Here's some people who are a little different but interesting

 

Click here to see more. Photos thanks to theChive.com

Neat Street-Art in Bristol, or how the locals love color!

I think you'll be surprised how innovative the local street art is. Walls in these neighborhoods vibrate with a zest for life that we can all appreciate. Image via http://www.bristol-street-art.co.uk For more wonderful walls click here.

Feeling kinda lazy and tired? So are these guys...

 

Click here to see more exhausted animals in interesting positions. 

images via desicolours

Nevada senator apologizes for affair with former staffer

 Senator Ensign is the latest poster boy for hypocrisy among the Republican Party. I can clearly remember him leading the charge against Bill Clinton for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. He's also a member of "Promise Keepers" - a Christian group that prides themselves on promoting all aspects of marriage.

But do you think that's going to slow him down in his bid for the presidency in 2012? Not even. He has enough gall for a water buffalo and isn't going to be shaken from his dreams of imperial power by a little old affair! I mean c'mon...does this guy look and sound like presidential material to you?

Apparently pundits in the GOP don't think this nasty little affair is going to have any bearing on his run for the top office in the land. Maybe they're hoping people will forget by then. I won't, and I'll be prepared to bring it up if he does run. Face it Ensign...you're busted!

From the LA Times today...

By Ashley Powers

Reporting from Las Vegas -- Nevada Sen. John Ensign, an emerging Republican leader who has been mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate, apologized Tuesday for an extramarital affair with a former staff member but indicated that he had no plans to resign.

"It's absolutely the worst thing I have ever done in my life," he said at a televised news conference. "If there was ever anything that I could take back in my life, this would be it." Click here for the rest of the story.

GOP committee paid son of Ensign's mistress during affair

By Ashley Powers and Richard Simon

The 19-year-old was paid $5,400 between March 2008 and August 2008 for 'research policy consulting.' The payments ended the same month the Nevada senator says the relationship did. Click here to read the rest of the story.

photo via LA/Times

Did political correctness cause this crime? Boy Scout forced to drink urine for alleged racial slur!

Is this a case of political correctness crossing over into crime? Have we come to that point now? Or was this a case of some bullies just having fun with this kid? It's something to think about.

From The Smoking Gun this morning...

Florida boy attending Boy Scout camp was forced to drink urine after he was accused of using a racial slur, according to police. The boy, 12, was accosted Friday by a quartet of attackers who pushed him to the ground and placed duct tape over his mouth.

According to the below Putnam County Sheriff's Office report, the child told cops that he was "blamed for calling a black boy a nigger," which the boy denied.

The attack, which occurred at Camp Shands in Hawthorne, resulted in the arrest of three minors and Joseph Reid, a 21-year-old volunteer. The victim told investigators that he was lured into the woods, where he was set upon by the quartet. The child's attackers said that "they were going to teach him a lesson and he was either going to drink a bottle of urine, or they were going to beat him up," according to the report (which was prepared by an officer unable to spell "lie" or "hairdo"). One assailant took the tape off the Boy Scout's mouth "and poured urine down his throat." Police recovered two bottles of urine and pieces of duct tape that were apparently used during the attack. Reid and the three minors were charged with kidnapping and aggravated child abuse, both felonies.

image via The Smoking Gun

Tired off the same old food? Try some of these goodies!

 

To see more scrumptious foods click here.

images via foodnetworkhumor.com

Joe Blow (conspiracy) Report staff bawl like babies!

Well readers, this is what I have to contend with sometimes. Extremists tend to attack anything that doesn't fit their world view. There's a group at the Joe Blow Report blog that decided to attack me on May 31st and who posted a hate-filled rant about a column I did on trolls (of all the ironies!) This is a group that has the mind-set of a steel trap.

Now they have their crying towels (it took them two weeks to think of a reply) out and are blubbering to all that will read their raving. I'm not going to be intimidated by a bunch of cowards who are whining about a conspiracy between me and the Times-Standard to attack trolls! Good grief! Get a life you blowhards.

I don't know who you think you are, but I do know that you seek to impose your will upon others by reading your past posts. Now you think you can silence me by making outrageous accusations and trying to get the newspaper to drop my column. Guess again gang. You'll never be able to silence me. You best bet is to change your soiled diapers and to find someone else to pick on!

image via Google Images

Gas prices keep climbing as a meek public pays the piper!

                              By Dave Stancliff    
       Did you happen to notice that gas prices rose again today?
That’s 48 straight days of getting gouged which matches a record for this decade. We keep getting ripped off despite the fact that the demand for gas is weak.
       Crude oils upward swing has been mirrored by the declining value of the dollar. That's because crude futures are bought and sold in U.S. currency, meaning that crude gets cheaper for many buyers as the dollar falls.
      Prices at the pump rose 0.6 cents to $2.669 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services. Prices are a nickel above where they were a week ago and 30.8 cents above month-ago levels, but remain $1.408 below year ago levels.
       Consumers are now paying about $1 billion a day for gasoline compared with about $600 million a day over New Year's weekend and $1.5 billion a day or more a year ago, according to Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.
       The more than 60 percent increase in prices so far this year exceeds anything going as far back as the 1970s, Kloza recently told the press. With all of this in mind, my next question is why haven’t these rising oil prices made front page headlines? Have we already forgotten about last year’s high point in ripping us off at the pump?
       Worse yet, are we just so blown away by this bad economy that we are now accepting whatever hits us like a bunch of sheep? I’m not sure what to make of this. Some experts are saying the good news is that prices look like they may be peaking.
       I wouldn’t bet on that however. It’s rapidly becoming clear to me that we’re going to be back at $4 plus per gallon by Christmas! That should really help stimulate the economy. People are struggling to have the very basics in life right now.
       It seems to me that something is fundamentally wrong with a system of speculators that can make life hell for the majority of Americans by driving up the price of gas whenever they feel like it. I’d call it un-American, but we are a capitalist society, and this is one of the scummy by-products that result.
        I’m trying to think of some upside to all of this. The best I can do is note that fuel-efficient cars will become more prevalent in the future. That is, of course, assuming that we just don’t go back to walking and riding bicycles like many third world nations today!
       As It Stands, we’ll never be free until fossil fuel is no longer part of our economy.

image via Seeds of Doubt    

Did you remember to get a digital converter box?

Cartoon via Rob Rogers @ Yahoo News

GOP activist DePass compares First Lady Michelle Obama to a Gorilla

 It's comments like Depass's, that make the Republicans look like asses!

From The Raw Story...

By Daniel Tencer

A high-ranking South Carolina Republican activist has issued an apology after comparing First Lady Michelle Obama to a gorilla.

Rusty DePass, a former chairman of the Richland County Republican Party, made the comments in a friend’s Facebook status update line after a gorilla was reported to have escaped from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo.

According to FitsNews, the status line read: “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless.”

DePass told the Associated Press that he made the comment in reference to President Barack Obama’s views on evolution.

From FitsNews:

"We’re all for First Amendment freedoms and politically incorrect remarks around here, but this strikes even our most indelicate of sensibilities as out of bounds.

And while we will defend DePass’ right to make such a comment, it’s insanely racist - sort of like the anti-Obama flyer found on S.C. Rep. Bill Sandifer’s desk last year."

That was in reference to a controversy last year in which a South Carolina state House Representative was caught with a flyer claiming that Obama had promised a job to all black Americans, but that those black Americans were too lazy to actually want the jobs.

photo via The Raw Story

Lakers close out Magic and earn 15th NBA title banner!

It's been a great series. The Lakers had to fight hard to win the Western Conference, and when it came time for the whole ball of wax, they shut the Magic down 4 games to 1. Read more here.

Photo via Wally Skalij /LA Times

Clean energy bill should have 100 percent auction of carbon emission permits

Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard

Posted: 06/14/2009 01:27:09 AM PDT

Congress is debating a comprehensive energy bill, known for short as “ACES,” that will be a winning hand for pollution-generating corporations, or for the American public. It's that simple.

The bill, HR 2453 -- The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- was introduced by Congressmen Waxman and Markley. It needs to be modified, but it's a step in the right direction. Everyone agrees something has to be done and it's important that we do it soon.

However, as currently worded, the bill allocates most of the revenue generated from new carbon emission permits to major corporations. Chesapeake Climate Action Network's (CCAN) Policy Director Ted Glick recently went to Washington, D.C., to deliver a sign-on letter to Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and other members of the House Ways and Means Committee, addressing the issue of carbon credits in the new legislation.

Click here for the rest of the column.

image via Google Images

Rep. Frank Re-Introduces Bill to Recognize State Medical Marijuana Laws - HR 2835

Press release from NORML

Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, along with a bipartisan coalition of co-sponsors, is seeking to strengthen legal protections for state-authorized medical marijuana patients.

The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act of 2009 would ensure that medical cannabis patients in states that have approved its use will no longer have to fear arrest or prosecution from federal law enforcement agencies.

Thirteen states -- Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington -- have enacted laws protecting medical marijuana patients from state prosecution. Yet in all of these states, patients and providers still face the risk of federal sanction -- even when their actions are fully compliant with state law.

It is time that we allowed our unique federalist system to work the way it was intended. Patients and their state representatives should have the authority to enact laws permitting the medical use of cannabis -- free from federal interference.

Previous versions of The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act were introduced in both the 108th and 109th Congress, but failed to receive a public hearing or a committee vote. Please write your members of Congress today and tell them to stop targeting and prosecuting medical marijuana patients and providers. For your convenience, a prewritten letter will be e-mailed to your member of Congress when you enter your contact information below.

Thank you for assisting NORML's federal law reform efforts.

image via fotosearch

A Foxy Foot Fetish: or how the locals found their footwear in a lair!

More than 120 shoes have gone missing from homes and gardens in Germany after a fox developed a bizarre fetish.

The mystery was only solved when a forestry worker found a stash of the missing footwear in the fox's lair near Fohren.

Tiny tooth marks on the leather show the vixen - dubbed Imelda Marcos after the shoe-mad president's wife - may have used them as toys for her cubs to play with.

Local landowner Count Rudolf Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt said: "She's clearly got a thing about shoes.

"We found 86 shoes in the den and a further 32 in a nearby quarry where they like to play. That includes 12 or 13 matching pairs of shoes."

image and story via Ananova

Clashes erupt in Iran over disputed election: Ahmadinejad accused of fraud

From the Associated Press this morning...

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI and ANNA JOHNSON, AP Writers Ali Akbar Dareini and Anna Johnson, AP Writers –

TEHRAN, Iran – Supporters of the main election challenger to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police and set up barricades of burning tires Saturday as authorities claimed the hard-line president was re-elected in a landslide. The rival candidate said the vote was tainted by widespread fraud and his followers responded with the most serious unrest in the capital in a decade.

Several hundred demonstrators — many wearing the trademark green colors of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign — chanted "the government lied to the people" and gathered near the Interior Ministry as the final count from Friday's presidential election was announced. It gave 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad and 33.75 to Mousavi — a former prime minister who has become the hero of a youth-driven movement seeking greater liberties and a gentler face for Iran abroad.

Mousavi rejected the result as rigged and urged his supporters to resist a government of "lies and dictatorship."

Read the rest of the story here.

photo via AP

Weed, Booze, Cocaine and Other Old School "Medicine" Ads

From Pill Talk we have some great ads that were run in the past...

Lloyd Cocaine Toothache Drops
In the US, cocaine was sold over the counter until 1914 and was commonly found in products like toothache drops, dandruff remedies and medicinal tonics.

Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but some awfully strange substances have been used for pharmaceutical purposes in the past -- and some might argue, continue to be used today. Here are some more vintage advertisements touting items that we might balk at taking today.

images via Pill Talk

 

Life is a mystery not to be solved, but to be experienced...

image via AMO

Radioactive wasps are nesting at Hanford reservation

I know. The following story almost sounds like prelude to an old B Movie. As a matter of fact I found this movie poster with it's wasp/human woman "getting her man!"

After reading it I'm also left wondering what "fairly highly contaminated" really means? It wouldn't be very comforting to me if I lived anywhere near those toxic wasps. Then again, it wouldn't be very comforting to me if I lived anywhere near a nuclear reactor!

 From the Associated Press...

 Workers cleaning up the Hanford nuclear reservation are going after radioactive wasp nests.

The Tri-City Herald reports 6 to 12 inches of top soil are being dug up this month from 6 acres near the H Reactor.

And, workers will dig up more individual mud dauber wasp nests over about 75 acres of the nuclear reservation in southeast Washington.

The contractor handling the clean-up, Washington Closure, says the nests were all built in 2003 when water was used to dampen dust during demolition of an H Reactor basin.

That attracted the wasps that used the mud to make tube-shaped nests for eggs.

Spokesman Todd Nelson says the nests are "fairly highly contaminated."

 image via Google Images

The Ice Age Cometh for the Republican Party...

From Search Time...

By Mike Murphy

Despairing Republican friends have been asking me what I think we should do to rebuild the GOP and begin our certain and inevitable comeback. My answer disappoints them: "Build an ark."

I say this because I've made a career out of counting votes, and the numbers tell a clear story; the demographics of America are changing in a way that is deadly for the Republican Party as it exists today. A GOP ice age is on the way.

Demographic change is irritating to politicos, since it works on elections much as rigged dice do on a Las Vegas craps table: it is a game changer. For years, Republicans won elections because the country was chock-full of white middle-class voters who mostly pulled the GOP lever on Election Day. Today, however, that formula is no longer enough. (See pictures of Republican memorabilia.)

It was a huge shock to the GOP when Barack Obama won Republican Indiana last year. The bigger news was how he did it. Latino voters delivered the state. Exit polls showed that they provided Obama with a margin of more than 58,000 votes in a state he carried by a slim 26,000 votes. That's right, GOP, you've entered a brave new world ruled by Latino Hoosiers, and you're losing. Click here to read the rest of the article.

image via searchtime.com

My great uncle was freed in the famous WW II Guerrila Raid on Los Banos with the author of this terrible experience

My Great-Uncle Leo Stancliff from Bakersfield (who I never got to meet), was a civilian POW during WW II.This account also mentioned someone from Hydesville (here in Humboldt County).

His name was Herman Beaber and he (with foot notes from his son John) wrote a book about his experiences titled: "Deliverance! It Has Come!" Click here to get more detailed information on Herman Barber.

In late 1941 war broke out in the Philippines with the Japanese. Many endured imprisonment, including some ministers who were interned at the Los Baños Internment Camp located about 40 miles south of Manila in the Philippines.

They were Willie Jamieson from Chirnside, Scotland; Ernest Stanley from England (internment at Santo Tomás); Leo Stancliff of Bakersfield, California; Cecil Barrett of New Zealand; and Herman Beaber of Hydesville, California, who kept a diary during their time as prisoners of war (1942-1945).

On January 6, 1942 Herman and his fellow ministers were picked up by the Japanese and were taken first to the Rizal Memorial Stadium where they were registered. Then they were bundled back into the car and taken to Santo Tomás University grounds.

They later were released and allowed to continue their church work. (with the exception of Ernest Stanley who chose to remain in Santo Tomás as an official interpreter for the Internee Government). They were allowed to have religious services (Sundays only), from January 15, 1942 until they were taken to prison at Los Baños on July 8, 1944, along with all the other American missionaries in the area.

"Los Baños was the former University of the Philippines, the Agricultural School at Los Baños was located in a town on the island of Luzon.

It had been converted into an internment camp. It was a plot of about 55 or 60 acres with a barbed wire fence around it, for more than 2,000 civilians who had the misfortune of falling into Japanese hands at the beginning of the war.

As time passed and as the Japanese began to lose the war, things became very desperate at the Los Baños prison camp. While Herman Beaber's diary does not record that they were tortured, they nearly starved, and many in the camp died from disease and slow starvation.

Herman wrote in his diary... "Naturally there is theft of food in camp. It is considered a major crime. We see people (respectable people) looking into garbage cans for banana skins, etc. (If you want a real delicacy... Fry some banana skins in rancid coconut oil.) People going to points in camp several blocks away will have to sit down to rest. Fights occur in the food lines. Some have eaten bugs and beetles - so they say."
Herman left from the United States for the Philippines in 1940 weighing 202 lbs at 6'3" and he weighed 140 lbs when he was finally rescued on February 23, 1945. On that day American soldiers freed over 2000 prisoners at Los Baños in a daring guerrilla and paratrooper rescue, just one day before they were all to be executed by the Japanese. Army Chief of Staff General

Herman left from the United States for the Philippines in 1940 weighing 202 lbs at 6'3" and he weighed 140 lbs when he was finally rescued on February 23, 1945. On that day American soldiers freed over 2000 prisoners at Los Baños in a daring guerrilla and paratrooper rescue, just one day before they were all to be executed by the Japanese.

Army Chief of Staff General Colin Powell (now former Secretary of State) proclaimed- "I doubt that any airborne unit in the world will ever be able to rival the Los Baños prison raid. It is the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies."

Herman Beaber wrote..."Let me say that you who have never been deprived of seeing Old Glory and all she stands for, for three long years, cannot understand what that sight would mean. We feel heavily indebted to our rescuers. (No greater love has a man, than to lay down his life for another) We are mighty proud to be citizens of a great country like the United States. On the other hand, we are grateful to God for His care and protection, and now that He has spared our lives... we feel more inclined than ever to give Him our best."

My Great Uncle Leo passed away on Oct.29th, 2005. Herman Beaber passed away on Feb. 5th, 2001