time is stranger than ever before liquid seconds dripping on the floor
No one uses a clock anymore
wristwatches leave the skin sore
time running out on the poor
we’re all going out the same door
forever more
forever more
-Dave
Good Morning Humboldt County!
The coffees on…c’mon in, grab a cup and a seat and let’s start this day with a few stories. The days are flying by, so it’s nice to start them off slowly with this quiet time. Enjoy:
Chicken jerky treats linked to mystery illnesses, deaths in dogs
Chicken jerky treats may be to blame for dozens of new reports of mysterious illnesses and some deaths in dogs, prompting a renewed warning for pet owners by the Food and Drug Administration.
At least 70 dogs have been sickened so far this year after reportedly eating chicken jerky products imported from China, FDA officials said. That’s up from 54 reports of illness in 2010. Some of the dogs have died, according to the anecdotal reports from pet owners and veterinarians. The new warning follows previous FDA cautions about chicken jerky treats in 2007 and 2008. But after a high of 156 reports of illness in 2007, the number of complaints dropped. Now, it's rising again. Dog owners and vets are reporting that animals may be stricken with a range of illnesses within days or hours of eating chicken jerky, including kidney failure and Fanconi syndrome, a condition characterized by low glucose.
A large chunk of a Los Angeles street and the coastal bluff it sat on crumbled into the ocean amid heavy rains on Sunday.
A section of Paseo Del Mar in the San Pedro area that for months had been creeping toward the ocean collapsed as a storm struck Southern California, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement.
The mayor said there were no injuries and no property was damaged. The scenic route had been long closed. It had been bisected by 25-foot-deep fissures in places and the city had erected a chain link fence and warning signs. The fissures first appeared last spring, and engineers had been monitoring potential landslide risk. The peninsula's scenic qualities prompted decades of homebuilding that some experts blame for further destabilizing the historically unstable ocean bluffs.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Nebraska's motor vehicle department for refusing to issue a personalized license plate that refers to an unofficial holiday known as National Pot Smoking Day.
An attorney who supports marijuana legalization had requested a plate reading "NE 420", letters and numerals that refer to Nebraska and April 20, the date of the unofficial holiday.Frank Shoemaker, the attorney from Holbrook, Nebraska, who requested the plate, is the sponsor of a petition drive for a state ballot measure next year to legalize marijuana.Beverly Neth, director of the DMV, refused to issue the plate and said the "420" numerals were used to promote marijuana use, an illegal drug in the state.
Officials aren’t so picky in Ohio (photo above)
She said the numbers were also a combination that could be associated with Adolf Hitler, who was born on April 20, 1889, and the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, which took place on April 20, 1999. Amy Miller, Nebraska ACLU legal director, said there was nothing obscene or offensive about Shoemaker's proposed plate. "It's purely political speech relating to a current ballot initiative." The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that license plates are a legitimate place for personal and political expression, said Tracy Hightower-Henne, an ACLU volunteer cooperating attorney in Omaha.
Time to walk on down the road…
By Dave Stancliff/For the Times-Standard
As weeks passed, whenever she went outdoors, her symptoms worsened. Wallace-Babb's doctor began to suspect she had been poisoned. Neither states nor the federal government have systematically tracked reports from people like Wallace-Babb, or comprehensively investigated how drilling affects human health.
ProPublica, a web magazine dedicated to “Journalism in the Public Interest,” recently examined government environmental reports and private lawsuits and interviewed scores of residents, physicians and toxicologists in four states—Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania—that are drilling hot spots.
Their research showed that cases like Wallace-Babb's go back a decade in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, where drilling has taken place for years. They are just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale drilling boom began in 2008.
Concern about such health complaints go back to 2007 when Wallace-Babb testified before Congress.
A pair of environmental monitoring water wells drilled deep into an aquifer in Pavillion, Wyo., contain high levels of cancer-causing compounds and at least one chemical commonly used in hydraulic fracturing, according to new test results released on Nov. 9 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Pavillion area has been drilled extensively for natural gas for 20 years and is home to hundreds of gas wells. For a decade, residents have claimed that hydraulic fracturing in particular - has caused their water to turn black and smell like gasoline. Some residents say they suffer neurological impairment, loss of smell, and nerve pain they associate with exposure to pollutants.
Meanwhile, the gas industry - led by the Canadian company EnCana, which owns the wells in Pavillion - has denied that its activities are responsible for the contamination. Despite their denial, EnCana has supplied drinking water to the residents.
The wells also contained benzene at 50 times the level that is considered safe for people, as well as phenols - another dangerous human carcinogen - acetone, toluene, naphthalene and traces of diesel fuel.
The EPA said the water samples were saturated with methane gas that matched the deep layers of natural gas being drilled for energy. The research in Wyoming is separate from the agency's ongoing national study of hydraulic fracturing's effect on water supplies, and is being funded through the Superfund cleanup program.
Health and contamination problems from fracking have to be taken seriously and addressed sooner, rather than later. If the industry wants to show it can be a good neighbor, now is the time to cooperate with researchers and solve these issues to everyone‘s satisfaction.
As It Stands, I’m hopeful the fracking process can be improved for both the people living near the active wells, and for the sake of this country’s energy supply.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Good Morning Humboldt County!
Good to see you. C’mon in and enjoy a cup of hot coffee with me. Today I have a special edition exclusive for you. Call it the opening shot from the 1% ers who have decided to wage all-out class warfare.
It’s always been about the “Haves” and the “Have Nots.” Now we have a lobbying firm offering to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement. What are the Wall Streeters afraid of? Read on:
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.
According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bulls eye.”
The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker; Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.
The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry -- that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says. “…This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”
The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in response to OWS. Wall Street companies “likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own cause,” according to the memo. “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”
Part of the plan CLGC proposes is to do “statewide surveys in at least eight states that are shaping up to be the most important of the 2012 cycle.”
The memo indicates that CLGC would research who has contributed financial backing to OWS, noting that, “Media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others.”
"It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.” (article source)
He really wanted to get on the Oprah show to spread his message(!) in a bad way, but never got the invite. Go figure.
So Oscar, aka Jesus Christ, went out with an assault rifle to gun down the Anti-Christ…none other than President Obama. Who knew?
But, as fate would have it, he was caught shortly after shooting at the side of the White House, which he reportedly wounded a couple of times. Obama and family weren’t at home when he tried to bless them with his assault rifle.
We live in really strange days folks. It’s not everyday the son of God goes on a rampage and tries to take out the leader of the free world with a semi-automatic weapon and doesn’t even come close! Somewhere in the hinterlands of America some GOP wannabe presidents are destroying their contracts with the “Great Deceiver.” God bless America!
Federal investigators are looking into a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility's water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system. The Nov. 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks.
Cyber security experts said that the reported attack highlights the risk that attackers can break into what is known as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. They are highly specialized computer systems that control critical infrastructure — from water treatment facilities, chemicals plants and nuclear reactors to gas pipelines, dams and switches on train lines.
Good Morning Humboldt County!
I think a cup of coffee on a rainy day is a Zen-like thing when its coupled with reading. C’mon in and grab a cup of brew. Pull up a chair, and see what I’ve culled from the headlines to start your day:
Watch out counterfeiters: Canada is planning to abandon paper money
This week, our friend to the north introduced the first in its new line of all-plastic notes -- a cool $100 bill made out of a single sheet of plastic polymer and tricked out with all kinds of high-tech security features.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors on Thursday by passing a bill that abandons proposals that threatened to end the reign of pizza and French fries on federally funded school lunch menus.
The scuttled changes, which would have stripped pizza's status as a vegetable and limited how often French fries could be served, stemmed from a 2010 child nutrition law calling on schools to improve the nutritional quality of lunches served to almost 32 million U.S. school children. The action is a win for the makers of frozen French fries and pizza and comes just weeks after the deep-pocketed food, beverage and restaurant industries successfully weakened government proposals for voluntary food marketing guidelines to children.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The California Supreme Court ruled that the sponsors of Proposition 8 have the right to defend the measure, clearing the way for federal courts to decide the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans.
Thursday's unanimous decision, written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, strongly affirmed that ballot sponsors may represent California in defending initiatives when elected officials fail to do so. Gov. Jerry Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris have refused to challenge last year's federal ruling against Proposition 8.
Robin Tyler, left, and Diane Olson, who were among the original plaintiffs in the 2004 lawsuit that led to same-sex marriages in California, said that the California Supreme Court’s decision Thursday was not a loss for them, merely a hurdle. (Michael Robinson Chavez, Los Angeles Times)
Time to walk on down the road…
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. --Albert Einstein
Good Morning Humboldt County!
C’mon inside on this rainy day and have a cup of coffee with me. I’ve searched out three stories for your reading entertainment this morning. Records are being set today as people from around the world try to get their name in the Guinness Book of World Records. So pull up a seat, relax, and read:
New jobless claims slide to 7- month low
New claims for unemployment insurance dropped to their lowest level in seven months, government data showed on Thursday, raising hopes that hiring may be picking up.
"The U.S. economy continues to show signs of strong momentum. The improvement in claims underscores that the gains in labor market activity over the past few months are being sustained," said Millan Mulraine, a senior macro strategist at TD Securities in New York.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Irish leprechauns, tea-sipping Britons, Australian ABBA impersonators and the oldest yoga teacher on the planet were just some of the people setting world records Thursday.
More than 300,000 people around the world took part in the seventh annual Guinness World Records Day, in which a number of records have already been confirmed.
Time to walk on down the road…
Earlier this year while getting my annual physical at the VA Clinic, my doctor told me I can’t take enough vitamin D and prescribed it for me in large daily doses. He gushed about how it was a miracle nutrient that would prevent me from getting prostate cancer.
I was sold until I saw another (civilian) doctor last week and he told me not to take vitamin D. I didn’t need it. It was just a fad among some less-informed doctors he suggested. I left his office understandably confused.
Two polar opposite opinions on the merit of taking vitamin D coming from two doctors. I’ve been waffling about taking vitamin D since my last visit. Then I read this article today about new research showing that higher than normal levels of it can make the heart beat too fast and out of rhythm (a condition known as atrial fibrillation).
The way I’ve always understood it is most people get at least some of their daily needs of vitamin D from sunlight. The research out of the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah warns that everyone absorbs supplements (like vitamin D) differently and should have their blood levels tested to be safe.
If I don’t take vitamin D will I get prostate cancer? If I do will my heart go into overdrive and crash? I hate choices like this. Maybe I’d have been better off not even hearing about these conflicting studies and mindlessly gobbled the controversial nutrient forever.
As It Stands, The only way I can make a decision, after giving this dilemma great thought, is to….flip a coin!
While Donald Trump has inspired thousands of grifters from across the country few have reached the heights that disgraced former Congressman...
