The Santa Barbara fires along the coastal foothills was bad enough, but now the fires have spread with wind gusts of 70 mph ripping through Northern San Fernando Valley overnight and into this morning.
With the hear expected to be in the 90's today, firefighters are in for a grueling battle.
There's no doubt this has been a bad year for fires in California.
For the whole story Click Here.
While reading two of my favorite blogs, Political Animal and Think Progress, I ran across some interesting news regarding Gov. Sarah Palin
It seems the Republican Governor's Association was holding a meeting and elected it's new leadership team and guess who wasn't picked? That's right. Gov. Sarah Palin. Imagine that?
The funny thing is that there are only 21 Republican Governors left in the country, and 19 of them attended the meeting, which was held in Miami. There's eight leadership posts. So she had a 42% chance of being picked and nobody wanted the hockey mom from Alaska.
Rumor has it that the governors weren't real happy with Palin's news conference yesterday and this was a great way of sending her a message! The cat's out-of-the-bag. She was a desperate political pick that gave new meaning to dumb and inexperienced.
My column AS IT STANDS this Sunday talks about the Republican Meltdown and where they are going next. I also make an argument for third party candidates getting more media exposure in the future. I did suggest that if the Republican Party did split in two, she might be the head of the new party - The Righteous Republicans!
See this Sunday's Times-Standard's AS IT STANDS and let me know what you think.
Firefighters pour water on the remains of the Physics Building at Westmont College.
Santa Barbara Fire Department crews fights to put out flames at a home on Coyote Drive in Montecito.
The charred remains of the house and car above are contrasted with the firefighter battling the
blaze on the right.
Over 2,500 acres of coastal foothills have been engulfed by fast-moving flames stroked by the Santa Ana and sundowner winds, but they are reportedly calming down today. Over 100 homes have been destroyed and there are thousands of people who have had to flee the area.
There's forests in Europe where people have to be careful when nature's urge to defecate comes upon them, if they don't want to get fined. Anybody ever been to Toiletten (Toilet?) benutzen! Or, does the sign mean, "No shitting."
This strikes me as odd, but if they don't want crap littering the forests, then that's the way it is. But what about the animals?
It almost looks like the figure is skiing and someone forgot to draw the skis. Yea...maybe that's what it is. What do you think?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently passed a new rule aimed at clearing the nation's air of toxic metal
At least 12 factories in Illinois alone have fallen through the cracks because of this sneaky move by Bush.
The EPA has been looking at the harmful effects of lead and there's a pile of research that shows how dangerous it really is when released in the air.
This is just another part of the putrid Bush legacy that will leave future generations to declare him the worst president we ever had!
“Live Free or Die,”
- New Hampshire State motto 
Do you support abolition of all income taxes?
Would you like to see regulatory bureaucracies eliminated, and most gun laws repealed? Do you think there should be complete free trade and that the government should be decentralized?
Does the repeal of most drug laws sound good to you? Finally, how does wide scale
privatization sound? If any of this sounds appealing, you may want to become a “Free Stater.”
The Free State Project is the brainchild of Jason Sorens, a card-carrying libertarian who back in 2001 came up with a concept to give the then irrelevant Libertarian Party, a national presence in politics.
Soren’s idea was to get 20,000 libertarians to move to a small state and pledge to carry out certain ideals where their numbers would carry some political clout. He and like-minded associates settled on New Hampshire for several reasons. It was known for to have low taxes and high regard for minding your own business.
According to the Free State Project web site info@freestateproject.org , this is a non-profit corporation, organized for mutual benefit and “social welfare” functions. They do not endorse candidates or legislation.
The goals of the Free State Project can be accomplished without the election of any candidates or the passage of any legislation,” according to the site. The Free State Project is not affiliated with the Libertarian Party, but welcomes its members along with “classic liberals” (not the modern liberals, but followers of Thomas Jefferson and similar thinkers), paleoconservatives, constitutionalists, and anyone willing to sign on to the movement.
Organizers are quick to point out that the Free Sate Project does not promote secession. Soren’s idea to wield political power by bringing large numbers of sympathetic people together may sound like a gathering of a radical, wild-eyed, ideologically separatists, at first glance. That impression has been gradually dispelled by articles in the mainstream press, including Reader’s Digest. The New York Times ran a respectful piece about Free Staters in October 2004.
Despite what legitimacy that has been conferred upon the organization, they are not without their detractors. Some residents of New Hampshire find the displays of rambunctious democracy unsettling. Free Staters use civil disobedience and street demonstrations to get their points across
Roderick Long, a philosophy professor at Auburn University and the brains behind the Libertarian Nation Foundation, told the Associated Press in December 2004, “We don’t want to live by ourselves but simply want to demonstrate to the world that libertarian principals actually work.”
Meanwhile, Sorens’ dream is slowly unfolding. There aren’t 20,000 followers, but those who did move to New Hampshire have made a political impact. Although the Free State Project doesn’t endorse political candidates, some members have been elected to local office, including staunch home-schooling advocates elected to local school boards.
Still, it’s apparent that most Americans don’t feel tyrannized enough to uproot themselves and join the Free Staters.. You never know however; as the paths of communications continue to open via the Internet, more people may embrace the Free Stater ideals and actually move to New Hampshire.
I think it’s important for people to follow a dream. It’s one of the many liberties that we Americans enjoy. Is the Free State Project a revolutionary plan or just a pipe dream? Only time will tell.
As It Stands, we are a country of dreamers always looking for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Twenty months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant an American man is said to be cured of AIDS by doctors. Researchers and doctors are admitting this one case might have been a fluke, but there's hope that more interest in gene therapy will come about. Click here for more on this story.
German hemotologists Eckhard Thiel (left) and Gero Huetter of Berlin's Charite University talk with the press about their recent findings.
Greg Papazian was a teenager when he began taking photos of rock stars for several famous clubs, like the Whiskey a Go-Go. He took over 1600 photos before going to work at the family's shoe store. He became a cobbler, but one day a friend talked him into turning the store into an art gallery featuring his rare photos.
Greg Papazian is shown above with two of his favorite photos. Annie Lennox (left) taken in 1983 at the Palace Theatre in Hollywood, and Ron Wood, taken at the Anaheim Convention Center in 1973. He took photos of such famous groups as: Led Zeppelin; Peter Frampton; Procol Harum; Rod Stewart; The Who; Edgar Winter; Humble Pie; Uriah Heep; Deep Purple; Fleetwood Mac; Eric Clapton; Chuck Berry; Bee Gees; and T. Rex.
Russian State media can't get enough of Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's proven to be a superstar for actively stopping aid to Ukrai...
