Chocolate, running shoes, and Spam sales are recession busters!

•   By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer –
•   Sat May 16, 12:27 pm ET

It's not all doom and gloom in the U.S. economy. Some products are bucking the recession and flying off store shelves.

Sales of chocolate and running shoes are up. Wine drinkers haven't stopped sipping; they just seem to be choosing cheaper vintages.

Gold coins are selling like hot cakes. So are gardening seeds. Tanning products are piling up in shopping carts; maybe more people are finding color in a bottle than from sun-worshipping on a faraway beach.

Strong sales of Spam, Dinty Moore stew and chili helped Hormel Foods Corp. post a 6 percent increase in first quarter sales in its grocery products unit.

Consumers have trimmed household budgets and postponed buying cars, major appliances and other big-ticket items. Yet they still are willing to shell out for small indulgences and goods that make life more comfortable at home, where they are spending more time.

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo via AP and is from a recent promo ad by Hormel Company.

The following links are being provided to you to so that you can track all information sources used in the article.

National Sporting Goods Association http://www.nsga.org

Information Resources Inc. http://www.infores.com

Mintel International http://www.mintel.com/

National Gardening Association http://www.garden.org

W. Atlee Burpee http://www.burpee.com

The Wine Institute http://www.wineinstitute.org

Enviorsell http://www.envirosell.com

Leo J. Shapiro & Associates http://www.ljs.com

 

More News From China: 'Love Land' is China's 1st-ever Sex Theme Park!

Things are sure changing in this communist country that once banned all forms of porn. It almost looks like their entering a "sexual revolution."

Westerners are flocking to China in record numbers. It must be the "new attitude" that Chinese have about Capitalism (once their sworn enemy).

From Most Emailed from Yahoo today.... 

Visitors try to get a glimpse of "Love Land", billed as China's first-ever sex theme park, in southwest China's Chongqing municipality.

The sex theme park is slated to open in October, but detractors hope the project will never see the light of day, as the exhibits of naked human sculptures, giant genitals and boasts a sex technique workshop is stirring up howls of protest.

(AFP)

A Strange Hen: Caught laying two eggs simultaneously!

FROM China Daily...

A chicken farmer named Mao Rui'an in Qingdao, Shandong province, is giving special attention to one of his chickens.

The unique hen is able to produce two eggs at the same time through two excretory openings. An expert said the hen probably has two separate reproductive systems.

He discovered the strange hen while he was giving vaccine shots to the chickens two months ago.

The lucky hen is enjoying a private henhouse and is fed with wheat seedlings instead of grass.

(Peninsula Metropolis Daily)

The Bilderbergers are back and they're still not talking...

Last year I wrote an article on this shadowy group of world leaders  -

'Shadow Government of the West' aka The Billderberg Group is the New World Order -

For Nolan Chart

Today From Haaratz.com

Are the people who 'really run the world' meeting this weekend?

By Adam Abrams

The Bilderberg Group, the topic of many conspiracy theories, is now meeting behind closed doors in Greece.

From today until May 17, approximately 150 of the most influential members of the world's elite will be meeting behind closed doors at a hotel in Greece. They are called the Bilderberg Group or the "Bilderbergers," and you have probably never heard of them.
The group, co-founded by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, has been meeting in secret every year since 1954. This year, says the British broadsheet The Times, they are meeting at the Nafsika Astir Palace in Vouliagmeni.
The individuals at the meeting come from such power houses as Google and the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Senate and European royalty. Governments, the banking industry, big oil, media and even the world of academia are amongst the Bilderberg ranks.

Read the rest here.

Photo via Wikipedia commons. This is the Hotel de Bilderberg,

Oosterbeek, the Netherlands

- scene of the first Bilderberg Conference in 1954.

Pelosi's claim of ignorance sounds fishy to ex-Democrat

FROM Neo-Neocon...

About the author:

 Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon.

DOES ANYONE BELIEVE NANCY PELOSI? AND DOES IT MATTER?

"My answer to the first question is: nobody, not even Pelosi. Maybe especially not Pelosi. Her story on the waterboarding briefings has changed so many times, and is stated with such verbal hesitancy and telegraphing of prevarication, that even the commenter's on the liberal blogs I’ve visited don’t seem to think she’s telling the truth." Read the full column Does anyone believe Nancy Pelosi? And does it matter?

Things you should know about your rights on the web...

Are you interested in knowing what your rights are when it comes to Internet usage? Do you want to be kept informed of anything that may interfere with your First Amendment Rights on the web? Then here's a good link for you this morning:

FROM the Electronic Frontier Foundation...

EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit group of passionate people—lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries — who depend on your support to continue successfully defending your digital rights. Litigation is particularly expensive; because two-thirds of our budget comes from individual donors, every contribution is critical to helping EFF fight —and win—more cases.

Click here for the whole article.

image via Google Images

Here are some Links and Resources on Media Reform...

WARNING! This information is scary if you value free speech and oppose mind control...

FROM THE MEDIA REFORM INFORMATION CENTER...

"In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation."

Read the rest of the story here.

Lost robot crosses city by asking directions!

FROM New Scientist...

Robots are getting better at finding their way around unknown areas, and making their own maps as they explore. But robots lost in urban areas don't need to rely on their own faculties to get from place to place, German roboticists have shown.

Their mobile robot simply rolls up to any humans nearby and asks for directions. By using that strategy, their robot has become one of the first to be properly let loose in the real world, not just carefully controlled environments.

Martin Buss's team at the Technical University of Munich dumped their mobile robot outside the university and instructed it to find its way to the Marienplatz in the center of Munich, some 1.5 kilometers away.

Click here for the rest of this story.

Wildlife Crew Finds Rare Albino Raccoon At Construction Site

FROM CITY NEWS...
It's not exactly one in a million - more like one in 500,000. But it's still a pretty rare sight. A Toronto wildlife company responding to a request for help has found a rare while albino raccoon at a construction site at Yonge and Eglinton.

The animal was one of a litter of five babies, and looks almost like a pig instead of one of the traditional "black masked bandits." It also lacked a striped tail.

How rare are the creatures? Brad Gates of Gates Wildlife Control, whose company was behind the discovery, says over the past 25 years, his people have only ever come across the phenomenon twice - the other time was in Mississauga. He estimates it's a 1-in-500,000 shot.

He tells CityNews.ca it's "a busy construction site" that's about to be sealed off and they needed to finally get rid of the raccoons. What happens to it now? It will be given back to its mother - arrangements are being made to trap her sometime on Monday night.

The entire family will then be "relocated" elsewhere in the area.

When asked if they won't just cause more problems for some other resident, Gates admits it's possible. But he says once a raccoon gets used to living in a city environment, it can't be sent back to the wild. He notes the mother will "teach the babies everything they need to know" to survive in the urban jungle.

Photo courtesy: Gates Wildlife Control

Scientific breakthrough proves there's water on Mars!

Credit & Copyright: Ellen Roper (GCC)

Heil! America? THE ORIGINAL PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE SALUTE

 

I don't remember saluting the flag at all when I was in elementary school in the 1950s. We did put our hand over our hearts however. I find it interesting that this was the way American's saluted the flag prior to the Nazi's infamous salute. You learn something new every day...

From Slightly Warped Curiosities...

When the Pledge of Allegiance was originally written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, who was - ironically - a socialist magazine writer, he included instructions on how to properly salute the flag while reciting his oath.

Dubbed "The Ballamy Salute" after its creator, school children were instructed to recite the pledge with the right arm out in a stiff salute outstretched to the flag.  This practice actually was adopted and continued until the early 1940's when it was noticed that the American salute bore a striking resemblance to a salute that another country was using.

Naturally, the salute quickly fell out of style and was replaced by placing the right hand over your heart as we do today.

Using the outstretched salute is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Romans, but after the Nazis, it's unlikely we'll see a resurgence of the original Pledge of Allegiance salute anytime soon.