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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.


Friday, February 6, 2009

Fire danger extreme in Australia

Maybe their fellows in the northern part of the country could send them some of their excess water?

*****

Crews battled to contain dozens of wildfires across southeastern Australia on Saturday as temperatures soared to record levels and officials warned conditions were perfect for a deadly inferno.

At least 40 fires were blazing in New South Wales state, and more burned in Victoria and South Australia.

Most were in parks and bush land away from residential areas.

Forecasters said a heat wave that has stewed millions of people in the southeast in the past two weeks would peak at the weekend with temperatures of up to 117 F.

Hot, dry winds would also blow across the region, creating conditions very similar to those that caused the 1983 wildfire tragedy known as Ash Wednesday that killed 75 people.

And I Quote

In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.

~ Kirk Douglas

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald


Gordon Lightfoot (live at 'the Soundstage' in 1979)

Items in the News

In Houston, school officials are bragging that they're treating teachers the same as they'd treat students -- having them prosecuted for drugs and prescription meds found in random searches of vehicles in school parking lots.
More details in the Houston Chronicle.

It's hard to comprehend it, but 19,000,000 American homes were vacant at the end of December - an all-time high.
More details at Bloomberg.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has undergone cancer surgery, and remains hospitalized.
She opposed the treasonous Bush v Gore decision in 2000, so she has the wishes of every true American for her speedy recovery.
More details at MSNBC News.

Actor James Whitmore dies of lung cancer

James Whitmore, the many-faceted character actor who delivered strong performances in movies, television and especially the theater with his popular one-man shows about Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Theodore Roosevelt, died today.
He was 87.

The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor was diagnosed with lung cancer the week before Thanksgiving and died this afternoon at his Malibu home,

His long-running "Give 'em Hell, Harry," tracing the life of the 33rd president, was released as a theatrical movie in 1975.
Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor, marking the only time in Oscar history that an actor has been nominated for a film in which he was the only cast member.
His Teddy Roosevelt portrait, "Bully," was also converted into a movie.

He later became the TV pitchman for Miracle-Gro plant food, and used the product in his large vegetable garden at his Malibu home.

While not known for his politics, Whitmore was an early supporter of President Barack Obama.
He stumped for Obama during a 2007 rally at the Gibson Theatre at Universal Studios, telling the crowd that Obama had the wisdom "to deal with a very, very confused and complex country, and the world."
Whitmore also appeared in TV commercials in 2008 for the "First Freedom First" campaign, which advocates religious liberty and preserving the separation of church and state.

Cop News

From New Scientist:

And you are surprised, how?

This comes as a surprise to no one (with the exception of the shrubby that it was exposed).
The bush administration overpaid tens of billions of dollars for stocks and
other assets in its massive bailout last year of Wall Street banks and financial
institutions, a new study by a government watchdog says.
Read more here

Economic Meltdown Continues

Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January, taking the unemployment rate up to 7.6%, according to the latest government reading on the nation's battered labor market.
More at CNN

That doesn't show the true unemployment rate though. It does not count those who are completely discouraged from searching and those that are underemployed. The true unemployment stats are ranging upwards of 20%.

*****

The shrub's tax cuts really helped the economy ... that's for sure! Not!

Sami celebrate National Day

The Sami people of Europe's Arctic held their National Day today, with some gathering around bonfires and eating reindeer dishes to celebrate the survival of their ancient lifestyle over many efforts to assimilate it into mainstream culture.

The once-oppressed indigenous reindeer herders in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and northwestern Russia began celebrating February 6th as their national day in 1993.

The date marks the first Sami national congress, when about 100 herders gathered in Trondheim, Norway, in 1917.

Norway's Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit visited the Sami Parliament in the Arctic town of Karasjok, where temperatures were -20 Fahrenheit.

The royal palace also launched a Sami-language version of its Internet site today.

The Sami - also known as Lapps - settled with their reindeer herds some 9,000 years ago in Europe's Arctic, and now call themselves one nation of about 70,000 people spread across the four countries.

For generations, the Nordic ethnic majority sought to assimilate the Sami into the mainstream culture, by banning their language and culture, while Russian Sami were isolated by Iron Curtain for 70 years of Soviet rule.

Now Sami have their own parliaments, schools, newspapers and broadcasts in their own language.

Most Sami live modern lifestyles, and few still herd reindeer.

But throughout the Arctic today they turned out in colorful costumes, called Kofte, singing traditional yoik songs, and flying the Sami flag, to recall their roots.

In Finland, party guests in the Inari, 730 miles north of the capital, Helsinki, braved temperatures of -22 Fahrenheit as they stood outside near bonfires to eat traditional reindeer dishes.

In Sweden, Sami Nils Gustav Labba said his country's traditional herders are still "not that good" at celebrating compared to Norwegian Sami with their bigger events.

Eigthy-four children dead from teething formula

The number of deaths from a tainted Nigerian teething formula has more than doubled, with 84 children killed by the syrup that contained a thickening agent normally used in brake fluid and antifreeze, the Health Ministry said.

The victims have ranged in age from 2 months to 7 years old, the ministry said in a statement late yesterday.
It indicated that about 75 percent of the 111 children who had been sickened since the poisonous batch of My Pikin Baby Teething Mixture hit shelves in November have died.

"The death of any Nigerian child is a great loss to the nation," Health Minister Babatunde Oshotimehin said in the statement.
"The federal ministry of health sincerely regrets this painful incidence and sympathizes with the nation and the families directly affected."

Health officials said in early December that 34 children had died up to that point and that stores were returning their stocks of the formula meant to stop pain in teething children.
The Health Ministry statement didn't say if it believed all the tainted dosages had been returned.

Many bottles of the paracetemol-based formula were determined to contain a high concentration of diethylene glycol, commonly found in antifreeze and brake fluid.
Exposure can cause kidney and liver damage and may be fatal in large amounts.
The afflicted children were stricken with fever, convulsions, diarrhea and vomiting, and were unable to urinate after being given the product.

The deadly agent entered the production process for My Pikin Baby Teething Mixture when an official with the Lagos-based maker procured the tainted ingredient from an unregistered chemical dealer in a sprawling slum near the city's main dump, the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control has said.
Several officials of the pharmaceutical maker, Barewa Pharmaceuticals Ltd., were under arrest along with several other suspects accused of helping provide the tainted ingredient.

The food and drug agency said the first sickened child was taken for treatment on November 19th of last year in Nigeria's far northern region.
Similar cases were documented in subsequent days in Nigeria's densely populated southwest, and investigators isolated the product as common to all the ailing children.
Health officials haven't said how many bottles of the bad formula were believed to have existed.

Officials say Barewa Pharmaceuticals appears to have been told it was purchasing propylene glycol, a normal ingredient in the teething formula.
They said that the pharmaceutical company had always bought that ingredient through approved channels before, but had turned to a new source for the ingredient used in the tainted batch.

Diethylene glycol is commonly found in antifreeze and brake fluid, and sometimes used illegally as a cheaper alternative to glycerin, which thickens toothpaste.
The contaminant has been implicated in poisoning cases around the world, including in Panama, where at least 116 people died after taking contaminated cough syrup, antihistamine tablets, calamine lotion and rash ointment made at a government laboratory.

*****

Remember, these people poisoning these products are the same type of people the repugicans fawn all over!

Will of the American people

Tired of his low approval ratings, the shrub called up the head of the CIA and said, "I want your very best agent over here first thing in the morning."

Moments later, a call went out to the Middle East, and the most gifted American agent was headed back to Washington.

The next morning, the agent was escorted into the Oval Office. The shrub said, "I hear you're the best in the business. I can't trust what my staff tells me.

So I want you to visit every state in the union, every major city. I want you to stay out on the road until you have an idea of what the vast majority of Americans would like to see happen in the Oval Office. Understand?"

The CIA agent responded affirmatively. He left the White House and wasn't heard from for nearly four months. Finally, he showed up early on a Saturday morning, and the shrub saw him immediately.

The shrub said, "Did you find out what an overwhelming majority of Americans want done here in this office?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, express the will of the people," the shrub ordered.

So the agent stood up, pulled out a gun, and shot him.

Draggin' The Line


Tommy James (live)

Liars and Fools

Today's Liars and Fools are:

AP misleadingly compares Obama's hiring of progressives at DoJ to the shrub's and cabal's illegal hiring practices

Off-hand character assassination, courtesy of the AP

Faux's Brick: Obama has us on the road not just to Socialism but Communism

Sessions (r-Texas): Taliban is 'a model' for how GOP can become an 'insurgency'

Ex-Veep Dick slithers over to Politico to lie, yell BOO! and blame Obama for future terrorist attacks

Gonzales lies (again) that U.S. Attorneys were not 'fired for political reasons'

McPain, still lying, makes false distinction between stimulus, spending

McPain claims FDR 'exacerbated the Great Depression'

McPain opposes recovery package because it has 'corporate giveaways' he once campaigned for

Media advances bizarre PR that the shrub's and cabal's policies kept U.S. safe

Parroting repugican talking point, CNN's Dobbs baselessly claims recovery bill provides $4 billion in funding for "so-called advocacy groups such as ACORN"

ABC's Gibson falsely claims "CBO says only 25 percent" of recovery bill "would get to people within a year"

Wall Street Journal's Fund falsely claims "Hong Kong has had a flat tax for over 50 years"

House of Lords damns British surveillance society

A report from the House of Lords on surveillance in the UK damns the widespread use of databases, CCTVs, and other incursions on personal freedom, noting, "privacy is an essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom," and questioning whether CCTVs are useful in fighting crime, and whether local councils should be allowed to surveil people at all.
Lord Goodlad, the former Tory chief whip and committee chairman, said there could be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about an individual being recorded and pored over by the state.

"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," he said. "If the public are to trust that information about them is not being improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, by whom and how it is used."

The constitution committee makes more than 40 recommendations to protect individual privacy, including the deletion of all profiles from the national DNA database except for those of convicted criminals and a call for the mandatory encryption of personal data held by public and private organisations that are legally obliged to hold it.

But the report is silent on proposals from Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for a "superdatabase" tracking everybody's emails, calls, texts and internet use and from Jack Straw, the justice secretary, to lower barriers on the widespread sharing of personal data across the public sector.

Youth hostel in a jumbo jet

An old jumbo jet -- began its life with Singapore Airlines, then served Pan Am and Transjet -- was rusting in Arlanda airfield in Stockholm, so Oscar Diös bought it and turned it into an airport youth-hostel. Stockholm has a 'few' great hostels and some quite unusual ones, too.

In December 2007, Sigtuna authorities granted a building permit for establishing Jumbo Hostel at the entrance to Arlanda airport. In January 2008, the aircraft was moved to a construction site parking where the first phase of the conversion has begun with the dismantling of the old interior, new paint and new decorations for the rooms. 450 seats are taken out and the plane is sanitized in its entirety. The hostel is built like any house, subjected to the same demands on climate control and isolation. It adheres to all common energy standards. Heating is achieved with an air-air inverter.

Summer 2008 the plane was towed to its final destination at the entrance to Arlanda where it was placed on a concrete foundation with the landing gear secured in two steel cradles. Here, Jumbo Hostel are a spectacular landmark as a portal to Arlanda offering a view of the landing strip. No visitor to Arlanda will miss the new hostel!

UK university says sorry for excrement error

From the "You got to be sh_tting, me" Department:

A British university has apologized to a Ph.D. student for throwing away his treasured, seven-year collection of lizard dung.

Daniel Bennett told Times Higher Education magazine that he had collected the dung in the Philippines while studying the rare Butaan lizard, a relative of the Komodo dragon.
The material was to be studied as part of his doctoral research.

Bennett says the 77-pound bag was thrown away by cleaners at his lab at Leeds University in northern England.
He says the dung represented seven years' worth of field work, and its loss "left me reeling."

The university said Friday it had apologized.
Bennett says he rejected the university's compensation offer of 500 pounds and will "see them in court."

*****

Bit of a smelly situation there, wot?

Offer on eBay leads to guitar-theft suspects

Just like they thought they would ...

Police in northern New Jersey say they've plucked some suspects in a string of guitar thefts.
Investigators said that someone spotted an instrument on eBay that was stolen from a relative in Roselle Park.
The seller was a Lakewood business that had two other hot guitars but didn't know they were stolen.
Police used surveillance video from the business to identify an undisclosed number of suspects.

Roselle Park police Sgt. Manuel Jimenez says all are male juveniles from New Jersey.
The three guitars were stolen by five masked bandits who beat up two apartment residents before taking the guitars.
They are among several worth more than $11,000 stolen in Roselle Park, Summit and Montclair since November.

*****

Crooks are so dumb.

Twenty Five Things About Me

It's all the rage right now so here goes:

1. I am tall and broad shouldered
2. I am honest and speak the truth -even if you do not like it
3. I am a great chef
4. I am a poet
5. I am dead center politically - though I always err on the side of humans in lieu of corporations
6. I am an Archeologist
7. I am an ordained minister
8. I have several post graduate degrees
9. I am fluent in several languages
10. I am a 'great' grandfather as well as a great-grandfather
11. I prefer dogs to cats
12. I would rather be in the mountains
13. I am Scots (with a dash of Native American)
14. I am one of the last of a dying breed -a true Southern Gentleman
15. I believe in love at first sight - I've seen it happen
16. I am an omnivorous reader
17. I always defend 'the little guy'
18. I am a crack shot with rifle or hand gun
19. I sleep very little
20. I do not drink alcohol of any kind and never have
21. I do not smoke and never have
22. I do not use 'street' or OTC drugs and my doctor says getting me to use prescription drugs is akin to getting blood from a turnip.
23. I love tea - all kinds of tea
24. I love camping
25. I have many hobbies and interests

And that's about it.

Afghans face death over translation of Quran

No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say.
The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives.
They're accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.

The trial illustrates what critics call the undue influence of hardline clerics in Afghanistan, a major hurdle as the country tries to establish a lawful society amid war and militant violence.
The book appeared among gifts left for the cleric at a major Kabul mosque after Friday prayers in September 2007.
It was a translation of the Quran into one of Afghanistan's languages, with a note giving permission to reprint the text as long as it was distributed for free.
Some of the men of the mosque said the book would be useful to Afghans who didn't know Arabic, so they took up a collection for printing.
The mosque's cleric asked Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a longtime friend, to get the books printed.

But as some of the 1,000 copies made their way to conservative Muslim clerics in Kabul, whispers began, then an outcry.
Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation.
It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God.
A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word.

The clerics said Zalmai, a stocky 54-year-old spokesman for the attorney general, was trying to anoint himself as a prophet.
They said his book was trying to replace the Quran, not offer a simple translation.
Translated editions of the Quran abound in Kabul markets, but they include Arabic verses.

The country's powerful Islamic council issued an edict condemning the book.
"In all the mosques in Afghanistan, all the mullahs said, 'Zalmai is an infidel. He should be killed,'"
Zalmai recounted as he sat outside the chief judge's chambers waiting for a recent hearing.
Zalmai lost friends quickly.
He was condemned by colleagues and even by others involved in the book's printing.
A mob stoned his house one night, said his brother, Mahmood Ghaws.

Police arrested Zalmai as he was fleeing to Pakistan, along with three other men the government says were trying to help him escape.
The publisher and the mosque's cleric, who signed a letter endorsing the book, were also jailed.

There is no law in Afghanistan prohibiting the translation of the Quran.
But Zalmai is accused of violating Islamic Shariah law by modifying the Quran.
The courts in Afghanistan, an Islamic state, are empowered to apply Shariah law when there are no applicable existing statutes.
Afghanistan's court system is stacked against those accused of religious crimes.
Judges don't want to seem soft on potential heretics and lawyers don't want to be seen defending them, said Afzal Shurmach Nooristani, whose Afghan Legal Aid group is defending Zalmai.

The prosecutor wants the death penalty for Zalmai and the cleric, who have now spent more than a year in prison.
Sentences on religious infractions can be harsh.

In January 2008, a court sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for asking questions about women's rights under Islam.
An appeals court reduced the sentence to 20 years in prison.
His lawyers appealed again and the case is pending.

In 2006, an Afghan man was sentenced to death for converting to Christianity.
He was later ruled insane and was given asylum in Italy.
Islamic leaders and the parliament accused President Hamid Karzai of being a puppet for the West for letting him live.

Nooristani, who is also defending the journalism student, said he and his colleagues have received death threats.
"The mullahs in the mosques have said whoever defends an infidel is an infidel," Nooristani said.
The legal aid organization, which usually represents impoverished defendants, is defending Zalmai because no one else would take the case.
"We went to all the lawyers and they said, 'We can't help you because all the mullahs are against you. If we defend you, the mullahs will say that we should be killed.' We went six months without a lawyer," Zalmai said outside the judge's chambers.

The publisher was originally sentenced to five years in prison.
Zalmai and the cleric were sentenced to 20, and now the prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for the two as a judge hears appeals.

Zalmai pleaded for forgiveness before a January hearing, saying he had assumed a stand-alone translation wasn't a problem."You can find these types of translations in Turkey, in Russia, in France, in Italy," he said.
When the chief judge later banged his gavel to silence shouting lawyers and nodded at Zalmai to explain himself, the defendant stood and chanted Quranic verses as proof that he was a devout Muslim who should be forgiven.

Shariah law is applied differently in Islamic states. Saudi Arabia claims the Quran as its constitution, while Malaysia has separate religious and secular courts.
But since there is no ultimate arbiter of religious questions in Afghanistan, judges must strike a balance between the country's laws and proclamations by clerics or the Islamic council, called the Ulema council.

*****

This is why religious nuts should never be allowed, period. Much less allowed to have any influence whatsoever.

Hey, Hey, My, My


Neil Young and Crazy Horse

More rain forecast for Australia's wet north

Water levels began to drop slightly across the vast flooded region of northern Australia on Friday, but a forecast of more heavy rain will stymie recovery and cleanup effort.

Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh visited the hardest-hit area and pledged 500,000 dollars to help northern towns recover, asking Australians to add their own contributions.

"The place is totally waterlogged, and we've got more very heavy rain appearing as I speak," Bligh told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio after flying over the town of Ingham in a helicopter.

The Herbert River in Ingham dropped by 3 in the last 24 hours but could return to its Monday peak of 40 feet if the low pressure storm system off the coast dumps the expected 11+ inches on the town this weekend.

While overflowing rivers and heavy rainstorms are normal during northern Australia's November-to-April tropical cyclone season, the Bureau of Meteorology has predicted above-normal monsoonal activity this season.

The government said that storms since late December have caused an estimated $109 million dollars in damage.

More than 60 percent of Queensland is under water - 400,000 square miles, or twice the area of Spain.

Ingham has been hardest hit, with 2,900 homes damaged or flooded in a weekend storm and hundreds of people evacuated.

Our Readers

Today our readers have hailed from:

Monterrey, Neuvo Leon, Mexico
Sarpsborg, Ostford, Norway
Paso Robles, California, United States
Yerevan, Yerevan, Armenia
Beaufort, South Carolina, United States

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

There's going to be competition.

Isn't there always