Birthers on the hill

I have to love this. These people placate their base, fanning the flames of the controversy, but when confronted with the question, many literally run from the question.


There was a vote today in the House that officially recognized the legitimacy of President Obama's birth question. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, (D-Hawaii), introduced Monday House Resolution 593 (PDF), "Recognizing and celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the entry of Hawaii into the Union as the 50th State... Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii."

Now many of you familiar with these kind of resolutions, normally ceremonial resolutions like this are usually passed without a problem, the idiots came out of the woodwork:




Now this resolution eventually passed 378-0 with most of the so-called "birthers' not voting I would assume. We have a bunch of nuts in this country who are creating issues in order to shield or cloud a darker agenda of racisism or their opposition to other programs that the President has proposed. However, we had some people claiming that John McCain was not a citizen due to his birth in the Panana Canal Zone which was not officially a psrt of the US. Still Congress saw fit to pass a resolution during the election to settle the question of his citizenship. Why did they do that?

Now although we have a satisfaction of citizenship that is perfectly legal for anyone else in the US. I can go get a certificate of live birth at the city clerk's office that is perfectly satisfactory to the Department of State to get a passport, it satifies the State in order for me to get a drivers license. However, the President doesn't get the same consideration that others do. He is different in may ways that many people in this country cannot accept.

I fear that there is a revolution in the offing in this country. People who cannot accept what a majority of their fellows believe are prepared to impose their agenda on those who do accept. I remember reading somewhere that the American Revolution was supported by only a third of the country whereas a third just wanted to sit things out while others remained loyalists. I also remember that Hitler was elected by only a third of the Germans in the country ans only acceded to power through a coalition. Democracy is a fragile thing and it only takes a few nuts to upset the apple cart.

Not sure what to say anymore, but there are very dark things happening. I only hope and pray that we can get through this dark time and emerge as Americans and Partiots in the best traditions of our forefathers.

Batshit crazy

Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD (SK)

SB SPCL @ ARL $ARLX010
ARLX010 WALTER CRONKITE, KB2GSD (SK)

ZCZC AX10
QST de W1AW
Special Bulletin 10 ARLX010
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT July 20, 2009
To all radio amateurs

SB SPCL ARL ARLX010
ARLX010 WALTER CRONKITE, KB2GSD (SK)

Legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD, who held the title of
''Most Trusted Man in America,'' passed away Friday, July 17 after a
long illness. He was 92. The avuncular Cronkite anchored the CBS
Evening News for 19 years until 1981 when he retired. During that
time, he reported on such subjects as the Kennedy assassinations,
the Civil Rights movement, the Apollo XI lunar landing, Vietnam and
the Vietnam-era protests, the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, Watergate
and the Begin-Sadat peace accords.

Cronkite, an ARRL member, narrated the 6 minute video ''Amateur Radio
Today'' (http://www.arrl.org/ARToday/). Produced by the ARRL in 2003,
the video tells Amateur Radio's public service story to non-hams,
focusing on ham radio's part in helping various agencies respond to
wildfires in the Western US during 2002, ham radio in space and the
role Amateur Radio plays in emergency communications. ''Dozens of
radio amateurs helped the police and fire departments and other
emergency services maintain communications in New York, Pennsylvania
and Washington, DC,'' narrator Cronkite intoned in reference to ham
radio's response on September 11, 2001. ''Their country asked, and
they responded without reservation.''

Walter Leland Cronkite was born in St Joseph, Missouri on November
4, 1916, the only child of a dentist father and homemaker mother.
When he was still young, his family moved to Texas. ''One day, he
read an article in ''Boys Life'' about the adventures of reporters
working around the world -- and young Cronkite was hooked,'' said
his obituary on the CBS Web site. ''He began working on his high
school newspaper and yearbook and in 1933, he entered the University
of Texas at Austin to study political science, economics and
journalism. He never graduated. He took a part time job at the
Houston Post and left college to do what he loved: report.''
(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/17/eveningnews/main5170556.shtml)

In 1963, it was Cronkite who broke into the soap opera ''As the World
Turns'' to announce that the president had been shot -- and later to
declare that he had been killed.'' CBS called it a ''defining moment
for Cronkite, and for the country. His presence -- in shirtsleeves,
slowly removing his glasses to check the time and blink back tears
-- captured both the sense of shock, and the struggle for composure,
that would consume America and the world over the next four days.''

One of Cronkite's enthusiasms was the space race. In 1969, when
America sent a man to the moon, he couldn't contain himself. ''Go
baby, go.'' he said as Apollo XI took off. He ended up performing
what critics described as ''Walter to Walter'' coverage of the mission
-- staying on the air for 27 of the 30 hours that astronauts Buzz
Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were on the moon. In 2006, NASA honored
Cronkite by giving him their Ambassador of Exploration Award. ''His
marathon, live coverage of the first moon landing brought the
excitement and impact of the historic event into the homes of
millions of Americans and observers around the world,'' NASA said in
a news release announcing the award. Cronkite was the first
non-astronaut and only NASA outsider to receive the award.
(http://www.arrl.org/?artid=6130.)

Steve Mendelsohn, W2ML, was Cronkite's radio engineer at CBS for
many years. ''I had many chances to discuss my favorite hobby, ham
radio, with 'the world's most trusted anchor man,''' he told the
ARRL. ''Gradually, his interest increased, but on finding that he had
to pass a Morse code test, he balked, saying it was too hard for
him; however, he told me he had purchased a receiver and listened to
the Novice bands every night for a few minutes. At the CBS Radio
Network, Walter would arrive 10 minutes before we went on the air to
read his script aloud, make corrections for his style of grammar and
just 'get in the mood' to do the show. In those days Rich Moseson,
W2VU, was the producer of a show called ''In the News,'' a 3 minute
television show for children voiced by CBS Correspondent Christopher
Glenn. On this day, Rich was at the Broadcast Center to record
Chris' voice for his show and had dropped by my control room to
discuss some upcoming ARRL issues.'' At the time, Mendelsohn was the
ARRL Hudson Division Director.

''When Walter walked into the studio, I started to set the show up at
the behest of our director, Dick Muller, WA2DOS,'' Mendelsohn
recalled. ''In setting up the tape recorders, I had to send tone to
them and make sure they were all at proper level. Having some time,
I grabbed ''The New York Times'' and started sending code with the
tone key on the audio console. For 10 minutes I sent code and
noticed Walter had turned his script over and was copying it. We
went to air, as we did every day, at 4:50 PM and after we were off,
Walter brought his script into the control room. Neatly printed on
the back was the text I had sent with the tone key. Rich and I
looked at the copy, he nodded, and I told Walter that he had just
passed the code test. He laughed and asked when the formal test was,
but I reminded him that it took two general class licensees to
validate the test and he had just passed the code. Several weeks
later he passed the written test and the FCC issued him KB2GSD.''

Mendelsohn helped Cronkite make his first Amateur Radio contact:
''Having passed the licensing test, Walter was now ready to get on
the air. His first QSO was on 10 meters about 28.390 MHz. He was
nervous and I called him on the phone to talk him through his first
experience. As we talked on the air, a ham from the Midwest come on
and called me. Acknowledging him, I asked the usual questions about
where he was from, wanting to give Walter a bit of flavor of what
the hobby was about. I turned it over to Walter, and following his
introduction, the gentleman in the Midwest said, 'That's the worst
Walter Cronkite imitation I've ever heard.' I suggested that maybe
it was Walter and the man replied, 'Walter Cronkite is not even a
ham, and if he was, he certainly wouldn't be here on 10 meters.'
Walter and I laughed for weeks at that one.''

In 2007, ARRL Hudson Division Director Frank Fallon, N2FF, presented
Cronkite with the ARRL President's Award. This award, created in
2003 by the ARRL Board of Directors, recognizes an ARRL member or
members who ''have shown long-term dedication to the goals and
objectives of ARRL and Amateur Radio'' and who have gone the extra
mile to support individual League programs and goals. Cronkite was
selected to receive the award in April 2005 in recognition of his
outstanding support of the ARRL and Amateur Radio by narrating the
videos ''Amateur Radio Today'' and ''The ARRL Goes to Washington''
(http://www.arrl.org/pio/VTS-video.wmv.) ''It was quite a thrill to
make this presentation to Cronkite,'' Fallon said. ''He has long been
recognized as the 'most trusted man in America,' so lining our
causes to his face, name and voice has been a great help.''

Cronkite is the recipient of a Peabody Award, the William White
Award for Journalistic Merit, an Emmy Award from the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences, the George Polk Journalism Award and a
Gold Medal from the International Radio and Television Society. In
1981, during his final three months on the CBS Evening News,
Cronkite received 11 major awards, including the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. In 1985, he became the second newsman, after Edward R.
Murrow, to be selected for the Television Hall of Fame.

A private memorial service was scheduled for July 23 in New York
City. Cronkite will be cremated and his remains buried in Missouri
next to his wife Betsy, who passed away in 2005. A public memorial
service will be held within the next month at Avery Fisher Hall at
the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. In lieu of flowers, the
family is requesting donations to the Walter and Betsy Cronkite
Foundation through the Austin Community Foundation
(http://www.austincommunityfoundation.org/), which will distribute
contributions to various charities the couple supported.

As Cronkite said on March 6, 1981, concluding his final broadcast as
anchorman: ''Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away, they just keep
coming back for more. And that's the way it is.''
NNNN
/EX

To Destroy a Culture - The Sarajevo City Library

August 12, 1996

Ruins of Sarajevo Library Is Symbol of a Shattered Culture

By JANE PERLEZ

ARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Eerie with shattered beauty, the burned ruins of Bosnia's national library have stood for the last four years as a wrenching symbol of an attempt to destroy a city and its culture.

Now the gouged granite columns, the crumbling crenelated trim and the once resplendent copper cupola, shredded like lacework, stand for something else: the sluggishness of the restoration and reconstruction of Sarajevo.

"What is missing is money -- there are lots of ideas but no money," said Enes Kujundzic, the energetic library director, who has shown scores of international dignitaries, experts and financiers through the ghostly interior, where more than a million books and priceless manuscripts were reduced to ashes by Serb shells. "I say this is top priority for a country coming out of war. They say with this money we could rebuild several factories, and then rebuild the library."

Lofty promises of international financing to rebuild Sarajevo's library, along with its roads, airport and factories, have failed to materialize in the amounts envisioned after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement last December. Much of the reluctance is caused by uncertainty over how Bosnia will fare after next month's national elections and by unease over whether the Bosnian government could manage the funds.

But unlike many of the reconstruction projects being bandied about, Kujundzic says that his plan is simple and practical.

He wants to start giving basic library services to the people of Sarajevo, who were starved intellectually and deprived professionally during the fighting. The city lent him an unused army barracks in which to get a temporary, but functional, library going again. So Kujundzic's first need, he said, is financing to create on-line services, open research facilities and create a new book, periodical and archival collection.

The more romantic idea of restoring the fabulous century-old structure that fuses Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian architectural styles -- where Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had just attended a reception when he was shot in 1914 -- should be deferred until later, he said. Hasty patching to insure that the ruins do not crumble completely from exposure to snow, wind and sun will be finished before the winter.

"Obviously the building attracts much more attention," Kujundzic said, looking out windows that are patched together with plastic in his temporary office a few blocks from the ruins. "But everyone forgets the people who are alive and willing to do research. And people forget that this country can't be rebuilt without resources of science and technology. People say you are a cultural institution. I say we're also an educational and scientific institution that has to help this country compete."

The library in Sarajevo served the University of Sarajevo, and was a national repository of Bosniaca -- with works devoted to subjects about Bosnia or published in Bosnia, many of them centuries old. Some of these were irreplaceable handwritten manuscripts, though many of the books can be found elsewhere.

When Serb artillery bombarded the library in August 1992, flames engulfed almost 50,000 feet of wooden bookshelves and burned a central atrium, richly carved staircases and the ceremonial auditoriums of the structure, built in 1896 as the town hall. The auditoriums had become reading rooms in 1951, when the building was converted to the national library for the republic within the Yugoslav federation. Books, original manuscripts, the archives of Serb, Croat, Bosnian and Jewish writers, the entire catalogue system, microfilm, computers and photo labs were all destroyed.

Three months earlier, the Serbs shelled the Sarajevo Oriental Institute, devastating a collection of medieval literature in Arabic, Persian and Turkish and priceless works in four alphabets -- Latin Arabic, Cyrillic and an alphabet that predated Cyrillic, known as Old Bosnian.

Immediately, librarians in the United States and elsewhere tried to come to the rescue.

To recapture as much of the collection as possible, Tatjana Lorkovic, the curator of Slavic and East European collections at Yale University Library, started playing detective. With funds from the Yale library as well as the library at Harvard, the Library of Congress and other national data bases, Ms. Lorkovic is organizing a bibliographic record of Bosniaca.

"Those Stone Age people who destroyed the library destroyed their heritage too," said Ms. Lorkovic in a telephone interview. "Represented in the library were the personal archives of the very important Serb poet, Aleksa Santic, who lived from 1868 to 1924. When the Bosnians started to go to Turkey after Yugoslavia was formed in 1918, he wrote a poem, 'Ostajte Ovdje,' 'Stay Here,' to tell his Muslim brothers not to leave."

Once a bibliography is in hand, Sarajevo could end up with one of the world's most modern library services. The trend in libraries is away from being depositories of books and toward providing on-line services. The bibliography from Ms. Lorkovic's project would enable the Sarajevo library to offer many of the available Bosnian works as full-text electronic archives. Ancient manuscripts of Bosnian literature owned by libraries elsewhere could be digitalized using the latest technology, Kujundzic said.

The 108-member staff of the library in 1992 has dwindled to 60. Some were killed, others went into the army, and others fled as refugees. With skimpy appropriations from the Bosnian government, Kujundzic struggles to meet monthly salaries and, so far, has not been able to provide training in new technologies.

There has been no money for supplies since March, he said. Some computers and some books have been sent from Unesco, which has also been working on long-term plans for reviving the library's collections, he said. But over all, the donations have been meager.

To illustrate his dire need for funds, Kujundzic said his staff had just completed a list of 450 journals and magazines to which the library would like to subscribe, at an annual cost of about $300,000. The subjects, he said, were selected according to Bosnia's post-war requirements: in medicine, journals about trauma; in international relations, material about the United Nations; in architecture, periodicals about reconstruction. Widely read journals such as Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Economist were also on the list.

To show that they are not waiting around for a grandiose rebuilding project, Kujundzic and his staff have produced the first issue of a new library journal called Bosniaca. It is devoted to articles about Bosnian literature and is intended as an inspiration for those wanting to return the library to its former intellectual achievements.

While the librarians toil to meet the basic needs of a people emerging from the cocoon of war, the debate will persist about what to do with the library ruins, now largely frequented by gawking tourists.

Ms. Lorkovic, who emigrated to the United States from Belgrade in the 1960s, is on the side of both memory and modernity.

"I think the old building should be preserved the way it is -- like Coventry Cathedral -- as a remembrance," she said. "A new Sarajevo library should be bright, the biggest and the best and the whole world should help."

In the Shadow of the Moon

This weekend we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon. It has been almost 40 years since we have been to the moon. This film is the one that catches the essense of what it was like to be there in the words of the men who were there. From their test flights at Edwards, to the Apollo 1 fire (Jules Bergmans voice breaking as he tells his audience the news is almost heartbreaking) to the landing itself. The men tell us the things they felt, the way the world was. Gene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, Alan Bean and all the others tell us what it was like to be there, what was in their hearts and minds.

The DVD is excellent and one should watchall the footage that was not included as well since there was more interviews that put a lot more background. I love that aspect of the DVD in that you can see everything. Included in the DVD are shots of the Saturn V that I myself have never seen before. All the staging shots, highlights of the missions, all give us a great sense of being with them as they enjoyed their time in space.

If you want to experience what it was like in those times, this is the film that captures it.

This isn't right.

MAD MAX

I want this car! WOAH!