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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, December 13, 2015

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.
Our thirteenth Xmas Tree of the month ...!
 
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Today in History

1789 The National Guard is created in France.
1812 The last remnants of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand ArmeĆ© reach the safety of Kovno, Poland, after the failed Russian campaign. Napoleon’s costly retreat from Moscow
1814 General Andrew Jackson announces martial law in New Orleans, Louisiana, as British troops disembark at Lake Borne, 40 miles east of the city. The Battle of New Orleans
1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg ends with the bloody slaughter of onrushing Union troops at Marye’s Heights. Maine’s Colonel Chamberlain at Marye’s Heights.
1902 The Committee of Imperial Defense holds its first meeting in London.
1908 The Dutch take two Venezuelan Coast Guard ships.
1937 The Japanese army occupies Nanking, China. Boeing’s Trailblazing P-26 Peashooters.
1940 Adolf Hitler issues preparations for Operation Martita, the German invasion of Greece.
1941 British forces launch an offensive in Libya.
1945 France and Britain agree to quit Syria and Lebanon.
1951 After meeting with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, President Harry S Truman vows to purge all disloyal government workers.
1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson and Mexico’s President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz meet on a bridge at El Paso, Texas, to officiate at ceremonies returning the long-disputed El Chamizal area to the Mexican side of the border.
1972 Astronaut Gene Cernan climbs into his lunar lander on the moon and prepares to lift off. He is the last man to set foot on the moon.
1973 Great Britain cuts the work week to three days to save energy.
1981 Polish labor leader Lech Walesa is arrested and the government decrees martial law, restricting civil rights and suspending operation of the independent trade union Solidarity.
1985 France sues the United States over the discovery of an AIDS serum.
2001 Terrorists attach the Parliament of India Sansad; 15 people are killed, including the terrorists
2003 Deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein captured; he is found hiding in near his home town of Tikrit.

Shoe

10 Interesting Facts About Xmas And Its Traditions

It's the most wonderful time of the year, but have you ever wondered about some of the things we see and embrace at Xmas? Here are 10 interesting facts about the December holiday.

ExxonMobil Defies Kochs – Warns Governments Must Intervene To Prevent Climate Catastrophe

ExxonMobil is the second leading oil corporation to publicly admit that climate change is real, following Shell Oil's admission in March…
EXXMob
While many Americans are stocking up on guns and ammunition to kill other Americans of the “wrong” religion, or the “wrong” sexual orientation, or “all the wrong” races, they are sleeping through the second greatest threat to their existence after the Republican cabal. Of course, part and parcel of Americans’ ignorance of and opposition to four decades-old data warning that man-made carbon emissions pose the greatest economic and national security threat to Americans is the oil industry’s deceit in pursuit of profits. A significant reason Americans dismiss the impending climate catastrophe is due to being cognitively incapable of connecting historic droughts, severe storms, deadly flooding, and wildfires to climate scientists warnings about historic droughts, severe storms, deadly flooding and increasingly intense wildfires due to carbon emissions. To make matters worse, there has been a four-plus decade-long oil industry crusade to portray global warming as a nasty liberal hoax to destroy America.
Chief among the groups that learned in the 1970s that man-made carbon emissions would have “catastrophic” effects on the Earth’s climate was ExxonMobil. Instead of warning Americans, ExxonMobil took the lead in funding massive misinformation campaigns and attacking climate scientists. Then the Koch brothers got serious and began issuing monumentally-large checks for Republican science deniers and oil industry ‘experts’ to contradict climate scientists empirical data and research.
It is important to reiterate that besides real independent climate scientists’ research in the 70s, it was ExxonMobil’s own scientists’ data and research warning the oil giant that climate change was “anthropomorphic” (man-caused), and that without immediate government intervention global temperatures “will reach catastrophic levels” and threaten the Earth’s population. Obviously, ExxonMobil, like the Kochs a couple of decades later, concealed the 1970’s science warning the climate is doomed; it is likely why today there are only 10 or 11 people among 300 million aware that climate scientists were screaming about global climate catastrophe over forty years ago.
Now though, in a break with the Koch brothers and all but a literal handful of Republicans, ExxonMobil’s scientists warned the Washington Post that “with no government action, average temperatures are likely to rise by a catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius (9-degrees Fahrenheit) with rises of 6, 7 (12, 13 F) or even more quite possible.” Climate scientists, even those denying anthropomorphic global warming, have predicted for a couple of decades, and issued dire warnings, that a rise in Earth’s temperature of 2 degrees Celsius is the deadly tipping point and “game over for the climate.”
It is certain that the Kochs, whose own scientists’ research agrees with climate scientists and ExxonMobil’s, and their dirt-stupid puppets in Congress and state legislatures nearly fainted when ExxonMobil used science to prophecy the climate’s demise. However, it is more likely that their heads exploded and their bowels emptied when ExxonMobil counseled what the government should initiate immediately to save the climate and billions of human lives.
According to the Washington Post’s “centrist” editorial page editor seeking some means of alerting Americans to just how “dangerously extreme the Republican cabal has become on climate change,” Fred Hiatt wrote that “Republicans’ ideologically based denial is dangerous and cowardly.” Hiatt then noted that ExxonMobil is the polar opposite of an environmental group like Greenpeace, but unlike the national cabal leadership, congressional Republicans and pretender candidates, “ExxonMobil believes climate change is real, that governments should take action to combat it, and that the most sensible action would be a revenue-neutral tax on carbon that taxes fossil fuels like coal and oil and returns the money to taxpayers.”
Although ExxonMobil just advised the federal government to take action to save the climate with a tax on carbon, the “carbon tax” was preemptively blocked by Grover Norquist and Koch brother Republicans in the Senate last March. There is no way in hell Norquist, or the Kochs, will allow Republicans to aid in saving the climate or Americans with any kind of tax, but particularly a tax on anything related to the cabal’s precious “fossil fuels;” materials that are as sacrosanct to Republicans as their devotion to fascist oligarchy and guns.
ExxonMobil is the second leading oil corporation to finally admit, in public, that climate change is real. So real, in fact, that last March Shell Oil admitted the climate is doomed and the company is planning for a 4-degree C rise in the Earth’s temperature. Shell also acknowledged that the 4-degree C rise eclipses the climate-killing 2C threshold and certain disaster. The oil giant began planning for a “planet-wide catastrophe replete with massive flooding, global famines, and desertification” in previously temperate zones. The “massive flooding” Shell is planning for is “sea water as sea levels will rise between 2.5 and 3.5 feet leading to widespread coastal flooding, animal and plant extinctions, and the near-decimation of global agriculture.”
Shell’s planning document, similar to ExxonMobil, did not waste time advising any government solutions because the corporation’s leaders accept the reality that Republicans will block any government effort to curb carbon emissions. Shell’s internal document said what a few Americans already know; “We do not see government taking any steps now that are consistent with 2 degrees C threshold scenario,” the tipping point of game over for the climate.
An optimist may believe that after two giant oil corporations weighed in, albeit too late, on the catastrophic temperature rise from carbon emissions, Republicans would give attention to an existential threat to Americans. However, despite pleas from the Vatican to address climate change as a humanitarian issue and 200 world leaders gathering to devise a planet-wide solution, Republicans remain steadfast in willful denial. And it appears that no amount of devastating weather events, droughts, wildfires, or flooding creating economic and national security havoc will affect Republicans. Despite mounting threats to civilization and corporate acknowledgment that action is required immediately, Republicans have ramped up their assault on President Obama’s efforts to address climate change.
It is a travesty, but as Paul Krugman noted last week, “the awesome, terrifying reality is that we’re looking at a party that has turned its back on science at a time when doing so puts the very future of civilization at risk. That’s the truth, and it needs to be faced head-on.” On the other side of the political spectrum, a member of the right wing anti-science echo chamber, opinion columnist David Brooks, made a different argument to come to the same conclusion as Krugman. Brooks explained that Republicans’ problem with climate change is that,
The republican cabal has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship — a vast majority of Republican politicians can’t publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they’re afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation.”
That “commie dictatorship and thought police interrogation” will come down from the Koch brothers and their substantial corporate media sycophants, not oil industry giants. Still, even though ExxonMobil and Shell Oil are predicting a planet-wide climate catastrophe without concerted government intervention, Republicans will continue doing the Koch’s bidding and as Paul Krugman said last week; doom the Earth’s population.

These Employers Have Decided Student Debt Repayment Is The Next Perk For Millennial Hires


School Got Fed Up With Planned Parenthood Agitators, What Happened Next Is HEROIC

School Got Fed Up With Planned Parenthood Protesters, What Happened Next Is HEROICWhat would you do if anti-choice agitators were constantly harassing you?

Meet The Workers Who Serve The Country’s Leaders But Still Live In Poverty

About Enrique Marquez — the neighbor and relative-by-marriage at the center of a federal terror investigation

In the days since his high school friend and former neighbor Syed Riswan Farook carried out a deadly attack in Southern California, Enrique Marquez has been thrust to the center of a massive federal terror investigation.

Police chief gets $260K golden parachute after covering up his own drunken hit-and-run

Police-Chief-Gets-260K-Golden-Parachute-After-Hes-Caught-Covering-Up-Drunken-Hit-and-Run
In yet another of the endless illustration of the fact that police and their political cronies constitute the American equivalent of the Soviet nomenklatura, a police chief who was involved in a drunken hit-and-run collision last Spring, then lied and obstructed the investigation, will not only escape criminal charges, but will be given a severance package of $260,000 in accumulated salary and benefits.

Inside the Plot to Kill JFK

Effective policing depends on public trust

Effective policing depends on public trust, science shows
Public trust and confidence in the police have remained flat for several decades despite a declining crime rate in the U.S., a problem that has become especially salient in the wake of recent police shootings of unarmed black men. A new report brings psychological...

Michigan woman pouts after losing gun permit for shooting at shoplifters

Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez pleaded no contest shortly after the shooting to reckless discharge of a firearm, and she was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months of probation.
***
As to her not helping anyone again ... she says that like it's a bad thing.

Lunatic fringe wingnut gun nut planned to ‘lynch’ lawmakers, rough up judge and sell illegally altered gun

Schuyler Barbeau appeared Monday in federal court in Washington state after a confidential informant notified the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force about alleged threats the wingnut 'patriot' made against law enforcement and public officials.

10 Things You Can Buy in America That Prove Just How Sick Our Gun Laws Are

Planned Parenthood shooting suspect says he’s guilty and calls himself ‘a warrior for the babies’

The suspect in the shooting attack against a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs declared his own guilt during a court hearing on Wednesday.

Minnesota man guns down worker at employees’ holiday party and fights with arresting officers

Kirk Bigby
“Things like this never happen here,” said partygoer Lyric Johnson, 18, who said she scrambled after hearing the gunshots. “It was really weird.”

NYC man accused of killing wife to stay on her will and trying to sell teen daughter into marriage

Former stockbroker Rod Covlin is accused of murdering his wife and then attempting to sell his 13-year-old daughter. (New York Daily News)NYC man accused of killing wife to stay on her will and trying to sell teen daughter into marriage

Sociopath vs. Psychopath

From real life to movies and TV, we often hear the terms sociopath and psychopath tossed around as though they mean the same thing. While the two share some personality traits, they differ in key ways.

Eye-Strain Redness Can Get Tanzanian Women Killed

Women in Tanzania are being hunted and murdered for witchcraft. What are the real reasons behind these injustices?

Ziggy

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81-Year Old Grandma Outran Her Kids at the Beer Mile

The beer mile is the world's greatest athletic challenge. The task is a demanding one for legs, lungs, and liver. The participant chugs a beer, then runs a quarter of a mile, then repeats the process. That's 4 beers in a full mile.
Elvira Montes, 81, prefers to drink scotch. But to prove her physical prowess, she made an exception and ran a beer mile in Austin, Texas, completing the feat in 20 minutes and 24 seconds.
Her daughter and son-in-law joined her. She whupped them both. Montes's daughter finished 50 seconds behind her. Her son-in-law didn't even finish the race! I must wonder: was it the running or the alcohol which did him in?
Montes told Runner's World that she hopes to beat the 20-minute mark on her next attempt. For now, she's just enjoying her victory:
Montes promised to make a return appearance next year and hopes to break 20 minutes. To train, she plans to drink a beer while on the treadmill.
But, after crossing the finish line with a mile in her legs and four beers in her stomach, Montes was not thinking about her next race. She was ready to celebrate. So, she took her daughter to Hooters. They had chicken wings and Scotch.

Fifteen Easy Things to Do When You're Feeling Down

Sometimes feelings of situational or other depression (feelings that aren't associated with serious mental illness diagnoses, which generally need to be addressed with medication and/or therapy) can be wiped out in the simplest of ways. Methods so rudimentary that if they were suggested to a person who is depressed, that person might respond with a roll of their eyes.
The fact is, when most people are feeling low, they are also feeling unmotivated and tend to wallow for too long. They lean more towards laying in bed or on the couch, immersing themselves in computer activity, music or the television for extended periods. Often, depressed people must force themselves to make a move in the right direction. Occasionally feelings of dysphoria may trump the strength to get moving altogether.
Next time you're feeling low, push yourself as hard as you can to do one of the things on this list, or something similarly stimulating that produces endorphins or creates a mind shift. At various times I've tried nearly every idea in the linked article to cure a case of the blues, and I'm rarely disappointed in the result. 

25 Facts about the Science of Music


What song is the catchiest of all? What causes us to get “chills” when we hear certain kinds of music? If intelligence is correlated with rhythm, does that means drummers are smarter than the average person? Find out as John Green gives us the latest research results in this latest episode of the mental_floss List Show. There are a surprisingly number of benefits of listening to pleasant music (although “pleasant” is quite subjective). All the more reason to crank it up!

Word Order Matters When Giving Directions

The order of the words you use when giving directions might matter as much as the words themselves.

Instagram Husband

This is the story of a man who is married to an Instagram star. Well, she might not be a star, but she’s certainly a contender. The husband is important to her Instagram feed, even though you never see him. It’s not an easy life.
You know how people say, “Pics or it didn’t happen?” They want proof that it happened. For these women, the pics are there, even if it didn’t happen. The pics are not just the biggest thing, they are the only thing.

Mona Lisa May Conceal Second Portrait

A light reflection technique reveals the outlines of what a researcher claims is a separate portrait under Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.



3-foot dinosaur was Triceratops' tiny ancestor

Newly-discovered fossil reveals 3-foot dinosaur was Triceratops' tiny ancestor

Animal News

A special molecular film coats their bellies and smooths the ride.
A newly discovered frog lives a fairytale existence, living in a mini nature-made swimming pool formed by the leaves of a tropical plant.
Ancestors of today’s dogs might have preferred life with humans over time spent with their own mothers.

Animal Pictures