Saturday, October 17, 2009

Treating Cancers with kind bud

See Sunday’s – Oct. 17 -Times-Standard for my column on treating cancers with THC

These are real pictures of a giant bear

 

These pictures are of a guy who works for the US Forest Service in Alaska and his trophy bear. He was out deer hunting last week when a large grizzly bear charged him from about 50 yards away. The guy unloaded his 7mm Mag Semi-automatic rifle into the bear and it dropped a few feet from him.” Click here to read this account.

The hunter told his own story at HuntingNet.com.

check it out on Snopes.com. Snopes says the pictures are real, even if the story has been heavily embellished:

The basic story here is true although some of the details are wrong, perhaps because two different recent incidents of very large bear killings in Alaska have been conflated into one.

The bear pictured above was killed in November 2001 by a hunter (not a Forest Service employee) who came across it while he was deer-hunting in Alaska.

The pictures of the November 2001 shooting became confused with a later account of a killing, also in Alaska, of another very large bear.

That story is told here.

Above information and links via maisbisson.com

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Republicans for Rape: see Franken Amendment 2588

The 2010 Defense Appropriations bill is about not giving money to government contractors who don’t allow their employees to sue them if they are sexually assaulted on the job.

Sounds reasonable to me, but 30 Republican Senators voted against it!

I thought, there has to be more to it than this. Nobody votes against something like that. Franken must have added something controversial and/or inappropriate in, like the public option or legalized marijuana or something.  Maybe the amendment is 1000 pages and they didn’t have time to read it.

Or maybe their all protecting Halliburton!

See What you think:

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress - 1st Session

As compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary:

Question: On the Amendment (Franken Amdt. No. 2588 )

Vote Number:
308
Vote Date:
October 6, 2009, 04:37 PM

Required For Majority:
1/2
Vote Result:
Amendment Agreed to

Amendment Number:
S.Amdt. 2588 to H.R. 3326 (Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010)

Statement of Purpose:
To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.

Vote Counts:
YEAs 68 – NAYs 30 - Not Voting 2

Just for the record, here are the 30 Republicans who voted against Franken’s bill. I was disappointed to see McCain’s name in there:

Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS),
Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS),Corker (R-TN),Cornyn (R-TX),Crapo (R-ID),DeMint (R-SC),Ensign (R-NV),Enzi (R-WY),Graham (R-SC),Gregg (R-NH),Inhofe (R-OK),Isakson (R-GA),Johanns (R-NE),Kyl (R-AZ),McCain (R-AZ),
McConnell (R-KY),Risch (R-ID),Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL),Shelby (R-AL),Thune (R-SD),Vitter (R-LA),Wicker (R-MS)

From Senate.gov.

The text:

“Sec. 8104. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention.”

“(b) The prohibition in subsection (a) does not apply with respect to employment contracts that may not be enforced in a court of the United States.”
 
 

All-male college cracks down on cross-dressing

An all-male college in Atlanta, Georgia, has banned the wearing of women's clothes, makeup, high heels and purses as part of a new crackdown on what the institution calls inappropriate attire.

Read the story here at CNN

Friday, October 16, 2009

Which One Are You?

Via despair.com

Medical Afflictions of the Cartoon World

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Best Office Pranks of All Time

 

Click here to view some more classic stunts. Hey it’s Friday…time to have a mood adjustment before going into your weekend!

Was Balloon Boy's Whirlwind Day All for "Show"?

Falcon Heene is hugged by his mother, Mayumi, after his disappearance led to a national scare. (Cyrus McCrimmon, Associated Press / October 15)

Has the nation been duped by a balloon-wielding evil genius? Did little 6-year-old Falcon Heene have us right where he wanted, enthralled with our local news stations and hoping for his safe landing? Click here to read this story and to see video.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Scientists hope work with poison gas can be a lifesaver

I’ve heard of some strange ways people have tried to extend life (like cryonics), but this one has to be the oddest.

These guys are serious… 

The rat sniffs the air a few times, and within a minute, his naturally twitchy movements are almost still. On a monitor that shows his rate of breathing, the lines look like a steep mountain slope, going down.

At first glance, that looks bad. We need oxygen to live. If you don't get it for several minutes -- for example, if you suffer cardiac arrest or a bad gunshot wound -- you die. But something else is going on inside this rat. He isn't dead, isn't dying. The reason why, some people think, is the future of emergency medicine.”

Read the whole story here at CNN Health.

 

Facial expressions run in the family

By Jacqui Hayes

Cosmos Online

SYDNEY: Do you look like your father when you're angry? Probably more than you'd imagined. Facial expressions may be inherited, Israeli researchers say.

According to scientists, every person has a set of facial expressions that is unique to them, a signature of their identity that remains stable over time. Stable patterns of facial expressions arise before a baby is six months old, but until now, scientists were unsure whether these patterns were learned or innate.

Click here to read the rest.

 

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Foreclosures keep soaring as unemployment remains main cause of housing woes

The number of households caught up in the foreclosure crisis rose more than 5 percent from summer to fall as a federal effort to assist struggling borrowers was overwhelmed by a flood of defaults among people who lost their jobs.

Click here to read the rest at the Chicago Tribune.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

AP sources: al-Qaida's Afghan head contacted Zazi

The airport shuttle driver accused of plotting a bombing in New York had contacts with al-Qaida that went nearly all the way to the top, to an Osama bin Laden confidant believed to be the terrorist group's leader in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

AP – FILE- This Tuesday, July 22, 2008 image taken from Pakistan's Geo TV shows Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an Egyptian

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Dow Jones average closes above 10,000 for 1st time in more than a year

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, specialists Michael Scavone, left, and Michael Sollitto react as the Dow Jones industrial average crosses 10,000. (Richard Drew / Associated Press / October14)

Read the story here at the LA Times

Evolution…

The Freedom Journalism School – learn how to be a muckraker

Here’s something of interest for our local Humboldt bloggers. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an investigative reporter? Check out this program: 

By Peter Rothberg

The Nation -- Here's a great new idea worth supporting: The Freedom Journalism School -- a pioneering program to train a network of fifty new media muckrakers across the South.

A new project from the Institute for Southern Studies (ISS), the outfit that publishes Facing South, the South's leading online magazine, and Southern Exposure, an award-winning journal of politics and culture, the idea is to provide training for fifty bloggers and citizen journalists in investigative reporting skills in an effort to give them the tools they need to expose corruption and hold elected leaders accountable. Click here to read the rest.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Let’s hear it for politicians who don’t cheat on their spouses!

By Dave Stancliff

Why does anyone cheat on their spouse?

In particular, why do so many politicians cheat on their mates? Researchers who study societal trends agree that there are some common factors involved when politicians choose to cheat.

One of the things often mentioned is that politicians are generally risk taking types who are into gathering power. I can see that. Here are seven examples of American presidents that seem to fit that theory: Thomas Jefferson, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton.

Click here to read the rest of this article at ALL VOICES 

'Whole face of the mountain' fell in valley

The sights and sounds of rocks rolling down mountainsides are common but still captivating phenomena for the residents of the Nile Valley in central Washington state.

But a landslide over the weekend was more than the 1,500 people in the area have ever seen. "We just had the whole face of the mountain just pretty much come off," said Valerie Royster, manager of the Woodshed Restaurant, which sits just across the road from the edge of the landslide. Here’s the full story at CNN

Photo credit: Washington Department of Transportation

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Democrats scramble after warning after health insurers say overhaul will drive up premiums

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Insurance companies aren't playing nice any more. Their dire message that health care legislation will drive up premiums for people who already have coverage comes as a warning shot at a crucial point in the debate and threatens President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
Democrats and their allies scrambled on Monday to knock down a new industry-funded study forecasting that Senate legislation, over time, will add thousands of dollars to the cost of a typical policy. "Distorted and flawed," said White House spokeswoman Linda Douglass. "Fundamentally dishonest," said AARP's senior policy strategist, John Rother. "A hatchet job," said a spokesman for Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
But the health insurance industry's top lobbyist in Washington stood her ground. In a call with reporters, Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, pointedly refused to rule out attack ads on TV featuring the study, though she said she believed the industry's concerns could be amicably addressed.

Click here to read the rest at the Chicago Tribune.

Monday, October 12, 2009

A Paradigm for Today's Democrats? FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him

ALAN NASSER, professor emeritus of Political Economy and Philosophy at The Evergreen State College, wrote an article one year ago titled,A coup attempt against the United States.”

Nasser makes some observations that I didn’t touch on in my recent column – Was Roosevelt coup attempt inspiration for one against him?”

The most unsettling topic that he brought up was that Bush family patriarch, Prescott Bush, was among the group of conspirators against Roosevelt.

Photo: General Smedley Butler

From the article: 

Thus, fascist tendencies gestating deep within the culture of the U.S. ruling class were effectively left to develop unhindered by mass political mobilization.

Might this grisly episode have important implications for our understanding of the current political moment? One may be inclined to think so on the basis of the fact that one of the architects of the plot was one Prescott Bush, grandfather of George W. Bush. Bush, along with many other big businessmen, had maintained friendly relations in 1933 and 1934 with the new German government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and was designated to form for his class conspirators a working relationship with that government.”

Later in the article Nasser sums up Prescott Bush’s legacy:

“…the implications of this unsettling piece of history for contemporary politics run deeper than many –especially soi disant “oppositional” liberals- would like to think.

There is the temptation to point triumphantly to George W. Bush’s commitment to the irrelevance of the Constitution, his corresponding contempt for hitherto taken-for-granted fundamental human rights, his Hobbesian notion of unbridled sovereignty, his militarized notion of political power - there is the temptation to regard these fascist elements as the most significant contemporary remnant of the 1934 conspiracy.”

  Among some of the interesting feedback from readers of my column was the criticism that I didn’t talk about the Bush family connection in the plot. It was like they wanted blood. The intent of my column was not to polarize people. I made sure to make no references to any political party or ideology that would turn readers off.

I let the reader’s come to their own conclusions. If they wanted to investigate further into the whole Roosevelt coup attempt, they were welcome too. One reader – pegging me as a liberal by insinuation, commented that if someone from the “Right” wrote my column, people would jump all over that person. How can I really respond to that anger?

I just want people to see the strikingly similar historical comparisons to FDR’s and Obama’s first year in office. I mentioned a current article by NewsMax columnist, John L. Perry, because it showed that some people think a coup against Obama may be necessary to stop him.

Even Perry’s part about finding a “patriotic general” to lead the coup was ripped from the pages of 1933-34 when the conspirators enlisted General Butler.

We can, and should, learn from history. I’m not saying that there’s a legitimate organized attempt to overthrow Obama (like you, I’d be the last to know about that).

 I’m saying we have to look at what is motivating people today with their raging, raw rhetoric, ramping up at numerous public meetings in the last six months. Loaded rifles at town hall gatherings, and NRA Shooting targets with Obama’s image on them, aren’t good things.

The thing I see is an anger that could easily lead to Obama’s assassination when you look at how some are categorizing him like he’s the devil or Adolf Hitler. The FBI is having trouble keeping up with the hate groups and the lunatic fringe that are calling for Obama’s ouster – dead or alive.

Here’s what I know for sure. A majority of Americans voted for Obama and that’s why he’s president. The Republicans lost, and the party is floundering around trying to find a new identity that will take them in a new direction, and make them a viable party again.

The message I want to get out is that all this ideological warfare among the two major political parties is destroying our democracy. Congress is more like ancient Rome’s coliseum – a spectacle for the masses, with nothing good coming from it.  

The losers are the common man and his family. The country’s poor and uninsured. The homeless population. No one in Congress – or any other political position – seems likely to stop the damn bickering!

As It Stands, will someone please tell me if there is any hope that the paralyzed political system we’re stuck with can be fixed?  

Was Roosevelt coup attempt inspiration for one against Obama?

Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 10/11/2009 01:27:21 AM PDT

In the summer of 1933, newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt started national programs to get people working again. He had no idea that some of the richest people in the country plotted to overthrow his government. His plans appeared to be a massive redistribution of their wealth to the poor, which shook the wealthy conspirators to the core. What to do?

Their answer: launch a military coup d'etat. Get rid of Roosevelt and form another government. A Fascist government. America's super wealthy, the most famous names of the time, gathered secretly and worked out a plan to seize power. Leading officers from the Morgan and Du Pont empires put together a coup that hinged on getting someone popular with the military on their side.

Click here to read the rest.

IMAGE ABOVE: Credit Franklin D. Roosevelt Heritage Center 2006

IMAGE BELOW: Credit Google Images – NOTE – Similarities to today’s Conservatives…especially the “Spend! Spend! Spend!” part in the lower left corner.

Universal Music Power

In a delightful description of the power of music William Congreve wrote "Music hath charms to sooth a savage beast..." in his 16...