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Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money? Ogden Nash
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My 1970 Dodge Charger had a 440ci motor (425-HP), 727 Torque Flight Transmission, heavy duty Hurst Shifter and clutch
I’d been out of the Army for six months in the fall of 1971 and bought the beast and got into some street races.
The race that got me in trouble was against a red corvette in Orange County. The cop clocked me at 110 mph and I was pulling away! His siren came on behind me. I pulled over, and the corvette didn’t.
I won’t even go into how ugly that little situation got. It earned me a visit to a judge who made me pay a lot of money for exhibition of speed and several other citatations. That was one hell of a car! image source
I wrote about this subject last year and things have just got worse since then.
“While U.S. officials have long been concerned about the mindless violence bred by Mexico’s bloody and brutal drug wars, they have a new reason to worry: Americans are increasingly getting caught in the deadly crossfire.
Some who have died were themselves working for the drug cartels. But more and more often, experts say, the casualties are U.S. law enforcement officers and innocent victims who died simply because they ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. "These cartels will stop at nothing," said Tiffany Hartley, who became an anti-cartel crusader after her husband, David, apparently was gunned down on Sept. 30 by Mexican drug gang members on Falcon Lake, a dammed section of the Rio Grande straddling the Texas-Mexico border. "The violence is not going to stop and more will die at the unforgiving hands of cartels."
Photo -Tiffany Hartley, speaking at a rally at the Colorado state Capitol in Denver on March 30, demanded that the U.S. government find the body of her slain husband, David. Story Here
More stories on The War Next Door
Someone paid over $13,000 for a PEZ dispenser.
Every time I hear something about that stupid Royal Wedding overseas, it gets more ridiculous. The American media (not just the entertainment part) is desperately trying to pump this matrimonial ceremony up into a money maker.
Their pathetic attempts to recreate the monster cash cow Diane and Prince Charles’ Wedding became, aren’t resonating with most Americans. Over 65% said they were ignoring the wedding in a recent Gallup Poll.
By the way, PEZ is an Austrian business, but someone from America (Connecticut) ponied up the bucks for this (I would hope) one-of-kind PEZ product.
“Think you pay too much in taxes? It could be worse. You could be living in Denmark.
As you send your hard-earned cash off to the good folks at the Internal Revenue Service, a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development may help take some of the sting out of writing that check.
The Paris-based group that tracks the economies of 34 nations found that the burden on U.S. taxpayers is just about the lowest in the developed world.” Story Here
Photo - Several dozen protesters using a "mad hatter" theme counter-demonstrate against a tax day Tea Party rally of about a hundred protesters nearby Friday in Bellevue, Wash
It was rocking in Coachella this past weekend as bands from the aughts dominated.
I can just imagine the heat there as I use to work in Palm Desert and had a newspaper in Indio.
It’s good to see a new generation of rock emerge with their own unique sounds.
“As the U.K. folk-revival quartet Mumford & Sons, all of whom are in their early 20s, stared out on the 70,000 people or so gathered to watch their set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on Saturday night, they couldn't help but remark on how much had changed for them. "In 2008, I was a punter sneaking in here for Rage Against the Machine," one of the Mumfords' string players cracked in disbelief.” Story Here
Photo - Arcade Fire performs at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio on Saturday. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
As I suggested in an earlier post, just because the Lakers won all four games against the Hornets in the regular season it doesn’t mean anything when it comes to the NBA Playoffs.
Losing today, 100-109, the Lakers weakness against top guards was fully exposed. Pau Gasol was beat up (stitches required under his eye) and had a horrible game. Kobe Bryant had more turnovers than the entire Hornets team who set a record for the least amount of turnovers in a playoff game. The Lakers looked unprepared and didn’t play like a team with good chemistry.
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"It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters."
-Paul "Bear" Bryant
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If you are a Laker fan this was an ugly game to watch, as they trailed through most of it. If you’re a Hornet fan, I’m sure you’re buzzing with excitement. It was a painful loss for the mighty Lakers who wanted to play the Hornets instead of Portland in the first round. Beware what you ask for!Another ouch!
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"The most important lesson I've learned from sports is how to be not only a gracious winner, but a good loser as well. Not everyone wins all the time, as a matter of fact, no one wins all the time. Winning is the easy part, losing is really tough. But, you learn more from one loss than you do from a million wins. You learn a lot about sportsmanship. I mean, it's really tough to shake the hand of someone who just beat you, and it's even harder to do it with a smile. If you can learn to do this and push through that pain, you will remember what that moment is like the next time you win and have a better sense of how those competitors around you feel. This experience will teach you a lot on and off the field!"
-Amy Van Dyken
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Will the Lakers recover from this stinging loss? I wish I had the answer. As a fan, I’m going to display confidence in my team, and urge them to play better in game 2. That’s all I can do.
Go Lakers!
By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
Posted: 04/17/2011 02:40:26 AM PDT
I wonder what would happen if I walked into a fancy jewelry store, tried on an expensive watch, decided I liked it, and walked out the door with it like Lindsay Lohan, who took a necklace?
A jury will have to decide if Lohan's guilty of grand theft. As for me? I'd soon be rotting in jail on grand theft charges if I tried that little trick. Heck, I couldn't afford one of her lawyers (even for an hour), and my defense team would probably look like the “Whose Who?” of struggling public defenders in northern California.
I'm picking on Lohan because she's been down this path before. Poor little rich girl caught stealing stuff. Gets old after a while, don't you think? Then I got to thinking (uh oh!) and wondered if she's conducting some sort of “social experiment” and plans to tell the jury all about it at the proper time?
I recently read about one teenager in Southfield, Mich., who claimed he was conducting a “social experiment” when he robbed a comic book store.
According to WJBK-TV in Detroit, the teenager didn't want money. He wanted a detailed list of collector merchandise and threatened to use a realistic-looking homemade bomb. Here's where it gets weirder; the clerk was stubborn and didn't meet his demands. Then the robber relented and paid cash for the few items on the list the clerk did have!
When he was arrested (you knew that was coming), he told the authorities that the whole thing was just a “social experiment.” Isn't that interesting? If so, he might want to contact Lohan's lawyers and see if they could take his case. Providing he's the son of an oil baron.
Now where were we? Oh, yeah. Social experiments. I found this great website -- www.ilovesocialexperiments.com/ -- which shares experiences in social experimentation, sociology and human observation.
I didn't stop exploring the subject of social experiments there. In a controversial social experiment currently going on in New York City, the city is denying part of its homeless population any assistance for the next two years. They want to see if their $23 million program, called “Homebase,” is helping the people for whom it was intended.
Sounds cold, doesn't it? Perhaps clinical is a better word. In medical testing, it's long been the standard to give drug treatment to one group while another, the control group, goes without. You can read more about this social experiment at www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/nyregion/09placebo.html?_r=2&hp.
Have you heard of Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist most noted for his controversial study “the Milgram Experiment” in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale? You might look him up for further enlightenment on the subject.
He was influenced by the events of the Nazi Holocaust and carried out an experiment to demonstrate the relationship between obedience and authority. Shortly after the obedience experiment, Milgram conducted the small-world experiment (the source of the six degrees of separation concept) while at Harvard.
Particularly poignant to me is the song “American Pie,” which documents the period of 1959 to 1970 in the “10 years we've been on our own” of the third verse. Coming near the end of a turbulent era, “American Pie” spoke to the grand social experiments of the 1960s, which eventually collapsed under the weight of realities.
And in 1970, as I sweated in the jungles of Vietnam, I knew the world back home was rapidly changing. My peers in the States now looked at me and my comrades as the enemy. My generation didn't lead the country into a new Age of Aquarius where love ruled.
The really sad part is there is no going back to those innocent times when America's youth thought they could change the world with the power of love. Turned out, peace and love demanded a price. Harsher for some than others. We all paid it in different ways.
My final observation to share with you is that life is an ongoing social experiment, constantly evolving and challenging us to be happy.
As It Stands, the lyrics “Bye bye, Miss American Pie” still bring tears to my eyes.
I’ve heard that the immune system of sharks is superior to humans… with the except of lawyers who also have other shark-like attributes. My apologies to the sharks for the comparison.
They say ants have no eyelids. I’ve never been able to get close enough to tell. Fact is, snakes don’t have ears, but don’t try sneaking up on one!
Male rats are known to mate with their mothers, sisters and any other females in their family. A pair of rats are capable of having 15,000 offspring in one year. Is it any wonder we use the word “rat” in a negative way when referring to someone?
Some animals can be gay. Really. Among them are the African Elephant, brown bears, buffalo, dogs, giraffe, chickens, emus, jewel fish, salmon, common garter snakes, the red diamond rattlesnake, and even some insects, to name some.
Snails have the ability to sleep for three years. Don’t ask my why this is a good thing but some researchers think it is. Starfish are brainless creatures of the sea, but I still like “Patrick” in “Sponge Bob, Square Pants” cartoons.
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Ants can lift objects 50 times their own weight. There use to be a comic book superhero called “Ant Man,” (DC Comics) who wouldn’t have been stopped by that nasty insecticide “RoundUp.”
Eels have two hearts. I’ve heard the phrase “slippery heart” by that’s ridiculous. And what’s with hagfish having four hearts? I’ve known hags that didn’t even have one heart!
Time to call it a day, my friends. Thanks for stopping by. (image source)
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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain
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Photo -John Foxx/Stockbyte/Getty Images
I get a kick out of humorous photos of all kinds and based upon reader feedback…so do you!
Man bites dog — then sues over police canine's act
That’s all from me bunky! Have a good one, and be safe on this Friday night Live!
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Stories like this touch my heart.
I grieve for these young men and women returning from war with PTSD.
I suffer from PTSD, and when I read about others who appear to be handling theirs well and they suddenly snap…
I can’t help but shuddering. There, but for the grace of God, goes me. Someday my story could end the same way.
There’s no time limits with PTSD. There’s no predicting when it will overwhelm you. I live with that reality. Survivor’s guilt is common among those of us who go into combat and live while others die. It can be traced back to ancient times.
But this is my life right now… and I grieve for Clay Hunt, a vibrant Iraq veteran that was chosen to be in public service announcements reminding veterans that they weren't alone…but you see he was alone, or thought he was. That’s the damn thing. Each one of us face the possibility of Clay’s fate. Even those who appear to be doing just fine.
I’ve seen those “just fine” veterans in Stand Downs as they try to convince me that they’re different. That they don’t think about their time in combat or have nightmares. Or, the fact they saw their best friends head explode before their eyes. No. they can handle it. Just like Clay Hunt could handle it.
As It Stands, rest in peace brother, the war is finally over for you.
Excerpt:
"He was very despondent about why he was alive and so many people he served with directly were not alive," said John Wordin, 48, the founder of Ride 2 Recovery, a program that uses bicycling to help veterans heal physically and mentally.”
I’ve been following this issue for three years now and the one thing that sticks out to me is the denial by the NRA and gun groups that the cartels are getting their weapons from American gun dealers through the use of “straw buyers.” I’ve been reviled for even suggesting it in my columns. I’ve got comments to the effect that, “Most of the cartels guns are coming from mass shipments from Russia and Third World counties.” I’ve never seen any evidence of that contention.
What I do see is the NRA continuing to fight any efforts to curtail gun sales. As long as the NRA has Congress in it’s big pockets we’re going to continue to see American border agents murdered, and innocent American citizens on our southern borders will not be safe.
PHOTO - A U.S. Border Patrol agent passes photos of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry during a memorial service in Tucson. Two guns involved in the Gunrunner operation were found at the scene of a shootout in southern Arizona in December in which Terry was killed. (John Moore / AFP/Getty Images / January 21, 2011)
Excerpt:
“The investigation into a federal operation that allowed Mexican drug cartels to acquire U.S. weapons escalated Thursday with new revelations that an Arizona gun dealer repeatedly expressed fears that his guns were falling into the "hands of the bad guys" but was encouraged by federal agents to continue the sales.
Employees of the dealer videotaped gun buyers — suspected "straw purchasers" who could legally buy the guns, though cartel members could not — exchanging money with other individuals on the dealer's premises.
The aim of the ATF program, called Project Gunrunner, was to gather intelligence on suspicious weapons sales and arrest senior members of international trafficking chains.
In an eerie case of premonition, the gun dealer expressed fears that the guns he was selling could be used against U.S. border agents.” Full Story
Related:
U.S. gun-tracing operation let firearms into criminal hands - A federal operation aimed at tracing weapons to Mexican drug cartels lost track of hundreds, including two guns found at the scene of a Border Patrol agent's killing in Arizona.
What is it with these people? The myth that Obama was born in Kenya has been dispelled but they continue to act stupid.
Should we fear stupid people? I think so, but we also need to challenge their bigotry and single-minded focus to get rid of a black president.
“Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, said he was embarrassed, the Republic reported.
"Arizona is the first state to pass a birther bill. We look pretty much backward," Gallego said. "You might as well change Arizona to Alabama." Full Story
“In the 1980s, a national ad campaign showed Gert Boyle (pictured) putting her son and the products through extreme tests and her flexing her biceps tattooed with the words "Born to Nag."
Who cares?
It’s a question strangely missing from the exhaustive coverage of the Royal Wedding.
Americans have been subjected to a month-long countdown complete with surveys of souvenirs ranging from commemorative plates to condoms to a signature airsick bag. Flotillas of news correspondents have been dispatched across the Atlantic to ensure that no question goes unanswered, from whether William will wear a wedding ring to whether Kate is still a virgin.
Didn’t we fight a war so we wouldn’t have to pay attention to this sort of thing? Story Here
Windbags unite! Hot air aficionados are ready for a chance to heat up race with meaningless rhetoric…
That’s right folks…we’re going to have us an election. In 19 months. Between now and then, make sure you’re wearing your high boots during the debates as the shit will be piling up fast!
Republicans presidential hopefuls have been noodling around and sending up hot air balloons of interest for several months now. Most recent is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick (I sometimes lose it and call the president a liar) Santorum. He’s setting up a fundraising committee that allows him to take the first steps toward a 2012 presidential campaign.
But it’s the “
There’s Newt (Two Failed Marriages and loon) Gingrich; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who believes in a guy named Joseph Smith and money; and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (can you say former lobbyist?) with his vision of the “New South.”
This past weekend, attendees of the Awakening 2011 conference for American values voters selected Rep. Michele Bachmann as its straw poll winner. Bachmann won 23 percent of the vote, while Huckabee garnered 22.8 percent and Newt Gingrich placed third with 21 percent of the vote.
A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll revealed Huckabee and Trump are neck-and-neck (or dollar for dollar) in the race. Frank Newport, the editor in chief of Gallup, says “this is a v
The Democrats, of course, are going with the guy in office right now. President Obama didn’t waste any time in announcing his intentions for the next election. It’s safe to say the 2012 presidential race is off and running and he’s in the campaign mode.
Isn’t that special? 
Makes me warm and fuzzy all over knowing that the circus election is going to be taking up most of those reprobates time trying to get re-elected, or elected for the first time, while the rest of us suffer through their meaningless rhetoric and this never-ending recession.
As It Stands, at least we don’t have to buy tickets to watch the “horse and pony” shows…or wait…do we?
The occasion today is their narrow victory last night that kept them from sliding into the third spot in the West. It also means they won’t have to face a hot Portland team in the 1st round.
That doesn’t mean their opponent, The New Orleans Hornets, are going to be a pushover. The Lakers do have a winning record against them this season, which is a favorable sign. However, as any sports fan will tell you, the Playoffs are a whole different animal! Everyone’s A game, every game, makes for epic matchups. And upsets.
I frankly don’t know what to think about this year’s Lakers. They’ve been more unpredictable than the stock market or a thoroughbred racehorse this season. Watching them play the last seven games produced plenty of “Tums” moments for me. Watching their five-game swoon was equivalent to someone scratching their fingernails on a blackboard (or white board) for a dedicated fan such as myself.
Will the Lakers repeat? Three Peat? Tie the Boston Celtics for the Most Championships? I’d like to say YES! resoundingly…but reality tells me…the competition is tougher this year in the wild wild West. When the smoke clears the winner is going to face stiff competition from a new guy in the East:
I predict the Chicago Bulls are going to be the Beast that manhandles ALL opponents. Lakers VS Bulls….hmmmmmm …the last time that happened (1995) the Lakers lost. Or was it 1998? See…I can’t even get that straight I was so traumatized!
Go Lakers! Photo Source
The door to the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is open and we've all walked through it. Some grudgingly, some eagerly. Most of us unknowin...
