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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Sunday, June 15, 2008

FEMA director defends giving away hurricane supplies

The director of Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday defended giving away an estimated $85 million in hurricane relief supplies, blaming Louisiana officials for turning down the stockpiles.

"We still have quite a few left if Louisiana needs those," David Paulison said. "But we did find out, we did ask Louisiana, 'Do you want these?' They said, 'No, we don't need them.' So we offered them to the other states."

A CNN investigation revealed last week FEMA gave away 121 truckloads of material the agency amassed after 2005's Hurricane Katrina. The material was declared surplus property and offered to federal and state agencies -- including Louisiana, where groups working to resettle hurricane victims say the supplies are still needed.

Paulison told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" his agency distributed more than 90,000 "living kits" to people in Louisiana whose homes were destroyed or damaged by Katrina. The kits included cleaning supplies, mops, brooms, pots and pans.

After CNN reported on the giveaway, Louisiana officials asked that the supplies be redirected to the state, which originally passed on them. John Medica, director of the Louisiana's Federal Property Assistance Agency, told CNN he was unaware Katrina victims still needed the items because no agency had contacted his office.

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, an outspoken critic of FEMA's response to the hurricane, told CNN the supply giveaway was "just a shame."

"It's just another example of the failings of the federal bureaucracy," said Landrieu, who wrote Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week to request an explanation. "We're still trying to fix it. It's going to take a lot more work."

Paulison said much of the stockpile included "things we don't normally store -- refrigerators, stoves, coolers, diapers, things like that." States, meanwhile, were requesting those items, he said.

"It didn't make any sense for FEMA to sit on this much stuff and supplies we normally don't even keep. We have plenty of supplies in place if we have another disaster. We can duplicate that type of commodities and get them for people in need," he said.

The agency's chief spokesman, James McIntyre, had declined a request for an on-camera interview and told CNN the giveaway was "not news."

Paulison said the story "just really missed the mark" -- that the supplies given away were not exclusively for Katrina victims, but were "donated from disasters all around the entire country."

But e-mails from McIntyre and from the General Services Administration, which manages federal property, contradict Paulison's account. In an e-mail sent in April, McIntyre told CNN "in many cases, items were purchased in the field by FEMA."

"That is property that was purchased in response to Katrina. We purchased most of that equipment because of the catastrophic nature of that disaster," he wrote.

And GSA spokeswoman Viki Reath wrote the supplies given away were "surplus from the Katrina and [hurricane] Rita disasters... some purchased by FEMA, some donated by foreign countries and federal government agencies."

McIntyre said FEMA's storage costs were running more than $1 million a year, and that GSA officials wanted to tear down the Fort Worth, Texas, warehouses in which the stockpiles were being kept.

(From CNN)


Ah, but here's the rub - there is no defending the incompetence so aptly displayed over and over by the Feds over Katrina and her aftermath.

Officer kills man who beat child to death

Normally I would be loathe to take any officer's word on why he used deadly force in any circumstance at face value ... then there are times such as this:

TURLOCK, Calif. (AP) - Police killed a 27-year-old man as he kicked, punched and stomped a toddler to death despite other people's attempts to stop him on a dark, country road, authorities said.

Investigators on Sunday were trying to establish the relationship between the suspect and the child they say he killed Saturday night. The Stanislaus County coroner said the boy appeared to be between 1 and 2 years old based on his size, according to county sheriff's deputy Royjindar Singh.

"It's been a long night of wondering, 'Why?' - not only for the officers and the passers-by who stopped and tried to help out, but for anyone. Why would somebody do this?" Singh said.

Singh said the coroner does not plan to confirm the identities of the suspect and victim until Monday. Because his injuries were so severe, the child will have to be identified through a blood or DNA test, he said.

The suspect had a child's car seat in the back of his four-door pickup truck. The truck caught the attention of an elderly couple at 10:13 p.m. Saturday because it was stopped in the two-lane road facing the wrong direction, Singh said.

As they got closer, the couple saw the man brutally beating the toddler behind his truck and throwing the child on the ground, according to Singh. Two or three other cars stopped, an unusual number to be passing through the remote area surrounded by a dairy, a cow pasture, a cornfield and a farmhouse, he said.

"What we got from witnesses is he was punching, slapping, kicking, stomping, shaking," Singh said. "They tried to intervene and get involved, but their efforts really didn't have an effect. The suspect was engaged in what he was doing. He just pushed them off and went back to it."

A sheriff's helicopter responding to emergency calls from the area landed in a cow pasture at 10:19 p.m. carrying a Modesto police officer who shot the man to death after he refused an order to stop beating the child, Singh said.

Paramedics tried to resuscitate the toddler, who was not breathing when they arrived. The boy was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

No children within the dead boy's age range have been reported kidnapped or missing in Stanislaus County, Singh said.

The incident happened on Bradbury Road about 10 miles west of Turlock, a city located about halfway between Sacramento and Fresno.

I say good for the officer(s) in this case.

Thought for the Day

What is it about hate that makes people embrace it?

DNA Shocker: some wooly mammoths were blond


DNA analysis has proven all our childhood museum visits viewing mammoths sporting only dark coats were wrong.


By examining DNA extracted from a mammoth bone frozen in Siberian permafrost and comparing it with sequences from other mammoth remains, researchers have concluded that the wooly creatures probably carried two versions of Mc1r, a gene whose protein product helps determine hair color in several mammals, including humans, mice, horses and dogs...

If the mammoth gene works the same way that it does for humans and other mammals, the lighter animals might have had yellow or reddish hair, while the dark ones might have been black or brown.

Sen. Kennedy preparing to 'do battle,' son says

From the News Wire:

Sen. Edward Kennedy enjoyed the Father's Day weekend surrounded by family at his home and preparing to "do battle," undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments for his brain cancer, said his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy.

The Rhode Island congressman told The Associated Press his father had been comforted by the company of friends and family in recent days, but that his visitors were aware he needed moments of quiet and breaks from entertaining as he fights the cancerous brain tumor.

"Everyone wants to be with him. But we also need to give him space and time to recover, where he doesn't have to be 'on,'" he said. "He's been through a lot. We want him to be strong for when he needs to do battle."

The Massachusetts Democrat returned to his home at Hyannis Port, Mass., on June 9, a week after undergoing aggressive surgery for the malignant glioma at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. He will undergo further treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he was diagnosed with the lethal tumor last month.

The younger Kennedy spoke late Saturday at a gala for the Diabetes Foundation of Rhode Island, where he received an award for his support of the group and diabetes issues.

He would not say when the radiation and chemotherapy treatments would begin, but said his father was considering a pill form of chemotherapy that would allow him to stay home for treatment. Radiation treatments would take about 15 minutes each, he said.

The course of the treatment will depend largely on how his father feels, Patrick Kennedy said, adding that advances in medicine have provided more options.

"When my brother had cancer, it was one type of chemo for all types of cancer. Now, it's such specific chemo for specific types of cancer. Now they have it in pill form in addition to IV form," he said. "It makes it much more accessible for him. That's a great thing."

Patrick Kennedy's older brother, Edward Jr., was treated for bone cancer at age 12.

Edward Kennedy attended Mass at his Cape Cod home on Saturday with his sister, Eunice Shriver, Patrick Kennedy said. He also has been sailing in recent days with his son and with his niece, Maria Shriver, wife of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Other visitors to the Kennedy home have included Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, as well as buddies from his days at Harvard University and the University of Virginia Law School, Patrick Kennedy said.

The younger Kennedy said he expects the presidential season will give his father a respite from politics, as Washington shifts its attention to the campaign. That will give him father time to focus on his recovery and get ready for January, when he hopes to see Sen. Barack Obama move into the White House.

Then he can focus on health care, the issue Patrick Kennedy said has been his father's top priority in his more than 45 years in office.

"I think my dad's going to be ready," he said. "In a sense, he's fought for everyone else his whole life. This really personalizes it."

McPain slams Supreme Court on terrorist detainees

republican presidential candidate John McPain on Friday sharply denounced a Supreme Court decision that gave suspected terrorist detainees a right to seek their release in federal courts.

"I think it's one of the worst decisions in history," McPain said. "It opens up a whole new chapter and interpretation of our constitution."

McPain is one of the authors of the 2006 Military Commissions Act which set up procedures for the handling of detainees. The act denied the detainees access to federal courts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said that provision of the law violated the constitution.

McPain on Thursday said he had not read the ruling and reserved his criticism. But on Friday, speaking to about 1,500 people at a town hall meeting in Pemberton, N.J., he attacked the decision, saying the law he helped write "made it very clear that these are enemy combatants, they are not citizens, they do not have the rights of citizens."

The issue could be potent for McPain, who often encounters questions from audiences about how he would go about selecting potential justices for the court. McPain often cites Chief Justice John Roberts as the type of justice he would nominate. On Friday he especially praised him for his dissent in the detainee case.

McPain spoke to reporters after the town hall, accompanied by Sen. Lindsey Graham, r-S.C., who helped him write the military commissions law.

"What happened yesterday was unprecedented," Graham said. "Americans are going to be shocked to find that that mastermind of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now has the same legal standing as an American citizen."

*****

Oops, the Hater's stacked court, decided that humans have rights. That clearly runs afoul of the Haters ideology and their ideologues. Which only further proves we don't need them and never did.

While some of the 'Detainees' are barely able to be classified as human by their actions, the same goes for some of those 'detaining' them and more so, actually.

And this McPain prick is wanting to continue the failed mission of the cabal?! Think not!

Random Photo

Just a photo at random.

15 Tips for Surviving a Bear Encounter

In North America, there are two species of bear -- black and brown (which includes subspecies grizzly and Kodiak bears) -- but it is often difficult to distinguish between the two. Both types are known to attack humans,
and in the past century, approximately 100 people have died in North America due to bear attacks.

Humans and animals can share the great outdoors if everyone behaves accordingly.
Get prepared with the tips listed below.
If you run into a bear in the wild, running away won't help.
A
Bear Awareness

Alert
In the interest of not becoming part of that "grizzly" statistic, the following list offers a few tips to avoid or survive a bear attack.

1. Why Are You Here?

Avoid investigating dark, unknown caves or hollow logs, where bears make their dens, and avoid areas identified by scavengers, such as raccoons, as there may be a feeding bear nearby.

2. You're Kidding with the Camera, Right?

Leave pictures of bears to professional wildlife photographers. Many attacks have occurred because someone decided to try to snap a photo in bear territory. Bears don't like you, and they don't want their picture taken.

Bear cubs may look cute and cuddly but mama is usually nearby so stay away from the little ones.
Bear cubs may look cute and cuddly, but mama is
usually nearby so stay away from the little ones.


3. Whoa, Mama!

If you see a bear with a cub, leave quickly. A mother bear with her cubs is not open to negotiation. She will attack if she thinks she or her cubs are in danger.

4. Leave No Trace

If you're camping, pick up all garbage, cooking supplies, and other materials. Clean up thoroughly after meals, and secure food overnight high above the ground (by hanging it from a tree branch) to prevent it from attracting bears. Not only do sloppy campers damage the area's ecosystem, they're also more likely to come face-to-face with a bear that has followed their gravy train.

5. Keep a Lookout

As you hike through bear country, keep an eye out for claw marks or droppings, and note any scratched up trees or fresh kills, such as deer.

6. Raise a Ruckus, Ring a Bell

Some experts recommend tying a bell to your foot or backpack to make noise as you travel. You can also sing or holler at your hiking buddies. Just don't be a ninja. Bears don't like to be surprised.

7. Freeze! Stick 'Em Up!

Okay, so you've spotted a bear, and the bear has spotted you. Stop right there, and don't move. Speak to the bear in a low, calm voice, and slowly raise your arms up above your head. This makes you appear larger.

8. Back Off

Clearly, you should try to leave now. Do it slowly and go back from whence you came. Don't cross the path of the bear (or any cubs, if present). Just rewind, slowly, and don't come back.

9. Don't Run!

The worst thing you could do at this point would be to get out your camera or try to feed the bear a snack. The second worst thing you could do would be to run. Bears run faster than humans, and they think chasing prey is fun.

10. Hello, Tree

"But bears can climb trees," you say. You're right: some bears, like black bears, can climb trees. But others, like grizzly bears, cannot. Either way, if you can get more than 12 feet up into a tree, you should be okay. That's pretty far up, so this is not your best option.

11. Grizzly Bear? Play Dead!

If a bear is charging you, you've got a couple of less-than-desirable options. The first thing you might try is going into the fetal position and playing dead. This might make you seem vulnerable to the grizzly bear and he or she will sniff you, growl at you, and hopefully leave you alone. Being in the fetal position will also protect your vital organs. IMPORTANT: If you're dealing with a black bear, do NOT play dead. They'll be thrilled that the work's been done for them and will commence lunch. If you can't tell what kind of bear you're dealing with, don't try it!

12. Go Undercover

While you're in the fetal position, try to put your backpack up on top of you to give you an extra layer of protection.

13. Bang, Bang

If a bear is charging you and you've got a gun, now might be the time to use it. Make sure you've got a clean shot because it usually takes more than one bullet to kill a bear and bad aim will only make it angrier. This should only be used as a last resort -- wrongful killing of a bear in the United States incurs a hefty fine up to $20,000.

14. Spray, Spray

Many camping and national park areas don't allow firearms, so some recommend bear spray or pepper spray. But beware: If you spray halfheartedly, it will only make the bear angrier.

15. The Fight of Your Life

Your last option is to fight back with everything you've got. There's really no need to tell you that, at this point, you're in big trouble. Kick, scream, flail your arms, go for the eyes -- do whatever you can because you're in for the fight of your life.

Lastly, remember if it is you or the bear, bet on the bear.

Chatter

The chatter that is hogging the forums right now is about the run for the presidency ... and you guessed it - the haters are in full chorus spouting their hate and vilifying Obama.

The biggest 'buzzword' amongst their shrillness is "he is the most Liberal senator in the Senate", but wait, isn't that what they said about and say about all persons not of their ilk in every election.

Talk about beating a dead horse.

These rants have even supplanted topics about sex - even on blogs dedicated to that very subject - and with our society's collective obsession with sex that is something.

Opinion polls of all stripes ... from local ad hoc to national strictly controlled ones ... show the haters are very much out of favor.

However, that hasn't quieted them down on the varied forums on the Net or on 'talk radio'.

It is just that fewer and fewer people are listening to them, except they don't know it ... just like they know nothing outside the boundaries of their dogma they are spoon-fed by their handlers in the first place.

You know it's over ...

Q: How does a man know when it's over with his marriage?

A: When his wife's favorite sexual position is "next door"!

Varied breakfasts boost mental health

Here's something we all could use:
Adding a banana to your bowl of cereal and milk could be the key to better mental health in teenagers, according to Australian researchers who have found that a variety of foods at breakfast is linked to mental functioning.

Presenting her research at the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) national conference, dietitian Therese O’Sullivan from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth said a high quality breakfast, with foods from at least three different healthy food groups, was linked with better mental health in 14 year old boys and girls.

And she said that for every extra food group eaten at breakfast, the associated mental health score improved. [link]


Sex trade thrives in Afghanistan

The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs.

The man paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex.

Afghanistan is one of the world's most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serve both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don't exist.

Customs meant to keep women "pure" have not stopped prostitution. Girls are expected to remain virgins until their wedding nights, so some prostitutes have only anal sex.

Police make two to three prostitution arrests each week, according to Zia ul-Haq, the chief investigator in the Interior Ministry's department of sexual crimes. They are often the casualties of nearly three decades of brutal war and a grinding poverty that forces most Afghans to live on less than $1 a day.

"Prostitution is in every country that has poverty, and it exists in Afghanistan," says women's rights activist Orzala Ashraf. "But society has black glasses and ignores these problems. Tradition is honor, and if we talk about these taboos, then we break tradition."

The girl is now 13, and her features have just sharpened into striking beauty. She speaks four languages - the local languages of Pashtu and Dari, the Urdu she picked up as a refugee in Pakistan and the English she learned in a $2.40-a-month course she pays for herself in Kabul. She is the breadwinner in her family of 10.

She does not know what a condom is. She has not heard of AIDS.

The Associated Press learned her story in a dozen meetings over four months, as well as interviews with police and aid workers. For months she insisted she was a "good girl" - a virgin. But in March, she confessed to having anal sex with men for years, starting with the legless beggar.

She looked down as she spoke, her face and hands sooty from car exhaust. She tucked her hair repeatedly under her head scarf.

The girl grew up in Pakistan, where her family fled during a bloody civil war in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. She cleaned cars for money.

Five years ago, her family and a flood of other refugees returned to Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But her father could earn only $40 a month doing various odd jobs.

So she sold chewing gum and newspapers and cleaned car windows in the muddy, potholed streets of Kabul. She made about $3 a day.

That was where she met Uncle Lang, a nickname that literally means Uncle Legless.

Uncle Lang was a land mine victim. When the girl and a friend brought him tea and food, he forced himself upon them, police say.

"I didn't know anything about sex," she says. "But it happened."

It's hard to know how many other women in Afghanistan are prostitutes because of the extreme secrecy around the issue. A University of Manitoba report last September estimated about 900 female sex workers in Kabul.

A 2005 report by the German aid group Ora International drew data from 122 female sex workers, of whom less than 1 percent knew about AIDS. The youngest was 14.

Prostitutes in Afghanistan include scores of Chinese women serving Western customers who work for security firms, companies and aid groups in Afghanistan. Many of the women say they were tricked into the trade by middlemen who promised them respectable jobs, but Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul's criminal investigations, denies this, saying: "They come here of their own will."

The shame of prostitution in Afghanistan is intense.

"In our culture, it is very, very bad," said Soraya Sobhrang, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commissioner for women's affairs.

Under the Afghan penal code, prostitution is often considered adultery, which is punishable by five to 15 years in prison. Under Islamic law, married prostitutes can be stoned to death.

Some prostitutes are forced into the sex trade by their families. The Ora report said 39 percent of the sex workers interviewed found clients through their relatives - including 17 percent through their mothers and 15 percent through their husbands.

For many girls, there is little recourse.

"They think that if they tell us the truth, we will return them to their families, and their families will kill them, or that we will send them to an institution and they will be put in prison," says Jamila Ghairat of the aid organization Women for Afghan Women. "The girls are afraid of their families, the government and everyone."

In some cases, it is families that pimp out the girls. At one family-run brothel, the oldest girl was a 15-year-old, orphaned when her parents died in rocket attacks in Kabul. A relative had married her off to a 9-year-old boy whose father was a pimp. She ran away three times, but each time her father-in-law bribed police to bring her back. She finally escaped to the human rights commission.

Makeshift brothels exist all over Kabul, but they are always moving, says Esmatullah Nekzad, a policeman formerly with the force's Department of Moral Crimes. The clients are mostly Afghan men.

"Most Afghan men have this hobby - young men from about 16 to 30 years of age," says Nekzad. "You go, you take their phone number, then you tell your friends. It's all by telephone."

The girls stay in one place for anything from five days to three months, until neighbors learn of their business.

That's what happened with the girl Uncle Lang raped. In November, he trafficked her and several others to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to beg and sell sex. Within days the neighbors became suspicious and tipped off police.

Police raided the place and arrested the prostitutes. Uncle Lang fled.

For a few weeks, the girl went daily to a women's aid organization. She arrived in the morning, worked in the kitchen and had an hour of counseling every day. She left at 4 p.m.

Her hands became clean and soft. She was happier. She started praying to ask Allah forgiveness for her sins.

At first she said her family did not know she was selling sex, and her mother would kill her. But during the counseling sessions, she let it slip that her parents encouraged her to work with Uncle Lang. When she stopped seeing him, they sent her 10-year-old brother instead.

One day, an aid worker spotted her with Uncle Lang on a popular street lined with kebab and ice cream shops.

The aid worker confronted her. A day later, the girl stopped going to the organization.

She has not been seen or heard from since.

*****

This illustrates the point that the more repressive and repressed a society is the more such 'trade' there is. On a 1 to 10 scale Afghanistan hovers at 9.7 on the repressive scale ... but don't be so smug those of you in the USA for we hover around a 6.8 on a good day though with the horror that is the cabal for the last seven plus years it has hovered nearer 7.9!

Flip-flops linked to skin cancer

Specialists say that wearing open-toed footwear can increase the chance of getting lesions as the skin becomes exposed to intense sunlight, a key cause of skin tumours, or melanomas.

Cancer that affects the feet is known as “acral melanoma” and typically occurs on the sole of the foot, between the toes or under the toenails.

Research shows that only half of patients with foot melanomas survive, compared with four out of five people who develop cancer elsewhere on their legs.

Read more from Flip-flops linked to skin cancer

Drinking four cups of tea a day cuts heart attack risk

Drinking four cups of tea a day cuts the risk of a heart attack, according to a review of studies by the British Nutrition Found-ation.

The review suggests that tea can also improve your mood, strengthen bones, boost hydration and increase alertness, reports the Daily Express.

For her study, Carrie Ruxton, a dietician and member of the independent Tea Advisory Panel, reviewed existing scientific literature on black tea, the type found in most teabags in Britain.

Read more from Drinking four cups of tea a day cuts heart attack risk

Blueberries may reverse memory decline, Reading University finds

Scientists have found that chemicals in the fruit can reverse age-releated decline in memory.

The team at Reading University found the equivalent of a punnet of blueberries a day, between 120g and 150g, significantly improved the memory of rats. The effect began after just three weeks of starting the blueberry diet an the improvement meant the older rats on the diet performed as well as young rats. They were put through a maze with food at the end and the accuracy and time taken were measured.

Blueberries are a major source of flavonoids, which are historically believed to act as antioxidants in our bodies by counteracting the damage done to DNA.

Read more from Blueberries may reverse memory decline, Reading University finds