Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Do you always know what your dog is thinking?

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It’s not uncommon for pet owners to think they know what their dog’s thinking.

I can look at my pug, Molly (photo), and tell she wants to play. It’s obvious. She brings me her toys for fun and games.

As the year’s go by you establish a language without a name. Your dog is super attuned to you. It knows all of your subtle behaviors because it’s always paying attention.

My wife, Shirley, and I, probably know more about what Molly is thinking than any one of our three sons! Her thoughts are transparent. They flit by like butterflies. At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure what my pug is thinking about.

Researchers, however, have to research…even if it seems like a waste of time …the things you and I already know. The Canine Cognition Center at Yale University is currently studying whether dogs pick up on human social cues, and how a dog make a decision.

In other words, brilliant researchers are trying to figure out what dogs are thinking. I’m thinking they should have conducted a field study of dog’s and their owners if they wanted to find that out.

Instead, a research team is busy acting out puppet shows to find out whether or not dogs are moral. I’m not making this up.

Try to imagine a white-coated bespectacled researcher crouching on the floor with a rat puppet. He makes the rat run up a little hill. The rat sees another puppet, a hedgehog, having a hard time getting up the hill.

The nice rat helps him. This goes on a couple times as the bored dog watches.

Image fades.

That white-coated researcher is back with his rat puppet. This time the rat sees the hedgehog having trouble getting up the hill, and pushes him down! The dog is left to contemplate that after several repeats.

Then it’s time for the moment of truth; the dog is given a choice to check out the nice or the mean puppet rat. Can it tell the difference? Does it want to interact with the good or mean rat?

If this study turns out like a similar one done with babies, the dog will like the nice rat and want to play with him. Interesting huh? Just one thing: dogs are not human babies. Thus, I’ve concluded those researchers are going to get flawed results.

Gee…it’s a shame watching all those researcher dollars going to the dogs with no appreciable benefits.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Satanists Aim to Go Mainstream With First Church in Detroit

DFP Satanic Temple (3).JPG

Good Day World!

My first experience with Satanists happened in 1991 when I was a managing editor of a group of newspapers in the Palm Springs area (Post Newspapers).

My reporters were investigating a series of animal mutilations (chickens, rabbits, and even a dog) that had weird things next to their decapitated corpses – like black candles, and inverse crosses spray-painted on the ground or wall.

(Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)

After a couple of months investigating these strange finds I met with a Palm Desert detective who gave me a short education on Satanism. He explained the meanings of the many symbols left by the makeshift altars.

We never did catch those involved. But the experience left me wondering how many people were into Satanism. Back then, Satanists didn’t go around advertising their quasi-religion. It just wasn’t cool in the 20th Century.

Everything changed in the 21st century. For example, Satanists don’t hide their beliefs anymore. The best example of this assertion I can give you is the following story:

THE DEVIL YOU SAY? SATANISTS SAY THEIR A PEACEFUL SECT

A new religious group aims to bring the devil to Detroit.

The Satanic Temple on Saturday marked the launch of its first chapter outside New York. But leaders say they don't worship Satan. They don't practice cannibalism, or sacrifice people or animals.

"It's peaceful," said Jex Blackmore, 32, local leader and part of the temple's executive ministry. "The idea of sacrifice specifically is to appease some demon or some god, and that's a supernatural belief that we don't subscribe to."

(Photo right: The Satanic Temple aims to place this statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed deity, at the Oklahoma State Capitol in response to Christians installing the Ten Commandments there. The Satanic Temple recently started a Detroit chapter, the first of 15 planned across the United States. Photo: Courtesy of the Satanic Temple)

The group's tenets include free will, compassion toward all creatures, respect of others' freedom — including freedom to offend — and beliefs supported by scientific understanding: "We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs," according to the Satanic Temple's website.

Based on Western civilization's most notorious evil character, the sect is intrinsically controversial.

The Satanic Temple was started about two years ago and has drawn national attention for First Amendment-related demonstrations in communities as far-flung as Florida and Massachusetts.

Detroit is the first of 15 chapters to be announced in the coming weeks.” (Read whole story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Monday, September 8, 2014

#Merry Monday: A Look at Laughter

Why Humans Laugh Good Day World!                                        

 When I was a newspaper editor I use to look for innovative ways to improve readership.

I discovered people like to read obituaries and letters to the editor. They also liked to look at the cartoon page. Especially in the Sunday edition.

It didn’t take a degree in philosophy for me to figure out people liked to laugh. I made sure to inject my column “As It Stands” with humor whenever possible.

Recently, I took the topic of laughter and broke it up into three categories. Laughter is a versatile subject that deserves a really good look.

The first board - Why Humans Laugh- will give you an excellent understanding of the dynamics of laughter. You may be surprised to learn that most laughter isn’t about humor. Basically, laughter is a social structure, something we do to connect with one another.

You’ll discover the origins of laughter - we laughed before we spoke any language - and why it’s so important to laugh for your health. Have you ever wondered what happens to your body when you laugh? This first board provides a good overview on why humans laugh.

The second board - Meet Animals That Can Laugh- takes you on a tour of the animal kingdom like you never thought about it before. In case you wondered, laughter and joy are not unique to humans. Pet owners can attest to that.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals long before humans began cracking up. There is amble evidence that many mammals make play sounds, including tickle-induced panting.

And wait until you hear the call of a Laughing Kookaburra! This bird’s laughter sounds like a variety of trills, chortles, belly laughs, and hoots. It starts and ends with a low chuckle and has a shrieking "laugh" in the middle.

You’ll be amazed at how many types of animals laugh. Owls, dogs, meerkats, penguins, and even a camel and a dolphin have been observed laughing by researchers. When you check out this board you’ll get the whole list of laughing animals.

In the third, and final board - Why Laughter is the Best Medicine -  you’ll discover  laughter as a meditation and a way of life. The benefits of laughter extend to improving marriages, your overall health, and general happiness.

Witness the positive power of laughter in Cancer therapy groups and why their becoming more common.

We often overlook how important laughter is. It makes us feel good inside and we smile when we hear others laugh. The positive feelings involved in a good chuckle are worth more than money and material things.

I’ll leave you this one last thought; “Laugh to live, live to laugh, and he who laughs last…laughs last!”

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

Sunday, September 7, 2014

World Wide Droughts Will Lead to Water Wars Someday

Good Day World!

We can’t live without drinking water.

It’s the most precious resource on the planet, but you wouldn’t know it by the way it’s wasted.

We need to price water accordingly. When you turn on the tap and water flows, there's little recognition it's a finite resource.

We’re facing a worldwide weather phenomenon that threatens the future of water and food supplies, according to experts.

Colombia, Pakistan, Somalia, Australia, Guatemala, China and Kenya are just a few of the other countries currently suffering from severe drought conditions.

Droughts have plagued the earth for centuries. In fact, there's some debate over whether the recent spate of drought is different from the past.

What is clear to some analysts is that more severe weather episodes like drought are on the way. It’s only going to get worse.

"We'll see more droughts and floods in the decades to come," said LaDawn Haglund, a professor of justice and social inquiry at Arizona State University and an urban water expert.

"Warming temperatures are changing when and where how much water falls from the sky," she said in a recent NBC interview.

In California, the well-documented drought will cost the state $2.2 billion and put some 17,000 agricultural workers out of a job this year, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. California is easily the biggest agriculture-producing state in the United States.

It's the use of groundwater supplies after surface wells have dried up that has helped keep food prices low for now. That’s changing.

With drought almost guaranteed, the issue, say experts, is how the world deals with dwindling surface and groundwater supplies.

What's missing in all the drought talk is advanced planning by political leaders. Partisan politics prevent any unified response to an issue.

A lot of the blame goes on governments around the globe for failing to think beyond the last drought. That failure could bring on national security issues and heighten conflicts over water and food in the future.

It does not seem likely that we can realistically slow down population growth or the demands of economic growth that comes with it.

The demand for water will increase with time. The resources won’t.

For centuries, wars have been fought over precious commodities from all over the world—though, so far, water hasn't been one of them.

But according to Blue Gold: World Water Wars, that's all about to change as political, economic, and social movements make water a limited resource in more and more international regions.

(Book Photo via PBS)

The film takes viewers through the causes of the water crisis—mining, pollution, wetland destruction—and blocks out the potential effects of a water shortage.

If you're not even sure that fighting to own water is possible, then Flow is a good film to start with; the award-winning documentary asks that exact question, and then sets about answering it through interviews with scientists and activists, and in-depth discussions of, as the film refers to it, "the growing privatization of the world's dwindling freshwater supply."

But it's not all gloom and doom: filmmaker Irena Salina also looks at the solutions, individuals, and companies that are developing ways to stem the tide of water damage.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Saturday, September 6, 2014

GOP’s Latest Attempt to Restrict Voter Access Fails in Ohio

Good Day World!

You have to hand it to the Republican Party; their creativity knows no bounds when it comes to trying to control election results.

It took a federal judge Thursday to stop their latest attempt at restricting voter access. U.S. District Judge Peter Economus blocked an Ohio law that scales back early voting just prior to the upcoming fall elections.

It took a lawsuit by civil rights groups and churches to halt the GOP’s latest attack on minority voters.

A directive from Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted that established uniform early voting times and restricted weekend and evening hours was overturned.

Another attempt to restrict voting access was a GOP-backed law that eliminated golden week, when people could both register to vote and cast ballots. Without those days, early voting would typically start 28 or 29 days before Election Day instead of the prior 35-day window.

Thanks to the judge, early voting will begin Sept. 30 instead of Oct. 7.

The ruling directs Husted to require boards to set expanded evening hours and adds another Sunday to the state's early voting schedule this fall.

The judge also blocked Husted from preventing boards from adopting additional early voting hours beyond his order.

According to Freda Levenson, managing attorney for ACLU of Ohio, the state's early voting opportunities are key to residents with inflexible work schedules or other responsibilities that prevent them from getting to a polling place during regular business hours.

This ruling means voters will not see their access to the ballot compromised during the upcoming election. It doesn’t mean however, that the GOP will not continue to try to restrict voter access.

It’s a pathetic ploy that the GOP should be ashamed of. By narrowing minorities ability to participate in the voting process the GOP is showing it’s true colors – and they’re not Red-White-and Blue.

What the GOP is doing is conceding that they’ll never get a majority without restricting some Americans ability to vote.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Friday, September 5, 2014

Punk Report: Bieber, CeeLo. Fries, Pick Up Punk Points

Here’s a quick look at three punks in the news recently.

What is a punk?

The answer is simple. Someone who thinks he can get away with doing whatever he/she wants. Punks hurt animals. Punks hurt people. Punks are thoughtless twits who think the world revolves around them.

A punk can be rich or poor. Doesn’t matter. The main ingredient is they think they can get away with anything. Here’s three good examples of punks in the news:

Justin Bieber

High-powered attorney Gloria Allred is representing two people who were involved in an all-terrain vehicle wreck and subsequent fight that led to pop star and punk, Justin Bieber’s, arrest.

Bieber, 20, was arrested and charged with dangerous driving and assault after the singer allegedly crashed his ATV into a minivan near Stratford, where he grew up, and then got into a physical confrontation with the minivan’s driver, Perth County Ontario Provincial Police said. Allred, in a statement Tuesday, called the accident “a serious matter that could have an impact on Mr. Bieber’s probation status in California.

”Bieber is on probation after accepting a plea deal to settle a case in which he was alleged to have thrown eggs at a neighbor’s house in Calabasas in Los Angeles County. (source)

Ceelo Green

"The Good Life" for CeeLo Green is over.

Four days after the singer-songwriter and punk was sentenced to three years of probation in Los Angeles and was ordered to complete 360 hours of community service and 52 Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous meetings, the Grammy winner's TBS reality show was canceled.

Green, 39, pleaded no contest to drugging a woman who later woke up naked in his bed with no memory of what happened. Prosecutors previously rejected a rape charge against Green, after the woman claimed he gave her ecstasy and assaulted her after a dinner party. Green maintained they had consensual sex. (source)

David J. Fries

New Hampshire police say a motorcyclist clocked at 127 mph bragged after being arrested that he had reached 185 mph during the chase.

State police say 31-yearDavid J. Fries of Manchester, N.H., was arrested after allegedly going 127 mph on his motorcycle. (Photo courtesy of NH State Police)-old David J. Fries, of Manchester, a punk who was spotted by a trooper on Interstate 93 in Bow at about 2:45 a.m. Saturday.

The first trooper eventually ended the chase, but another trooper saw Fries crash into a guardrail after he exited Interstate 393.

Police say Fries then led officers on an hourlong foot chase in Concord. He was subdued with help from a police dog. Fries was treated for injuries from the crash and from the dog. He faces a variety of charges and is being held on $30,000 bail. (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

 

Throwing Hot Water on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Good Day World!

I’ve got nothing against fundraisers to help people, but caution should be courted before parting with your money.

Not all charities are created equal.

This may come as a surprise to you, but a serious search reveals even the biggest names in charity only put a small portion of your donation towards what you think is going directly to benefit someone.

For example, lets take the recent (is it still going on?) Ice Bucket Challenge to raise money for ALS research. The campaign has gone viral and over $100 million in donations have been collected.

Where is that money going?

According to the ALS Foundation, not towards ALS.

Over 73% of all donations raised are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations. Less than 27% is actually used for the purpose we donated for.

According to the ECFA, a charitable watchdog, 27% of donations actually making it to the cause they are donated to is unacceptable.

In fact, the ECFA won't deem a non-profit as a reliable charity unless at least 80% of donations make it to their intended projects.

The illustration on the right shows the breakdown of the ALS Foundation's Financials.

Employee salaries at the ALS Foundation are out-of-this-WORLD!

Jane H. Gilbert – President and CEO –$339,475.00
Daniel M. Reznikov – Chief Financial Officer – $201,260.00
Steve Gibson – Chief Public Policy Officer – $182,862.00
Kimberly Maginnis -Chief of Care Services Officer – $160,646.00
Lance Slaughter -Chief Chapter Relations and Development Officer – $152,692.00
Michelle Keegan – Chief Development Officer – $178,744.00
John Applegate – Association Finance Officer – $118.726.00
David Moses – Director of Planned Giving – $112,509.00
Carrie Munk – Chief Communications and Marketing Officer – $142,875.00
Patrick Wildman – Director of Public Policy – $112,358.00
Kathi Kromer – Director of State Advocacy – $110,661.00

The ALS Foundation is a terrible organization to send your money.

If you decide to take the Ice Bucket Challenge, may I humbly suggest that you select a well-researched charity (on your own, no endorsements here) and send it to them.

If you’re wondering what charities are the best, I refer you to CHARITY NAVIGATOR, an excellent website and Guide to Intelligent Giving.

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Meet The New Spy On the Block: Fake Cellphone Towers

Mysterious Fake Cellphone Towers Are Intercepting Calls All Over The US

Good Day World!

It seems like everyone wants to spy on us these days. By us, I mean the American public.

No one is exempt from having their civil liberties infringed upon by agencies like the NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI, and local cops.

(Photo-REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

Now, there may be a new “player” looking to learn anything they can about us. None of the aforementioned agencies claim to know about the new spy on the block: Fake Cellphone Towers.

Chances are someone knows whose behind these mysterious Cellphone Towers that are popping up across the country. But no one is talking. Yet. Just listening.

According to numerous sources, those Cell Phone Towers are intercepting calls.

Seventeen fake cellphone towers were discovered across the U.S. last week, according to a report in Popular Science.

Rather than offering you cellphone service, the towers appear to be connecting to nearby phones, bypassing their encryption, and either tapping calls or reading texts.

Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, used ESD's CryptoPhone 500 to detect 17 bogus cellphone towers. ESD is a leading American defense and law enforcement technology provider based in Las Vegas. 

It's probably not the NSA — that agency can tap all it wants without the need for bogus towers, according to VentureBeat:

Not the NSA, cloud security firm SilverSky CTO/SVP Andrew Jaquith told us. “The NSA doesn’t need a fake tower,” he said. “They can just go to the carrier” to tap your line.

ComputerWorld points out that the fake towers give themselves away by crushing down the performance of your phone from 4G to 2G while the intercept is taking place.

So if you see your phone operating on a slow download signal while you're near a military base ... maybe make that call from somewhere else.

In an amazing coincidence, police departments in a handful of U.S. cities have been operating "Stingray" or "Hailstorm" towers, which — you guessed it — conduct surveillance on mobile phone activity.

They do that by jamming mobile phone signals, forcing phones to drop down from 4G and 3G network bands to the older, more insecure 2G band.

With most phones, these fake communication towers are undetectable. But not for the CryptoPhone 500,  a customized Android device that is disguised as a Samsung Galaxy S III but has highly advanced encryption. (Full story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

To End the War on Drugs Legal Pot Must Succeed in Washington and Colorado

Good Day World!

As Colorado and Washington license pot growers and sellers, cops elsewhere continue to carry out marijuana busts at a rate of one every 42 seconds.

If you drop a gram of Sour Diesel on the sidewalk in Seattle, a police officer may help you sweep it up. Do that in New Orleans and you could face 20 years hard labor.

What we're witnessing now is a political movement giving birth to an economic awakening. The struggle to end the War on Drugs – at heart a movement to stop the mass incarceration of black men – is creating one of the greatest business opportunities of the 21st century.

For the War on Drugs to end, Colorado or Washington must succeed. That will require risk-taking entrepreneurs, not movement leaders. If both states fail, it may be impossible for others to follow.

Wall Street analysts believe there are going to be two or three billionaires minted in the marijuana industry in the next 10 years.

Top-quality weed currently retails for $250 to $300 an ounce. Over the long term, though, that could drop by as much as 80 percent prior to taxation.

BLACK PEOPLE MORE LIKELY TO BE ARRESTED FOR POT USAGE

Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, spent nearly a year mining data on the racial makeup of marijuana arrests. The ACLU found that black people were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people. This at a time when white and black marijuana usage rates are virtually identical, about 12 to 14 percent.

That racial disparity has grown worse with time. Over the past decade, the white arrest rate for marijuana possession held steady, around 192 arrests per 100,000 white people. Meanwhile, the black arrest rate skyrocketed. In 2001, it stood at 537 arrests per 100,000 black people. By 2010, it had climbed to 716.

Going into the project, Edwards suspected the numbers might be bad. But not this bad. "We knew about racial disparities in New York," he tells me. "We didn't expect to find racial disparities everywhere, urban and rural, 49 of the 50 states." (Only Hawaii had a nearly even black-white arrest rate.) The war on marijuana, Edwards says, "has been a war on people of color."

To understand what those numbers mean on the ground, you only have to visit the American marijuana gulag that is the state of Louisiana. New Orleans, of course, famously welcomes and celebrates bacchanalian debauchery.

But Louisiana lawmakers take a perverse pride in maintaining some of the harshest marijuana laws in the country. One joint can get you six months in the parish prison. Second offense: up to five years. Third: up to 20.

BIG PLAYERS WAITING TO EXPAND POT INDUSTRY

Marijuana today is a craft-scale industry. It may not stay that way very long. Bigger players are waiting in the wings. In the past year, Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, the nation's biggest marijuana-­advocacy group, has met half a dozen times with representatives of the beer, wine and liquor industries.

They've talked about the coming legalization of marijuana and what it will mean for the sector of what St. Pierre calls "problematic adult commerce." The NORML leader didn't ask for those meetings. The booze people came to him. (Snippets from the January 16th, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone. Full story here)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Sleep, Successful People, & Slouches Who Still Manage To Get By

Good Day World!

You’ve heard their stories.

They all have one thing in common – achieving success despite numerous life challenges.

Famous people who share their success often credit it to simple things. Like sleep, for example.

It’s important to everyone. The difference between a “good night’s sleep” and a lousy one can make or break your day.

Experts say the very last thing you do before bed affects your mood and energy level the following day, since it often determines how well and how much you sleep.

I hated sleeping when I was young – up until my early teens. Then it suddenly became a precious commodity after long nights of partying.

Sleep took on even more significance when I was sent to Vietnam in 1970.

I learned to sleep in every imaginable position. Even standing – leaning against something. If I got a total of six hours sleep in a 24 hour period I considered myself a lucky dogface.

Having said all this, I now consider myself a slouch. No apologies. Thanks to daily naps and a early bedtime I get a lots of sleep. I have no interesting pre-sleep rituals to share with you.

That is, unless you count drifting off and taking your brain out of gear. In my “non-system” no coherent thoughts are allowed to trouble my brain.

Successful people however, look at sleep as a necessary function that one must prepare for each night.

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin outlined a schedule that would lead him to "moral perfection."

In this ideal schedule, Franklin asked himself the same self-improvement question every night: "What good have I done today?"

He described his other rituals before bed as "put things in their places, supper, music or diversion or conversation, and examination of the day."

Franklin tracked his progress on self-improvement daily. Now that’s dedicated.

Take Winston Churchill, The British Prime Minister during WW II. He kept to a similar daily routine no matter what happened. In the book "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work," author Mason Currey recorded Churchill's schedule:

“Around 5 p.m., the prime minister would drink a weak whisky and soda before taking a nap for an hour and a half. Churchill said this siesta, or short nap, allowed him to work for 1.5 days every 24 hours. When he woke, he bathed and got ready for dinner.”

At 8 p.m., Churchill would eat dinner, which was often followed by drinks and cigars well past midnight. Due to his irregular sleep schedule, Churchill was said to hold War Cabinet meetings in his bath.

That couldn’t have been a pretty picture, but anything went during wartime I suppose.

One of my favorite authors, Stephen King, has a nightly routine that includes washing his hands and making sure all the pillows face a certain way.

"It’s not any different than a bedtime routine," says King as recorded in Lisa Rogak's book "Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King."

"I brush my teeth, I wash my hands. Why would anybody wash their hands before they go to bed? I don’t know. And the pillows are supposed to be pointed a certain way. The open side of the pillowcase is supposed to be pointed in toward the other side of the bed. I don’t know why."

Hint…can you say OCD?

One last example of preparing for a successful sleep:

Bill Gates reads for an hour before bed, no matter what time he gets home.

The Microsoft billionaire told the Seattle Times: "I read an hour almost every night. It's part of falling asleep."

He enjoys "deeply informative and beautifully written" books (in June he released a list of six books he recommends) and his reading topics range from healthcare to climate change to business and politics.

In conclusion, some of us are slouches who still manage to get by and actually have a successful, but unspectacular, career. Slouches, like myself, are seldom famous. But they’re always well-rested!

Here’s some related stories if you want to be a success: 

101 Inspirational Quotes From Super Successful People

Here’s How Your Clothing Affects Your Success

5 Things Successful People Never Do

It’s time for me to walk on down the road…

Monday, September 1, 2014

Corporations & Billionaires Busy Violating the Publics Rights

Image: Surfers are arrested during a dispute over beach access

Good Day World!

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have more rights than citizens in this country, the divide between “Haves” and “Have Nots” has increased.

Millionaires and Billionaires live in a different America than the rest of us.

(Photo -Surfers were arrested in 2012 after bypassing a locked gate to reach Martins Beach in San Mateo County, California.)

In their world it’s okay to deny access to public beaches because they have enough money to fight the laws protecting the public’s rights to them. Putting it mildly, they don’t share very well! 

The beach is so central to California’s identity that the right of surfers and sun lovers to access the sand is guaranteed in the state Constitution.

That doesn’t mean anything to the wealthy landowners snatching up beach front properties on both coasts.

Many California landowners want to block public access to their chunks of the coveted coastline. There are several hundred alleged violations pending before state officials, including a highly charged case in which Vinod Khosla, a green energy billionaire with ties to President Obama, is fighting surfers over access to a beach south of San Francisco.

Property owners and the public have clashed over beach access nationwide.

In Hawaii, for example, the state has sanctioned landowners whose overgrown vegetation blocked paths to the strand. But the fight has proven particularly rancorous in California, where two-thirds of the state’s nearly 40 million people live in the counties that hug the coast. (source)

At the rate things are going the day is going to arrive when California’s beaches are no longer accessible to the public. You may think that’s an exaggeration. But consider the current lawsuits filed by the wealthy and the new precedents being set by their legions of lawyers.

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...