As of this moment ...

Because of the shrub's greed and uncaring ...

4,125 brave men and women are gone.
4,125 families have been destroyed

... in the useless waste of Iraq.

Support our troops ... Bring them home now!

How High Fructose Corn Syrup Makes You Gain Weight

New research from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows the amazing speed that our bodies make body fat from fructose. One of the reasons why low carb diets help you lose weight is that they reduce your intake of fructose.

Read more from How High Fructose Corn Syrup Makes you Gain Weight

A World That Stands As One

Damn, a politician who speaks plainly and with somewhat honesty?!
Could the mythical creature known as an "Honest Politician" actually exist?

Have a gander at Obama's speech to the citizens of Germany in Berlin.

200,000 plus hear Obama speak in Berlin

"A World That Stands as One"

As Prepared For Delivery
Berlin, Germany
July 24th, 2008

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.

This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.

The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. “There is only one possibility,” he said. “For us to stand together united until this battle is won…The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin!”

People of the world – look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.

In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew.

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century – in this city of all cities – we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

Flip-Flop McPain

How many times has McPain "Flip-Flopped"?

Not sure? Check here and find out.

Insurance Company Rules

Murder by Taser

Tasered to death by Cops

Lead full story here

Excerpt:
A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting
him on a cocaine charge. Baron Pikes, 21, was Tasered nine times by a police officer in Winnfield, Louisiana.
He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead.

Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes' January death after
medical examiners ruled it a homicide. The coroner said the 21-year-old man was jolted
so many times by the Taser that he might have been dead before the last two shocks were delivered.

McPain can't read a map, either

And you wonder why our children cannot find their home state on a map ...

"We have a lot of work to do and it's a very hard struggle,

particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border."

-- Gramps McPain, pretending Iraq and Pakistan share a border,
Read more here

That "border" Gramps talks about is a country called Iran.

The Ten Most Unfortunate Store Names

The name of this shop in Terrassa, Catalonia, Spain becomes "SHIT" when converted to an acronym.

See the rest at Oddee.com

Quiddity

Check out Meggan Marie's blog Quiddity.
She has been blogging for nearly ten years and that is something.
And her blog is a nice one to boot.

'Such a coward' is right

A convicted spammer fatally shot his wife and young daughter in an apparent murder-suicide Thursday while being sought after escaping prison last weekend.

A teenage girl was shot in the neck and a baby was found unhurt in a car seat inside the vehicle where the three bodies were found, according to Arapahoe County undersheriff Mark Campbell.

The relationship between the girl, baby and the escaped convict wasn't immediately clear.

The bodies of "Spam King" Edward "Eddie" Davidson, his wife and 3-year-old daughter were found in an SUV parked in a farmhouse driveway in a rural part of Bennett, about 25 miles east of Denver.

All three had been shot, U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said."What a nightmare, and such a coward," Eid said. "Davidson imposed the `death penalty' on family members for his own crime."

Hurricane Dolly slams into Texas with 100 mph winds

Want to bet the shrub is already there with aid for those harmed by Dolly!

Hurricane Dolly gathered strength and slammed into the South Texas coast Wednesday with punishing rain and winds of 100 mph, blowing down signs, damaging an apartment complex and knocking out power to thousands.

But local officials' greatest fear - that the levees holding back the Rio Grande would fail and cause massive flooding - eased when Dolly meandered 35 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border just before coming ashore on South Padre Island as a Category 2 storm.

"The levees are holding up just fine," said Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos. "There is no indication right now that they are going to crest."

Forecasters warned of up to 12 inches of rain that could produce flooding in the heavily populated Rio Grande Valley. Up to 20 inches was predicted for isolated areas. Thunderstorms were attributed to Dolly as far away as Houston, 400 miles up the Texas coastline.

But South Texas residents still needed breakfast and the few stores that were open - even without electricity - were doing brisk business before Dolly fully revved up.

"Tienes tortillas?" Jorge Herrera shouted, rushing soaking wet into Johnny's Grocery and Meat Market #2. His 3-year-old son Michelangelo, sporting a Superman T-shirt and matching underpants, was in tow.Discovering the tortilla factories had closed before the storm and the store didn't have any to sell, the Herreras settled for a bag of charcoal, chocolate cookies and two tall cans of beer.

Store owners were most worried about the pounds of meat now sitting unrefrigerated in the July heat, but cashier Elvira Farias said her boss "wanted to stay open to serve the community.
We know that some people need to buy a meal for their kids."Residents were apparently staying put. Food was selling fast, but gas pumps were idle.

In Mexico, fields were filling with water, palm trees were bent over in the wind and beaches were closed to the public.
Maria Miguel, 102, and seven family members fled their wooden shack in the Mexican fishing community of Higuerilla and spent the night at a convention center-turned-shelter in Matamoros. "I don't know if my poor house will withstand the rain and wind," Miguel said.

Mexican soldiers made a last-minute attempt to rescue people at the mouth of the Rio Grande. The soldiers battled storm-charged waves in an inflatable raft to rescue at least one family trapped in their home, while others further inland were still refusing to go to government shelters, said Matamoros spokeswoman Leticia Montalvo."These are people who did not want to leave, and now they are in trouble," Montalvo said.

On Texas' South Padre Island, an apartment complex roof partially collapsed early Wednesday. Residents said they didn't believe anybody was injured. Melissa Zamora, a spokeswoman for the town of South Padre Island, said the roof collapse caused a plumbing leak and few residents were being relocated."I thought it was just a big clap of thunder, (then) saw this stuff flying around and it's the roof," said Buck Dopp, who lives in the ground floor apartment under the collapsed roof. Dopp and his family packed up and left the building, despite their plans to ride out the storm.

The causeway linking the island to the mainland remained closed early Wednesday.
Dan Quandt, a spokesman for South Padre Island emergency operations, said winds were picking up to around 50 mph and were expected to increase later Wednesday morning. He said there was a steady rain falling, but no reports of flooding.
A sign on a hotel blew off, but no one was injured and it did not pose a hazard, he said.

Power was knocked out to more than 13,000 customers in Cameron County, where Brownsville is located, utility company AEP Texas said. Cavazos said 11 power poles were down near the Port of Brownsville and transformers were popping downtown. Power also was out on South Padre Island.

In Brownsville, palm trees leaned and small debris was strewn across the all-but empty streets. The windows and doors of shops were boarded up with plywood and most businesses were closed.

Thousands of people fled to shelters in towns on both sides of the border patrolled by local police and National Guard troops. Evacuees flowed into an emergency shelter at Gladys Porter High School, even as Dolly's winds dismantled a school sign. Principal Dora Sauceda said people were lined up outside when she arrived at 4:30 a.m. The shelter was quickly nearing its 300-person capacity.

Miguel Angel Cruz and his wife Maria Hernandez brought their four children to the shelter because they feared the trailer they lived in wouldn't withstand the wind and a nearby resaca - or pond formed by a bend in the Rio Grande - would flood."Yes, we're scared," Cruz, a welder, said in Spanish as his family settled in. "It's our first hurricane."

At 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, the storm's center had come ashore on South Padre Island about 35 miles northeast of Brownsville and was moving northwest at about 7 mph.Tornado watches were in effect for coastal counties between Corpus Christi and Houston through Wednesday afternoon.

The U.S. Census Bureau said that based on Dolly's projected path, about 1.5 million Texans could feel the storm's effects.
Gov. Rick Perry declared 14 south Texas counties disaster areas, allowing state resources to be used to send equipment and emergency workers to areas in the storm's path.

The storm, combined with levees that have deteriorated in the 41 years since Beulah swept up the Rio Grande, posed a major flooding threat to low-lying counties along the border. Beulah spawned more than 100 tornadoes across Texas and dumped 36 inches of rain in some parts of south Texas, killing 58 people and causing more than $1 billion damage.

Around Brownsville, levees protect the historic downtown as well as preserved buildings that were formerly part of Fort Brown on the University of Texas at Brownsville campus.
Outside the city, agricultural land dominates the banks of the Rio Grande, but thousands of people live in low-lying colonias, often poor subdivisions built without water and sewer utilities.

In the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil evacuated workers from oil rigs, but said it didn't expect production to be affected.
It also secured wells and shut down production in the Rio Grande Valley, where it primarily deals in natural gas. Mexico's state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, said it had evacuated 66 workers from an oil platform off the coast of the port city of Tampico.

As Dolly approached, oil and gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico evacuated workers from 62 production platforms and eight rigs, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which monitors offshore activity.
Oil production in the Gulf was down about 4.5 percent, while natural gas production was down 7.8 percent.

Dolly is the first hurricane to hit the U.S. since the fast-forming Humberto came ashore in South Texas last September. It is the 26th hurricane known to make landfall in the U.S. in July since record keeping started in 1851, according to federal researchers.

The busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season is usually in August and September.

So far this year, there have been four named storms, two of which became hurricanes. Federal forecasters predict a total of 12 to 16 named storms and six to nine hurricanes this season.

This is how the cabal treats our troops part duex

I have seen this all over the net so I thought I would add it here as well ...

Soldier in famous photo ... dead!

Link

Excerpt:
For most of the past five years, the 31-year-old soldier had writhed in a private hell,
shooting at imaginary enemies and dodging nonexistent roadside bombs, sleeping in
a closet bunker and trying desperately to huff away the "demons" in his head. When his
personal problems became public, efforts were made to help him, but nothing seemed to work.

They found Joseph Dwyer lying on his back, his clothes soiled with urine and feces.
Scattered on the floor around him were dozens of spent cans of Dust-Off,
a refrigerant-based aerosol normally used to clean electrical equipment.

Dwyer told police Lt. Mike Wilson he'd been "huffing" the aerosol.

"Help me, please!" the former Army medic begged Wilson.
"I'm dying. Help me. I can't breathe."

Unable to stand or even sit up, Dwyer was hoisted onto a stretcher.
As paramedics prepared to load him into an ambulance, an officer
noticed Dwyer's eyes had glassed over and were fixed.

A half hour later, he was dead.

North Carolina bullying ban dies in committee

And to think they protested with howls and shrill whines about a plastic doll wearing fishnet stockings ... but let a child be bullied - no problem!

North Carolina legislation protecting schoolchildren from bullying died Thursday in committee, Raleigh's News & Observer reported.

"The failure of this bill to pass . . . sends a bad message," state Sen. Doug Berger told the Observer.

To quote one, Gloria Brame:

"Ya reckon? Give that man the Understatement of the Year Award."

The controversy that prevented the bill from passing surrounded the addition of "sexual orientation" as a reason a student may face discrimination or bullying, the Observer reported.

The Christian Action League and the North Carolina Family Policy Council objected, saying that LGBT groups would use the bill as leverage for other rights legislation.

Hurricanes in Iowa?

Actually it's only thunderstorms, but ...

Officials in Iowa say thunderstorms with winds of up to 100 mph have knocked out electricity for thousands of residents.

No injuries have been reported.State and local officials say the storms ripped up trees and power lines early today and ripped the roof off a building at the state prison for women in Mitchellville.

The utilities MidAmerican Energy and Alliant Energy say more than 200,000 of their customers have been blacked out. MidAmerican Energy is controlled by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

National Weather Service meteorologist Ben Moyer says there hasn't been a lot of rain with the system but winds gusted up to 100 mph.

... with winds at 100 mph they would be called hurricanes out over the water sea instead of the grassy sea.

Who else thinks the weather patterns are getting wackier!?

Fish Pedicures

Ready for the latest in spa pampering?

Prepare to dunk your tootsies in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away.

Fish pedicures are creating something of a splash in the D.C. area, where a northern Virginia spa has been offering them for the past four months. John Ho, who runs the Yvonne Hair and Nails salon with his wife, Yvonne Le, said 5,000 people have taken the plunge so far."This is a good treatment for everyone who likes to have nice feet," Ho said.

He said he wanted to come up with something unique while finding a replacement for pedicures that use razors to scrape off dead skin. The razors have fallen out of favor with state regulators because of concerns about whether they're sanitary.

Ho was skeptical at first about the fish, which are called garra rufa but typically known as doctor fish. They were first used in Turkey and have become popular in some Asian countries.

*****

I wonder if it tickles or not?

OOPS!

The White House this past Saturday afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine.”

The story was about how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that “he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time-frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,’” the prime minister said.

The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.

The gaff comes at an odd time for the shrub's foreign policy, at a time when Obama’s campaign alleges the shrub is moving closer toward Obama’s recommendations about international relations — sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a “general time horizon” for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.

Regarding the Maliki announcement:

Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re fucked.”

Random Photo

No particular reason for this photograph 'borrowed' from Grow-A-Brain.
Just struck me as funny is all.

Dolly forms in the western Caribbean

Tropical Storm Dolly formed in the western Caribbean and approached Mexico on Sunday, as Tropical Storm Cristobal edged closer to the North Carolina coast.

The National Hurricane Center issued a tropical storm warning for Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula from Campeche to the border with Belize.

At 11:45 a.m. ET, the hurricane center said the center of Dolly -- the fourth tropical storm of the Atlantic season -- was about 270 miles east of Chetumal, Mexico, and 230 miles southeast of Cozumel.

Dolly was moving northwest at about 17 mph, with top sustained winds near 45 mph.

Meanwhile, Cristobal moved "parallel and very close" to the North Carolina coast Sunday morning, but the storm was expected to drift away from the eastern coast by Monday.

"The center of the tropical storm is expected to move parallel and very close to the coast of North Carolina today and begin to move away from the coast by Monday," the hurricane center said in its 11 a.m. advisory. It is expected to dump 1 or 2 inches of rain along the North Carolina coast Sunday, it said.

A discussion posted online by hurricane center forecasters said the satellite view of Cristobal "remained unimpressive-looking" and predicted that the storm would "lose tropical characteristics" over the next two or three days.

A tropical storm warning -- meaning tropical storm conditions with maximum winds of 39 mph are expected within the next 24 hours -- was canceled for an area from north of Little River Inlet, North Carolina, to the North Carolina-Virginia border. Another warning remained in effect from north of Surf City to the North Carolina-Virginia border.

As of 11 a.m. ET Sunday, Cristobal's center was about 15 miles southwest of Cape Lookout, North Carolina, and about 70 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It was moving northeast at near 7 mph.

The storm's maximum sustained winds were near 50 mph, with higher gusts.

Cristobal evolved Saturday from a tropical depression that formed Friday.

Meanwhile, Bertha was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Saturday evening. The storm, centered about 670 miles east-northeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, is moving quickly into the northern Atlantic, the hurricane center said Sunday morning.

Bertha, the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic season, formed July 3 in the eastern Atlantic and dealt a glancing blow to Bermuda before heading north.

The storm set several records:

It is the longest-lived tropical cyclone on record during the month of July and the third-strongest July storm on record, behind Dennis and Emily in the 2005 hurricane season.

Tropical Storm Cristobal rumbles off the Carolinas

Tropical Storm Cristobal, the first tropical storm to menace the Southeast seaboard this hurricane season, sent outer bands of intermittent rain lashing the eastern Carolinas late Saturday as forecasters predicted it could dump several inches in some areas of drought-stricken North Carolina.

At 8 p.m. EDT, the center of the storm was about 130 miles east of Charleston and about 185 miles southwest of Cape Hatteras, N.C.

The National Hurricane Center said Cristobal was moving northeast at about 6 mph with maximum sustained winds of about 45 mph and some higher gusts.

"Basically the track is running parallel to the coast," said lead center forecaster Martin Nelson. "Slow strengthening is forecast for the next day or two."

At the By The Sea Motel in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., out-of-state visitors photographed outer storm bands as Cristobal churned off the coast, said hotel manager Charlie Peterson.
Intermittent light rain fell in the afternoon but that wasn't enough to chase them away.
"They've got their cameras set and they think there is going to be lightning over the water," he said.

Bradley Rose, a surf instructor at SandBarz in Carolina Beach, N.C., said surfers took the plunge.
"It looks pretty fun out there," Rose said.

Although the center of the storm was forecast to remain off the coast through the weekend, tropical storm warnings were in effect from the South Santee River in South Carolina to the North Carolina-Virginia state line, including Pamlico Sound.

Flood advisories were posted for coastal counties and Wilmington, N.C., received 2 1/2 inches of rain Saturday, said Stephen Keebler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service there.

Cristobal's winds were not expected to be a problem, Keebler said.

Forecasters predicted up to 5 inches of rain along the North Carolina coast, with heavier amounts in some areas.

Eastern North Carolina is under a moderate drought while areas along South Carolina's northern coast are considered abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Officials have blamed the drought for a huge wildfire that has charred more than 40,000 acres in eastern North Carolina since it began June 1 with a lightning strike.

Also, on Saturday, Hurricane Fausto strengthened far off Mexico's Pacific coast, while Hurricane Bertha raced rapidly to the northeast over the North Atlantic, hundreds of miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Neither of those storms currently threaten land.
Bertha had blustered across Bermuda earlier this week, knocking out electricity to thousands there.

Family of slain NC woman plan return to Canada

The parents of a North Carolina mother found slain near her home tearfully asked Friday for the culprit to show "a shred of decency" by confessing, while her husband's attorney said he's an innocent man who wants to grieve in private.

Nancy Cooper's body was found Monday at a construction site about three miles from her home in Cary, a Raleigh suburb.

Her husband, Bradley Cooper, told police that she went jogging on Saturday and he had not seen her since.

No suspects have been named, but a custody move for the couple's two young daughters has revealed deep tension between the wife's family and her husband.

Bradley Cooper's attorney, Seth Blum, said Friday that he has repeatedly answered questions from police and allowed them to search his home and vehicles. Authorities have said he has been cooperative.

The wife's parents won temporary custody of the children, claiming in court filings that the husband was having an affair, was emotionally unstable and posed a danger to the girls.

They claimed he recently threatened to commit suicide, was verbally abusive and prevented his wife and daughters from going to Canada by taking away the children's passports.

The wife's family didn't discuss those claims in emotional news conferences this week.
They focused on memories and praise for the mother and daughters.

The wife's father, Garry Rentz, said the girls have not even asked for their father.
He said his family's pain would only subside if her killer came forward and confessed.
"I think this is an act of extreme cowardice - whoever the person was who did this," Rentz said. "And I think if they had a shred of decency in their body, they would come forward and acknowledge their guilt."

The husband's attorney, meanwhile, took an apparent swipe at her family:
"Attending press briefings does nothing to catch a killer."
"Brad Cooper is a man in mourning," Blum said.
"Different people grieve in different ways. Mr. Cooper wishes to mourn privately."
Blum declined to answer questions about the custody battle, asking that those decisions be kept private.

Family members planned to take the girls to Canada this weekend and meet with a psychologist who was a friend of Nancy Cooper to get advice on how to explain the situation to the girls: One is 4 years old and the other turns 2 next week.
"We have not told them, and they have not mentioned to us that they know," Rentz said.
"So, we are going to walk very gingerly into this area."

After a private memorial service Friday night, the family will host a public memorial service Saturday afternoon in Raleigh.

They'll have a second service in Edmonton.

Family members planned to return next week before a Friday court hearing to decide a more long-term custody arrangement for the girls.

Police declined to discuss the case Friday.

Chief Pat Bazemore said they planned no other public updates on the case until they name a suspect or make an arrest.

"Would I like it to be over tomorrow morning? Yes, I would," Rentz said.
"Am I uncomfortable that it's not? No, and we'll allow people to take their time."

See what religion will get you

The military standoff between Cambodia and Thailand entered its fifth day Saturday as both sides continued to reinforce their troops ahead of scheduled talks over a disputed border area near an 11th century temple.

Some 300 more Cambodian soldiers and 100 Thais were seen arriving near the Preah Vihear temple late Friday, although commanders declined to confirm those numbers.

Earlier, Cambodian Brig. Gen. Chea Keo said Cambodia had about 800 troops against 400 Thai soldiers in the area.

The countries are to meet Monday in an attempt to defuse the conflict over territory surrounding the ancient temple, which escalated when UNESCO recently approved Cambodia's application to have the complex named a World Heritage Site.

Thai activists fear the new status will undermine Thailand's claim to nearby land since the border has never been demarcated.

Carolina Naturally is read in ...

Some odd sounding places like:

Owosso, Michigan - Palatine, Illinois - Metuen, Massachusetts - Cary, North Carolina - House Springs, Missouri - Blue Ridge, Georgia - Bayonne, New Jersey - Ketchikan, Alaska - Vandergrift, Pennsylvania - Concord, North Carolina

OK, so some of those don't sound too odd after all.

But what about these:

Ostersund, Sweden - Palma De Mallorca, Spain - Lodz, Poland - Ljubljana, Slovenia - Crawley, England

Well, some of those are not too odd either come to think of it are they?!

It is good for this ol'Scot to see readers from Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland.

I still haven't figured out just why this blog is so popular in Almere, Amsterdam and The Hague, Netherlands but I am not complaining.

Thanks to all the readers of Carolina Naturally.

As of this moment ...

Of our troops in Afghanistan:

476 brave men and women are gone.

Support our troops ... Bring them home now!

How to Reach Age 99: 100 Essential Habits

Having a sense of humor is one of the most vital things to a long life ... that and following healthier habits:

No matter what you do, you must know that the odds of living to age 99 are against you. While living to experience age 99 isn’t an easy task, it can be done. One huge factor that can decrease your chances dramatically is heart disease. So, our focus is on that issue. But, your risk for heart disease can be reduced drastically with small measures, and the majority of habits listed here coul help you realize your old-age potential. The reason the ‘tips’ listed below are called ‘habits’ is because they are life-changing skills that must be repeated throughout your life to realize the possibility of reaching that age 99 goal.

Read more from How to Reach Age 99: 100 Essential Habits

As of this moment ...

Of our troops in Iraq:
4,124 brave men and women are gone.

4,124 families have been destroyed

Support our troops ... Bring them home now!

Faux Pas

You knew there was a connection, right?!

And, you didn't believe it!

SAUT D'EAU, Haiti : Voodoo Pilgrimage

Every year, Haitians crowd into the basin of a sacred waterfall to relax and pray for a better future.

This time, they asked for relief from soaring food prices and rampant unemployment.

Thousands of pilgrims bathed and threw their clothes into the cascading veils of Saut D'Eau, where the faithful believe the Virgin Mary, known as Erzulie in Haitian Voodoo, appeared in the 1800s.

The observant lit candles and sacrificed a cow nearby.

Many traveled for days on foot or horseback to reach the holy site, which lies 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Port-au-Prince.

"Whatever the Saint gives me, I will take," said 38-year-old Fifi Jean, who spent US$5.30 of her last savings to make the trip.

The former food vendor lost her Port-au-Prince market stand when she got sick.

Now, she said, she can't afford the US$17 monthly rent for her and her daughter.

Haitian Voodoo was created when African slaves fused their religious tradition with Roman Catholic saints and practices so they could continue observing their beliefs under the noses of their French masters.

Today, many move freely between the two beliefs."I used to be a Christian, but then things went bad for us," said Marie Denise, 35, who wore a blue scarf and white frock marked with the numbers of her favorite Psalms.

The single mother hopes Erzulie will provide money and help for her two daughters.

Even Haiti's most powerful showed up.

Chamber of Deputies President Eric Pierre Jean-Jacques descended concrete steps to the water's edge on the last day of the pilgrimage, flanked by guards carrying assault rifles.

Lawmakers are recovering from deadly food riots and face an impasse that has left Haiti without a prime minister for more than three months.

"I'm going to pray that the country changes," Jean-Jacques said, "that people get a better way of life."

Gray Wolves protected again

A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy granted a preliminary injunction late Friday restoring the protections for the wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

Molloy will eventually decide whether the injunction should be permanent.The region has an estimated 2,000 gray wolves.

They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

Environmentalists sued to overturn the decision, arguing wolf numbers would plummet if hunting were allowed. They sought the injunction in the hopes of stopping the hunts and allowing the wolf population to continue expanding.

Needle inspired by mosquito

This could be a great thing ...

Researchers have developed a microneedle inspired by the the blood-sucking action of a female mosquito. Described as "painless," the microneedle has applications for blood drawing, injections, and biomonitoring. Designed by engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology and Tokai University, the device uses shape-memory alloy to push the needle into the body. Then, a microelectromechnical pump sucks out the blood or delivers the drugs. From New Scientist:

Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito bite does not hurt. It is the anticoagulant saliva that the creature injects to stop your blood clotting that causes inflammation and pain.

The new needle has an inner diameter of around 25 microns and an external diameter of 60 microns, which is about the same size as a mosquito's mouthpart. Its size and the fact that it works by suction, makes it painless. To compare, a conventional syringe needle has an outer diameter of around 900 microns.

Mosquito-inspired microneedle

Doing the exact opposite from what they should be doing

Breaking News:

More US troops may go to Afghanistan this year

Pentagon leaders on Wednesday signaled a surge in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later," a shift that could send some units there within weeks, as officials prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.

Senior military officials are looking across the services to identify smaller units and other equipment that could be sent to Afghanistan, according to a defense official.

Although there are no brigade-sized units that can be deployed quickly into Afghanistan, military leaders believe they can find a number of smaller units such as aviation, engineering and surveillance troops that can be moved more swiftly, said the official, who requested anonymity because the discussions are private.

The moves are expected to happen within weeks rather than months, the official said.

*****

They should be bringing ALL the troops home not sending MORE!
But in typical cabal fashion they are doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing!

The shrub is claiming privilege

As if that is anything new ...

The shrub invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with the prick Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003.

The shrub's decision drew a sharp protest Wednesday from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents."This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," the California Democrat said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

Waxman left little doubt he would soon move for a committee vote to hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress.

Casino regulators got items meant for Katrina victims

The agency that regulates Mississippi's casinos got pillows, stoves, dinnerware and other items meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, according to state records.

The Mississippi Gaming Commission was among 11 state agencies that received the household items from the state's surplus agency.

A breakdown of what each agency received shows the commission took a coffee maker, a case of pillows, wash kits, two dual-burner stoves, plates and utensils, two cases of hand sanitizers and 20 five-gallon containers.

Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, could not be reached for comment. But an aide, Becky Clark, said the agency is keeping the items "in case of another hurricane."

The Mississippi Department of Corrections also got 20 coffee makers, 15 tents, four cases of pillows, five cases of men's underwear and other supplies.

An investigation revealed in June that for two years after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency stored 121 truckloads of household items that were purchased or donated for Katrina victims. FEMA eventually declared the items surplus, saying it was too expensive to keep warehousing them, and then offered them to federal agencies and states.

Sixteen states, including storm-ravaged Mississippi, took the items. However, it was discovered that those items were given to the 11 state agencies, schools, cities and fire departments rather than being distributed to residents trying to rebuild their homes.

Leaders of nonprofit groups helping Katrina victims were astounded when shown photos of the FEMA supplies. All said they were unaware that such supplies were available.

As of this moment ...

4,121 brave men and women are gone.

Life's Cardinal Rules

The Cardinal Rule of Moving

Never pack a box heavier than you can lift because you may be the one lifting it!

*****

Now, if someone would tell the Mrs., of this rule maybe my back will stop hurting. Of course when moving a library one does have to expect a little heft to be involved - books are heavy ... but come on, a 100 lbs in a square/foot box - now damn it that's a bit excessive even for this old ball player.

She can only lift 10 lbs by the way. More boxes, but hey, no back pain, there.

White worm-eating slug discovered in Wales

Here's a BBC story about the discovery of a new slug species.

It's pure white and carnivorous, feasting on worms instead of the typical slug diet of plants and decaying matter.

Because it was found in Wales, it's been christened with a partially-Welsh name: Selenochlamys ysbryda.

Ysbryd is Welsh for ghost.

Worm-eating slug found in garden

15 Smart Ways to Beat Jet Lag

No one likes jet lag. We get off a flight feeling wrinkled and exhausted and then head into a day full of meetings or jump full swing into a vacation. Here’s how to reset your body clock and sleep better.

Read more from 15 Smart Ways to Beat Jet Lag

Analysts: More Banks Will Fail

From the New York Times:

“As home prices continue to decline and loan defaults mount, federal regulators are bracing for dozens of American banks to fail over the next year.

But after a large mortgage lender in California collapsed late Friday, Wall Street analysts began posing two crucial questions: Just how many banks might falter? And, more urgently, which one could be next?

The nation’s banks are in far less danger than they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when more than 1,000 federally insured institutions went under during the savings-and-loan crisis. The debacle, the greatest collapse of American financial institutions since the Depression, prompted a government bailout that cost taxpayers about $125 billion.

But the troubles are growing so rapidly at some small and midsize banks that as many as 150 out of the 7,500 banks nationwide could fail over the next 12 to 18 months, analysts say. Other lenders are likely to shut branches or seek mergers…”

Read the rest of the article here.

Phil Gramm: Pornographer?

Thanks to the folks over at Scrutiny Hooligans for this one:

(quote)

By Arratik

Turns out that McCain surrogate/lobbyist/bank president/sub-prime mortgage crisis profiteer Phil Gramm, who famously referred to the United States of America as a “nation of whiners” last week, was actually doing his part to turn us into a nation of moaners back in the seventies as a producer of sub-Cinemax soft-core pr0n.

This popped up @ The Nation, among other places:

Before Gramm joined the Christian Coalition’s Ralph Reed to call for the defunding of the NEA, before he attacked an opponent for taking money from a gay rights group, and before he was interviewed by the white supremacist Southern Partisan magazine, Gramm was an avidly active investor in soft-core pornography movies.

Gramm’s journey into porn began in 1973, when his brother-in-law, George Caton, rushed to tell him about an exciting low-budget soft-core production called “Truck Stop Women.” A promo poster for the film boasted of its buxom stars: “No Rig Was Too Big For Them To Handle.” Caton, who was in charge of fundraising for the production, asked Gramm to become an investor. To entice his brother-in-law, Caton showed him scenes of Playboy Playmate of the year Claudia Jennings displaying her bare essentials (she is naked throughout much of the film).

These scenes “really got Phil titillated,” Caton told journalist John Judis in 1995. Gramm enthusiastically cut Caton a check for $15,000. Because the film was oversold, however, Caton returned his brother-in-law’s money, offering him an investment opportunity in an upcoming feature

That “upcoming feature” was originally supposed to be a film about beauty pageant judges who have sex with contestants, but that film was shelved at the eleventh hour in favor of another production called White House Madness, a satire of the Nixon Administration (of which, ironically, Gramm was a staunch supporter) that featured a troupe of drag queens (called The Cockettes) and depicted Nixon as someone who wandered around the White House naked. It was a box-office flop.

I don’t know about you, but “failed pr0n investor” is exactly the kind of thing I look for on the resume of a potential Secretary of the Treasury.

(end quote)

I don’t know about you, but “failed pr0n investor” is exactly the kind of thing I look for on the resume of a potential Secretary of the Treasury.

You and me both, you and me both.

Bertha the longest-lived July storm in history

Not exactly what I thought would happen, but the neck hairs are never wrong - Bertha did do something before she was all said and done (and she isn't all said and done just yet).

Tropical Storm Bertha headed back out over open ocean and away from the U.S. mainland Tuesday after it battered Bermuda, knocking out electricity to thousands on the Atlantic tourist island.

It is the longest-lived July tropical storm in history, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Bertha became the Atlantic season's first hurricane, before weakening into a tropical storm.

It is expected to strengthen over the next 24 hours, forecasters said.

The previous longest-lived storm, known as Storm No. 2, occurred in 1960 and lasted just over 12 days, according to forecaster Daniel Brown. Bertha is entering its 13th day.

The storm was centered 360 miles (580 kilometers) northeast of Bermuda Tuesday night, with sustained winds near 65 mph (100 kph), the center said. It was moving northeast at 6 mph (9 kph).

Mystery insect bugging experts at London museum

The experts at London's Natural History Museum pride themselves on being able to identify species from around the globe, from birds and mammals to insects and snakes. Yet they can't figure out a tiny red-and-black bug that has appeared in the museum's own gardens.

The almond-shaped insect, about the size of a grain of rice, and was first seen in March 2007 on some of the plane trees that grow on the grounds of the 19th century museum, collections manager Max Barclay said Tuesday.

Within three months, it had become the most common insect in the garden, and it was also spotted in other central London parks, he said.

The museum has more than 28 million insect species in its collection, but none is an exact match for this one. Still, Barclay is cautious about calling it a new discovery.

"I don't expect to find a new species in the gardens of a museum," he said. "Deep inside a tropical rainforest, yes, but not in central London."

The bug resembles the Arocatus roeselii, which is usually found in central Europe but is a brighter red and lives on alder trees. Entomologists suspect the new bug could be a version of the roeselii that has adapted to live on plane trees, but acknowledge it could be a new species.

Either way, it appears the museum's tiny visitor, which appears harmless, is here to stay.

"We waited to see if the insect would survive the British winter," Barclay said. "It did and it's thriving, so now we had better figure out what it is."

*****

OK, all you armchair bug experts in Cyberland let's help the fellas in London identify this bug!

Bud Ain't American No More

Philip McClary was grilling out at his home in suburban St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday night when he heard hometown brewer Anheuser-Busch would be bought by the Belgian company InBev.

"I was actually drinking a Bud Light when I heard, and I couldn't even finish it. That's the honest-to-God truth," he said Monday.

"I was proud to drink Budweiser, not any more," said P.J. Champion, a student at the University of Mississippi who said the brew is "a great piece of American history."

McClary put Champion's thoughts to music, posting his song "Kiss Our Glass" on YouTube and on a Web site that tried to stop the sale, SaveBudweiser.com.

"America is not for sale, and neither is her beer," McClary sings.

"All you hard-working Americans stand up and show some class," the song continues, "Have a drink with Mother Freedom, and tell InBev to kiss your glass."

Such outrage is to be expected, says Matt Simpson, who bills himself as The Beer Sommelier and teaches Beer Education 101 at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. But he said the protests will soon fade.

"Unless it affects [Americans] in the product or the pocketbook, they're likely to forget about it," Simpson says. And he doesn't think InBev will change its iconic product.

"You don't mess with a good thing," he says. "It really isn't about nationalism, it's about money."

Even McClary agrees.

"I think there will be somewhat of a backlash; I would anticipate initially that people will be furious and stop drinking it. Maybe after six months, though, they'll switch back."

Simpson says that if American beer drinkers turn away from Budweiser and other Anheuser-Busch brands, it will be because they are turning to microbrews.

"They are heading the pack in popularity and business success these days," he says of the small breweries. "Today, taste is king. You really don't get from the macro beer producers."

But he doesn't expect Budweiser to go away, either.

"There's nothing inherently wrong with the taste of Budweiser. It's a light American lager. There will always be some sort of market for that," he says.

For McClary, taste was never an issue. "I've drank tons of different beers, different brands; but Bud Light has always been the one to me that was the easiest to go down and had the smoothest taste."

But he says he's quaffed his last Bud Light, and the issue is larger than beer.

"We've kind of lost a part of our history here and all across the United States," he said.

InBev says it won't be changing Budweiser or Bud Light, which it says are the best-selling beers in the world.

"Budweiser will be brewed in the same breweries ... by the same people, according to the same recipe," said Carlos Brito, InBev's chief executive officer.

But iReporter Adam Williams, who lives across the street from Anheuser-Busch's St. Louis brewery, doesn't share that feeling of a continued tradition.

Things will change, Williams says, right down to the company's mascot Dalmatians that have been a constant commotion in the neighborhood.

"I will miss the nuisance that ... the Budweiser Dalmatians have meant around our neighborhood," he writes. "They may still exist over there for some time to come, but their kingdom's significance has severely diminished.

"What is the mascot of InBev, anyway?"

Dead Army nurse's husband charged with murder

The husband of an Army nurse who worked in the maternity ward at Fort Bragg's hospital was charged Monday with murder in her death, a day after her body was discovered by authorities.

Marine Cpl. John Wimunc, 23, was also charged with first-degree arson and conspiracy to commit arson in the death of his wife, Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, of Dubuque, Iowa. Her body was found Sunday, three days after a suspicious fire at her Fayetteville apartment.

In May, Wimunc secured a temporary restraining order against her husband. She told authorities he got drunk and held a loaded handgun to her head and his. At the time of her death, the couple was going through a divorce.

"You start with people who are closest to the spouse and you work your way out from that," Fayetteville Detective Jeff Locklear said of the investigation.

Authorities also charged Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Alden, 22, with first-degree arson, conspiracy to commit arson and accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. Both were arrested at Camp Lejeune, the Marine Corps base about 130 miles southeast of Fayetteville where they are stationed as combat engineers.

Wimunc's body was found in a wooded area near the southern border of Camp Lejeune late Sunday afternoon, not far from Alden's residence. The body had been there several days and there is evidence she was dead upon arrival, said Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson, who wouldn't elaborate. The men were arrested late Sunday night after police interviewed Alden.

"We were able to corroborate a lot of the things he told us," Locklear said. "We used that information, interviews with witnesses ... to get the arrest warrant."

Both men are currently being held without bond in the Cumberland County jail and are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. It wasn't immediately clear if they had attorneys. John Wimunc's father declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press, but Alden's mother said her son's only involvement was giving a friend a ride to Fayetteville.

"He had no idea what was going on. He didn't do this," Connie Johnson said in a phone interview from her home in Pequot Lakes, Minn.

Fayetteville police began searching for Wimunc when she didn't show up for work Thursday. Co-workers could not find her at her apartment, but smelled what they suspected was a fire and called police. Once inside, investigators found evidence of arson.

Sgt. Chris Corcione said Monday that investigators found several points where the fire was started, but the blaze was concentrated in the apartment's rear bedroom. While the interior walls of the burned room were black with soot, Corcione said, the fire burned itself out and left behind useable evidence.

Holley Wimunc, 24, was commissioned by the Army Nurse Corps in 2007. Her first duty assignment was at Fort Bragg, where she worked in the mother and baby unit at Womack Army Medical Center.

Corcione said Wimunc was last seen alive the night of July 8, when she went out with friends and used her ATM card. Police believe she was dead when she was taken out of the apartment, but they are not yet sure when her body was taken to Onslow County.

Hudson said an attempt to burn the body set off a brush fire that drew the attention of authorities, and the body was located by Division of Forest Resources personnel. He said detectives likely would never have found her body had it been burned in a brush-free area about 100 feet away.

"It seems that someone tried to torch the body in the shallow grave," Hudson said.

Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore, a spokesman with the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, said both suspects are assigned to the division's 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion. John Wimunc has served two tours in Iraq, including one that ended in January. Alden's mother said he went to Iraq in 2006.

"All he wanted to do was defend our country," Johnson said. "He has a wonderful, loving heart."

Holley Wimunc's father in Dubuque, Jesse James, said his daughter was a St. Ambrose University graduate, and excited about nursing and her career in the U.S. Army. She also had a son and daughter.

John Wimunc was not the father of Holley Wimunc's two children, and they were not in Fayetteville when the fire was reported. She had sent them to live with her father because of "the domestic situation," Corcione said.

Wimunc's death is the third homicide of a young North Carolina-based female service member in the past seven months.

In January, the body of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, of Vandalia, Ohio, was found in the back yard of a fellow Marine, Cpl. Cesar Laurean. He fled to Mexico and was captured in early April, and is charged with murder in her death.

Last month, the decomposing body of Spc. Megan Touma, of Cold Spring, Ky., was discovered in a motel near Fort Bragg. Authorities have made no arrests in that case, but stressed Monday it has no connection to Wimunc's death.

Father says NC remains in fire are missing soldier

The father of a missing Fort Bragg soldier says authorities have identified the remains of a woman found in a brush fire near Camp Lejeune as those of his missing daughter.

Army nurse Holley Wimunc (WHY-munk) has been missing since a fire Thursday at her apartment in Fayetteville.

On Monday, her father told Raleigh television station WRAL that authorities informed the family that a body found in the brush fire Sunday was that of his daughter.

Wimunc was going through a divorce from Camp Lejeune Marine Cpl. John Patrick Wimunc.

Fayetteville police questioned the husband last week. He has not been named as a suspect in her disappearance.

World's oldest blogger dies in Australia

A 108-year-old Australian woman who was promoted as the world's oldest blogger has died two weeks after making her last post about "singing a happy song," her great-grand son and her online forum said.

Olive Riley wrote 74 entries in her blogs, firstly http://www.allaboutolive.com.au and later http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com. A friend introduced Riley to blogging early in 2007, and was hooked.

Riley "passed away peacefully on Saturday, July 12," a posting on her Web site said. No cause of death was given. "She will be mourned by thousands of Internet friends and hundreds of descendants and other relatives."

She entered a nursing home in Woy Woy, 50 miles north of Sydney, last month, from where she blogged about having a bad cough and feeling weak.

In her last entry, on June 26, Riley thanked supporters for "a whole swag of e-mails and comments from my Internet friends" and described meeting a new friend in the bed next to her.

"She and I sang a happy song, as I do every day, and before long we were joined by several nurses, who sang along too. It was quite a concert!" she posted.

Great-grandson Darren Stone said Riley loved being able to stay in touch with correspondents all over the world and said she believed it kept her mind active.

"It was mind blowing to her," Stone said. "She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while."

Born in the remote mining town of Broken Hill in 1899, Riley blogged regularly in the last year of her life about growing up in the Outback, raising three children and working as a farm cook and bartender earlier in her life.

NAACP Chairman says Obama win won't solve racial injustice

The chairman of the NAACP says racial disparity will remain an issue in America whether or not Barack Obama is elected as the nation's first black president.

Julian Bond told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention Sunday night that Obama's candidacy doesn't "herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America."

He says black Americans should feel proud that a presidential candidate who couldn't have stayed in some cities' hotels several decades ago won the Democratic nomination.

Obama plans to address the convention Monday night. Republican presidential candidate John McCain plans to speak Wednesday.

Don't blame me for IndyMac failure

Sen. Charles Schumer said Sunday the Bush administration is trying to "blame the fire on the person who calls 911" by suggesting he had a role in one of the costliest U.S. bank failures.

Federal regulators with the Office of Thrift Supervision were "asleep at the switch" when it came to IndyMac's "reckless" behavior, the New York Democrat complained.

The OTS announced Friday that it was taking over the $32 billion IndyMac and transferring control to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The OTS pointed the finger directly at Schumer for the failure, accusing him of sparking a bank run by releasing a letter that "expressed concerns about IndyMac's viability."

"In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts," the OTS said in a statement announcing the California-based lender's takeover on Friday.

The statement included a quote from OTS Director John Reich saying, "Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process."

Schumer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, chairman of Congress' Joint Economic Committee and the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, rejected any suggestions of responsibility for IndyMac's collapse

"OTS ought to stop pointing false fingers of blame and start doing its job to protect the future of the banking system, so that there won't be other IndyMacs," he said.

Schumer's June 26 letter said he was "concerned that IndyMac's financial deterioration poses significant risks to both taxpayers and borrowers."

In a Sunday news conference, he said everything in his letter was already known to the public.

"IndyMac was one of the most poorly run and reckless of all the banks," he said. "It was a spinoff from the old Countrywide, and like Countrywide, it did all kinds of profligate activities that it never should have. Both IndyMac and Countrywide helped cause the housing crisis we're now in."

The embattled Countrywide Financial Corp. was recently purchased by Bank of America.

Schumer argued that the "breadth and depth" of the problems at IndyMac were "apparent for years, and they accelerated in the last six months." But OTS, he said, "was asleep at the switch and allowed things to happen without restraint.

"And now they are doing what the Bush administration always does: Blame the fire on the person who calls 911."

The White House had no immediate response.

Schumer said OTS is "known as a weak regulator," and added, "my job was to try and toughen them up and that's what I tried to do."

IndyMac, with assets of $32 billion and deposits of $19 billion, is the fifth bank to fail this year. Between 2005 and 2007, only three banks failed. And in the past 15 years, the FDIC has taken over 127 banks with combined assets of $22 billion, according to FDIC records.

IndyMac will reopen Monday with a new charter and a new name -- IndyMac Federal Bank.

*****

Proof of the typical behavior of the Haters - Accuse everyone else of what you are doing! And the shrub and the cabal are skilled in only one thing and that is Hating ... with all its accompanying behaviors.

Fire bomb thrown at US Consulate General

An assailant threw a homemade firebomb into the U.S. consulate compound on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, home to most of the American troops based in Japan, but nobody was injured in the attack, police said.

The Molotov cocktail fell in the garden inside the compound and burned itself out, Okinawan police official Yasuhiko Yoshinaga said. He declined to give further details.

A local resident told police that a person driving a black motorbike fled the scene after the attack.

Okinawa, located 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, is home to more than half the 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan and is considered a linchpin in the American military posture in Asia.

There has long been anti-U.S. military sentiment on the island, with Okinawans complaining of soldier-related crimes.

This is one situation that we cannot lay squarely at the feet of the shrub and the cabal (albeit, they have acerbated the situation simply by they way they do things), it has been a thorn in the side of the island residents and the US military basically since before the end of WW2 when American troops landed on the island - and instances such as this are actually not all that uncommon.

The island residents DO have legitimate claims as to crimes by US Service Personnel ... quite a bit is swept under the rug as it were (not so much today as was years ago when it was pretty much open range for the servicemen to do as they pleased with not a fear of retribution or of any consequences for that matter in the early years following the war).

As of this moment ...

473
Dead in Afghanistan

4118
Dead in Iraq

Support our troops - Bring them home now!

Daily Horoscope

Conditions are good for peacefully contemplating the meaning of life.

*****

Am I so ever glad that is the case - contemplating the meaning of life while conditions are not good for peacefully contemplating is a royal pain in the arse!

Ash in the sky

A volcano erupted Saturday with little warning on a remote island in Alaska, sending residents of a nearby ranch fleeing from falling ash and volcanic rock.

The Okmok Caldera erupted late Saturday morning, just hours after seismologists at the Alaska Volcano Center began detecting a series of small tremors.

The explosion flung an ash cloud at least 50,000 feet high, said geophysicist Steve McNutt.

Ten people, including three children, were at Fort Glenn, a private cattle ranch six miles south of the volcano on Umnak Island, located in the western Aleutians about 860 miles southwest of Anchorage.

They were later picked up by the fishing boat Tara Gaila, which responded to a Coast Guard request for emergency assistance. The Tara Gaila was taking them to Dutch Harbor, the Coast Guard said late Saturday night.

The ranch residents had managed to call military police on Kodiak Island on a satellite phone before losing their connection, according to the Coast Guard.

At the same time it issued the general request for assistance from boats in the area, the Coast Guard diverted the cutters Jarvis and Melon to head toward the scene from their patrols in the Bering Sea.

A rescue helicopter from the Melon responded but had to land in Dutch Harbor after flying through some volcanic ash, causing some damage to the aircraft, the Coast Guard said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lee Goldsmith said those at the ranch reported rock and ash falling around them.

Okmok is 60 miles west of the busy fishing port of Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island. Ash was reported falling in the region, McNutt said.

Two planned flights from Unalaska were canceled in response to the eruption, said Jerry Lucas, a spokesman for PenAir, the primary airliner serving the area.

The 3,500-foot volcano last erupted in 1997, according to McNutt. The volcano has shown signs of increased activity during the last few months, he said.

Previous eruptions have typically produced lava flows, but the volcano center could not immediately determine if that had occurred in Saturday's explosion, McNutt said.

Parkways are not Beltways

Meandering through wooded hills, the George Washington Memorial Parkway offers stunning views of the Potomac River and the capital's monuments beyond. It also offers one of the most direct commutes to downtown Washington for suburban residents - and that has brought traffic it was never intended to handle.

Unlike an ordinary highway, the GW, as it's commonly known, can't just be widened, flattened and straightened to make room for more vehicles at higher speeds. The road is the property of the National Park Service, and its central mission is to showcase the area's historic sights and natural beauty.

Around the country, old parkways designed mainly with aesthetics in mind are bumping up against modern realities, turning scenic roads into hotbeds of commuter frustration and treacherous driving.

Classic parkways are ill-suited for heavy traffic because they often contain sharp curves and steep hills and lack features like merge lanes. The challenge for the agencies overseeing them is to balance their historic and scenic value with the need for safe and free-flowing arteries.

"It's a real balancing act. It always has been, and it becomes more so as traffic increases," said Jon G. James, acting superintendent of the GW, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary as a National Park Service site next month.

The road runs 25 miles in northern Virginia from the Capital Beltway to George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, with two lanes in each direction. The smaller Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland across the Potomac is also part of the GW.

Park officials estimate that 75,000 to 80,000 vehicles drive on the parkway every day - far more than intended.

The GW is not alone in its beauty or its challenges. In the densely populated suburbs of New York City - where the nation's first parkway, the Bronx River Parkway, opened in 1925 - a network of scenic highways showcases rivers, rolling hills and dramatic cliffs.

Those roads have grown to become key commuter arteries. On the southern portion of the Taconic State Parkway, for example, average daily traffic has increased from 44,000 in 1981 to 106,000 in 2003.

In Connecticut, the picturesque Merritt Parkway features bridges representing Art Moderne, Art Deco, Classical, Gothic and Renaissance architecture. In the 1990s, officials considered widening the road to cope with traffic growth on the key conduit toward New York City, but preservationists blocked the effort, said Jill Smyth, executive director of the Merritt Parkway Conservancy, an independent nonprofit that grew out of that fight.

On the West Coast, the Arroyo Seco Parkway follows a dry riverbed from Los Angeles to Pasadena. With large bands of parkland running parallel to it and several historic monuments located off it, the parkway is considered California's first freeway. Like the GW and the Merritt, it is recognized under the America's Byways program administered by the Federal Highway Administration. But critics say it has been poorly adapted to handle today's traffic, contributing to frequent accidents.

Despite their practical flaws, parkways are important to preserve and can even provide a model for future construction, advocates say.

"The experience of driving doesn't have to be terrible. There's still room for beauty and enjoyment," said Kevin Fry, president of Scenic America, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the nation's "visual character." Fry's group advocates flexibility in road construction and upgrades. Such compromises can be used to improve safety features of parkways while still maintaining their aesthetics.

On the GW parkway, guard rails, which were not part of the original design, have been added. But rather than using metal fixtures, the park service used steel-backed timber to give them "a more rustic, historic appeal," James said.

The latest project on the GW is reconstruction of the Humpback Bridge, near the Pentagon, to make it wider and improve visibility. There, the contractor is trying to incorporate the original stone work in the new bridge, James said.

In New York, shoulders have been added on parkways. But rather than add an 8- to 10-foot swath of pavement, officials have opted to make them half paved and half grass.

But in some cases, practical concerns have won out over ambiance. The Taconic, for example, remains largely unchanged on the lightly traveled northern portions approaching Albany, but is a much different road on the portions near New York City, where it has been expanded from two lanes in each direction to three or four.

"We've had to reconstruct it and improve the alignment, and for sure it has lost a lot of its original character," said Sandra Jobson, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Transportation.

The GW is unlikely to be changed as dramatically, since the National Park Service sees "park" as the operative word in "parkway."

Even drivers who use the road more for transportation than for pleasure say they appreciate it for what it is.

"It's a beautiful way to commute even if there's cars around you," said Ellen Walter, who lives near the parkway in Alexandria. "It's pretty. It's green. A lot of times there's pretty birds."

Still, there are concerns that the current levels of commuter traffic compromise safety, since commuters tend to ignore the posted speed limits of 25 mph to 50 mph.

"If commuters want to drive on the parkways, that's fine, but they have to drive on them as parkways, not the beltway," said Dan Marriott, a historic roads consultant, adding that he would like to see more aggressive speed enforcement. Efforts to limit rush-hour traffic through tolls or high-occupancy requirements might also be worth considering, he said.

James said he too wants drivers to slow down and notice what's outside their window. The park service's two priorities are visitor safety and letting people appreciate the sights, he added.

"If people would drive the speed limit," he said, "we would be solving both things at once."