thoughts around Anthony, because he can read your mind. If he doesn't like what you think, he can whisk you away to the cornfield, never to be seen again. You don't go against Anthony because he controls everything, what you see on TV (Anthony loves dinosaurs so that is all there is on TV), what you eat or what you can do. He doesn't like dogs, so dogs have been whisked away. Everyone lives in terror of Anthony, but they can't show it for fear of being whisked away to the cornfield.

Right now, we have an Anthony in our nation. Anthony goes by various names, the TEA party, Fox News, the vast Right Wing conspiracy, what have you. Anthony goes around wanting to control everything and because he believe he is right, and we have enshrined the right to listen to his arguments, they are not questioned. Even when his arguments venture into the bizarre or absurd, we do not question him. It seems only a small minority has anything to say. They rarely speak up and thus the monster gains power. Anthony is in our midst and soon a lot of us may be whisked away to the cornfield for thinking bad thoughts.

This is Rod Serling, and now the Twilight Zone

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

An old Joke - Jesus is watching you

2010-08-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite jokes:

A robber breaks into a house and starts to pillage the place. As he is starting to ransack the living room, he hears a voice, "Jesus is watching you."

He shines his flashlight around looking for the source. "Jesus is watching you," he hears it again. Finally his searching comes upon a parrot on a perch.

"Jesus is watching you," says the Parrot.

"What?" says the robber.

"Jesus is watching you."

"Oh and who are you?" says the robber.

"Well," says the parrot. "My name is Moses."

"Moses?" says the robber. "Why would anyone name their parrot Moses."

"Well," says Moses. "The same kind of people that would name their Rottweiler Jesus."

Amazing times in the history of Aviation - The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki

2010-08-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

Today we "celebrate" the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. History has debated and will continue to debate whether it was an action that was good or bad. On the one hand you have the people that state that Japan would have never given up thanks to the Bushido code and the desire of the military for Japan to fight to the last man. Indeed, during the invasion of Okinawa, hundreds of thousands of civilians hurled themselves off the cliffs rather than surrender to American soldiers. Soldiers refused to surrender, instead dying in suicide attacks or dying by self inflicted injuries committed in ritual suicide.

On the other hand, there are others who look to the uselessness of the gesture. Japan was finished and had nothing to fight with. Whole cities were being burned with Incendiary attacks. The firebombing of Tokyo killed far more people than the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima initially did.

However, forgotten in history was that there was a second raid on a second city. Nagasaki was long a port of entry to Japan dating back to the 1500's It was here the Imperial Japan permitted foreigners to enter its country until the opening of Japan by Perry in the 1800's. For 200 years, the only way one could get into Japan was by way of Nagasaki. There existed armament plants and shipyards to be sure. But there also existed the largest Christian Cathedral in the East and a large population of expatriate foreigners, stranded by the war or having chosen to remain there in spite of the war. Nagasaki had been and remained the center of Christianity in Japan since the Portuguese first landed in the 1500's.

Having completed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the architect of the campaign, General Curtis LeMay, who would later rise to command the Strategic Air Command during the Cold War, searched for other targets. He only had one other bomb available and the target had better be a good one.

Meanwhile, the Soviets, with whom the civilian leadership of Japan had hoped to make peace with began to invade Manchuria. The hope that Japan would be able to use the Soviets to negotiate their way out, plus the increasing paranoia of the military leadership, made a negotiated peace on Japan's terms impossible.

The other Bomb, which was named "Fat Man" for the obvious reasons of its shape, was what was termed an Implosion Bomb. The original "Little Boy" device used over Hiroshima was crude but effective and required only relatively small amounts of Uranium 235. Little Boy was termed a "Gun Weapon" in that it involved two lumps of Uranium located at either end of a tube. High explosives propelled one chunk of Uranium into the other which fused and then resulted in a critical mass which then yielded the Nuclear detonation. Fat Man was far more complex.

Fat Man had a sphere of Plutonium in the middle of a segmented sphere of of High Explosives. The goal in the reaction was to compress the Plutonium in such a way that would yield the critical mass which would result in the Nuclear Explosion. Fat Man had been demonstrated in principle at the first nuclear test at Trinity.

The aircraft designated to carry this device was named "Bocks Car." Originally flown by Captain Fredrick C. Bocks for which the aircraft was named, the aircraft in this mission was flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney. Originally Sweeney's aircraft, "The Great Artiste" was slated to perform the mission, but it had been equipped for support duties, photography and measurement of the blast. Rather than waste the time to switch the equipment back into Bocks Car and have The Great Artiste do the bombing it was elected to switch the crews instead. This led to some original confusion as to the actual aircraft that performed the bombing. However, it is settled that Bocks Car did the bombing.

Bocks Car took off on the morning of August 9, 1945 on the last wartime atomic bombing mission in history. Its original target was not Nagasaki, but Kokura. Kokura was a Castle town dating back to ancient Japan, whose warrens produced armaments, shells, and missiles for the Japanese war effort. In July 1945, the Japanese began to assemble Chemical Weapons in Kokura in the event they were needed to repel the eventual Allied Invasion. However, weather obscured the city and Sweeney turned to his secondary target, Nagasaki. Fortune had spared the Castle City.

However, to Sweeney's frustration, clouds also obscured Nagasaki as well. The Bocks Car's bombardier Kermet Beahan searched in vain for a break in the clouds. However, fortune was not to smile on Nagasaki or its Catholic Cathedral, or its torpedo factory, or its POW camp. No. At 11:01, Kermet reported a break in the clouds that let him sight on his Aiming point. He pushed his trigger and Fat Man was let go as the Bocks Car swung desperately away and sped away from the impending blast. Forty-Three seconds later at an altitude of 1500 feet of about 440 meters above Urikami Valley, which served as the main industrial area of the city, the High Explosives in Fat Man triggered. It crushed the Plutonium sheathed within it and upon reaching the critical mass, the Plutonium detonated.

The area covered was smaller than Hiroshima in spite of the Fat Man device being more powerful. In comparison to contemporary atomic weapons, Fat Man was small, about 21 kilotons of TNT. A W76 Thermonuclear warhead of today carried by the Trident SLBM as an example would yield a 100 Kiloton blast with a Thermonuclear explosion. The smaller area was due to the hilly nature of Nagasaki and much of the city was protected by hills surrounding the valley. Killed in the initial blast were between 50,000 to 70,000 people along with at least 13 POWs and in a very hideous irony, an unknown number of the survivors of the Hiroshima bombing who had been evacuated to Nagasaki, some of whom survived. Due to its large Catholic population, the Fat Man bomb probably killed more Christians in Japan than had all the emperors in all of Japan's history.

Today, Nagasaki is a thriving port city, the church has been rebuilt, but the legacy remains. There is a Peace Park and Atomic Museum just like its counterpart in Hiroshima, but in large part, Hiroshima gets all the "glory" if one can use that term for the atomic campaign on Japan. Nagasaki is largely forgotten in the remembrances of the Atomic Bomb. There were two or possibly three other devices available and the US contemplated another raid as early as the 17th or 18th of August, but such was not to be. Japan surrendered on August 14th, 1945 with the Emperor telling his people that the Americans were using a "most cruel bomb" and that Japan had "to endure the unendurable." In the lead up to the announcement, a rebellion of the military to prevent the surrender was put down. Even to the end, the Military wanted to fight on in spite of the bomb.

After the war, what devices remained were expended in testing on targets at Bikini with the Able and Baker tests as part of Operation Crossroads. The tests left the Island of Bikini irradiated and uninhabitable to this day. Bocks Car eventually made it back to the United States and was retired in 1946. It was displayed for a time, in the markings of "The Great Artiste" at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base where it was labeled as the aircraft that took part in the Nagasaki Raid. In 1961, she was flown to the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio where it was restored to its original markings and is now on display. In contrast to the restored Enola Gay and its subdued display at the National Air and Space Museum, Bocks Car is labeled as "the aircraft that ended World War II."

Emergency, Home Care and Hospital - Trials and Tribulations

2010-08-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I would give a detailed accounting of what I have been going through. I have been blurting and noting on here and Facebook so that friends and family will know what is happening but I think a more detailed account is in order. David, if you are reading this, please read to the end. I am hard on you, but you have to understand my perspective.

First, is how I got here. A litany of bad eating habits and so forth led to the Gall Stones that almost clogged my bile duct on Friday. I must have had a mild attack last weekend and was thinking of seeing my Uncle who is a retired Internist to see if a more detailed examination was in order, but some aspirin made the pain go away, but did not put off the inevitable. My reluctance to go was based not on a fear of hospitals, but a fear of financial ruin if I needed surgery which unfortunately has happened, but more on that later.

Anyway, on Friday, the pain became so intense I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I had fallen asleep being very tired after getting home and it woke me out of a sound sleep. It felt like someone was standing on my chest and I couldn't catch my breath so I called 911 and the fire people came and then the ambulance. My nephew, who adores me, was so worried and ran out to make sure the fire and ambulance people could find my trailer among the many in the park. The fire people are trained in primary first aid, somewhat on a level more detailed than we are at work. They brought Oxygen and an AED (Automatic External Defibrillator) which thankfully was not needed. The EMT's brought more sophisticated equipment and asked me the standard questions and I answered them to the best of my ability. Since it was apparent that I was still ambulatory, I walked out to the ambulance. Such was my need that the fact I was in my underwear never entered my mind. I was hooked up to an EKG and it showed a normal sinus which made me feel better. But there was still something wrong and I needed to see someone.

My nephew rode along with me in the ambulance, riding up front as we went to St. Clare Health Center. St. Clare is one of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area's newest medical facilities with a different take on how room care is provided. More on that later. In a wonderful twist of irony, the Hospital is built on a former golf course. (For those of my loyal readers who do not live in the States, the association of Doctors to the playing of Golf is almost ubiquitous. It seems a requirement of medical men to have a set of golf clubs in the office. Thus the irony). The hospital swallowed up all of the grounds of the course, so it no longer exists. The residue has new McMansions and a retirement home that has been built on the remainder. St. Clare is run by SSM Health Care which is descendant of hospitals run since 1872 by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary in the St. Louis area. Primarily in the St. Louis area, they run 15 acute care hospitals and 2 Nursing homes in Missouri and three other states. St Clare is named for a Catholic Nun who, being born of nobility, gave it all up for helping the poor and downtrodden in medieval Europe in the early 1200's on the Christian Calendar. But I digress.

I arrived in the emergency room having received two doses of Nitroglycerin. This had the effect of lowering my blood pressure as it expanded my blood vessels and really made me feel woozy. After a preliminary examination by the Emergency room Physician, I was x-rayed and then given an ultrasound examination. The questions being asked by the techs led me to believe that the problem was not cardio-vascular in nature, but to do with the liver and gall bladder. After these examinations, my brother arrived with my mom and the whole brood was there. Since the examinations were showing problems there and my liver enzymes were bad, I was admitted and sent to room 3212. A nice wheelchair ride let me arrive at my room at the end of the hall on the 3rd floor.

Now a word about the care and feeding of the patient. One of St. Clare Health Center's philosophies is to really care for the patient. The traditional Nurses station is no longer there, with the nurses put closer to the patient. Each room is a single suite with observation windows so that the nurse doesn't necessarily have to be in the room to observe the patient. Still the nurses are short in number so the call button wasn't necessarily answered immediately, but none of my needs were life threatening and I can understand they were busy. The food was excellent and I partook of a grilled chicken, corn, and green beans with some jello and 2% milk for dinner after I arrived. My brother and the brood left and I spent the night in somewhat of a sleepless state. My brother had brought my trusty netbook and with that, I had access to the outside world through the Hospital's rather undependable Wi-Fi system. Out of my visit, that was the only drawback as I had hoped to play some games with Stephanie only to find out that the game site we play on, Pogo, was one of the sites the Hospital found objectionable and had blocked it. I really think that unlimited Wi-Fi access should be a right if one is incarcerated in a hospital with no link to the outside as our computers have become such a part of us in this day and age.

I had been talked to by the surgeon and I must not have heard or misinterpreted the fact that my surgery was scheduled for Saturday because I was told that such was the case which left me little time to prepare for said surgery mentally. In the end I think this was a good thing in that there was little anxiety present for the surgery. All I know is that they came in and were there to start me down for the surgery. The wonderful thing is that I didn't have to get out of the bed. The whole kit and caboodle was wheeled down to the operating area. Contacting friend and family on such short notice proved difficult as no one answered the phones and I managed to get my Uncle to let him know, so that at least I talked to someone. This led to something rather unfortunate later which I will detail.

One thing that led to me not being anxious was I know that Stephanie was there for me. Stephanie is very special to me, my best friend in a lot of ways. What has happened over the years is that whenever I get into a situation where I feel anxious or bothered, the name pops up and I know she is there in spirit and that make me feel better. I had two prep nurses to get me ready for my surgery both of whom took me down from my room to surgery. One was named Stephanie and God forgive me I forgot the other one. Stephanie was pregnant and starting to show, but it was nice to know that my Stephanie was there in spirit. I also know that Stephanie has had to go through far worse in Surgery than I had to so I know that what I had to go through was pretty much nothing in comparison.

My procedure was Laparoscopic in nature. The surgery is performed with a minimum of invasion by poking a Laparoscope (which is a CCTV on a long tube) through the Belly Button to see inside the abdomen. Carbon Dioxide or air is pumped in to expand the cavity to see the organs. Three other small incisions are made to insert other instruments which the surgeon can see through the Laparoscope and the offending Gall Bladder, Appendix or other such organ removed by the procedure can be seen and removed.

I got down and a man next to me was in recovery having had his appendix removed. Walls separated us so I had no idea how he looked but I could hear his semi sombulant ramblings as I was being prepped. I thought there was going to be a lot more shaving, but I didn't have to endure any of that indignity, as least as far as I can remember. I was transferred to a surgical gurney and wheeled into the operating room and that's all I can remember. From subsequent reports, I was told I am an entertaining patient as I was singing the "Paul the Octopus" song along with some others, but for some reason that one has been going through my head lately. I was awake and in recovery and doing fine. I was back in my bed and after a few minutes of waiting, I was wheeled back up to my room.

Now I got back and I slept off and on, but the unfortunate aspect of not being able to get hold of my brother had an effect on him. He didn't want to leave me. I wasn't dying. But apparently he thought I was. He's always been so sensitive about things like that. I got a short respite when I sent Mom home because she would not stop talking. But he returned and took up residence in the room.

One of the special things about the room was the fact that the furniture converts readily to sleeping places. The built in couch in the wall, a small love seat, plus a recliner by the bed all can be slept in, one way or another. Now, I needed sleep, which I wasn't able to get, but apparently he was since his and the whole brood's snoring kept me awake for most of the night. Finally Sunday morning, I had to put my foot down and send them out of my room so I could get some much needed rest. I got about three hours and when I woke up I couldn't go back to sleep, so the whole brood came back in and would not leave. Such was the off and on for Sunday.

However, there were benefits. One of the benefits of this was the fact that I didn't have to bother the nurses for a lot of things. Going to the bathroom was an experience since it was difficult, if not impossible to get up so I had to use other means. Upon being informed that if I didn't urinate, a catheter would be employed, my body responded in timely fashion. The means employed was a bottle shaped for strictly that purpose. This has replaced the bedpan but it still has some drawbacks. In the state I was in, I could not hold it very well and not being able to see the area in question, I was concerned that I was tilting it to where the offending fluid was going to leak out. So my brother became the "Piss Boy" (as I was not going to give such a duty to his wife or my nephew for reasons of modesty) and thus the inevitable jokes ensued. One may remember the innumerable scenes in Mel Brooks "History of the World Part 1" about the French Revolution where his character was both King and "Piss Boy" who collected the urine of the male nobility. I figured if he wouldn't leave, I would use him.

I guess that in a way, he didn't want to leave because he cared, but for some reason it was hard to fall asleep with them in the room. I hadn't had a problem like that before, but then I have never been operated on before. It bothers me to a certain extent that they didn't leave, but then I didn't have the heart to tell them to leave. I know now why some hospitals limit visiting hours. It is for the benefit of the patients.

Time passed and Sunday rolled around the clock of the day. My surgeon came by to examine my dressing and the first appearance of what I shall call the "Red Alien." Since I am lying on my back, the blood pools in my belly button and upon pulling it out the clot has molded its shape to the belly button. The appearance is somewhat similar to a member of the anatomy which is strictly apparent only on the male of the human species. The surgeon remarked that it looked obscene and that was due to its appearance and not to any complications of the surgery. However, he pronounced me fit to leave and released me to go home.

Finally I could leave the Hospital. I received my instructions and prescriptions. I was free. Unfortunately, another problem ensued. My brother has three cars. The Ford Taurus Station Wagon is unregistered and thus not legally drivable, but he had chosen to drive his low to the ground Dodge Neon to the hospital, which in my state, being unable to bend over would not have been able to get into. So, my ride home had to drive all the way back to his home to get his van, which sits higher off the ground, in order to get home. Thus I was delayed getting out of the hospital even further because of this. I was preferring the Hospital and wished I could have stayed a little longer because the care was so good and the nurses were nice. I still miss the room.

I went to Walgreens and got some supplies along with my prescriptions. A digital thermometer, some gauze for changing my dressing, some low dose aspirin, some absorbent tampons to use for dressing and absorbing the blood and some band aids to replace those given me at the hospital. I told my brother I would pay him back when I got paid Tuesday.

We got home and all was chaos. My bed has seen better days and the mattress is overdue for replacement so I was going to take up residence on the bed my mother never uses to sleep on because she prefers the couch. However, in order to do so, I had to move my TV in the front bedroom which is designated for my Mom, but which she has used for storage since she moved here. I can't lift anything, so I had to instruct everyone to move things to order. No one really follows my requests but everything did eventually get moved into place. I have a much more comfortable bed which being set higher off the floor was better able to accommodate me in the state I was in.

Changing the dressing I had to do myself. I know how hard it is to get care and to be cared for at home. My Mom is hardly in the best shape to help me since she is 82 and practically an invalid herself. I wouldn't trust my brother, his wife or son to do it because they didn't react well when they changed the dressing in the room. So I have to change my own dressing which was an experience and a half. The first night I changed my dressing, the Red Alien again appeared and I had to wonder if I was losing too much blood. However, I think I did a fairly good job with the first night changing the dressing.

Last night I did some shopping, and I exerted myself, which I probably shouldn't have done but I needed to get a couple of things like a fan for my room, which I can never seem to get cool enough and I am reluctant to turn the Air Conditioning down any more because of my mother's constant complaints of being too cold. I can understand her at her age because her body is more cold sensitive, but man she shuts off the AC and only turns it on when it’s in the 90's. It’s a problem which I will solve in the next month because I will move her into the bedroom I have which I hope a lot of her stuff will also follow. That might kill two birds by granting her a larger room and getting her closer to the bathroom which will help her there.

I changed my dressing last night and again, the Red Alien made its appearance although a little smaller I have noted in retrospect. I have become adept at the dressing change although tonight I was a little off and may have to redo it since it’s sitting a little too high. Tonight there was no appearance of the Red Alien, so I think my belly button has healed to a certain extent. I still feel a little "off." It will be another couple of days for me to return to work so I can be OK there. I have lost no pay because my boss gave me the option of using my vacation time to cover it. Now I have no vacation, but at least I have the money. I hate America. At least I should have some paid sick time.

When all is said and done, this has been a wakeup call in a lot of ways. I only hope that what happens here is a permanent concern about my health rather than something that will fade. I have a penchant for embarking on changes in my life, only to find the task daunting and reverting back inevitably to the old ways. Perhaps this will be a change.

I hope this look into my life was not too intimate. The facts are still fresh, but can be distorted by the fact the anesthetic can and does induce changes in memory. I might have been too hard on my brother. He has always been there for me and I do love him. Although at times he can and does induce stress in my life I can't afford to have.

I want to thank you all for the prayers and good wishes. They helped in a lot of ways. I have nothing more to say at the moment so I will close this tome. More details to follow later as I begin a new road to discover the life of having to now pay for my medical procedure without medical insurance. That is going to be an adventure.

Resueme Mistakes

2010-07-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

Are these the reasons I am having trouble finding a better job?

Objective: Seeking a party-time position with room for advancement

Professional headline: 1 year old marketing executive

Achievement: Planned new corporate facility at $3M over budget.

Explanation of employment gap: career break in 1999 to renovate my horse

References: Referees available upon request

Skills: I am a rabid typist

Strengths: Impersonal skills

Hobbies: Enjoy cooking Chinese and Italians

Education: College: August 1880 to May 1984

Cover letter: I would like to assure you that I am a hardly working person.

And just how much information on a resume is too much?

Objective: To have my skills and ethics challenged on a regular basis

Personal Information: Married, eight children, prefer frequent travel

Language Skills: Exposure to German for two years-but many words are inappropriate for business

Reason for leaving last job: the owner gave new meaning to the word paranoia

Achievements: Nominated for prom queen

Education: Finished eighth in a class of ten

Interests: Gossiping

Awards: National record for eating 45 eggs in two minutes

References: Bill, Tom, Eric - but I don't know their phone numbers

Salary: The higher the better

Cover letter: Please disregard the attached resume; it's totally outdated

Amazing times in the history of Aviation - USS Macon

2010-07-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

I hope to make this a regular thing. I was blogging with a friend here Troy J. who has a feature similar to Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" and I thought there are so many amazing things in Aviation that no one has heard about. The never built planes, the ones that did fly, but faded into obscurity. Today's tale is one of those.

The USS Macon was the last of the US Navy's 5 big rigid airships. From after World War One, till the 1960's the US Navy had an Airship program. Lighter-than-Air was considered the future of aviation for most since other aircraft at the time lacked the range to perform many of the roles that the airships did. The Macon was one of those and she was the last rigid Airship built for the US Navy.

Commissioned in April of 1933, she was the sister of the USS Akron which had crashed just a month earlier in what at the time was the greatest air tragedy in history till after the war. Designed by a group of German airship designers brought over by the Goodyear company, the Macon and her sister were the largest aircraft in terms of volume ever built. Although the famous German Zeppelin Hindenberg was longer, Macon was larger. Akron and Macon were built in what at the time was the largest buildings in the world, the great Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio. Construction started after the completion of Akron and she was the second of what was planned to be a whole class of scouting airships for the US Navy.

a video of the Macon on her test flights

What was unique about the Akron and Macon was that they were flying Aircraft Carriers. In a compartment aft of the control car, there was a space for 5 small F9C "Sparrowhawk" fighters. The fighters were launched and recovered by a unique "trapeze" set up on the ship. They would fly up to a bar deployed from the hanger, hook on by the use of a large hook on the upper wing of the bi-plane fighter and lock on. The bar would them be raised into the hanger which would then be closed. The fighters were to protect the airship and provide for extending the patrol and scouting capabilities of the Airship. The Akron never received her full complement of aircraft as funding was scarce in the depression era Navy. The Macon went on to prove the doctrines of what patrol and long range scouting were in the Navy, which in the pre-radar days depended upon visual location of whatever ships were out there. But tragedy always seemed to follow the airships and Macon proved to be no exception.

The Navy had a common practice of using the giant airship as a recruiting tool and the overland flights proved hard on the airship which had to clear mountains and so forth on its flights around the country. During a flight in Arizona on one such trip, turbulence snapped several girders. Rapid damage control prevented the airship from crashing, but the die had been cast.

Macon was scheduled for a fleet exercise immediately after this flight. The damage was repaired, but some was put off till the next scheduled overhaul when gas cells could be deflated since helium was very expensive at the time and the Navy frowned on its loss. So with damage to its rear upper fin temporarialy repaired, the Macon went on to participate in exercises off the coast of California. Off Point Sur, she hit a storm which snapped her fin. Being overweight, the airship had too many cells punctured to remain aloft and slowly sank into the water. Unlike her tragic sister which lost all by three of her crew, the Macon lost only two crewman thanks to the warm California seas and the provision of rafts and life jackets aboard, a lesson learned from the crash of the Akron. The hideous Irony was that Macon was commanded by the most senior officer to survive the Akron Disaster, Commander Herbert V. Wiley.

In 1991, the Monterey Bay Research Institute located the wreck and took many photographs of the framework at the bottom of the ocean. Subsequent expeditions have surveyed the wreck and taken video of the site.

After the loss of the Macon, the US Navy shelved plans for follow-on airships to Macon, instead concentrating on Blimps and its fledgling Aircraft Carriers. The US Navy was still a Battleship Navy and Aircraft were considered secondary. It took the Pearl Harbor Disaster to prove the military utility of aircraft.

The surviving artifacts of this era include a single example of the Sparrowhawk, in the Air ans Space Museum, and the huge Airdock hanger in Akron with a similar one located on Moffet Field in California, named after Admiral Moffett who was among those who died on the Akron. Most of the veterans of that forgotten era have passed away and their achievements have been forgotten save for grainy newsreel footage and fading photographs.

This isn't right but I had to post it anyway....

2010-07-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

My brother Paul sent this to me, a wonderful faux cruise to a wonderful spot on the globe.....


L u x u r y C r u i s e L i n e s	Now Accepting Reservations! Additional cruise information available below.

To The Point Cruise Lines is excited to offer the ultimate

adventure cruise along the pirate-infested coast of Somalia !

Ultimate Adventure Cruise Route

Rates and Availability

Ship Name	Starting Price	Days	Availability
Sun Splendor	$5,200.00	5	Fully Booked
Grand Voyage	$6,150.00	7	Reservations Available
Horizons IV	$7,091.00	10	Reservations Available
Horizons III	$5,200.00	7	Fully Booked
Grand Voyage II	$6,300.00	7	Fully Booked
Grand Voyage III	$5,200.00	5	Reservations Available
Coastal Paradise	$5,200.00	7	Reservations Available
Coastal Paradise II	$8,200.00	10	Reservations Available
Peril Princess	$5,200.00	7	Fully Booked
Peril Princess II	$5,200.00	7	Reservations Available

We board our luxury cruise ships in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea ,
and disembark in Mombasa Kenya , seven adrenaline-charged days later.
Reservations start at only $5,200 per-person (double occupancy, inside room)
and $6,900 (verandah complete with bench rest).

You'll relax like never before!

That's because you are welcome to bring your own arsenal with you.
If you don't have your own weapons, you can rent them from our onboard Master Gunsmith.

Enjoy reloading parties every afternoon,
with skeet and marksmanship competitions every night!

But the best fun of all, of course, is...

...Pirate Target Practice!

The object of our cruise is to sail up and down the Somali Coast waiting to get hijacked by pirates!

Weapons rentals:

Weapon Selection	Price	Description
AK-47 Light Assault	$12.00 Per Day	On a budget? Rent a full-auto scope-mounted AK-47 for only $9/day with 7.62 ball ammo at $12 per 100 rounds:
M-16 Full Automatic	$25.00 Per Day	Rent a full auto M-16 for only $25/day with ammo attractively priced at $16 per 100 rounds of 5.56 armor-piercing:
Barrett M-107 50 Caliber	$59.00 Per Day	Hello! Nothing gets a pirate's attention like a Barrett M-107 50-cal rifle; only $59/day with 25 rounds of armor-piercing ammo affordably priced at only $29.95.
RPG Launcher	$175.00 Per Day	Want to make a real impact? Rent an RPG for only $175/day with three fragmentation rounds included! A true favorite among pirates, rent one today and show you care!

Customer Testimonials

"Six attacks in 4 days were more than I expected. I bagged three pirates, my wife nailed two, and my 12-year old son sank two boats with the mini-gun. This wonderful cruise was fun for the whole family"-- Fred D., Cincinnati , OH
"Pirates 0, Passengers 32! Well worth the trip! Can't recommend it highly enough!" -- Ben L., Bethesda , MD
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Twin mounted mini-guns are available for rental at only $450.00 per 30 seconds of sustained fire!

Additional Cruise Line Services

Need a spotter? Our professional crew members can double as spotters for only $30/hour.
(spotting scope included, but gratuities are not)
Also included: Free complimentary night vision equipment -
and throughout the night, coffee, pastries and snacks are always available on the main deck from 7 PM until 6 AM
Our deluxe package comes complete with gourmet meals and all rooms offer a mini-bar

OUR SATISFACTION GUARANTEE!

We guarantee you will experience at least two hijacking attempts by pirates
or you'll receive an instant $1,000 refund upon arrival in Mombasa .

How can we make that guarantee? We operate at 5 knots just beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia , thus in international waters where pirates have no rights whatever.
In fact, we make three passes through the area's most treacherous waters to ensure maximum visibility by Somali mother ships.
We repeat this for five days, making three complete passes past the entire Somali Coast .
At night, the boat is fully lit and bottle rockets are shot every five minutes with loud disco music
directionally beamed shore side to attract maximum attention.

ACT NOW!

Cabin space is limited so you need to respond quickly. Reserve your package before July 31st and get a great bonus -
100 rounds of free tracer ammo in the caliber of your choice! So sign up for the Ultimate Somali Coast Adventure Cruise now!

BUT THERE'S EVEN MORE!

Reserve Now -and be automatically entered
to win a 5 minute time slot on the Captain's own Twin Browning 50 Caliber M2HB installation!

"I haven't had this much fun since flying choppers in ' Nam . Don't worry about getting shot by pirates...they never even got close to the ship with the crap they shoot and their lousy aim...
Come on board and bag your own clutch of genuine Somali pirates!" -- Mike W., Savannah , GA

"Holy crap! I mean literally, I crapped myself!
This gun shook the deck like thunder and I was laughing so hard I just had to release it.
AWESOME!-- Jim W., Tampa , FL

My Dream Cars

2010-07-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading a blog from my friend, Remixed Phoenix which was a photo essay about what car he would have if he was a billionaire. Now I posted my responses and I thought I would repost them here because I want to be able to share my dreams here. I want a better world for my nephew, better than the one he is growing up in. To do this, we have to live within our means and be cleaner about it. We all can afford to be a lot more green in our dealings with the world. However there are intersts in the world which would perpertuate the damaging effects of our petroleum based economy has on our environment, political systems, and the world in general.

My Garage if I won the lottery:

I am often asked when I tell people my dream cars are CNG powered about fueling. CNG infrastructure isn't what it is in Europe lets say. At one time one could drive across the US on CNG alone. However, the Bush Administration abandoned CNG along with the big 3 US auto makers at around 2006. With that, and the lack of renewal of tax incentives, the fueling infrastructure decreased.

Funny though, all the US manufacturers have CNG vehicles in their fleets in Europe. The Ford Focus apparently has a CNG Version as well as Opal for GM in Europe. However, the Big three keep them over in Europe and not over here. The CNG stations here are depended upon whatever municipality or state is supporting them. California, Utah, Oklahoma and some areas in New England have fairly good fueling infrastructure, some of them even at the stations you get your regular gasoline from. I know of a few Shell stations on the East Coast that sell it. There are some cities that have a single station and that is it. Then you are dependent on if the pump works, which may be half the time. Both vehicles I showed above are CNG.

The Ford Crown Victoria is a V8 monster which is based on the ubiquitous car of the same name which is used as a police cruiser and Taxi in many cities in the US. The Crown Vic CNG is a dedicated fuel CNG (which means it uses CNG exclusively as its means of propulsion) and has a 300 US mile range depending on the tanking options. More range means less trunk (boot) space and vice versa, but the Vic has a HUGE trunk so unless you are a mobster who regularly disposes of bodies or a woman who regularly cleans out the local supermarket with 10 bags of groceries its doubtful you will need all that space. Law enforcement likes big trunk space for tactical items and technical items. (DVR for dash cameras are stored in trunks as well as forensic kits and the like). The one above was produced in 1994-1997 and are referred to by CV enthusiasts as "aero-Vics" because of their more aerodynamic styling with the wrap-around headlights and such. I like the styling on these and own a gasoline powered version. (Reference my blogs about the "Victor-Victoria" as I refer to my lovely car). There is also one for sale in California, however given its age it is likely that in spite of its cheap price, the tanks will likely have to be swapped out soon as they are limited by age. The certification for the CNG tanks, due to their high pressure containment are certified for only 12 years or 100,000 miles. Swapping the tanks is almost as costly as an engine change which would make the vehicle cost a whole lot more than I can afford to spend at the moment. But I digress.

The more contemporary Vics are less aerodynamic but are said to be more robust. They were improved after a spate of crashes involving Crown Victoria Police version which resulted in Gasoline tank explosions which resulted in the deaths several policemen. The vehicles are now certified for tank survivability in a 75 MPH crash.

As of today, the Civic GX is the only domestic US produced CNG vehicle in the US. Sad that a Japanese manufacturer is producing the only US CNG car.

If I could afford it really, I would be a Green car owner exclusively. I'd have a solar powered mansion if I could afford it, with wind power and the like. When you are poor in the US, one really can't afford to be green. You have to take what you can get and what you can get is usually the stuff which isn't the best for the planet or for you.

What I love about CNG is that they can be readily converted to run on Hydrogen gas which we will in all likelihood be using soon given that fossil fuels are running out. I read somewhere that Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel will become economically viable when gasoline reaches $6.00 a gallon in the United States. After that, you will probably see the US finally coming to its senses and getting itself off of Petroleum and going to a Hydrogen economy or despoiling the environment and fighting wars in an ever desperate search for the dwindling supplies of Oil. Care to guess the likely scenario?

If one is interested you can check out my Multiply Group on the subject, which unfortunately has not been updated as of recently or you can check out other organizations listed on the links which I think I have kept updated and if not, please let me know so I can.

A wise sermon

2010-07-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

Each day I drive by the Second Baptist Church in St. Louis. This sign held some intriguing prospects and I decided to check out the sermon when it was posted on their website. I wish that people such as Sarah Palin and the like would listen to people of faith that have a realistic idea of what the separation of Church and State really means. This guy has it right.

http://www.2ndbc.org/safari/article/242.html

After reading and listening to it I would add that there are forces afoot in our country that would impose some Christian version of Sharia law on our land. They argue that if we had "God back in our values" we would be a much better nation. The fact of the matter is that even when we did have God on our values, we behaved like morons. We have always been a nation of easy empire even while professing we weren't. Our conquest of the west of our country includes numerous lands stolen from the natives and the Spanish an their successors. We possess islands in the Pacific where we practice the worst forms of capitalism in substandard wages, and several of those islands are uninhabitable due to indiscriminate testing of our nuclear arsenal. We like to think ourselves above the pettiness of Empire and Theocracy as it is practices elsewhere in the world, but the truth of the matter is that we are as guilty of it as any other nation on this planet. If we are not careful, we will soon slide down the slippery slope of theocracy and dictatorship that will make Iran look tame.

The Honda Civic GX

2010-07-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is a review by KBB of the Honda Civic GX. Many of you know one of my passions is for CNG vehicles. This is the only vehicle available to the public that you can buy straight off the lot in many places. Its manufactured in the United States at the Honda Plant in Ohio. I am considering getting one of these. Simply because I want a car that is not giving money to Al Queda. Most Natural Gas used in the US is produced locally here in the US. While those that get it out of the ground are huge multi-national corporations, the gas comes from here and is part of our resources. You have to think that when you fill your tank with Gasoline, eventually that money will find its way back to those who use that money to fund terrorism. One gentleman here in the ethanol debate that said something telling. This is the first war in which we are essentially funding both sides.

When will the killing stop

2010-07-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Killing is becoming institutionalized in our country. Violence is an accepted way of life in many areas of our country. Guns are predominant on our streets and show no sign of stopping. The shootings are commonplace and are so numerous, they have taken to accounting the number of shootings rather than reporting on each individual shooting on our local news.

I am not sure what we are doing in the City of St. Louis here. We have had a appearance of a surge in violence. One shooting killed a mayor and another killed a former police chief who worked as a investigator for the state. Both of these were people of color. We are killing the leaders who are trying to stop this.

The former police chief was a friend of a friend of mine at work. I was there when he found out his childhood friend had passed. It was a senseless killing by an idiot who lost money gambling and tried to rob an armed man. He killed his attacker as well, and shot the assailants friend, so all will pay. One man, who was a decent and honorable man who did what was best for the neighborhood. Another, well, he was "well known" to law enforcement paid with his life, and his friend will be incarcerated for his participation in this incident.

When will the killing stop? When will the attitude change? As I type this, I watch the local news about how bad the schools are. Our priorities are so messed up about what things are going on. We need more money for the items on our budget that should be our priorities.

The next time some sports team owner asks for money to fix up a stadium I have to ask him where that money is going to come from. I want him to understand that to pay these athletes to throw a ball around and provide a premium facility for them to do it, we are taking money from the kids, our future, to give them what they want. Do we need this elective activity? We have to ask ourselves what the priorities are. I live with this each and every day.

I see people lining up for shoes at stores whenever there is a new release. Shoes that cost $125 made by people in third world countries making fifty or 74 cents an hour while there are people here unemployed.

Where is the outrage? In what is happening here, we are all guilty because we let it happen. It isn't in our neighborhood, so we ignore it. It does touch it through our TV screens every day. In the past 24 hours in St. Louis there was 9 shootings, with one hitting the car sitting in front of a state representatives office. (The State Rep was not targeted, but was the result of two men arguing on the parking lot of his office). One shooting in the downtown area hit an office building where workers were forced to hit the floor terrified.

In this environment, our Supreme Court has, in its infinite wisdom, decided that we all need to arm ourselves to kill and kill and kill again. They have limited the ability for local municipalities to control guns on the streets. What happens next is anyone's guess. What happens next is up to us to vote into office people who want peace on our streets and changing the local attitudes to violence.

United corporations of America

2010-07-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Link

Just look at the picture at the fair St. Louis over the Fourth of July here. The Corporate flags flying on the same staffs as the American flags. It has a lot to say about the corporate take over of America.

A Better Pain Chart

2010-07-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

I am sure that many of you have seen those wonderful pain charts at the hospital. They are the ones you point at the sad face to tell the doctor how much pain you are in. I came across this item on Zazzle and then found the original, apparently written by a nurse who though the conventional chart did not reflect actual realities.

See the original (complete with all sorts of funny comments) at the following

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html

See the Zazzle and order the t-shirt and poster at:

http://www.zazzle.com/a_better_pain_chart_poster-228976370094879342

None of that is medically useful and it doesn't even have all the numbers, so I made a better one with all the numbers:

0: Hi. I am not experiencing any pain at all. I don't know why I'm even here.

1: I am completely unsure whether I am experiencing pain or itching or maybe I just have a bad taste in my mouth.

2: I probably just need a Band Aid.

3: This is distressing. I don't want this to be happening to me at all.

4: My pain is not fucking around.

5: Why is this happening to me??

6: Ow. Okay, my pain is super legit now.

7: I see Jesus coming for me and I'm scared.

8: I am experiencing a disturbing amount of pain. I might actually be dying. Please help.

9: I am almost definitely dying.

10: I am actively being mauled by a bear.

11: Blood is going to explode out of my face at any moment.

Too Serious For Numbers: You probably have ebola. It appears that you may also be suffering from Stigmata and/or pinkeye.

Could Paul the Octopus be the great prophet of the Pastafarians?

2010-07-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

If you have lived in a cave the past few weeks, maybe you haven't heard of Paul the Octopus. Named for a German Children's poem by Boy Lorensen Der Tintenfisch Paul Oktopus, he lives in an aquarium in Germany and has made a name for himself by accurately predicting the winners of various games of the World Cup Football games. (By the way, that's soccer to anyone from America whom football is somewhat akin to rugby in Europe. Its a very American game played by overpaid, injury prone semi-athletes, who play in ever more expensive sports stadiums which suck valuable tax revenue from more deserving projects like fixing sewers, improving schools and the like, but I digress). Anyway, Paul has a relatively good record, predicting according to some reports 85% of the wins of the various contests he has been asked to make a prediction on, including the championship match which Spain won. According to his Facebook page, Paul has officially retired from making soccer predictions.

However, Paul's brief career as a prophet has earned him the love and contempt of Football fans everywhere. Love from the fans who have benefited from his predictions and contempt and Octopus preparation recipes from those who have not. In this brief time, I have started to wonder if Paul could be a great prophet of the Pastafarian religion.

For the uninitiated, Pastafarians are those who believe in the God of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who was created by a computer programmer in Nevada as a contemptuous response to new school standards proposed by the Kansas State Board of Education. He reasoned that if they believed that God created the Earth in 6 days, he could equally believe that a Flying Spaghetti Monster cold do so as well and that his "religion" deserved just as equal respect by the school board.

I have read nothing of the Pastafarian faith, but reason that this religion, like many others has a great prophet or messiah who would arrive to save the world from its ills. Paul bears an uncanny resemblance to the great deity.
Now one must remember that Paul was the name of the first Christian prophet and evangelist, who spread the good word far and wide for all to hear. Now this Paul, being a denizen of the sea, has proven unable to do that, being unable to leave his tank. And with death threats and sushi recipes following him around, he might be ill advised to do so. However, Paul is not without his supporters and the faithful of the Pastafarian movement might be ones to jump on the bandwagon of the prognosticating cephalopod. Heck, it can't be any crazier than any one believing in some of the other lunacy of those who take the worlds various religions seriously. However, we must not denigrate the words other, more well recognized prophets. After all, all they have brought is peace, love and brotherhood, avoiding centuries of bloodshed, right?

Controversy Over Lutheran Church's Treatment of KFUO Employees - KTVI

2010-07-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

Controversy Over Lutheran Church's Treatment of KFUO Employees - KTVI

Link: http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-kfuo-classical-radio-ends-vigil-07061...

Many of you who follow my blog may note that our local classical station has finally gone off the air. A candlelight vigil, organized on the Facebook page which sought to stop the sale, was a peaceful and wonderful way to end over 60 years of service that KFUO has given the community. However, in the aftermath of the sale, the local Fox affiliate has reported on the fact that the on air personalities and other station personnel have been given an unfair severance package. The agreement, which all had to sing in order to gain a severance settlement, prevents the employee from finding ANY job ANY where for ANY reason for six months or their severance is voided.

This is a Christian organization? Where is the outrage? Jobs in broadcasting are difficult to get as it is, but to impose such an agreement on anyone is sad and says a lot about the motives of people who purport to be Christian and charitable.

KFUO has been a fixture in the St. Louis Arts community for over 60 years and was one of the first FM stations to start broadcasting in St. Louis. Four Years ago it won the prestigious Marconi Award for excellence in its broadcasting of Classical Music. While classical music may one day return to St. Louis, the style and grace in which KFUO brought it to use will never return. A unique prize has been lost for all time.

A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space : NPR

2010-07-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space : NPR

Jul 4, '10 7:16 PM
for everyone

Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775

As part of my recent research into our bizarre fascination with nuclear testing, I came across this on my Facebook page. In 1962, as part of our last series of Nuclear tests, several Thor rockets were launched from Johnson Atoll in the Pacific with Nuclear bombs as a payload. Rather than returning to Earth, they detonated their payloads high in the atmosphere, above it actually, in the Van Allen radiation belts. The strange fact was that they were shot over the Fourth of July holiday in 1962 may have been a coincidence, but it made for some really spectacular fireworks.

Another, unintended discovery of these tests was the discovery of an effect called EMP or Electro-Magnetic Pulse. This is an effect that can affect things on the ground. Fortune smiled on us that these tests were conducted in the Pacific, so few were affected. What happened was the EMP propagated to Earth and shorted out electrical transformers in Hawa'ii over 800 miles away. Back then, computers filled a room and were about as capable as a pocket calculator is today. Now, we have computers in our cars, homes, and lives. If such an explosion happened today, over the US, we would be back in the stone age.

Such an event has been contemplated by anti-terrorism officials. As such, this would be the ultimate terrorist device. It would affect everyone. Estimates are that while the initial effects would kill immediately 10-20,000 people (every airliner would in all likelihood crash, people on life support in hospitals, people with pacemakers, car accidents and the like) the ultimate effects would be devastating. As civilization and the transportation infrastructure that supported it broke down, people would slowly die of starvation as food shipments would be stopped. People dependent on medications would die as that aspect of manufacturing and transportation would stop as well. Within a year, according to a prominent report, perhaps 10% of Americans would still be alive and America would no longer be a world power. The rough estimates would be that a similar calamity would happen if such detonations occurred over China and/or Japan, over Europe, you get the picture.

So, these weapons, even without the horror of blast or radiation could significantly affect all of us. A country with just one of these weapons could make us ineffectual as a world power in a second. Say one bomb launched from a rocket on a container ship in the Gulf of Mexico and the US would cease to exist as a power. The people, the buildings would still be there. But we would still be doomed as we all died from starvation and the fact that we depend on our technology way too much.

Let us hope that never happens.

A good book to read, portraying a fictional account of what might happen in the scenario is called "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After

Happy Birthday Princess Diana

2010-07-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

This day is also the birthday of one of the most special people in the world I believe. Princess Diana was truly the "Peoples Princess" and many of her contributions are truly overlooked. She brought a lot of attention to the issue of Land Mines and land mine clearance. Many countries such as Bosnia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and many others have vast tracts of lands that are unusable for agriculture due to the use of this indiscriminate weapon. Her efforts have resulted in the Ottawa Treaty which has attempted to ban the deployment and production of land mine. However, many of the biggest offenders have refused to sign, thus leaving this indiscriminate weapon to maim and kill.

She did many things, but this is the most poignant for me as I wrote the Princess Diana Memorial Committee after her passing proposing the creation of a unit of Royal Engineers to be deployed all over the world in her name to clear land mines. I got a nice letter back saying that the idea had merit but never heard any more about it. I suppose if I had made more of an effort there would be a unit, but then again there was so many things I was doing at the time which left me with no time to pursue it any further.

She was such a beautiful, special person, so totally unlike the vapid, self-centered people that dominate the media today. I hope that a lot of people live by her example.

Happy Canada Day!

2010-07-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

Our Greatest Instrument of Diplomacy

2010-06-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

When all is going wrong in the world, the United States has always had one of its greatest instruments of diplomacy. Here's a song about it:

Six Degrees of blaming Bush

2010-06-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Blame

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Christian Extremists disrupt Hindu Senate Invocation

2010-06-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

They have to have the podium all the time. These people are as bad as the Muslims. Theocracy in the US anyone

Operation Wigwam

2010-06-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

One of the solutions that was batted around for a solution to the Deepwater Horizon crisis in the gulf is to detonate a Nuclear Device to seal the well. What the explosion would accomplish is to heat and seal the wellhead by turning the ocean floor into a magma which would then cool. With evidence suggesting that the ocean floor may be cracking around the wellhead such a solution may be needed.

Would a conventional explosion be possible? I am not sure if the conventional explosives would work at that depth. Its untried. However, there has been a nuclear test at that depth and it was successful. On 14 May 1955, a 30 Kiloton Nuclear Device (which was a Nuclear Depth Charge designated Mark 90 Betty) was detonated 500 miles SW of San Diego at a depth of 2000 feet. The result was this:

The explosion released no radioactivity to the atmosphere.

There are two things standing in the way of using this and even I am not sure if it is wise.

One: Such an explosion is banned by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (signed in 1963) which bans explosions above the surface of the earth, in Space, and underwater. However, there is a Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty which was signed in 1976 and entered into force in 1990. An explosion of this nature would be covered by this treaty.

Two: Such a use of Nuclear weapons would give justification for other states (specifically Iran) to develop nuclear weapons for so-called "peaceful" purposes.

Nuclear weapons have been used to carve out harbors by the Soviet Union. A similar project by the United States (Operation Plowshare/Project Chariot) was canceled due to concerns about radioactive fallout and its dubious purpose in creating a harbor in Alaska where none was needed. Various proposals for peaceful uses of Nuclear weapons include: Creating a second Panama Canal, bringing water to the Qattara Depression in Egypt, and last but not least Project Orion which would have used Nuclear bombs to propel a huge spacecraft into orbit and then journey throughout the solar system (not to be confused with the Orion capsule project which was part of the recently canceled Project Constellation).

Nuclear Weapons have been contemplated for peaceful purposes, but the after effects are what have rendered any application of them as dubious. If however, this disaster cannot be controlled by the relief wells which are contemplated to be completed by August (for the first one) such a use may be contemplated. Sea life has already been decimated by the oil so an argument can be made that its use would do no more harm to said life. Our leaders will have to weigh the pros and cons of such use before contemplating it.

Porky Pig is a Communist?

2010-06-27T11:37:00.000-07:00

To those who would say that ours is a Christian Nation I offer this:

God was never in the "Pledge of Allegiance" and even the Pledge may have been an anathema to our founding fathers. Ours is a secular nation.

The WORST case scenario for the BP spill

2010-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Tropical Depression One forms off the coast of Yucatan.

000
WTNT31 KNHC 252159
TCPAT1
BULLETIN
TROPICAL DEPRESSION ONE SPECIAL ADVISORY NUMBER   1
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL     AL012010
600 PM EDT FRI JUN 25 2010

...FIRST TROPICAL DEPRESSION OF THE ATLANTIC SEASON FORMS IN THE
WESTERN CARIBBEAN...


SUMMARY OF 600 PM EDT...2200 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...16.5N 83.5W
ABOUT 355 MI...570 KM SE OF COZUMEL MEXICO
ABOUT 345 MI...555 KM ESE OF CHETUMAL MEXICO
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...35 MPH...55 KM/HR
PRESENT MOVEMENT...WNW OR 300 DEGREES AT 10 MPH...17 KM/HR
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1004 MB...29.65 INCHES


WATCHES AND WARNINGS
--------------------
CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY...

THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO HAS ISSUED A TROPICAL STORM WARNING FOR THE
EAST COAST OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA FROM CHETUMAL NORTHWARD TO
CANCUN.

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT...

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR...
* THE EAST COAST OF THE YUCATAN PENINSULA FROM CHETUMAL NORTHWARD TO
CANCUN

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE
EXPECTED SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN 36 HOURS.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...PLEASE MONITOR
PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE.


DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
------------------------------
AT 600 PM EDT...2200 UTC...THE CENTER OF NEWLY FORMED TROPICAL
DEPRESSION ONE WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 16.5 NORTH...LONGITUDE
83.5 WEST. THE DEPRESSION IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR
10 MPH...17 KM/HR.  THIS GENERAL MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR
THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.  ON THE FORECAST TRACK...THE DEPRESSION
WILL REACH THE YUCATAN PENINSULA BY LATE SATURDAY.  

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 35 MPH...55 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS.  SOME STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST...AND THE DEPRESSION IS
EXPECTED TO BECOME A TROPICAL STORM TONIGHT OR SATURDAY. 

THE MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE REPORTED BY AN AIR FORCE RESERVE
HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT WAS 1004 MB...29.65 INCHES.


HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND
----------------------
WIND...TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO REACH THE COAST
WITHIN THE WARNING AREA BY SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

RAINFALL...THE DEPRESSION IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN
ACCUMULATIONS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES OVER THE YUCATAN PENINSULA...EASTERN
GUATEMALA...AND MUCH OF HONDURAS AND BELIZE THROUGH SUNDAY MORNING.
ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 15 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE OVER MOUNTAINOUS
AREAS.  THERE RAINS COULD CAUSE LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODS AND
MUDSLIDES.


NEXT ADVISORY
-------------
NEXT INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY...800 PM EDT.
NEXT COMPLETE ADVISORY...1100 PM EDT.

$$
FORECASTER AVILA/BRENNAN

Just wondering what this picture has to say

2010-06-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

I always love Non Sequitur and this was particularly funny. If you can't read the caption balloon it says, "Yes, every once in a while I do think its a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth."

Remember Star Trek 6

2010-06-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Remember Star Trek 6 after the planet exploded and the wave front hits the Excelsior? This is the radar for me at the moment. The rain is starting to come down and its not too bad at the moment. Just weird looking radar. Never seen anything like this except on a lesson I saw on interpreting radar. Classic Bow echo.

Another sleepless day

2010-06-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

Being a night worker has advantages and disadvantages. One of the great diasdvantages is taht that I have to sleep during the day. Yesterday, everyone was doing yard work with mowers and weed wackers working overtime to tame the encroaching grassland. the fact that it was trash day didn't help either.

I live in a trailer park and we used to have a couple of sets of dumpsters that were communal trash disposal areas. The sad fact that the redneck contingent used it to dispose of everything from refrigerators to couches to mattresses, in spite of being told by the trash companies that fines would ensue was not respected by said contingent. Therefore, the management, in its infinite wisdom decided to supply indivdual custom garbage cans to each resident. (I noted piles of said debris at the former sites of the communial dumpsters after they had been removed. Which, in my mind reinforces the intellectual level of the redneck contingent. They are now gone and no more debris are being disposed there. Lesson learned, but I digress). What this means to me the day sleeper is that the custom garbage cans are designed to be picked up by a trash truck and dumped into the truck. So, all 200 or so units have a garbage can, do the math. After trying to sleep, listening to that sound is just not right. I was finally able to get some rest after the trash truck left, but the sleep was fitful as the lawn contingent left, fleeing the humid air for the comfort of air conditioning.

Another factor seems my mother's claim that it is simply too cold in here. So she has a habit of shutting off the air conditioning at the worst times of the day. So much for sleep there as well. I may have to rearrange the household in order to accommodate my sleep.

Today, the weather was the culprit. A little after noon, a large lightning bolt stuck nearby. I was aware of the flash and then the bolt immediately sounded. It was CLOSE. I wondered if my truck, with the tall VHF antenna, was struck. So I got up and turned on the TV and yes, we are under a severe thunderstorm warning. In fact, immediately after I turned on the TV, my weather radio started going off with warnings for all the counties to the east and west of me. This incident had caught the weather services off guard apparently. So I went outside and looked up and not too bad, but it was starting to rain. Not seeing any rotation or anything like that, I went back inside and monitored the TV and weather radio.

Thus I am still awake, watching the TV and listening to the weather radio. Everything is moved off so I will try to sleep soon.

Revised Theocracy Timeline

2010-06-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

This represents a revision and completion of the timeline I presented in an earlier blog. Comments are welcome and appreciated. I had it end similarly to Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising. Hopefully we have sane officers in the military who realize that any use of nuclear weapons would be undesirable.

Timeline of the American Theocracy

President Obama wins the final Democratic primary and the Democratic convention selects him as the candidate for the 2012 election. Tea Party and other Right wing groups stage a tumultuous demonstration vowing that he will never be elected again.

Sarah Palin is selected as the Republican presidential candidate after a stormy Republican convention in which the Tea Party and Christian Nativist groups drown out moderate elements of the Party.

September 15, 2011 - President Obama assassinated by White Supremacist and Militia member Robert O'Dell of the Ohio "Patriot" militia at a campaign stop in Cleveland. O'Dell is killed in the resultant gun battle as the sniper nest he was concealed in is stormed by Secret Service Agents. Vice President Biden assumes office sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Sonja Sotamayor vowing to crack down on the perpetrators of this deed.

September 16, 2011 - Republican Candidate Palin appears on Fox News to express condolences for the death of the President but then calls into question the electability of President Biden since he was not the Presidential candidate. Right wing media takes up this "question," fanning indecision and the electorate begins to question the electability of Biden.

September 29, 2011 - A joint FBI, Secret Service and ATF task force begins crackdown of several so called "militia" units. The Colorado 44th "Jim Bridger" militia fights back resulting in a stand-off in Boulder for 34 days. The Police vehicles are shot at by RPG's and heavy machine guns when they attempt to storm the compound.

October 10, 2011 - FBI agent Harold Rediker is killed by a sniper within the Boulder compound.

October 15, 2011 - Some units of the Colorado National Guard refuse orders to surround the Bridger militia compound citing their membership in the so-called "Oath Keepers" organization. Units of the US Army are called in from Ft. Hood, Texas. Some members of these units also refuse orders, citing their membership in the Oath Keepers. Those soldiers in these and subsequent incidents are placed under arrest.

November 1, 2011 - Sarah Palin wins the Presidency as enough doubt is cast on Biden that many vote for her in the belief that Biden is not legitimate thanks to a campaign by right wing media outlets and pundits. This is also coupled with widespread voter manipulation and outright fraud in some areas.

November 3, 2011 - Units of the US Army, along with FBI and ATF agents storm the Boulder compound. Much like Waco, the compound is set ablaze by Bridger Militia members, many of whom kill themselves rather than submit to capture.

November 4, 2011 - Fox News, which has supported the Militias since the storming of the Boulder compound, interview several soldiers who claim they were ordered to execute militia members rather than attempt to capture them. Subsequent investigation proves the soldiers were nowhere near the area of Boulder or even assigned to the storming of the Boulder compound. Several right wing organizations pick up this rumor and it is spread through the use of social media on the internet. Attempts to explain or refute the interview are fruitless.

November 23, 2011 - An attempt is made to assassinate President Biden and Speaker Polosi. A state of emergency is declared in the Washington DC area and the National Guard is called out in order to maintain security.

November 29, 2011 - Militia members attempt to storm the Supreme Court, but are thwarted by soldiers of the National Guard.

December 15th, 2011 - The Joint Militia Task Force storms the compound of the Maryland Militia unit responsible for the attempt on the President and the Supreme Court attack. Many of the militia are killed.

December 29, 2011 - Units of Xe Incorporated (formerly Blackwater Incorporated) are called upon to secure some areas of Washington DC as some units of the US Military are rendered ineffective due to many soldiers who refuse to follow orders to maintain security citing their Oath Keeper membership.

Janruary 2nd, 2011 - Sarah Palin goes on Fox News to accuse President Biden and Speaker Polosi of treason in their enabling of the Obama Adminstration. She cites numerous statistics and rumors of cooperation with Al Queda. Right Wing media calls for internment of all persons of Arab decent and the arrest of President Biden and Speaker Polosi. She also calls for the deportation of all persons of Mexican decent regardless if they are citizens or not.

January 5th 2012 - Units of Xe Incorporated seize President Biden and Speaker Polosi and hold them hostage as Sarah Palin assumes the Presidency. Citing an unprecedented national emergency, Supreme Court Justice Roberts swears Palin in early. Media sources decry the seizure and early swearing in of the President with the notable exception of Fox News.

January 19th, 2012 - Supreme Court Justice Sonja Sotamayor dies under mysterious circumstances. Sarah Palin nominates Judge Roy Moore of Alabama as her replacement. Many soldiers which formerly were disobeying orders are released from military custody by the President who calls their imprisonment "un-American."

February 20th, 2012 - In a Capitol building surrounded by armed "militia" units, units of the National Guard and Military units loyal to the President, Roy Moore is confirmed as the new Supreme Court Justice in a swift vote. Some objecting Senators are taken away by armed guards. Of those taken away, some disappear under mysterious circumstances.

February 22, 2012 - Cynthia Dunbar, formerly of the Texas Education Standards Board, is confirmed as Secretary of Education vowing to "bring God back to the classroom."

February 29, 2012 - Many Americans fearing for their safety begin to gather at the borders of Canada and Mexico fleeing the country as a campaign of intimidation and ostracization by Tea Party sympathizers and Fundamentalist Christians begins. Canada grants asylum to many, but the numbers are starting to grow overwhelmingly as a wave of religious oppression begins in America.

March 14th, 2012 - President Palin proposes the first of many laws designed to "bring a Godly presence to government." Among these are laws withdrawing the United States from the United Nations, criminalizing homosexuality, instituting broad censorship of media outlets across the spectrum from television to Internet and criminalizing "disrespect of God." The penalty of many of these laws are low, but the sentiment in the country promises that such laws will be strictly enforced.

March 17th, 2012 - The City of Berkely, CA is among the first of many cities and states to object to the new laws proposed. Many cities in California, Oregon, and other "blue states" pass similar resolutions condemning the laws.

March 29th, 2012 - After a tumultuous debate, the slate of laws are passed by the House and Senate. They are quickly signed into law by President Palin in a Rose Garden ceremony. In a speech at the signing ceremony, she states that, "We have begun a new order in which the Lord Jesus Christ will be the king of our land."

March 31, 2012 - Former President Biden and Former Speaker Pelosi are charged with treason by the Justice Department for facilitating Obama's Presidency. In the charges, it is alleged that Obama was not a citizen of the United States due to his status as a Kenyan citizen (or Indonesian depending on the media outlet originating the story). Hearings begin to nullify laws passed during the Obama Administration due to their alleged illegality and the alleged illegitimacy of the Presidency.

April 1, 2012 - The Religious Enforcement Division (RED) of the Department of Homeland Security is created by executive order to enforce the slate of religious laws passed in March since many professionals at the various agencies object to enforcing them. The new agency is staffed with extremists from various Christian religions, among them is Eric Prince, former head of Blackwater (Xe Incorporated) who is the head of the new agency. Members of the so-called "Joel's Army" are tapped as auxiliaries of the New agency with paid employment by the government pending background checks.

April 2, 2012 - The offices of MSNBC are stormed by Federal agents and many of the media personalities are arrested for Treason. Among them are Rachael Maddow, Keith Olberman and others. MSNBC is taken off the air. Similar raids take place at the offices of other Media companies, newspapers and radio stations in the ensuing days, in a campaign of intimidating the press. Some reporters and media personalities slip away and flee to Canada or Europe who grant asylum.

April 7th, 2012 - In Afghanistan, military units loyal to the President massacre a village filled with "suspected" al Queda members. the village is subsequently found to contain only elderly, women and children. European protests are dismissed by the Palin administration. The administration begins to ramp up operations in Afghanistan in preparation for a withdrawal later. The Karzai Government protests the atrocity as well saying that it will render the country impossible for him to govern.

April 12, 2012 - NATO forces, citing the present US policies state they will no longer support US operations in Afghanistan. Their forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving the US alone.

April 22nd, 2012 - Former President Biden and Former Speaker Polosi are moved to a High Security Federal Penitentiary in Colorado.

April 25th, 2012 - Congress begins debate on a slate of new "citizenship laws" which will redefine who a citizen is and how citizenship is to be obtained. Among the proposals considered is that anyone who was born to a non-citizen is no longer considered a citizen even if born on US soil, revoking the citizenship of Arab Americans and persons of Middle Eastern or South West Asian decent, prohibiting persons of Mexican, Arab or South West Asian decent from owning land, and the prevention of using military service to obtain citizenship.

May 15th 2012 - In spite of attempts at opposition, the New Citizenship Laws are passed. Police are given power to stop anyone of suspected citizenship violation and anyone not found with citizenship papers on their person is subject to arrest and arbitrary detention. Federal Home Loans are denied to persons of Mexican, Arab and South West Asian decent and persons are encouraged to start to boycott businesses of those persons. These persons are also denied access to health care, Social Security, banking, schools, etc.

May 23rd, 2012 - Troops from the US Army (apparently forgetting their Oath Keeper oaths) under the auspices of the RED raid various sections of Dearborn and Detroit to start rounding up persons of Arab decent to enforce the new slate of citizenship laws. Similar raids take place in various Southwestern states with the exception that the persons rounded up are of Hispanic decent. Raids at various "gay bars" start rounding up persons alleged to be homosexual. In spite of statements to the contrary, many are killed in these initial raids by overzealous personnel in the RED.

May 25th, 2012 - New gun control laws are instituted requiring an RED background check before one can purchase a firearm. A letter or similar document from a pastor or other "approved" church leader is needed before a firearm can be purchased. All citizens are then required to satisfy the new gun control legislation.

May 27th, 2012 - Citing lack of support by their allies, President Palin quietly withdraws US troops from Afghanistan. This is not seen as a setback as they are going to be desperately needed to quell domestic disturbances. This goes unreported in the media due to censorship. Units are consolidated in Iraq as insurgent attacks increase. There are reports that units with large numbers of minorities are abandoned by their comrades in both countries to essentially fend for themselves.

May 30, 2012 - Due to the increasing numbers of people being rounded up, Federal troops seize control of Berkley, CA and other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. A new "Federal District" is created in the area to house "displaced persons." Homosexuals from other locations throughout the country are brought to this area to be "processed." A similar area is created in the Detroit and Dearborn areas in Michigan to house persons of Arab decent. (Raids are executed in areas of Ohio, Indiana and other cities in the Northeast to round up citizens of Arabic decent). The city of El Paso, Texas is similarly cordoned off to create a district for Hispanics. They are then deported across the border to Mexico. (Strangely enough, persons of Cuban decent are not included, but it is strongly suggested that they remain in Florida so that they not be confused with Hispanics from other areas. Due to this, many Hispanics of all countries of origin flee to Florida to escape arrest).

June 5, 2012 - In order to prevent "confusion," persons of Hispanic or Arab decent are required to wear flags on their clothing indicating whether they are a legal citizen or not. This does not stop the arbitrary detentions or arrests as people are known to wear the flags regardless of their citizenship status. The penalties for violations are harsh if one is caught wearing a flag he is not entitled to wear. Persons on temporary visas are required to wear a flag of their country of origin either on their clothing or in a pouch contained on or about their person visible to law enforcement personnel. All citizens are encouraged to carry required display identification and display such if approached by law enforcement. Failure to do so is enforced by harsh penalties as well. Homosexuals are required to wear pink triangles on their clothing. Hispanic radio and television stations and other media outlets are ordered to begin broadcasting in English under penalty of license forfeiture. Border control officers along the Mexican border are now advised to "shoot to kill" anyone trying to get across the border from Mexico. Many Restaurants and Yard Care companies close due to lack of personnel. Strikes and protests staged by Hispanic and Arab-American groups are dealt with in harsh
manners by RED units.

June 20th, 2012 - In order to prevent "confusion" in news reporting and media outlets, all media outlets are closed down in favor of Fox News and other Murdoch and conservative owned papers, electronic media, radio and television stations. The newspapers, radio stations, and television and cable outlets of several cities are seized and given over to the new government sanctioned media monopoly. After objections by the board of the FCC, Glenn Beck is appointed to the revised Federal Communications Commission which is given responsibility to apply the new directives concerning the media. Stations not seized and not in the affected areas are strongly encouraged to broadcast the sanctioned media. Amateur Radios not involved with public safety organizations are ordered seized by Executive Order.

June 25th, 2012 - The RED is placed "above the law" by Executive Order.

June 30th, 2012 - A resolution in the Oregon State legislature proposes secession from the United States. The Governor of Oregon mobilizes the National Guard in his state to protect its citizens from the new Federal Laws and seizures. A similar resolution is proposed in California but is quickly quashed by conservative legislators. Governor Schwarzenegger resigns rather than enforce the new federal laws, leaving for Austria just missing being arrested by Federal agents.

July 1, 2012 - Federal troops from Fort Lewis, Fort Ord and Camp Pendelton are mobilized in order to invade Oregon in the first step to quash the so-called "Blue State Rebellion." Oregon passes its secession resolution by acclimation. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York all pass resolutions to join Oregon. These states mobilize their various National Guard Units. The State of Maine petitions Canada for assistance to protect itself from US Federal troops.

July 15, 2012 - Sailors on the USS Harry Truman and her escorts mutiny and sail towards Oregon to assist them in their struggle. The "Blue Mutiny" of the US Military begins. There is some chaos as other Federal units begin to mutiny on some overseas bases. Some other Federal individual soldiers and some entire units join the "Blue Mutiny" as well and head to Oregon and other states to assist them.

July 20th, 2012 - The Harry Truman is sunk off the coast of California by Federal US Air Force aircraft. Mutinies by other units are quashed as leaders are executed by officers loyal to the President. Some soldiers in the Blue States flee their bases to join National Guard Units. Those that remain on base are enclaves surrounded by National Guard troops of the states in question.

July 22nd, 2012 - The RED begins purging the military of suspect persons based on affiliations and the like. Many discharged soldiers, sailors and Airman flee to the Blue States. President Palin declares martial law and begins to institute federal rule by decree calling it "Gods Order." The Stars and Strips is hauled down from the US Capital and replaced with the so-called "US Civil" Flag with red stripes on a white field vertically with blue stars in the corner.

July 31, 2012 - Canadian officers and military personnel are removed from NORAD and Space Command Headquarters at Pearson AFB in Colorado. Canada responds by ordering all US military units off their soil. Canada continues to offer asylum to US citizens and soldiers fleeing the country. Some soldiers who slip into Canada return to Blue States to join up with Blue National Guard units. Canada begins to mobilize its military. Units of other NATO countries are quietly mobilized to assist Canada in the event they are needed. US Military facilities in Europe and other locations are ordered locked down with extra security added in order to quell dissent and prevent "spies" from infiltrating these facilities.

August 10, 2012 - Riot at the Canadian border crossing at Detroit as persons attempting to cross are shot at by Federal troops. Lines of cars are shot at and set ablaze by Federal troops. The Detroit Border crossing is closed.

August 12th, 2012 - NATO advises US units to leave Germany and England as well as other countries on European soil. Soldiers who do not wish to return to the US are invited to stay and many do so. Remaining US Forces are withdrawn and evacuate via Airlift. Whatever heavy equipment could not be flown out is demilitarized and left behind by withdrawing US Federal Troops. The US is given 30 days to remove all Personnel. US responds by banning flights from the US to NATO and EU countries by Executive Order. Thousands of stranded travelers, students and businessmen unable to flee before the order begin to make their way to Blue States or to the Canadian or Mexican border in order to return to their home country. US units in Iraq and units remaining in Afghanistan are attacked by insurgents. The units in Afghanistan are few since the withdrawal was almost complete. Those units institute a fighting withdrawal as they flee by transport aircraft. Units in Iraq are surrounded as they hole up in Baghdad. Some units composed of minorities are wiped out as they are again abandoned by their comrades.

August 14th, 2012 - US Navy personnel at the US Base in Yokohama are asked to leave by Japanese authorities. What forces do not turn themselves over for asylum to Japanese Self-Defense Forces withdraw to Korea, Guam and Hawaii or are tasked to assist in the evacuation of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

August 15, 2012 - US borders are closed to departing persons by Presidential decree. Units of the Department of Homeland Security are placed under Eric Prince, (Head of the RED) and
Law Enforcement is Federalized under the RED by Executive Order.

August 17, 2012 - In what is typical of many abuses by the RED, a 20 year old woman in Denver is executed for failing to wear a dress according to the new dress code instituted under the "Gods Order" Laws. Hair Salons and beauty shops are ordered closed and the sale of makeup and birth control devices are banned.

August 25th, 2012 - President Karzai is executed by al Queda operatives as they assume control of Afghanistan and the Taliban are again in charge of the country.

September 12th, 2012 - US Forces complete withdrawal from NATO countries.

September 15th, 2012 - Oregon is invaded by US Federal troops in an attempt to quash their rebellion.

September 20th, 2012 - Portland is bombed by US Air Force and by Cruise Missiles launched from US Naval vessels in the Pacific.

September 30th, 2012 - Portland, Oregon falls to Federal troops as the last pockets of the Oregon National Guard surrender. Lacking sufficient manpower, resources and equipment the Oregon forces were doomed form the start. Some officers and men are executed summarily by Federal troops by order of the President. The Governor of Oregon is hanged by executive order. The hanging is broadcast live on Fox News as a warning to all who would oppose Gods Order.

October 10th, 2012 - In a meeting in the Adirondacks, the Governors and key legislators of the various remaining Blue States elect the Governor of New York as de facto head of the government. They declare all Federal Laws and the Constitution of the US that was extant before the new administration to be in force in the area. They adopt the name "Free United States" as their name. The Council of Governors and the heads of the various state national guard units begin the process of coordinating strategies to maintain their republic and the safety of the people therein.

October 15, 2012 - Units of the New York National Guard attempt to seize Fort Drum, the HQ of the 10th Mountain Division and are successful as the units are understrength due to the mutiny. In a coordinated operation, Blue Rebel units seize federal facilities in their states and imprison Federal officers who refuse to join in the rebellion.

October 25, 2012 - US Federal Forces mass at the New York Border in Northern Pennsylvania in a standoff that lasts approximately three months.

November 1st, 2012 - Fighter sweeps begin as the US Air Force attempts to gain Air Superiority over the area controlled by the Free US.

November 10th, 2012 - A raid by rebel navy units of the Free US Navy based in New London, Connecticut responding from Submarines, seize the remaining ships based at the Diego Garcia Naval facility which contain ammunition, vehicles and supplies for the Rapid Deployment Forces. They are then spirited to New York for use by the Free US Military. (Although the USNS Bob Hope is sunk by the Federally controlled USS Sacramento, the Sacramento is then sunk by Free US units defending the Convoy).

November 20th, 2012 - This the middle of a period of relative calm as both sides take steps to consolidate their positions. The RED continues to round up various groups people who practice non-Christian religions and ship them to Detroit (if they are in the East) or San Francisco (in the West). Some practicing witches other Pagan religions are summarily executed rather than shipped off because they worship Satan or practice religions against "Gods will." Prices rise for goods and services in the Federal states as world trade increasingly becomes disrupted. Groups of RED officers continue to make sweeps across Oregon looking for Blue State sympathizers. They adopt the Celtic cross as a logo on their uniforms and wear armbands with the logo on them. Its a symbol that becomes increasingly associated with "Gods Order."

However, the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have had their toll on Federal forces. The Oregon attack proved brutal on many and the prospect of shooting their own citizens has had the effect of polarizing some soldiers.

Blue state units attempt to fortify their positions with the limited manpower and resources available to them. Many of the new arrivals who manage to slip in have abilities to assist. Tens of Thousands head to the Blue States to attempt to slip in and get away from the repression of "Gods Order." While they would love to assist, Canada and other NATO countries have to have an official neutral stance given the nuclear capability of the Federal Forces and the lack of it on the Blue State side. (While some soldiers and units escaped with Nuclear Weapons, in many cases the codes did not come with them and the weapons are few and far between).

Several overseas US Federal military bases and facilities are seized by their host governments. Air Forces continue a battle of wits over the skies of the Blue States as they attempt to maintain air travel to and from the rest of the world.

December 27th, 2012 - An Air Canada Airbus A320 is shot down by a USAF fighter for "violating" the Federal Airspace restricted zone around the Blue States. The shooting is accidental, but the effect is to drive Canada into the rebel camp with Canada responding by closing the Alaska Highway and cutting off Alaska. US Federal troops are massing at the Pennsylvania/New York border in preparation for an expected invasion of New York. The closure of the Alaska Highway puts these plans on hold.

January 15th, 2013 - NATO officially begins to assist clandestinely the Free US forces by shipping whatever spare parts were left at US bases in Europe and other countries which were seized after US forces left. Since many spares are universal among the NATO countries, the transfer of parts offers a respite the Free US Forces need.

January 25th, 2013 - The countries of Kenya and Uganda officially offer support the US Federal Government. Several other Christian-dominated African countries on the western coast offer their support as well.

January 27th, 2013 - Federal Forces begin a series of harassment raids along the de facto Federal/Free US border which follows the southern border of New York State. It consists of Artillery bombardment, Fighter raids and the like as a preparation for an expected invasion. The Siege of New York begins as US Federal and Free US Forces begin Artillery duels in areas close to the City. Millions of New Yorkers flee rather than submit to being shelled. Federal Forces pay particular attention to the UN Secretariat building which is hit several times. However, UN personnel have already been evacuated to Geneva and have reconvened the UN Security Council and General Assembly at the old League of Nations Headquarters. Some of the works of art at the Headquarters building and grounds which could not be evacuated are destroyed. Among these are the Japanese Peace Bell and the "Swords into Plowshares" statue. The raids are primarily a diversionary tactic to keep the Free US forces off balance and allow for a planning of a raid into Canada to open up the Alaska Highway.

February 10th, 2013 - Continued Cyber attacks come to a head as computer systems around the world crash due to repeated cyber attacks and retaliation by Federal and Free US Forces. Cyber-duels by organized and unorganized hackers employed by both sides render most of the internet impotent for the majority of the year. Europe and the rest of the world isolates the internet from the United States which stops a large majority of the attacks. However, traffic from Canada is heavily contaminated with viruses and malware propaganda from both sides in the conflict.

February 27th, 2013 - World trade with the Federal US has ceased as the US is isolated not by its government, but by the rest of the world. Alaska is increasingly isolated and supplies are difficult to get to due to the closure of the Alaska Highway. Oil tankers are unable to put to sea due to threats by Free US and Canadian submarines. Free US Forces have succeded in capturing or sinking several commercial tankers. In spite of systematic hunting by Federal US Forces, the Free US is able to field a limited number of Los Angeles-class Attack submarines. Use of the Panama Canal is also denied to Federal US forces due to its size and the Federal US's treatment of Latinos. The major goal becomes not to take the Free US, but to establish road communications to Alaska to obtain Oil and to supply goods to Alaska's citizens. Air traffic is able to supply Alaska, but the lack of petroleum from Alaska is starting to take its toll. The Federal US institutes drastic petroleum rationing. Communities start to become isolated as Gas prices soar to $5-$7 a gallon even when available. Aviation Fuel and fuel for military units is given priority.

March 10th, 2013 - Federal US forces begin to mass at the Washington/British Columbia Border at the head of the Alaska Highway. Originally, these forces had been deployed in the Oregon Operation. Limited Guerrilla activity by irregular and Free US sympathizers in Oregon and other West Coast cities have tied down federal forces. However, President Palin is determined to take the Alaska Highway to regain Alaska at any cost. She does this by thinning forces at the Free US border in the East and moving forces to Washington state.
The goal is to start a blitzkrieg through British Columbia to establish a communications route to Alaska. Fighting on two fronts reduces the Federal commitment to the Free US operational front in New England. Canadian forces are deployed to counter this threat, supported by NATO troops.

March 17th, 2013 - Battle of Bermuda as a combined NATO/Free US and Canadian Task force battles units of the Federal US Navy. The Royal Navy Submarine HMS Artful, freshly commissioned and the Free US Submarine USS Springfield manage to slip into the middle of the Federal Task Group and sink the USS George HW Bush and severely damage the USS Eisenhower. However, the Springfield is sunk attempting to withdraw. Long range Cruise Missile strikes by NATO forces on Norfolk and Charleston Naval bases. With the remaining Atlantic fleet carrier units either in extended refit, securing oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico or seized in NATO ports in the Medeterian, and Pacific Fleet units committed to operations in British Columbia, the Federal US Navy is left with no significant surface naval air force in the Atlantic for the foreseeable future. This leaves the Atlantic open for resupply by NATO to Free US and NATO forces defending Canada.

March 25th, 2013 - Operation Cold Ranger begins as Federal US forces proceed up US 97 and cross the Canadian border at Osoyoss, British Columbia. Federal US Naval forces bomb Vancouver, Victoria, Comox, CFB Comox and CFB Esquimalt with Cruise Missiles and aircraft in a simultaneous attack to keep Canadian Forces from responding. Other Federal US Cruise Missiles strike at targets deep in Canada to destroy Canadian forces which might retaliate. The Federal US Forces are met with little resistance in the initial stages.

April 4th, 2013 - Battle of Kelowana as Canadian/NATO troops ambush US Federal forces. NATO and Free US Submarines harass Federal Naval forces and fuel shortages are starting to tell on US forces as they are unable to field Air Forces at adequate strength to counter NATO air power. Losses are Heavy on both sides, but the Federal US advance is slowed.

April 19th, 2013 - Battle of Prince Rupert as Federal Marines from Camp Pendelton make an amphibious landing at Prince Rupert in British Columbia. However, several supply ships are sunk by Free US and NATO forces leaving supply an ongoing problem. The Marines are slated to rendezvous with Army forces, but since they are not advancing according to timetable, the Marines face a possibility of being cut off. The Southern advance is stalled by fierce Canadian/NATO resistance at Williams Lake

April 27th, 2013 - Marine Units surrender after being cut off at the Prince George Crossroads. With the Southern advance stalled, the operation is starting to fall apart. Incidents of "fragging" of fanatical Federal US officers by Federal US noncoms are increasing as RED harassment of the US populace continues.

April 30th, 2013 - The Governor of Illinois, in a surprise to the Federal US, declares for the Free US and attempts to seize the State House in Springfield with loyal National Guard Units. With Federal Units tied up in British Columbia and on the New York Border, response is due to be slow.

May 5th, 2013 - The Detroit ghetto riots - in an uprising similar to the Warsaw ghetto riots in WWII, Arab Americans and others detained in the Detroit Federal district, begin to attack Federal forces. Forces being sent to quell the Illinois uprising are diverted to deal with the new threat.

May 7th, 2013 - Similar riots and uprisings occur in the San Francisco and El Paso Federal Districts. Mexico declares war on the Federal US and requests NATO assistance.

May 17th, 2013 - Unknown to Free US and its allies, the Federal US forces begin to prepare Nuclear weapons. With forces stalled in the Canadian invasion, the use of Nuclear bombs would break the back of the forces in British Columbia and send a message to the Free US and its allies.

May 21st, 2013 - Federal US B-52's equipped with Nuclear Weapons are moved to Mountain Home AFB in Idaho from Louisiana in preparation for deployment. Tactical Nuclear weapons are moved to Mountain Home for use by F-15 Strike Eagles already based there.

May 27th, 2013 - Revolt of the Military - In a surprise move by low level military officers, federal US military officers seize control of the government, killing Vice President Rand Paul and arresting President Palin. Eric Prince is assassinated by Navy Seals at his home in Alexandria, VA and the building housing the Religious Enforcement Division is seized along with other Federal buildings. The commander of the rebels Federal Officers, the Admiral of the Navy on the JSC, offers an armistice with NATO/Free US forces and offers the Governor of New York to take over the government until free elections can be held.

How would the flag look with more stars

2010-06-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Legislation has been introduced in the US to give Puerto Rico statehood status. In retrospect, our "territorial" system is outdated. Most of the entities we term territories have far surpassed their populations to be admitted to statehood. I quite frankly feel that all the territories should be admitted to the Union as states.

What would our flag be like if we had new states. I found this on Slate and thought it was interesting:

Dolphins are learning to communicate through iPads

2010-06-11T13:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/early-adopting-dolphin-uses-ipad-touchscreen-communicate-humans

Pretty soon we will have to start paying dolphins to perform at the water parks. I can't wait till "Dolphins Got Talent." Then we got to pay them to help us fishing. Maybe then we will manage our oceans better. Next they sue us for the spill in the Gulf and then we will have to start fighting for Cetacean Civil Rights. The next movement in Civil Rights.

Niven predicted this in several of his books. In his stories the breakthrough was through telepathy, but here we have direct communications. Like the Chimps who learn sign language or African Grey Parrots who have displayed intelligence. Things like this just go to show that we, as humans, are nothing more than advanced animals.

One more reason to support evolution.

This is what you get when you don't pay taxes

2010-06-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

You take a place with very low property taxes. Add a little tea party magic and voila! The city will start dying. Such is a place called Colorado Springs. They voted down a property tax increase and now they have to face the consequences. City services have been drastically cut. Street lights have been disabled in order to save money. The police helicopters have been sold as they were too expensive to operate. Transit service does not function after 6:15pm or on the weekends. I guess people will have to learn to walk again or buy a car they can't afford and choose between gas and paying the bills or rent or whatever. To a lot of conservatives I suppose a car can be a good home for the poor.

Our area faced this as well. St. Louis County voters rejected a proposed tax increase to fund basic services for Mass transit. They, in their infinite wisdom, rejected it. Then came the cuts in services. Doctors who had relocated their offices to the county then realized that a lot of their lucrative medicare patients use the bus to get to their offices. Businesses realized that a lot of their employees use the bus to get out to jobs at the malls in the county. The affluent in the county realized that their maids and other cleaning people need a bus to get to their McMansions. After slashing mass transit to the bone, the local business community realized that they needed mass transit and supported an increase in taxes. The proposition passed overwhelmingly and now the local mass transit system is slowly restoring services.

I want to hold your hand

2010-06-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

Obviously this cat doesn't want to let go:

Its time to get away

2010-06-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

I saw this picture and I got a kick outta it! :-)

The Road

2010-05-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

I saw a wonderful, but disturbing movie. "The Road" depicts a father and son surviving in a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape. They are journeying to the cost in a desperate attempt to survive. Civilization has fallen and the world is filled with people who are either dying or dead. In this world they are trying to go down the road, trying to stay one of the "good guys." In this world the lives of people are a desperate struggle to survive. There is nothing to keep the world alive. Nothing grows anymore. The skies are dark and bleak and no light shines in the gray skies. People are either searching for food or eating each other to survive. The scenes depicting cannibalism are difficult to watch and I have to wonder how and what I would do to live in a world like that. I would hope that I would not resort to something like that to survive. But they were disturbing. People eat each other and that is not a good thing.

I have always wondered about the end of the world. How this wonderful thing called civilization is such a fragile thing. How easily we take such a fragile thing for granted. How easy it is for civilization to end. A disaster can strip away the veneer of our civilization and leaves us savages. In that we are but animals without that veneer.

A movie filled with that bleakness can be a depression. Sometimes a world can touch you in a way that you cannot believe. We like to think we are not animals. Somehow we are blessed with a special gift with that civilization. Its only a thing and a very empty thing. I hope that if it does fall, we learn the lessons of our literature.

The Battle of Britian - The Polish

2010-05-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

Back in the early dark days of World War II, where victory was far from certain and the armies of darkness swarmed the world, Britain was the country that stood alone against the darkness. Flooded with people who fled the Nazi onslaught, those that were willing signed up to join the British in fighting against their common enemy.

The Americans came, with the Eagle squadrons, the Checks, Free French, and the Poles. The following is one of my favorite scenes in the famous movie "The Battle of Britain" which depicted the period of time where Britain fought alone with the help of its exile allies. In this scene, the volunteer Polish squadron, still undergoing training, sees a group of German Aircraft and a chance at payback:

We aren't the only country with religous problems

2010-05-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

Turkey is a nation which has struggled with a fine line between religion and secularism. In my search for information about the escalator miracle I came across this story on one Turkish News website:

Atheist Turkish family wins case on compulsory religious classes.

This has recently happened as the story was dated today. Our nation now is starting to follow in the footsteps of religious extremism. We take tiny baby steps towards the Theocratic abyss daily. The camel's nose is definitely inside the tent and soon we will have to deal with the whole smelly animal in the tent. There is a whole group in this country that makes the Islamic extremists look tame and they are armed and dangerous. They are also taking steps to taking over our government which will lead to religious crusades. Israel and Saudi Arabia had better watch out since both are threatened. Israel enjoys some slight enthusiasm and support from the Christians in this country, but they can just as easily turn against them as many of the organizations allied with this Christian theocratic elite come from a white-supremacist/anti-Semitic tradition.

So the United States isn't the only country with a secular tradition having a crisis of conscience with that tradition.

Miracle at the Shopping Mall

2010-05-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

Now this could be at the mall I work at as we have an escalator similar to this. Apparently, this four year old by decided to take a ride up an escalator. the only wrong things is that he went on the other side of the escalator riding on the handrail. As you can see on the video below he hold onto the handrail riding to the top where he looses his grip and falls. Fortunately for him, a bystander (possibly his own father in one report), sees him and runs, catching him as halls.

The Anthem of the Tea Party?

2010-05-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite entertainers is Tom Lehrer. He was active in the 1960's. Many of you may remember a song he did called "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." However, he had an extensive reportuare of songs, many of which have a wonderful political bent. One song he had was a song of the Wild West written in his days as a physicist at the Los Alamos Laboratory. A line in the song said something about watching the planes droping bombs "while the old FBI was watching me."

Some of his songs bordered on the bizarre and I present this one forthwith:

Very intersting thing I just discovered - or couldn't find

2010-05-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

In my youth I lived in Joplin, MO. I graduated High School in 1982 and subsequently moved to Springfield, MO and later St. Louis MO. I remember this rather large brick building on one of the main roads across from the Lincoln-Mercury Dealer. A sign in front of it proclaimed it to be "Lincoln School" but it was empty and never used by the school district in the time I lived in Joplin.

Come to find out it had been the "Negro School" in Joplin. This was where blacks were provided "separate, but equal" education in the local school district. There was also a park provided for them as well as other facilities to keep blacks from intermingling with the white citizens of Joplin. This was a city that created a hospital strictly to keep from having to be treated by Catholics. (Joplin never had a Jewish hospital. I don't think there were enough Jews in Joplin to support one. The synagogue was just down the alley from where I grew up but apparently only had a traveling Rabbi and maybe a handful of attendees. However there was a Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. It was merged with the much larger Barnes Hospital just recently). I don't know when the school was closed. I don't know when the school was opened. I have no idea if it had any famous alumni. In searching for the school online, you would think it would have at least a picture, but its as if the school never existed. Even the building is gone now.

I find myself wondering what kind of memories, stories and the like existed for that school. Certainly it had some people who remembered it and what kind of teachers it had. Maybe its shame that they were kept apart from the society, but its a legacy that should be remembered.

This is the way the world ends, not with a whimper

2010-05-23T03:34:00.000-07:00

I started writing this last night, wondering how theocracy might come to pass in this country. I think it would be fairly easy. I thought about this after the Texas School Standards victory by the religious nuts the other day. There have been some classics in the field, Margaret Atwater's A Handmaden's Tale; Sinclar Lewis' "It Could Happen Here," and a recent good one by Douglas McKinnon's "The Apocalypse Directive." This is my take on the whole subject. Its a timeline, but it could serve as the basis for a novel. Understand this is a rough draft, heck the typewriter keys are still hot from me writing it. There might be some confusion, so bear with me and let me know what you think, please.

Timeline of the American Theocracy
President Obama wins the final Democratic primary and the Democratic convention selects him as the candidate for the 2012 election. Tea Party and other Right wing groups stage a tumultuous demonstration vowing that he will never be elected again.
Sarah Palin is selected as the Republican presidential candidate after a stormy Republican convention in which the Tea Party and Christian Nativist groups drown out moderate elements of the Party.

September 15, 2011 - President Obama assassinated by White Supremacist and Militia member Robert O'Dell of the Ohio "Patriot" militia at a campaign stop in Cleveland. O'Dell is killed in the resultant gun battle as the sniper nest he was concealed in is stormed by Secret Service Agents. Vice President Biden assumes office vowing to crack down on the perpetrators of this deed.

September 16, 2011 - Republican Candidate Palin appears on Fox News to express condolences for the death of the President but then calls into question the electability of President Biden since he was not the Presidential candidate. Right wing media takes up this question, fanning indecision and the electorate begins to question the electability of Biden.

September 29, 2011 - A joint FBI, Secret Service and ATF task force begins crackdown of several so called "militia" units. The Colorado 44th "Jim Bridger" militia fights back resulting in a stand-off in Boulder for 34 days. The Police vehicles are shot at by RPG's and heavy machine guns.

October 10, 2011 - FBI agent Harold Rediker is killed by a sniper within the Boulder compound.

October 15, 2011 - Units of the Colorado National Guard refuse orders to surround the Bridger militia compound citing their membership in the so-called "Oath Keepers" organization. Units of the US Army are called in from Ft. Hood. Some members of these units also refuse orders, also citing their membership in the Oath Keepers.

November 1, 2011 - Sarah Palin wins the Presidency as enough doubt is cast on Biden that many vote for her in the belief that Biden is not legitimate thanks to a campaign by right wing media outlets and pundits.

November 3, 2011 - Units of the US Army, along with FBI and ATF agents storm the Boulder compound. Much like Waco, the compound is set ablaze by Bridger Militia members, many of whom kill themselves rather than submit to capture.

November 4, 2011 - Fox News, which has supported the Militias since the storming of the Boulder compound, interview several soldiers who claim they were ordered to execute militia members rather than attempt to capture them. Subsequent investigation proves the soldiers were nowhere near the are of Boulder or even assigned to the storming of the Boulder compound. Several right wing organizations pick up this rumor and it is spread through the use of social media on the internet. Attempts to explain or refute the interview are fruitless.

November 23, 2011 - An attempt is made to assassinate President Biden and Speaker Polosi. A state of emergency is declared in the Washington DC area and the National Guard is called out in order to maintain security.

November 29, 2011 - Militia members attempt to storm the Supreme Court, but are thwarted by soldiers of the National Guard.

December 15th, 2011 - The Joint Militia Task Force storms the compound of the Maryland Militia unit responsible for the attempt on the President and the Supreme Court attack. Many of the militia are killed.

December 29, 2011 - Units of Xe Incorporated are called upon to secure some areas of Washington DC as some units of the US Military are rendered ineffective due to many soldiers who refuse to follow orders to maintain security citing their Oath Keeper membership.

January 5th 2012 - Units of Xe Incorporated seize President Biden and Speaker Polosi and hold them hostage as Sarah Palin assumes the Presidency. Citing an unprecedented national emergency, Supreme Court Justice Roberts swears Palin in early.

January 19th, 2012 - Justice Sonja Sotamayor dies under mysterious circumstances. Sarah Palin nominates Judge Joe Moore of Alabama as her replacement. Many soldiers which formerly were disobeying orders are released from military custody by the President who calls their imprisonment "un-American."

February 20th, 2012 - In a Capitol building surrounded by armed militia units of the, National guard and military units loyal to the President, Joe Moore is confirmed as the new Supreme Court Justice in a swift vote. Some objecting Senators are taken away by armed guards. Of those taken away, some disappear under mysterious circumstances.

February 22, 2012 - Cynthia Dunbar, formerly of the Texas Education Standards Board, is confirmed as Secretary of Education vowing to "bring God back to the classroom."

February 29, 2012 - Many Americans fearing for their safety begin to gather at the borders of Canada and Mexico fleeing the country as a campaign of intimidation and ostracized by Tea Party sympathizers. Canada grants asylum to many, but the numbers are starting to grow overwhelmingly as a wave of religious oppression begins in America.

March 14th, 2012 - President Palin proposes the first of many laws designed to "bring a Godly presence to government." Among these are laws withdrawing the United States from the United Nations, criminalizing homosexuality, instituting broad censorship of media outlets across the spectrum from television to Internet and criminalizing "disrespect of God." The penalty of many of these laws are low, but the sentiment in the country promises that such laws will be strictly enforced.

March 17th, 2012 - The City of Berkely, CA is among the first of many cities and states to object to the new laws proposed. Many cities in California, Oregon, and other "blue states" pass resolutions condemning the laws.

March 29th, 2012 - After a tumultuous debate, the slate of laws are passed by the House and Senate. They are quickly signed into law by President Palin in a Rose Garden ceremony. In a speech at the signing ceremony, she states that, "We have begun a new order in which the Lord and Jesus Christ will be the king of our land."

March 31, 2012 - Former President Biden and Former Speaker Pelosi are charged with treason by the Justice Department for facilitating Obama's Presidency. In the charges, it is alleged that Obama was not a citizen of the United States due to his status as a Kenyan citizen (or Indonesian depending on the media outlet originating the story). Hearings begin to nullify laws passed during the Obama Administration due to their alleged illegality and the alleged illegitimacy of the Presidency.

April 1, 2012 - The Religious Enforcement Division (RED) of the Department of Homeland Security is created by executive order to enforce the slate of laws passed in March since many professionals at the various agencies object to enforcing them. The new agency is staffed with extremists from various Christian religions, among the Eric Prince, former head of Blackwater (Xe Incorporated) who is the head of the new agency.

April 2, 2012 - The offices of MSNBC are stormed by Federal agents and many of the media personalities are arrested for Treason. Among them are Rachael Maddow, Keith Olberman and others. MSNBC is taken off the air. Similar raids take place at the offices of other Media companies, newspapers and radio stations in the ensuing days. Some reporters and media personalities slip away and flee to Canada or Europe who grant asylum.

April 12, 2012 - NATO forces, citing the present US policies state they will no longer support US operations in Afghanistan. Their forces begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, leaving the US alone.

April 22nd, 2012 - Former President Biden and Former Speaker Polosi are moved to a High Security Federal Penitentiary in Colorado.

May 23rd, 2012 - Troops from the US Army (apparently forgetting their Oath Keeper oaths) under the auspices of the RED raid various sections of Dearborn and Detroit to start rounding up persons of Arab decent regardless of citizenship. Similar raids take place in various Southwestern states with the exception that the persons rounded up are of Hispanic decent. Raids at various "gay bars" start rounding up persons alleged to be homosexual. In spite of statements to the contrary, many are killed in these initial raids by overzealous personnel in the RED.

May 25th, 2012 - New gun control laws are instituted requiring an RED background check before one can purchase a firearm. A letter or similar document from a pastor or other "approved" church leader is needed before a firearm can be purchased.

May 27th, 2012 - Citing lack of support by their allies, President Palin quietly withdraws US troops from Afghanistan. This is not seen as a setback as they are going to be desperately needed to quell domestic disturbances. This goes unreported in the media due to censorship. Units are consolidated in Iraq as insurgent attacks increase.

May 30, 2012 - Federal troops seize control of Berkley and other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area as roundups begin of homosexual and other undesirables. A new "Federal District" is created in the area to house "displaced persons." Homosexuals from other locations throughout the country are brought to this area to be "processed." A similar area is created in the Detroit and Dearborn areas to house persons of Arab decent. The city of El Paso is cordoned off to create a similar district for Hispanics. They are then deported across the border to Mexico. (Strangely enough, persons of Cuban decent are not included, but it is strongly suggested that they remain in Florida so that they not be confused with Hispanics from other areas. Due to this, many Hispanics of all countries flee to Florida to escape arrest).

June 5, 2012 - in order to prevent "confusion," persons of Hispanic or Arab decent are required to wear flags on their clothing indicating whether they are a legal citizen or not. This does not stop the arbitrary detentions or arrests as people are known to wear the flags regardless of their citizenship status. The penalties for violations are harsh if one is caught wearing a flag he is not entitled to wear. Persons on temporary visas are required to wear a flag of their country of origin either on their clothing or in a pouch contained on or about their person visible to law enforcement personnel. All citizens are encouraged to carry required display identification and display such if approached by law enforcement. Failure to do so is enforced by harsh penalties as well. Homosexuals are required to wear pink triangles on their clothing. Hispanic radio and television stations and other media outlets are ordered to begin broadcasting in English under penalty of license forfeiture. Border control officers along the Mexican border are now advised to "shoot to kill" anyone trying to get across the border from Mexico. Many Restaurants and Yard Care companies close due to lack of personnel.

June 20th, 2012 - In order to prevent "confusion" in news reporting and media outlets, all media outlets are closed down in favor of Fox News and other Murdoch and conservative owned papers, electronic media, radio and television stations. The newspapers, radio stations, and television and cable outlets of several cities are seized and given over to the new government sanctioned media monopoly. Glenn Beck is appointed to the revised Federal Communications Commission which is given responsibility to apply the new directives concerning the media. Stations not seized and not in the affected areas are strongly encouraged to broadcast the sanctioned media.

June 30th, 2012 - A resolution in the Oregon State legislature proposes secession from the United States. The Governor of Oregon mobilizes the National Guard in his state to protect its citizens from the new Federal Laws and seizures. A similar resolution is proposed in California but is quickly quashed by conservative legislators. Governor Schwarzenegger resigns rather than enforce the new federal laws.

July 1, 2012 - Federal troops from Fort Lewis, Fort Ord and Camp Pendelton are mobilized in order to invade Oregon in the first step to quash the so-called "Blue State Rebellion." Oregon passes its secession resolution by acclimation. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York all pass resolutions to join Oregon. These states mobilize their various National Guard Units. The State of Maine petitions Canada for assistance to protect itself from US Federal troops.

July 15, 2012 - Sailors on the USS Harry Truman and her escorts mutiny and sail towards Oregon to assist them in their struggle. The "Blue Mutiny" of the US Military begins. There is some chaos as other Federal units begin to mutiny on some overseas bases. Some other Federal individual soldiers and some entire units join the "Blue Mutiny" as well and head to Oregon and other states to assist them.

July 20th, 2012 - The Harry Truman is sunk off the coast of California by Air Force aircraft. Mutinies by other units are quashed as leaders are executed by officers loyal to the President. Some soldiers in the Blue States flee their bases to join National Guard Units. Those that remain on base are enclaves surrounded by National Guard troops of the states in question.

July 22nd, 2012 - The RED begins purging the military of suspect persons based on affiliations and the like. Many discharged soldiers, sailors and Airman flee to the Blue States as the so-called "Blue State Rebellion" begins. President Palin declares martial law and begins to institute federal rule by decree calling it "Gods Order."

July 31, 2012 - Canadian officers and military personnel are removed from NORAD and Space Command Headquarters at Pearson AFB in Colorado. Canada continues to offer asylum to US citizens and soldiers fleeing the country. Some soldiers who slip into Canada return to Blue States to join up with Blue National Guard units. Canada begins to mobilize its military. Units of other NATO countries are quietly mobilized to assist Canada in the event they are needed.

August 10, 2012 - Riot at the Canadian border crossing at Detroit as persons attempting to cross are shot at by Federal troops. Lines of cars are shot at and set ablaze by Federal troops. The Detroit Border crossing is closed.

August 12th, 2012 - NATO advises US units to leave Germany and England. Soldiers who do not wish to return to the US are invited to stay and many do so. Remaining US Forces are withdrawn and evacuate via Airlift. Whatever heavy equipment could not be flown out is demilitarized and left behind by withdrawing US Federal Troops. The US is given 30 days to remove all Personnel. US responds by banning flights from the US to NATO and EU countries by Executive Order. Thousands of stranded travelers, students and businessmen unable to flee before begin to make their way to Blue States or to the Canadian or Mexican border in order to return to their home country. US units in Iraq and units remaining in Afghanistan are attacked by insurgents. The units in Afghanistan are few since the withdrawal was almost complete. Those units institute a fighting withdrawal as they flee by transport aircraft. Units in Iraq are surrounded as they hole up in Baghdad.

August 14th, 2012 - US Navy personnel at the US Base in Yokohama are asked to leave by Japanese authorities. What forces do not turn themselves over for asylum to Japanese Self-Defense Forces withdraw to Korea, Guam and Hawaii or are tasked to assist in the evacuation of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

August 15, 2012 - US borders are closed to departing persons by Presidential decree. Units of the Department of Homeland Security are placed under the Eric Prince, (Head of the RED) and Law Enforcement is Federalized under the RED by Executive Order.

August 17, 2012 - In what is typical of many abuses by the RED, a 20 year old woman in Denver is executed for failing to wear a dress according to the new dress code instituted under the "Gods Order" Laws. Hair Salons and beauty shops are ordered closed and the sale of makeup and birth control devices are banned.

September 12th, 2012 - US Forces complete withdrawal from NATO countries.

September 15th, 2012 - Oregon is invaded by US Federal troops in an attempt to quash their rebellion.

September 20th, 2012 - Portland is bombed by US Air Force and by Cruise Missiles launched from US Naval vessels in the Pacific.

September 30th, 2012 - Portland, Oregon falls to Federal troops as the last pockets of the Oregon National Guard surrender. Lacking sufficient manpower, resources and equipment the Oregon forces were doomed form the start. Some officers and men are executed summarily by Federal troops by order of the President. The Governor of Oregon is hanged by executive order. The hanging is broadcast live on Fox News as a warning to all who would oppose Gods Order.

October 10th, 2012 - In a meeting in the Adirondacks, the Governors and key legislators of the various remaining Blue States elect the Governor of New York as de facto head of the government. The declare all Federal Laws and the Constitution of the US the was extant before the new administration to be in force in the area. They adopt the name Free United States as their name. The Council of Governors and the heads of the various state national guard units begin the process of coordinating strategies to maintain their republic and the safety of the people therein.

October 15, 2012 - Units of the New York National Guard attempt to seize Fort Drum, the HQ of the 10th Mountain Division and are successful as the units are understrength due to the mutiny. In a coordinated operation, Blue Rebel units seize federal facilities in their states and imprison Federal officers who refuse to join in the rebellion.

October 25, 2012 - US Federal Forces mass at the New York Border in Northern Pennsylvania in a standoff that lasts approximately two months.

November 1st, 2012 - Fighter sweeps begin as the US Air Force attempts to gain Air Superiority over the area controlled by the Free US.

November 10th, 2012 - A raid by rebel navy units of the Free US Navy based in Groton, Connecticut responding from Submarines, seize the remaining ships based at the Diego Garcia Naval facility which contain ammunition, vehicles and supplies for the Rapid Deployment Forces. They are then spirited to New York for use by the Free US Military. (Although the USNS Bob Hope is sunk by the Federally controlled USS Sacramento, the Sacramento is then sunk by Free US units defending the Convoy).

November 20th, 2012 - This the middle of a period of relative calm as both sides take steps to consolidate their positions. The RED continues to round up various groups people who practice non-Christian religions and ship them to Detroit (if they are in the East) or San Francisco (in the West). Some practicing witches other Pagan religions are summarily executed rather than shipped off because they worship Satan or practice religions against "Gods will." Prices rise for goods and services in the Federal states as world trade increasingly becomes disrupted. Groups of RED officers continue to make sweeps across Oregon looking for Blue State sympathizers. They adopt the Celtic cross as a logo on their uniforms and wear armbands with the logo on them. Its a symbol that becomes increasingly associate with "Gods Order."

However, the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have had their toll on Federal forces. The Oregon attack proved brutal on many and the prospect of shooting their own citizens has had the effect of polarizing some soldiers.

Blue state units attempt to fortify their positions with the limited manpower and resources available to them. Many of the new arrivals who manage to slip in have abilities to assist. Tens of Thousands head to the Blue States to attempt to slip in and get away from the repression of "Gods Order." While they would love to assist, Canada and other NATO countries have to have an official neutral stance given the nuclear capability of the Federal Forces and the lack of it on the Blue State side. (While some soldiers and units escaped with Nuclear Weapons, in many cases the codes did not come with them and the weapons are few and far between).

Several overseas US Federal military bases and facilities are seized by their host governments. Air Forces continue a battle of wits over the skies of the Blue States as they attempt to maintain air travel to and from the rest of the world.

December 27th, 2012 - An Air Canada Airbus A320 is shot down by a USAF fighter for "violating" the Federal Airspace restricted zone around the Blue States. The shooting is accidental, but the effect is to drive Canada into the rebel camp. US Federal troops are massing at the southern border in preparation for an expected invasion of New York.

January 15th, 2013 - NATO officially begins to assist clandestinely the Free US forces by shipping whatever spare parts were left at US bases in Europe and other countries which were seized after US forces left. Since many spares are universal among the NATO countries, the transfer of parts offers a respite the Free US Forces need.

January 25th, 2013 - The countries of Kenya and Uganda officially offer support the US Federal Government. Several other Christian-dominated African countries on the western coast offer their support as well.

I wonder if he does everything God tells him to do

2010-05-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

May 20, 6:19 PM EDT

Man tells cops God told him to stroll in the nude

THIBODAUX, La. (AP) -- A man who told police that God told him to walk the streets naked to save his soul has been arrested. Thibodaux police responded to an obscenity complaint around 2 a.m. Thursday and found Shafiq Mohamed walking nude down the street. When approached, Mohamed reportedly told officers that "America raped him" and added God told him to walk the streets naked to save his soul.

Mohamed was taken into custody and charged with obscenity. He was booked into the Lafourche Parish Detention Center where he awaited bail.

It was not immediately known whether Mohamed has an attorney.

Martin Niem�ller updated for 2010

2010-05-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

In researching this I had to read the original poem by Niemoller which, translated from German reads thus:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Now this poem has been quoted many ways, but from my research this is the original. There have been variants which have included the Catholics, the Homosexuals, and what have you. Niemoller varied it depending on the year.

What would the modern version say?

First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist and they were our enemy anyway so I was not concerned.

Then they came for the anti-war protesters. I wasn't necessarally for the war, but then we stopped fighting the war, and they faded away.

Then President Reagan fired all the Air Traffic Controllers because they had the audacity to strike. I thought Reagan did the right thing because it disrupted my travel plans. In fact, we needed to get rid of all those pesky unions and their silly rules to keep the corporations in check. We let Reagan do that and now we have no unions.

Then they deregulated the banks. They let banks sell insurance and play the stock market with our savings. I didn't say anything because I was getting rich and my 401 K was getting large.

Then they came for those "Activist Judges," you know, the ones who "leglislate from the bench." Yeah, those judges that made Abortion legal and forced us to go to school with black kids. Yeah, we got those guys out of there and replaced them with judges who say that corporations are people and that even though that fella Al Gore got the most votes, that George Bush was the man who won the election and he should be President of the United States.

Then they came for the Welfare recipients. I didn't care because they were lazy bastards anyway and we needed to get them to work. It didn't matter that the only jobs they could get were the menial ones that didn't pay anything, no child care and if the welfare recipient was a single mother left the child at home to raise themselves. I didn't care just as long as those welfare mothers had a job and weren't on the dole.

Then the came for the Arabs. I didn't care because the Arabs had smashed some planes into our buildings. Anyone who wore a rag was suspect as far as I was concerned. "Kill them all," I said, "and let God sort them out." It didn't matter that the Arabs we rounded up didn't have anything to do with the Arabs who flew the planes into those buildings. It didn't matter that the country we bought most of our oil from and had a repressive religious regime and that was where the Arabs who flew the planes came from.

Then we invaded Afghanistan. I thought that was good since the terrorists who flew the planes were trained there. But we didn't go in with enough troops and I thought that was strange.

Then we invaded Iraq. I thought that was good since they were Arab, we had fought them before, and they might have had something to do with those planes hitting those buildings. (Even though, as mentioned before, the country where most of those terrorists came from wasn't Iraq).

Then they came for the new President. They said he was a Muslim, that he wasn't born in the United States and since he wouldn't show his birth certificate (even though the State of Hawaii has it on file and there are announcements on the day of his birth in the newspapers in Honolulu) he wasn't the legitimate President of the United States. They accused him of being a Socialist and a Fascist even though he was neither.

Then they came for the Mexicans. Well, that was OK since Mexicans steal our jobs. (Still, I don't think for all the tea in China I would work some of the jobs that Mexicans do, so they really aren't stealing those jobs are they?)

Then they changed the textbooks. Thomas Jefferson was an idiot they said, so we should ignore him because he believed in the separation of church and state.. Instead we need to study people like Phillis Schfley, and Newt Gingrich and things like the Contract with America. Joe McCarthy might have been right in his pursuit of Communists even though he destroyed many lives of people who had nothing to do with communism and his lists were lies. We need to study Jefferson Davis and the wonderful contributions his cause made to the United States and that his words mean as much to the country as those of Abraham Lincoln and are just as great. We don't need to study people who didn't contribute much like the Latinos, since they didn't do much to make Texas what it is today. There were "unintended consequences" of things like the Civil Rights movement. And that the United States is a "Christian Nation" in spite of the fact that most of our Founding Fathers argued for a strict separation of Church and State because the kings had used the church to control the populace and we elected our leaders, they weren't selected by God, but by the people.

Who will they come for next?

Typical of Texas politics

2010-05-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

May 17, 9:06 AM EDT

Gov. Perry's temporary digs costs Texas big bucks

By JAY
Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- With the state facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has spent almost $600,000 in public money during the past two years to live in a sprawling rental home in the hills above the capital, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

It costs more than $10,000 a month in rent, utilities and upkeep to house Perry in a five-bedroom, seven-bath mansion that has pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms. Perry has also spent $130,000 in campaign donations to throw parties, buy food and drink, and pay for cable TV and a host of other services since he moved in, the records show.

The public spending on Perry's rental comes as the state grapples with a budget shortfall forecast to reach at least $11 billion over the next two years. Perry has asked state agencies to cut their budgets by 5 percent and the Republican House speaker has begun to consider furloughs and shortened workweeks for state employees.

Ethics watchdogs, meanwhile, say Perry's campaign may have violated state disclosure laws because of the vague way he's reported what his staff calls "incidental" spending at the mansion.

"Anybody who is not offended probably doesn't know what's going on," said Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, the Texas House Democratic leader. To spend so much while asking state agencies to spend less, Dunnam said, is "just rank hypocrisy."

Perry dismissed such criticism with a laugh when asked by the AP about the costs of living in the exclusive Barton Creek Estates neighborhood in West Austin: "If that's the best cut anybody's got of leadership in the state of Texas, then bring it on."

Texas' longest-serving governor moved into his temporary home in the fall of 2007, leaving the white columned, two-story governor's mansion so it could undergo repairs. A still-unsolved arson wrecked the 1856 residence less than a year later, and officials say it will take another two years to finish its reconstruction.

His 6,386-square-foot rental sits on more than three acres and was advertised in 2007 for sale at $1.85 million. Perry's state-paid expenses at the home include $18,000 for "consumables" such as household supplies and cleaning products, $1,001.46 in window coverings from upscale retailer Neiman Marcus, a $1,000 "emergency repair" of the governor's filtered ice machine, a $700 clothes rack, and a little over $70 for a two year subscription to Food & Wine Magazine.

Maintenance on the heated pool has cost taxpayers at least $8,400, and the tab for grounds and lawn maintenance has topped $44,000, the records show. All told, taxpayers have spent at least $592,000 for rent, utilities, repairs, furnishings and supplies since Perry moved in.

By comparison, the Texas governor's mansion is wholly owned by the state - there is no rent or mortgage to pay. As currently configured, it has about 9,900 total square feet, but most is public space packed with historic artifacts. Only 2,750 square feet is dedicated to the governor's residence.

Democratic critics have said Perry and his wife, Anita, could live in a downtown apartment while the mansion is under repair. Should he win in November, Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor and multimillionaire lawyer challenging Perry's bid for a third full term, told the AP he would rent his own home until the mansion is repaired.

The records detailing the amount of public money spent on Perry's temporary home came from the governor's office, the State Preservation Board and the Texas Facilities Commission, and were obtained by the AP through the Texas Public Information Act. Perry's office is still fighting the release of at least 10 e-mails about his temporary residence.

The governor's staff said Perry, who earns $150,000 a year as governor, has cut back on some luxuries in response to the state's tight finances. Spokeswoman Allison Castle said he has just one housekeeper, one full-time chef - although a second chef works part time - and a mansion administrator who left and was not replaced. Along with a steward, the salaries for the five mansion employees cost taxpayers $195,770 a year, records show. The governor's security detail occupies the guest house.

Castle also said Perry and his wife lessen the burden on taxpayers by using campaign funds to pay for their expenses and reimburse the fund for their own food. For the 28 months from September 2007 through the end of 2009, the campaign-funded "Mansion Fund" has incurred costs of over $130,000, including more than $56,000 for food and beverages. Thousands more were spent on flowers, tent set-ups and other rentals, the cable bill, invitations and unspecified "services."

That spending tops more than $810,000 in all since Perry took office in 2001.

"These are non-taxpayer dollars that go for entertaining and various costs that a governor's residence would have," said Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner. "These are the same policies that were implemented for numerous governors before Rick Perry."

Perry's aides add the governor, who has made officeholder transparency a signature issue of his 2010 campaign, has fully complied with ethics and transparency laws that govern such spending.

But Perry's state disclosure reports describe the $810,000 directed to the "Mansion Fund" generically as "Mansion Expenditures," despite state requirements that recipients of political dollars be listed by name along with a description of the goods or services they provide.

"It's a fact question on a case by case basis to determine whether the actual payee has been disclosed," said Tim Sorrells, the deputy general counsel at the Texas Ethics Commission.

Sorrells stressed that he could not specifically speak about Perry's report. But ethics watchdog Fred Lewis, an Austin lawyer and activist who for years has urged the Legislature to tighten political disclosure rules, said Perry's reports may not comply with the law.

"When you do not describe who the payee is, and do not describe what the services or goods are, it's impossible for anybody to know whether the expenditures comply with the law or whether it is an expenditure for something that the public would like or dislike," Lewis said.

The Mama Test

2010-05-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

I got this from a female friend.  Feel free to borrow it.

THE MAMA TEST



I was out walking with my 4-year-old daughter. She picked up something off 

of the ground and started to put it in her mouth. I took the item away 

from her and I asked her not to do that.  'Why?' my daughter asked. 

 'Because it's been on the ground; You don't know where it's been, it's 

dirty and probably has germs,' I replied.  At this point, my daughter 

looked at me with total admiration and asked, 'Mama, how do you know all 

this stuff? you are so smart.'  I was thinking quickly and replied, 'All 

moms know this stuff..... It's on the Mama Test. You have to know it, or 

they don't let you be a Mama.'



We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes, But she was evidently 

pondering this new information.  'Oh.....I get it!' she beamed, 'So if you 

don't pass the test you have to be the dad.'  'Exactly,' I replied with a 

big smile on my face.

The Sad Ending of a St. Louis Tradition

2010-05-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

In the next few days, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, one of the great institutions of St. Louis will cease to exist. I speak of our award winning classical music radio station, KFUO. Since 1948, KFUO has broadcast its 100,000 watt signal filled with wonderful sounds of classical music throughout the St. Louis area. It has won many awards and is among the highest rated classical music radio stations in the nation.

However, its ownership, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, decided it was loosing money on the station and decided to sell it a couple of years ago. When the news came out, a group of listeners decided to put up the money to buy the station from its owners. However, the church was determined to adhere to its political and religious agenda rather than the loyalty of the listeners who had supported the station for years. It negotiated a deal with an organization called Joy FM which ALREADY owns and operates TWO stations in the area, broadcasting a so-called "Contemporary Christian" format to purchase the station. The deal may end up breaking the Lutheran Church here, but at least they had their way.

Local leaders petitioned the FCC contending that the deal or the transfer was not open to competitive bidding or taking the public good into account. However, the FCC apparently was not listening and the transfer was approved on or about May 7th. So, within a week, the station will be transferred and will cease broadcasting.its present format and broadcast its new format. The institutions which broadcast on KFUO, such as the St. Louis Symphony and local High School and College Symphony Orchestras, will have to look elsewhere in order to have their music go out to the public.

Again, the fundies have removed another symbol of art in their inane pursuit of spreading the Gospel.

I don;t know whether to be disgusted or just plain angry.

2010-05-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=201365

Our local NBC affiliate has revealed that the Catholic Church has a center where it "treats" its pedophile priests. Especially heinous offenders are sent to the center for "rehabilitation." A former employer of the center, which is much like a summer camp where the priests are left free to roam, contacted the station after she became disgusted with what the priests there were doing. Some have access to pornography. There is no real supervision.

I have real problems with this. Why is the Catholic Church treated differently from any other organization in the world? If someone did the things that some of these priests are accused of, especially in a church, they would be arrested and incarcerated at a REAL jail to be molested by REAL inmates skilled in such matters.

I invite you to watch the report at the link above and form your own opinion. My respect for the Catholic Church diminishes by the day, especially with every revelation of the actions of its leadership in covering up the actions of its clergy.

Recent updates on life

2010-05-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my ham radio installation in my vehicle. The installation of the Yaesu FT-1802M was accomplished by several things. Not only including inventiveness, some shade tree "mechanicin" and a little blood, sweat and tears. This picture to the left shows the antenna installation I opted to do. Rather than break the factory seal on the sunroof, which would probably have resulted in a lot of headaches, roof distortion, hands sticky with silicone sealant and a leaky roof, I decided to compromise and put it through the door I use the least, the passenger side.

As an aside, on Saturday the 24rd I was awoken by my weather radio blaring an alarm about a severe Thunderstorm warning and a tornado warning for my area. As a volunteer storm spotter I leapt into action getting out in truck to start spotting and hopefully make a phone call if there was a storm. The radio hadn't been installed yet so I was armed with the cell phone with a number to the Skywarn office we have at the County EOC.

I opened my door to a yellow sky which isn't a good sign. So I watched the storm clouds gather and sure enough, it started to rain. Only this wasn't an ordinary rain, no, by all means. I think the technical term is GULLY WASHER. Like being in a car wash, except all that is being washed is also possible in the process of being blown away by the high winds being driven by the rain and vice versa. I watch to my right as my neighbors lawn furniture and radio (probably now useless due to its being drenched) start to take flight in the wind.

It was then that I started to notice my roof was leaking. One of the connector points to the sunroof hatch was leaking by drips. Not too bad, but then I didn't want to be wet. I began a search for something to staunch the flow and found a napkin that quickly became saturated. I couldn't see a thing due to the intensity of the rain and wind so I was not very useful at that point as a storm spotter.

I heard someone on the scanner report that someone to the west had seen a funnel cloud over St. Clair Hospital, which is the new one built just to the North west of where I live near Hwy 141 and Interstate 44. So I just have to hope it isn't heading for me. Then the funnel touched down briefly at a spot east of the West County Center Mall. Fortunately it didn't hit a mall crowded with shoppers. It damaged several homes in that area and lifted off heading for Illinois to cause more damage. Another tornado struck Overland, MO ripping apart a storage facility with one spotter reporting shopping carts and items of clothing, appliances and other articles raining from the heavens.

The most amazing thing I was to behold was on the television. KSDK apparently decided that coverage of the Chicago Blackhawks/Nashville Predators Hockey game was far more important than the fact that the city was being pummeled by tornadoes. Usually KTVI, the Fox affiliate is the one I like to watch for emergency weather info because they have a couple of professional Met guys on staff. Chris Higgins is in the Air Force Reserve and spent a year deployed to Iraq, being a lead forcaster in the Air Force office for Central Command. KMOV is usually the more panicky people but have lots of reporters and such out looking for nice pictures. Our ABC affiliate is owned by a large eastern conglomerate and has decided that we need no local news and continued to broadcast the ABC network stream or infomercials it always does.

After this event I began to tell myself I need to get myself set for the need to modify my vehicle. However, I was much too drained to do it over the weekend I encountered another wave of storms the weekend of the 30th. Tornadoes danced all around me but no damage here. I did take my Mom and myself to Shop and Save since it was a better shelter than my trailer.

Now back to the subject at hand. I finished the installation yesterday and so far it has held up and I am proud of myself The picture at the top shows my antenna installation which is a magnetic mount with plastic clips holding my antenna wire. The clips are held on with double sided foam stickey which is the same kind of installation we use for our safety lights on the vehicles at work.

Here is the installation at the rear of the vehicle for the antenna proper. You can't see any sticky clips here because they are behind the roof rack.

Now here is the dashboard installation. I got me a ashtray holder from a similar vehicle and used that for my under dash installation. I screwed the bracket for the radio to the spare and then reinstalled it in the conventional location back under the dash. I then installed the radio which is underneath the car CD player above. It is for the moment powered by a cigarette lighter socket connected to the power cable supplied by the manufacturer.

The future of the installation is shown here. This is the ashtray that came with the bracket I stripped from the salvage car. What I will do is cut off the front end of it to place in the bracket to cover the screws. It will look like the ashtray. I may also put the three socket strip I am going to use in the future in that area and that will be used to power cell phone, laptop and other items I need to power.

Now I am set up for my future storm spotting. I need to have the spark plugs swapped out with resister spark plugs to kill the interference from the engine on the radio like Jade has advised.me to do.

Next project? Installing a new rear window with a windshield wiper on the back. Stay tuned.

The Bankers Manifesto of 1892 or could it be 2010

2010-05-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

The Bankers Manifesto of 1892

The Father and his more famous son.

Revealed by US Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, SR from Minnesota before the US Congress sometime during his term of office between the years of 1907 and 1917 to warn the citizens.

"We (the bankers) must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.

The Farmers Alliance and Knights of Labor organizations in the United States should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.

At the coming Omaha Convention to be held July 4th (1892), our men must attend and direct its movement, or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome. This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination (conspiracy) and legislation.

The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.

When through the process of the law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders.

History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.

The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.

By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expand their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete action, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished."

Greg Palast - Slick Operator - The BP I have known so well

2010-05-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well

Wednesday 05 May 2010

by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).

That's important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.

What's so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.

That's because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.

To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called a "boom." Quickly surround a spill, leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers, or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple.

But there's one thing about the rubber skirts: you've got to have lots of them at the ready, with crews on standby in helicopters and on containment barges ready to roll. They have to be in place round the clock, all the time, just like a fire department, even when all is operating A-O.K. Because rapid response is the key. In Alaska, that was BP's job, as principal owner of the pipeline consortium Alyeska. It is, as well, BP's job in the Gulf, as principal lessee of the deepwater oil concession.

Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP's Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.

But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.

As a result, the oil from the Exxon Valdez, which could have and should have been contained around the ship, spread out in a sludge tide that wrecked 1,200 miles of shoreline.

And here we go again. Valdez goes Cajun.

BP's CEO Tony Hayward reportedly asked, "What the hell did we do to deserve this?"

It's what you didn't do, Mr. Hayward. Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP?

Last year, CEO Hayward boasted that, despite increased oil production in exotic deep waters, he had cut BP's costs by an extra one billion dollars a year. Now we know how he did it.

As chance would have it, I was meeting last week with Louisiana lawyer Daniel Becnel Jr. when word came in of the platform explosion. Daniel represents oil workers on those platforms; now, he'll represent their bereaved families. The Coast Guard called him. They had found the emergency evacuation capsule floating in the sea and were afraid to open it and disturb the cooked bodies.

I wonder if BP painted the capsule green, like they paint their gas stations.

Becnel, yesterday by phone from his office from the town of Reserve, Louisiana, said the spill response crews were told they weren't needed because the company had already sealed the well. Like everything else from BP mouthpieces, it was a lie.

In the end, this is bigger than BP and its policy of cheaping out and skiving the rules. This is about the anti-regulatory mania, which has infected the American body politic. While the tea baggers are simply its extreme expression, US politicians of all stripes love to attack "the little bureaucrat with the fat rule book." It began with Ronald Reagan and was promoted, most vociferously, by Bill Clinton and the head of Clinton's deregulation committee, one Al Gore.

Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.

Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"

The answer is because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn't needed.

You should meet some of these little bureaucrats with the fat rule books. Like Dan Lawn, the inspector from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, who warned and warned and warned, before the Exxon Valdez grounding, that BP and Alyeska were courting disaster in their arrogant disregard of the rule book. In 2006, I printed his latest warnings about BP's culture of negligence. When the choice is between Lawn's rule book and a bag of tea, Lawn's my man.

This just in: Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews, who, therefore, poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So, it blew.

Why didn't Halliburton check? "Gross negligence on everyone's part," said Becnel. Negligence driven by penny-pinching, bottom-line squeezing. BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here, man on the platform or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Greg Palast has investigated the illegal disenfranchisement of voters for BBC Television, "Rolling Stone" (with Robert Kennedy Jr.), "Harper's," "The Nation" and Truthout.org. Palast co-authored the investigative comic book, "Steal Back Your Vote" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., available in full-color print or for download at www.StealBackYourVote.com for a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.

Politics has come full circle

2010-05-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

We have come back to the beginning of our political struggle. In the early late 1800's and early 1900's, we lived in a world vastly different from today. People lived in squalid tenements. they worked 12 hours a day in factories often times with their children with them for pennies. The working conditions were horrendous. Machines were unsafe often maiming or killing their operators. They were machines that would not be stopped because those in charge did not want to loose money to down production time. Workers were treated like expendable property. Robber barons played Monopoly with real buildings, real cities, real railroads and real people. They controlled the political process through intimidation, graft, thuggery and other despicable acts.

The few progressives started a battle to gain rights for workers and the people so they would no longer be treated as wage slaves and property to be used up at a bosses whim. They stopped work and took on the strike breaking thugs employed by business owners. They gave us gifts we take for granted today. Break time, Lunch time, the Eight Hour day, the weekend and vacations are things we have thanks to those few who fought those battles so that we might enjoy freedom to be people and not endure the constant drudgery of work. The populist progressives battled the trusts, the affluent, the political elite, the Klan and its minions, and the robber barons. All of these disparate battles combined and resulted in a nation that won the Second World War, gave us the greatest standard of living we ever had, landed on the moon, and gave us a generation of statesmen who accomplished much.

Something changed in the 1980's. We elected a president who said that government was the problem and that business was too shackled by onerous regulation which limited the ability to gather wealth and power. We were told that we needed to change things to give us wealth. We forgot the lessons of that greatest generation, and now we have had the rise of abject poverty, the greed of the corporate capitalists, and a nation falling apart at the seams. The conservatives dismantled the regulatory framework which kept the greedy in check, and resulted in a generation of greed. The result of which has created the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression.

Now politics has come full circle. Most of the populist progressivism which resulted in the nation we had up to the Reagan era (which created the politics we live in today) happened in the early 20th Century. That world of progress was dismantled and now the world is a bastardized mess of greed and avarice. The rich and the powerful roam at will in our halls of power and dictate policies which affect the lives of millions. They exploit the people, lie, cheat and steal with impunity and are rewarded with riches. We live in this world of our creation and ignore it at our own peril.

We now have to again fight those battles since we forgot those lessons. We need to rise up and take back what is ours, our rights to be free of greed and those who would exploit us in the blind pursuit of wealth. Our world can be bright again. We can enjoy freedom from poverty again. We only have to have the courage to change the world we live in.

One reason I am against Concealed Carry Laws

2010-05-05T13:15:00.000-07:00

May 5, 2:37 PM EDT

Woman's gun stolen after leaving it in restroom

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- A 24-year-old Juneau woman went into a public restroom packing heat and left burned. The Juneau Police Department reports Veronica Valle-Arnes was carrying a Ruger .380 - a small pocket pistol - worth about $400 with her Friday night.

She told police she took the gun out of her waistband and set it on top of a toilet paper dispenser in the women's room at the Fisherman's Wharf, a building on Juneau's downtown waterfront with a bar, eateries and shops.

She told police she forgot to pick it back up. When she realized it was missing a few moments later, she returned to the restroom but the gun was gone.

Fox News, Nazis and the Tea Party

2010-05-01T02:16:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting article I encountered this morning. Apparently, any attempt to connect the Tea Party to its similarity to the Nazi movement of the 1930's is sacrosanct. The very fact that Tea Party protesters keep calling the President a "Nazi" and a "Fascist" shows no real understanding of the true meaning of the terms. Several definitions are available for these terms and the previous administration was well on the road to fulfilling the true definitions of the terms mentioned above.

AlterNet / By Chip Berlet

I Was the Target of a Fox News Hoax

When I was asked to address a conference at Brandeis, a right-wing shock jock created a hoax to stir up the right. Then Glenn Beck ran with it.

April 30, 2010 |

Photo Credit: NewsCorpse.com

The story surfaces nationally with a surreal Glenn Beck segment and two ludicrous Fox News discussions highlighting the false claim that Brandeis University was hosting an international conference linking the Tea Party movement to Nazis in Europe. The conference, which took place yesterday, revealed the entire propaganda campaign was a hoax, but not before anguished Holocaust survivors, conservative Jews in the Tea Party movement, and others had deluged Brandeis University with complaints.

Now it seems that the story emerged as part of a Fox News campaign to defend the diverse and complicated Tea Party movement from evidence that its supporters include a significant contingent of White people who harbor racial resentment against Blacks and Latinos/Latinas.

For the original Brandeis story on Fox News reporters relied on the claims of a single local Boston Tea Party advocate and conservative talk radio shock jock, Michael Graham, for its information. So Fox News featured the offensive hoax based on biased hearsay, unsubstantiated supposition, and a misreading of the conference program by a person who is a Tea Party supporter

The Glenn Beck segment drifted farther away from facts and logic.
Glenn Beck segment:
3:20 Brandeis conference denounced
6:00 Beck tells viewers to contact Brandeis

As Media Matters for America observed, apparently the most significant aspect of the story for Beck was that the university was named after the late Jewish scholar and Supreme Court justice, Louis D. Brandeis. F or Beck, wrote a Media Matters researcher, the "Brandeis University symposium on political extremism is suspect because Louis Brandeis was in [Woodrow] Wilson's cabinet;" the quip accompanies a link to that portion of Beck's tirade which skirted on the thin ice of classic antisemitic conspiracy claims about manipulation of politics by powerful elite Jews.

Since I was a conference participant, and part of the hoax was based on the title of my paper, "From Tea Parties to Armed Militias," I am writing this from a personal perspective. And am I pissed off? You betcha!

Unlike Fox News and the right-wing blogosphere, some people actually contacted me before the conference and fact-checked the claims. Not Graham, who wrote an op-ed in the Boston Herald repeating his false claims.

My conference paper, which clearly stated that I did not think that Tea Party activists were Nazis, was presented at an interdisciplinary conference coordinated by the Brandeis Center for German and European Studies. The conference title was "New Right-Wing Radicalism: A Transatlantic Perspective." A range of scholars with demonstrable expertise on the subject from Europe and United States were invited.

When Brandeis realized the conference program was being misinterpreted, it issued the following statement:

On April 28, the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis University is hosting a conference on the rise of right-wing radicalism.
The event, which features speakers from a variety of universities and institutions, focuses on developments in Europe, including the rise of neo-Nazi and anti-semitic groups. It also includes discussion of a wide range of movements and activities in the United States, from the extreme and violent to the Tea Party, as a point of comparison.

The logo created for the conference showed a swastika inside the international symbol of negation, reflecting the legitimate concern people feel over the activities, often violent, of neo-Nazi extremists.

Unfortunately, this logo created an impression that Brandeis and the conference organizers equated a range of organizations, including the Tea Party in the United States, with extremist groups on both continents.

That was not the intention of the faculty, staff or students of the University who were involved in creating the conference, and Brandeis regrets the unintended association and pain this caused. The logo has been removed from the event page promoting the conference

So Brandeis understood that the agony for Holocaust survivors caused by the hoax media claims required a revised graphic and an apology. Good for Brandeis. No apologies yet from Fox News for not bothering to fact-check the allegations before misrepresenting the Brandeis program on national television and spawning a storm of controversy on the right-wing side of the Internet.

After the conference Fox News continued to beat the dead horse droppings of their manufactured story. They featured Graham, who is publicizing himself by contacting other conservative outlets such as Accuracy in Media and highlighting his role in publicizing what he calls a scandal and I call a hoax.

Fox News is using the Brandeis controversy to insulate the Tea Parties from increasing media coverage of racism and xenophobia within the movement. I reviewed the racial bias in the Tea Parties in my Brandeis presentation yesterday.

On their first story about the Brandeis conference Fox News sandbagged NPR commentator Juan Williams who was asked to comment on the charge that the Tea Party activists were Nazis. Not surprisingly Williams thought the charge was outlandish. It is. It is also a hoax. Williams should be more alert to the idea that Fox News would exploit William's skin color as a way to dismiss increasing evidence of racial bias in the movement.

Victor Goode on RaceWire, the Colorlines Blog, summarized a New York Times poll that "shows that while their most important concern is the economy, they often view this issue through the lens of racially tinted glasses."

The University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality has released a study that shows the "tea party is not just about politics and size of government. The data suggests it may also be about race" study author Christopher Parker, explained. The study asked questions about the trustworthiness and intelligence of Black and Latino/Latina people in the United States, and showed that Tea Party supporters are significantly more prone to prejudice, than those who oppose the movement.

According to a University press release:

Indeed, strong support for the tea party movement results in a 45 percent decline in support for health care reform compared with those who oppose the tea party. "While it's clear that the tea party in one sense is about limited government, it's also clear from the data that people who want limited government don't want certain services for certain kinds of people. Those services include health care,"Parker said.

Some defenders of the Tea Parties go so far as to claim the movement is not on the political right at all. David A Graham on the Newsweek Web site has put together a photo essay depicting similar historic conservative movements. According to Graham, "the United States has a long tradition of reactionary, conservative, populist movements, dating back to before the Civil War. Many of them included racial or ethnic prejudice and hostility toward immigrants.

The second Fox News program on the Brandeis affair, after the conference, attempted to divert attention away from the potential anti-immigrant trends in the Tea Parties. One recent Tea Party event featured anti-immigrant Machiavellian mastermind Tom Tancredo--a notorious bigot and racist. The former Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo told a Tea Party rally in South Carolina that Obama should be sent back to Africa.

One of the core themes of Beck and Fox News is that fascism is a left-wing movement. The subject came up at the Brandeis conference, and one of the German scholars observed that while it was undeniably true that national socialists led by Gregor Strasser played an important role in the Nazi Party, the 1934 R�hm-Putsch (aka the Night of the Long Knives), terminated the revolutionary socialist agenda of the Nazi Party. He said, however, it was generally accepted that German Nazism was a right-wing movement.

I was part of a group of scholars asked by the History News Network to review Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism, and all of us thought the claims and analysis in the book were unsubstantiated, and contradicted the majority scholarship.

The discussion of the role of angry middle-class right-wing populist movements intersecting with opportunistic politicians and media demagogues to facilitate the formation of fascist and neo fascist movements is well studied in scholarly literature. But hyperbolic claims from the political Left that the Tea Party movement itself is a Nazi movement flow from deeply inaccurate and superficial perceptions about the nature of fascism and the actual attitudes within the Tea Party movement.

There is, however, a set of dynamics that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "Rage on the Right," that involves the Patriot Movement, the Militias, Anti-immigrant groups, and the Ultra Right including neonazis.

In recent months a number of progressive scholars and journalists have opened up a discussion about these dynamics, most recently Noam Chomsky, but preceded by Sara Robinson, David Neiwert, author of The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.

This is not the same as denouncing the Tea Party movement as Nazis. It is a comparative analysis of the role of right-wing populist movements in Germany during the Weimar regime, and the role they played in the decision of elite faction in Germany to give power to Hitler to solve the "crisis;" but also to block the growing power of socialist and communist parties and movements.

That's not the situation in the U.S. today. The Tea Party movement is not on the verge of joining the tiny "groupuscule" of neonazis in our country. It is far more likely they will pull the Republican Party further to the right -- chased by the Democrats led by deluded spin doctors who apparently control what passes for Democratic Party strategy built around snidely deriding the Tea Party activists as ignorant and lunatic "wing-nuts."

Of course like all populist social movements on the right or left, the Tea Party could collapse in a few months, or merge into a revitalized Republican Party, or splinter into segments built around libertarianism, xenophobic anti-immigrant activism, Gun Rights, anti-Muslim fears, and the Christian Right gender-drive social agenda of pushing gay people back into the closet and forcing women into back alleys for abortions. Nobody knows for sure.

Shock Jock Graham apparently missed the parts of my presentation dealing with why a comparative analysis of how the Tea Party, Town Hall, and Militia movements interact in a dynamic way with the Republican Party on one side and organized insurgent ultra-right movements on the other side. He might have picked up one of the diagrams I distributed at the conference, but if so, he apparently missed the point. (this version is from 2009, as it shows how long I have used this analytical lens mentioning the reformist and dissident Tea Party movement as situated between the reformist Conservative Right and the Insurgent Ultra Right including neonazis.

I have also explained the dynamic of how angry right-wing populism can lead to aggression and violence, especially against people of color and immigrants, on Religion Dispatches, and in the Progressive magazine in a February cover story titled Taking Tea Partiers Seriously."

Since Graham apparently has not bothered to actually read any of my work, or else he simply ignores its content. So here is the text from the end of my Brandeis conference paper:

...Fascism exploits anger and frustration and directs it into demonization and scapegoating; creating a potential for aggression and violence that in the worst case scenario can end in genocide.

The work of Fritzsche and others on voting patterns in Weimar Germany demonstrates that in the late 1920s Hitler's Nazi Party was able to exploit the fears of exasperated middle class voters by promising to fix a broken economic and political system.

After the First World War Yeats wrote in his poem "The Second Coming" :
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Most right-wing populist movements never become fascist, and most fascist movements never gain state power; but the turmoil created in these volatile periods can undermine civil society, and harm the individuals targeted as scapegoats.

Even if you think my presentation is hogwash, please understand that no one at Brandeis and no panelist here today, including me, ever meant to suggest that the Tea Party movement was the equivalent of the Nazi Party. We all thought that was obvious.

A simple Internet search would have demonstrated that I have repeatedly condemned the trivialization, mockery, and name-calling aimed at the participants in the Tea Party movement.

For media demagogues to exploit the agony of the Holocaust for political gain and to attract personal attention is offensive to this audience, the Brandeis community, Jews around the world, and every decent person on this planet.

You may disagree with everything I said here today, but know that the point of conferences like this is to ensure we have learned the horrible lessons of the Nazi genocide, and continuously explore it from a variety of perspectives. And I hope all of us here today can agree on one point... Never Again!

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

This post is my personal rant (see, for example going Santelli) . It does not in any way represent the views of my employer, my freelance editors, or the many subversive pinko human rights groups to which I belong or support as a board member or advisor.

More on right-wing populism is here

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, is editor of the book, Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash (South End Press).

Apparently Fred Phelps and his "followers" don't like the tables turned on them

2010-04-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

Apr 26, 1:03 PM EDT

Veterans' group pickets Phelpses, Westboro Baptist

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- A Topeka church that has gained notoriety in recent years for picketing the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers was itself picketed after turning a group of veterans and their families away from its noon worship service.

Veteran Jerry Bacidore and 15 supporters traveled to Topeka from across Illinois to attend a service at the Westboro Baptist Church on Sunday.

They had planned to stand at the back of the church dressed in black, silently representing soldiers who have been killed, Bacidore said in a letter published last week in The Topeka Capital-Journal.

At the last minute, church officials told the veterans' group that they were not welcome to attend, so the group from Illinois picketed nearby.

Westboro members - most of whom are related to church patriarch Fred Phelps Sr. - are best known for protesting at military funerals to express the belief that U.S. troop deaths are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

Laura Cordell of Peoria, Ill., said in comments published in the newspaper Monday that the group had contacted Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, by phone and e-mail informing her that they would be attending a service, and she welcomed them. Phelps-Roper confirmed Sunday that she had given Bacidore permission to attend.

"Anyone is welcome to sit in the pew and listen," Phelps-Roper wrote in an e-mail to Bacidore. "Anyone is free and within the bounds of the law to protest out on a public right of way."

Group members arrived in Topeka at 5 a.m., ate breakfast, changed into their church clothes and gathered in front of the church at 11 a.m. That's when they were turned away.

"We were told that the public service had been canceled, and that they had a private service that we were not allowed to enter," Bacidore told the Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star.

Although her church churns out hundreds of e-mails telling media outlets, including The Associated Press, where Westboro members will be protesting, Phelps-Roper objected to Bacidore's letter to the newspaper. She said it showed the group's "contempt for the church's religious service."

"When you come into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, you sit in the pews. You're not welcome to make a scene," she said.

She said the time of the Sunday service was changed to accommodate members who had to leave for Virginia to picket a memorial service for 29 people who died in a coal mining accident.

Phelps-Roper said she advises all visitors to call her cell phone to verify times because the group's picketing schedule can affect when services are conducted.

The Illinois veterans' group assembled at a nearby intersection, where members waved American flags and held up large signs with patriotic slogans such as "We defended freedom, let our fallen rest in peace." Several drivers honked in support.

"They impose themselves on sacred events, such as funerals, but when you come to them, they rear their ugly head," Cordell said. "They are playing games. It's obvious they are not a church. We hate to call them a church, and we want to strip them of that title."

Cordell and Bacidore are trying to organize a Topeka group and will try to attend a future service.

"It's obvious they are trying to ignore us," Cordell said.

For my computer firends who may not be with us

2010-04-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

If you have McAfee as your antivirus program you are most likely not with us.... McAfee's update today (21 April) introduced a Windows error by misidentifying a legitimate Windows file as a virus. It triggered an ongoing reboot cycle which shut down systems all over the world. It closed hospitals in Rhode Island, paralyzed Law enforcement in Kentucky, and the National Science Foundation (!) lost computer access among other things, Intel was also affected.

While McAfee is attempting to put out an update that will not have the suspect files, the damage is already done. I will definitely not be putting McAfee on any systems I own anymore. Its standard on Acer systems, and I had an Acer for a while. The damage to their reputation is likely to be long lasting.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36694120/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/?GT1=43001

The Latest Trend - Unschooling

2010-04-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

The Unschooling Movement: School's Out ... Forever

by Tom Henderson (Subscribe to Tom Henderson's posts) Apr 19th 2010 3:42PM

If she is lucky -- very lucky -- Michele Darr-Babson can get from one end of a sentence to the other uninterrupted.

Mornings in her Salem, Ore., home are slightly, shall we say, chaotic.

"We're able to give our children ... Louis! Don't stand on that!" she tells ParentDish (and Louis).

What Darr-Babson is trying to say is that unschooling -- a movement where children get no education and basically teach themselves what they need to know -- gives kids more choices. Apparently, the choice for Louis to stand on whatever "that" is, is not one of them.

Darr-Babson has 10 children in her blended family. She used to unschool most of them, and it's a good idea, she says. In theory, at least. Most of her children are in traditional school these days. That's because attending school was one of the choices they were free to make. Darr-Babson's ex-partner didn't share her enthusiasm for homeschooling.

But when unschooling works, Darr-Babson tells ParentDish, it can work magnificently.

"It enables children to focus what they're interested in," she says.

A growing number of parents are unschooling their children. ABC News reports there are 56 million American children in traditional schools, with another 1.5 million being homeschooled.

Of those, according to the network, about 10 percent are unschooled.

Unschooling is not homeschooling. In homeschooling, children receive structure, discipline and curriculum.

Darr-Babson explains that unschooling has no rules. It is all organic.

"It really promotes how learning is accomplishing in real life -- through experience," she tells ParentDish.

Her two oldest children, ages 18 and 20, are in Egypt. "Now that's a learning experience," she says.

But does visiting the Sphinx teach a person algebra?

Children can take care of that on their own, unschooling parent Christine Yablonski of Massachusetts tells ABC News.

"If they need formal algebra understanding, they will find that information," she tells the network.

She knows her kids will do what they need to do, she adds.

"They might watch television. They might play games on the computers. The key there is you have to trust your kids to find their own interests," she tells ABC News.

It doesn't bother her, for example, that her 15-year-old daughter Kimi Biegler stays up all night.

"She's getting everything done that she wants to get done," she tells the network.

What about Kimi? Does she feel prepared for college?

"No, not really," she tells ABC News. "I haven't done the traditional look at a textbook and learn about such and such."

When such and such becomes important, she adds, she'll study it.

"If I wanted to to go college, then I would pick up a textbook and I would learn," she tells the network.

According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, there are no laws regarding homeschooling or unschooling in Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Connecticut or New Jersey.

All you have to do in those states is notify the school district that your child won't be attending classes. There is no testing or other requirements.

The rest of the states vary in the amount of notification parents must give and how much student testing is required. Colleges can set their own requirements for the admission of homeschooled and unschooled students.

"We find that we don't need a whole lot of rules," Kimi's father, Phil Biegler, tells ABC. "They will do what they need to do whether or not they enjoy it because they see the purpose in it."

Ann Pleshette Murphy, the former editor of Parents magazine and the current parenting expert on ABC's "Good Morning America," is doubtful.

"This to me is putting way too much power in the hands of the kids -- something that we know kids actually can often find very anxiety producing," she tells ABC News.

"And it's also sending a message that they're the center of the universe, which I do not think is healthy for children."

Internet Addiction

2010-04-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

First there was the man in Joplin, MO who shot up his house over loosing cable. Now comes THIS:

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Man stabs five of his kin, torches house, after Net access row

NAGOYA (Kyodo) A 30-year-old man was arrested Saturday on suspicion of stabbing five members of his family, killing two, at a house in Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, and setting the building on fire.

Takayuki Iwase is suspected of stabbing his father, Kazumi, 58, around 2:15 a.m. Saturday while he was sleeping in a bedroom, the police said. He was later confirmed dead.

Tomomi Kanemaru, the 1-year-old daughter of Iwase's younger brother, Fumihiko, was also confirmed dead.

Iwase, who is unemployed, was taken into custody at a funeral hall near the house after admitting that he stabbed the five with a kitchen knife and set fire to the house, the police said.

Iwase reportedly told police under questioning that he was angry that his account with an Internet service provider had been canceled by his father.

After receiving an emergency call from a neighbor at around 2:25 a.m., the police arrived and found the house on fire and the five family members inside with stab wounds. Police are treating the investigation as a murder case.

British Airways Flight 9

2010-04-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

If you find yourself wondering why the whole of Europe is shut down to air travel, take a look at this. Now this video has 5 parts and has a little bit of sitting so If you want to watch it and find out I'll post the spoilers after..

What happened is on 24 June 1982, British Airways Flight 9, a 747 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, Australia had all four engines fail in flight. At the time, the results of an aircraft flying into a volcanic ash cloud was unknown. Flying through the cloud resulted in the abrasive ash clouding the windshield and abrading the surface of the aircraft. It occurred in the dead of night and a fire sheen of St. Elmo's Fire clung to the aircraft. It affected the instruments by clogging the pitot tubes and giving false speed readings. However, the most significant affect was the failure of the engines.

Volcanic ash is a fine dust made up of sandy particles. Sucked into the huge, air-thirsty engines, the ash is then heated by the 3000 degree heat and melted to the fan blades of the engine. The engine cannot function properly with the glass melted to the turbine blades and consequently they shut down.

After falling about 15000 feet in a gentle glide, the aircraft fell below the ash cloud layer. The ash accumulated cooled and broke off the fan blades. By this time the crew had desperately attempted to restart the engines multiple times. Below the ash layer, their attempts were successful and the aircraft diverted to Jakarta in Indonesia.

After this there was another incident in 1989 when a KLM flight was not notified about the eruption of Mount Redoubt and flew into an ash cloud over Alaska. Like this incident, the aircraft successfully landed.

The Biggest Loser

2010-04-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight I had a dinner which my Mom partially burned. Enough was salvagable that I had a decent meal. I am sitting at the computer downloading Space Shuttle videos from Europe. Then I am looking forward to a night at work with who knows what kooks at the Theatre. A few weeks ago some nuts jumped the counter and stole a couple of bags of chips. They were arrested for shoplifting after the cops searched for them an hour or so. (Not much going on that night so they were able to look for these dudes). So don't go thinkin you have it bad... ;-)

The reason my Mom burned dinner was she was watching "The Biggest Looser" on NBC.. But I digress..

No ham radio this week

2010-04-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I got my sleep goofed up so I couldn't do the ham radio. Most of my wake time was night and then I fooled around on the computer too much. But I did get out and about. I spent most of yesterday at the salvage yard wandering among the the graveyard looking for trucks like mine. I wanted to get me another ashtray so I can install the ham radio bracket on that. I also found a two plug power outlet in a newer car, so my strategy has changed.

Rather than trying to tap into the fuse cluster for the power outlet and then tapping into the cigarette lighter for the power for the ham radio I am going to just put the two outlet plug down close to the 4x4 shift, then tap that into the cigarette lighter. Then I can power the Ham radio with a cigarette lighter adapter, then have another outlet for my phone, computer or other item to charge. I bought an inline fuse for that line so it will have double fuses which I suppose will be good for fire prevention.

My situation for the rear windshield wiper may have changed. I was thinking about putting in a new window from another salvage vehicle with a windshield wiper installed. Then I could have a windshield wiper on the back. I can put the wires along the side and through the pillars. However, I looked back there and the mounting may be different for one with a motor verses one without. I'll have to look next couple of weeks if and when I spend the $75 for the window class.

Meanwhile I have the parts, wires, fuses and the sealant for the moon roof. That way I can get the antenna wire through without drilling a hole through the roof or have a wire dangling from the door.I have a conduit to put the antenna through to keep it from getting in the way of my legs and now I just thought I have to get something to hold the antenna wire down on the roof of the car. I can use those as well to hold the wires on the underside of the dash like we have for our truck installations at work. They hold up rather well and have put up with hail, rain washing and the like. I know about washing because I wash the trucks and I am pretty vigorous about that.

Well, there is always next week and I will have a good truck. Then the week after that, I'll tackle the rear windshield wiper if its possible. I'll keep you updated.

Twitter Question

2010-04-15T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was asked today about something via e-mail and I thought I'd share my response:

--- On Thu, 4/15/10, G wrote:

From: G
Subject: Twitter question
To: Stephen
Date: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 2:57 PM

Stephen,
Explain to me something about Twitter.

Here is something I saw:

BrentSpiner

RT @# * Reply * Retweet # Shawn Lewis salact81 @BrentSpiner I love you!!!! --Thank you, Shawn. You are very wise for your age.

What does the "@" sign indicate.

G.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Stephen Koehler wrote:

Very good question. I would ask a friendly teenager. Taking a stab I would assume @ stands for 'AT". However, I might be wrong and the whole meaning is something else entirely. I am getting to the point that texting is a whole other language and translators will soon have to be employed to sort out the gibberish.

Unfortunately I do not use Twitter that much. Well, really I see no real use for it and I log on only once in a blue moon. I have too many online accounts as it is and its getting to the point of information overload.

This whole exchange sounds like that kind of shorthand that texters use and this whole thing about keeping it under 150 characters really limits it in my opinion. It looks like some have made use of it though and God bless em. Call me a Luddite, but I have only relatively recently started using the text function on my cell phone. I am the idiot you seeing typing whole words on texts and thus using all 150 characters.

Sorry I couldn't help, and I probably could have been a little less verbose, but I am bored at the moment and this is a wonderful day off. I hope you get out and hike and see the sun if its there.

Stephen

I miss the day when it was just us technogeeks on the computer and we could understand each other.....

Maybe someone out there has a translation?

The Cardiologist's Funeral.

2010-04-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Cardiologist's Funeral:

A very prestigious cardiologist died, and was given a very elaborate funeral by the hospital he worked for most of his life... A huge heart... covered in flowers stood behind the casket during the service as all the doctors from the hospital sat in awe. Following the eulogy, the heart opened, and the casket was rolled inside.The heart then closed, sealing the doctor in the beautiful heart forever.

At that point, one of the mourners burst into laughter. When all eyes
stared at him, he said, 'I am so sorry, I was just thinking of my own
funeral... I'm a gynecologist.'

The proctologist fainted!!

Among the Righteous

2010-04-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

After Robert Satloff saw the Twin Towers fall in 2001, he was transferred with his wife to Morocco. He then made it his mission in life to find a Righteous Arab. There is a memorial in Israel to Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust. But among the thousands of names there is not one Arab. Robert Satloff set out to find one and maybe more. His journey took him through the former Jewish communities through out North Africa. In Tunisia which was occupied for many years by the Nazis he found several stories. In Morocco, he found the king who said that if they put stars of David on the Jews of Morocco, then they should make more for every citizen of the country.

The hope of his mission is that if he finds righteous Arabs and their names are on that Holocaust memorial then there can be a better dialogue between Arabs and Jews.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/among-the-righteous/

40 years ago today

2010-04-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

Fourty years ago today, at around the time I am writing this, three men were on their way to Moon. their Apollo spacecraft was state of the art. They had been on the way to the Moon three days and everything was going normally. The media didn't even bother to run the TV show they broadcast from about halfway between the Moon and the Earth. Having concluded their broadcast they got ready to close down for the night. There were a few "housekeeping procedures" they had to perform. Jack Swigert flicked a switch he had turned many times before. The current flowed through the wires and stirred the slushy liquid oxygen in tank number 2. What he didn't know was that in a previous incident several years before, the tank had been overheated and the wires in the tank were bare. A spark flew and the pure oxygen exploded into a fire. The explosion damaged all the other tanks in the Service Module and the vehicle was now useless.

What happened next was a triumph of technology and innovation which allowed them to safely return to the Earth. That triumph became NASA's finest hour.

Random thoughts

2010-04-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

Someone commented on another blog here about loosing the ability to read. She lamented that as a former avid reader, books no longer held her interest. I feel the same way. I love the stories of Larry Niven and his fantastic Known Space Series. The Ringworld, Jinx the Easter Egg Planet, the puppeteers and the Kzinti all dance in my head. Niven hadn't written much in Known Space, but then a fan has written three novels which Niven put a co-author stamp on which has made the universe a lot richer and I have been listening to the audio books for them lately. I have hundreds of books. I used to read and reread them voraciously. Now I am lucky if I can get a book or two a year in. Lately I have been listening to Audio books which have helped somewhat since I spend hours driving a security truck around a mall in the middle of the night with nothing to do. It helps pass the time. But then I find myself squirming sometimes wanting it all to be over with, not really life but just the day so I can get home and away from the boredom.

Someone else commented on Smoking. They just passed a smoking ban here in St. Louis county. The city law depended upon the county vote happening. So now both the City and the County have bans soon to be in place. There are exceptions for big money areas like casinos and the like, but in general we have smoking banned. the opposition to this law, you would think they were banning cigarettes all together. I think smoking is a reprehensible habit because one's money can be better spent on other things. Plus its a very unhealthy habit

But I am one to talk. My diet/lifestyle needs changing and I find it difficult with my schedule to modify it. I live pretty varied as far as time is concerned and setting a schedule is so problematic. but soon I hope to start something as far as an exercise program. I am the only one that can change myself. My uncle who is a retired doctor called me the other day and had me come over for dinner where he expressed his concern for my health and offered me a gym membership. I am probably going to take him up on the offer since I do need to get something done about things.

I need a few successes to make me feel good about myself. I have been really down lately and I think its seasonal. Spring being in the air has made things feel so much better. My recent success with my car radio installation has confirmed that I can do things right and accomplish things. In the recent past, something like that would have sat for ages hanging out and never have gotten done. I am so glad to have accomplished something.

Next week is my ham radio and maybe a few other things about my car. I have toyed with putting a windshield wiper on my back window using one pulled from a junker. I'd have to replace the back glass, and there would be no washer, but beggars can't be choosers. Another item to install is to replace my tire rack on the back with a newer model that eliminates the infernal rattling that goes on. I have a list of projects that might span into infinity. I love my Blazer because its the car I can work on without worrying about things getting over my head technically. New cars you need a masters degree it seems to work on them.

Things have to change for good or ill or I will surely vegetate into catatonia. Maybe I am out of my deep blue funk.