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Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, August 5, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Today in History

1391 Castilian sailors in Barcelona, Spain set fire to a jewish ghetto, killing 100 people and setting off four days of violence against Jews.
1763 Colonel Henry Bouquet decisively defeats the Indians at the Battle of Bushy Run in Pennsylvania during Pontiac’s rebellion.
1762 Russia, Prussia and Austria sign a treaty agreeing on the partition of Poland.
1815 A peace treaty with Tripoli–which follows treaties with Algeria and Tunis–brings an end to the Barbary Wars.
1858 The first transatlantic cable is completed.
1861 Congress adopts the nation’s first income tax to finance the Civil War.
1864 The Union Navy captures Mobile Bay in Alabama.
1892 Harriet Tubman receives a pension from Congress for her work as a nurse, spy and scout during the Civil War.
1914 The British Expeditionary Force mobilizes for World War I.
1914 The first electric traffic signal lights are installed in Cleveland, Ohio.
1915 The Austro-German Army takes Warsaw, in present-day Poland, on the Eastern Front.
1916 The British navy defeats the Ottomans at the naval battle off Port Said, Egypt.
1921 Mustapha Kemal is appointed virtual ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
1941 The German army completes taking 410,000 Russian prisoners in Uman and Smolensk pockets in the Soviet Union.
1951 The United Nations Command suspends armistice talks with the North Koreans when armed troops are spotted in neutral areas.
1962 Actress Marilyn Monroe dies under mysterious circumstances.
1964 President Lyndon Johnson begins bombing North Vietnam in retaliation for Gulf of Tonkin incident and asks Congress to go to war against North Vietnam.
1974 Richard Nixon admits he ordered a cover-up for political as well as national security reasons.
1981 Ronald Reagan fires 11,500 striking air traffic controllers.
1992 Four police officers indicted on civil rights charges in the beating of Rodney King.
1995 Croatian forces capture the city of Knin, a Serb stronghold, during Operation Storm.
1997 Mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, goes on trial.
2012 A gunman in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, opens fire in a Sikh temple, killing six before committing suicide.

The Batalla de Flores

The Batalla de Flores, or the Flower Battle, is the grand finale of a month-long festival in Valencia, Spain, every July to convince people to stay in the city during summer. It starts with a parade of floats full of ornately-dressed women and girls. They parade once for the judges, a second time to wave their tennis rackets, and the third time….
Wait… what was that about “tennis rackets”?
One might assume that onlookers have gathered along the Paseo de Alameda simply because they love a colorful procession, enjoy cheering on lovely falleras in traditional dress, and hope to see some interesting floats. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. This crowd is blood-thirsty. The only thing they really want, and the one reason they’re attending this event, is to hurl softball-size flower at the falleras, and clock them right in their pretty faces.
That happens on the third go-round of the parade. The tennis rackets are defensive weapons to lob the carnations back to the crowd. Even after the parade, the flower battle continues, but it’s all in fun and doesn’t really hurt. Afterwards, the streets of Valencia are covered with a layer of colorful carnations. See a gorgeous collection of photographs of the Batalla de Flores (and a video) at For 91 Days.

The Smallest Post Office in the US is the Size of a Closet

In 1953, the general store and post office of Ochopee, Florida burned down. So local residents converted an irrigation pipe shed on a tomato farm into a temporary post office. It stayed there and remains in business to this day.
It serves residents of 3 counties and was once a bus stop. A single Postal Service employee works there, sorting mail into slots on the back wall. In addition to being a functional service point, the Ochopee Post Office is also a popular tourist attraction as it is the smallest Post Office in the United States.
This is 1 of 7 of America's smallest civic institutions rounded up by Atlas Obscura, including the smallest national forest (33 trees) and a police station the size of a phone booth.

Ten People Who Found Big Money and Returned It


A 62-year-old homeless woman from Calgary, Canada was living in a YWCA shelter when she found a purse with $10,000 cash inside. Despite her dire circumstances, she immediately turned the money in.
“It never crossed my mind to keep the money,” she said. “It’s not mine to keep.”
Once the story hit Canadian media, a groundswell of support and cash rewards were offered to the woman, who declined them due to her embarrassment over being homeless and insistence on remaining anonymous. In the end, the owner of the purse set up a $500 trust fund for the woman. That account, combined with other local funding, was enough to move the lady into her own apartment.
Read other stories of people, some in need, who found huge amounts of cash — in amounts up to $221,510 — and decided to return the money in this article. 

When Congress Looked James Smithson's Gift Horse in the Mouth

Have you ever wondered about the person the Smithsonian Institution was named after? It’s a rather peculiar story.
James Smithson (1765-1829) was a well-to-do English scientist who had never visited the United States. In his 1826 will, he left his estate to his nephew. But he ended his will with an odd clause that said if that nephew died without heirs, legitimate or illegitimate, the estate would go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.”  When Smithson’s nephew died without heirs in 1835, the peculiar clause went into effect. On July 28, 1835, Smithson’s solicitors notified the United States government of the bequest. An 1835 article in the National Intelligencer told the public that a “gentleman of Paris” had left a bequest to the United States, for the purpose of endowing a National University.
That seems all very nice, but this was 1835, and the government of the Unites States didn’t know what to do with the bequest, or even whether they should accept it. The president handed the matter over to Congress, where they weren’t sure of the procedure for taking the bequest, or even if it was allowed by the Constitution. Some politicians had objections to receiving money from an Englishman. Read about the conundrum Smithson caused at (where else?) Smithsonian.

IRS Surrenders To The Koch Brothers’ Dark Money, Gives Up On Regulating PACs

by Shannon Argueta
Any hope that the I.R.S. would crack down on “dark money” donors who have created tax exempt nonprofit groups for political purposes before the 2016 election is gone. The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, told a House committee meeting on Thursday that there were no plans in the works for new regulations before the upcoming elections.
Donors use these tax-exempt organizations because there is no accountability and little paper trail that reveals who is donating to them; the perfect way to funnel money to causes without leaving any fingerprints. Koskinen later gave reporters an unbelievable explanation as to why the I.R.S. was not going to do its job and change the tax code:
“I don’t want people thinking we are trying to get these regs done so we can influence the election.”
His announcement comes on the heels of another decision earlier this year in which the commissioner said he would allow the political organizations who have disguised themselves as nonprofit “social welfare” groups to keep their tax exempt status as long as they only spend up to 49 percent of their revenue on political activity.
The IRS has been under attack from the Republican cabal ever since they began investigating just where the teabagger covens came from, and where the war-chests that toppled mainstream Republicans from their seats and began rapidly radicalizing American politics. The Republican cabal erupted in self-righteous fury, accusing the IRS of bias and that wingnut ‘nonprofits’ were being unfairly targeted by the I.R.S. Even though it was quickly discovered the left-leaning groups were given the same scrutiny that teabagger covens were given, but that didn’t stop the hysterical cries of victimization and government overreach that fulfilled their purpose- to draw attention away from the puppet masters- the Koch Brothers. Since then, the Republican cabal has been steadily cutting away funding from the I.R.S, hindering them from fulfilling their most basic functions..
Now, they are backing down from the Kochs and their dirty dollars once again. It is absolutely infuriating that Koskinen is not going to crack down on these cabals, especially when you find out just how much money they are illegally spending on political activities. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org) these nonprofit organizations exploded after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. In 2006, spending from these dark money fueled nonprofits was just under $5.2 million in 2006, but in 2012, just two years after the SCOTUS ruling, it was over $300 million. This next cycle, they are planning to shell out a jaw-dropping $900 million to tilt the odds in their favor.
This is horrendous news for the fate of our elections. Not only do we have the I.R.S. not taking any action to punish illegal activities, but we have the Federal Election Commission completely unable to enact any kind of reform because of the Republicans on the board. With both the I.R.S. and F.E.C. paralyzed by Republican cabal obstructionism, big money has been given a free pass to take over our elections, potentially  drowning out the rest of America. This is why it is so important that a Democrat wins the upcoming election; after four more years, the damage to our democracy might be irreversible.

When ISIL Preyed On Three Young Women, The Girls Got A Glorious Revenge

Via Twitter It’s not every day you get a feel-good story about the barbaric Islamic State – but this is certainly one. When ISIL set out to groom three...

Deadbeat Duggars Are Begging 'Fans' To Fund Their Lifestyle

Image via TwitterNot content to just go away, the Duggars are now asking fans for money after losing the $25 million salary from their now-canceled reality show and the fact that no one wants anything to do with them.

Creepy Subway Spokesman Jared Fogle Paid For Sex With A 16-Year-Old

Creepy Subway Spokesman Jared Fogle Reportedly Paid For Sex With A 16-Year-Old
Turns out the guy who inspired the world with his dramatic weight loss on a Subway diet is an absolute creep. And Subway may have covered for him.

Several Cities See A Sharp Uptick In Homicides After Record Low Rates


Cheney’s Halliburton Suing The Cancer-Stricken Iraq War Vets They Poisoned

Halliburton, the colossal oil field services company that was formerly run by Black Prince of Darkness, Dick Cheney, was one of the biggest profiteers off of the atrocious bloodshed during the War in Iraq. Cheney arranged for his former company and its subsidiaries to get massive government contracts, and used American servicemen to guard the sites. The toxic nature of oil work has resulted in the poisoning of untold numbers of our soldiers and Iraqis alike without their knowledge, even though the company was certainly aware of it.In 2012, a federal court in Portland, OR, awarded $85 million in damages to twelve Oregon National Guardsmen who had been exposed and fallen ill from the cancer-causing toxin sodium dichromate at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant, Iraq, a site operated by the Halliburton subsidiary KBR. The 9th Circuit Court threw out the judgement on appeal, ruling that they had to sue the company in their own state of Texas.
The case against KBR is being filed again in Houston, but KBR has retaliated by suing the veterans for $850,000 in legal fees from the first case, in a retaliatory and deeply immoral attempt to punish the veterans and silence their efforts to bring the company to justice.
By burying these veterans in litigation and possibly crushing debt if the court sides with KBR again, they will have poisoned US veterans, on the US government’s dime, and have gotten away with it. It is absolutely reprehensible. The ghosts of Iraq still haunt our soldiers and our conscience, eight years later. Corporate privilege in our nation extends much far too far if shocking travesties like this are allowed to occur in our nation. Cheney, Halliburton, and KBR have done enough damage and stolen enough money to our nation as it is. We can’t let them do this to our vets again.


Man runs into jail lobby seeking help but dies after deputies pile on him instead

Dallas county jail lobby (Screenshot/WFAA)

South Carolina Cop Never Reported Killing 19-Year-Old

Featured image credit: video screen capture, Fox Carolina
There better be an investigation into this.
Read more 

The First Americans

For years, theories have abounded about how the first people in the New World got there, but now we seem to have a definitive answer, thanks to the miracle of DNA analysis.

Sinking in D.C.

The nation's capital will drop 6 inches in the next 100 years, and coupled with sea-level rise faces a flooding double-whammy.

Earth News

A strange paradox is actually proof of climate change, argues a new study.
Two volcanoes are connected to the same underground pipe, yet mysteriously contain differing types of material. Here's why.
California's rain deficit during its record-setting drought is about one year's worth of normal rain.
Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from harmful blasts of solar radiation, is much older than thought.

Star Secrets

The Globular Star Cluster NGC 6362Scientists unlock secrets of stars through aluminum


Physicists at the University of York have revealed a new understanding of nucleosynthesis in stars, providing insight into the role massive stars play in the evolution of the Milky Way […]

Hulk, the World's Largest Pitbull Has a Litter of Pricey Puppies


Hulk and his puppies | Image: Still of video by Barcroft TVYou may remember a previous Neatorama post about 173-pound Hulk, thought to be the largest pitbull in the world. The famous gentle giant is the pride, joy and family dog of owner Marlon Grannon, who breeds and trains protection and police dogs at Dark Dynasty K9 in New Hampshire.
There is an update in the world of Hulk since that post went live: he is now the doting father of eight adorable puppies. The litter may be naturally precious to Hulk and his puppy mama, but in the human world where money talks, each pup is akin to pitbull royalty, with a monetary value of between $30,000 and $55,000. By the time the puppies were born, most were already sold at a price of $30,000. Yet if the pups would go on to be trained by Grannon, their value would be in the neighborhood of $55,000 each.
Grannon's business caters to celebrities and other wealthy clientele worldwide, as well as law enforcement. Each dog is trained from birth and "lives together in a pack without fences, barriers or physical restrictions.” See Hulk and his puppies in action in the video below, and read more about him and his newly expanded canine and human family at the Daily Mail.

Animal Pictures