Comments, Comments, Comments

What they are saying:

Hi, It is nice to be a part of your world. Rich

Repugicans! I like that term, it suits them. Joaine

Great blog. Hope you are having a wonderful day. Stephanie

Anchorage loves Carolina Naturally. Keep it up. James

Good for you. Nice blog. It’s been a long time since ’78. Gilles

(editor's note: Gilles was an exchange student who stayed with us back in '78. And he just found my blog)

你好，从北京。 爱您的博客。 黄 (Hello, from Beijing. Love your blog. Huang)

Biting humor didn't die with George! Marie

I took a hard look in the mirror, thanks. Eduard

Thanks for the comments folks keep them coming.

Daily Conundrum

Does not expecting the unexpected make the unexpected, expected?

Obama Unharmed by Rabid Chihuahua Attack

DETROIT, MICHIGAN- During a campaign event over the weekend, Presidential candidate Barack Obama found himself distracted by an odd tugging at his pant leg. He looked down and discovered a tiny chihuahua ferociously chewing on his ankle.

Instinctively, his aides rushed in to whisk the Senator off to the nearest emergency room, but in the end this proved to be unnecessary. For all its growling and gnashing of teeth, the animal had failed to break the skin. As a matter of fact, Obama suffered no discernible injury whatsoever other than an uncomfortable moist and slightly sticky sensation. He was so nonchalant about the so-called attack that he didn't even bother to remove the thing as it continued to munch on him.

Read the rest here.

A 2-to-1 ratio

By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks.

As a result of this Obama's advantage, is growing.

Fifty-one percent of registered voters now say they will back Obama.

Where did Obama make his gains?

In two core McPain constituencies: men, who now favor Obama, and seniors, who have also flipped from McPain to Obama.

Lest you Forget ...

As of Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, at least 525 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

Iraqi's warmth to Israel exacts a heavy price

First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi's troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state - something Iraq's leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel - a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party's sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

Now he is in trouble for again visiting Israel and attending a conference a week ago at the International Institute for Counterterrorism.

"He wasn't set to speak, but he was in the audience and conversed with a lecturer on a panel about insurgency and terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel," said conference organizer Eitan Azani. "We didn't invite him. He came on his own initiative."

Al-Alusi has a German passport, allowing him to travel without visa restrictions imposed on other Iraqis. Lawmakers accused him of humiliating the nation with a trip to the "enemy" state.

The uproar shows how far Iraq has moved from the early U.S. goal of creating a democracy that would make peace with Israel and remove a critical force from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The U.S. Embassy declined comment. "It is an issue for the Iraqi parliament, not the U.S. Mission to Iraq," said spokesman Armand Cucciniello.

"What has happened was a catastrophe for democracy," Al-Alusi told The Associated Press in an interview in his Baghdad home. "Within an hour's time, the parliament became the policeman, the investigator, the judge, the government and the law. It was a sham trial."

Al-Alusi said he went to Israel to seek international support for Iraq as it struggles against terrorism, and insisted that the outcry reflects Iranian meddling in Iraq's internal affairs - an accusation often leveled by Sunnis like himself against Iraq's mostly Shiite neighbor.

"Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah and many other terrorist organizations. Israelis are suffering like me, like my people. So we need to be together," he said. "Peace will have more of a chance."

Iraq sent troops to three Arab wars against Israel, and fired Scud missiles at it in the 1991 Gulf War. It remains technically at war with the Jewish state. Iraq's once-thriving Jewish community has shriveled to just a few people, most having fled after Israel was founded in 1948.

"Al-Alusi has insulted the hundreds of Iraqi martyrs who fell while fighting the Israelis," said Osama al-Nujeifi, a Sunni lawmaker. "It was a provocative visit to a historical enemy."

In Al-Alusi's living room, decorated with oriental rugs and paintings, his two dead sons, aged 19 and 29, smile from a photo hanging next to a stately grandfather clock.

A secular Muslim, he lit a cigarette during an interview even though this is the Muslim month of Ramadan, when food, water and smoking are forbidden during daylight hours.

Al-Alusi, 55, has a long history of clashes with authority and spent half his life in exile.

He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1976 - he was studying in Cairo at the time - for allegedly trying to undermine Saddam Hussein. He went to Syria and Germany, returning in 2003 after the dictator was overthrown.

Even in exile, he caused commotion, leading a group that stormed the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in 2002 to protest against Saddam's regime. A German court convicted him of hostage-taking and other charges, but he appealed and never served his full sentence of three years.

In 2004, he was expelled from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress for his earlier visit to Israel, also for a terrorism conference.

In February 2005 came the ambush. Asad Kamal al-Hashimi, a former culture minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government, was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death last month on charges he planned the ambush. Al-Hashimi remains a fugitive.

After his expulsion from the Iraqi National Congress, al-Alusi formed the Iraqi Nation Party, which he describes as a "liberal, secular and democratic party" with 12,000 members.

Al-Alusi said Iraq should follow Jordan and Egypt in seeking peace with Israel, especially since Syria is moving in that direction. He insists Israel would have to make concessions to the Palestinians.

"We should act now because if the Syrian-Israel talks succeed, this means that Iraq will be isolated," he said. "It's the right time to open a new phase with Israel."

'Merchant of Death' in Thai court

An arms smuggler's extradition hearing to the United States began Monday after a string of delays in the high-profile case because of complications with his defense team in Thailand.

Viktor Bout, dubbed "The Merchant of Death," has been indicted in the U.S. on four terrorism charges. He was arrested in Thailand on March 6.

Though Bout denies any involvement in illicit activities, he is regarded as one of the world's most-wanted arms traffickers and was purportedly the model for the character portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie "Lord of War."

Chained at the ankles, Bout made no comment as he was led into Bangkok's Criminal Court.

Monday's hearing was briefly interrupted at the start when defense attorney Preecha Prasertsak petitioned the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the Russian had been illegally detained. After a half-hour adjournment, judges said the complaint would be considered at a later date.

Bout's defense team has repeatedly said she plans to fight his extradition, a procedure that has been bogged down by the Russian's inability to hold onto a lawyer.

The hearing was initially scheduled to start June 9 but was postponed when Bout's attorney at the time said he had heart problems.

Bout was then given a court-appointed attorney who failed to show up for the rescheduled hearing on July 28, saying he had another case in court at the same time. That lawyer was dismissed and Bout was assigned representation by Preecha.

It was not immediately clear how long the extradition proceedings would take.

The 41-year-old Russian faces charges of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to kill U.S. officers or employees, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile, according to a U.S. indictment made public May 6. He faces a life sentence.

American prosecutors say Bout was offering a deadly arsenal of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, including more than 700 surface-to-air missiles, thousands of guns, high-tech helicopters, and airplanes outfitted with grenade launchers and missiles. The U.S. classifies FARC as a terrorist organization.

The charges were based in part on a covertly recorded meeting in Thailand on March 6. Bout was arrested after a sting operation in which undercover U.S. agents posed as Colombian rebels.

Bout, who has been accused of breaking several U.N. arms embargoes, has a long list of alleged clients including African dictators and warlords such as former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and both sides of the civil war in Angola.

Police say officer feared insulin pump was weapon

This is why we need better educated policemen ...

Police officers in two Detroit suburbs are accused of beating a motorist who was suffering a diabetic episode on a freeway.

Lawyer Arnold Reed says 59-year-old Ernest Griglen had brain surgery after the June 15 encounter with police and has been clinging to life with help from a ventilator.

Reed filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court seeking at least $20 million from Allen Park and Dearborn police. He says officers mistakenly believed Griglen was resisting arrest when he was having a major medical problem.

An Allen Park police report says Griglen's car was swerving.

Allen Park police wouldn't comment on the lawsuit. Dearborn police released a report saying an officer feared Griglen's insulin pump was a weapon.

Woman whose dogs mauled neighbor gets 15 to life

A woman whose dogs viciously attacked and killed her neighbor in the hallway of their apartment building seven years ago was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison.

Marjorie Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder in the 2001 mauling death of Dianne Whipple, but a judge later reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced her in 2002 to a four-year prison term.

But the California Supreme Court last year said the trial judge was wrong and sent the case back. Last month, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard reinstated the murder conviction, for which Knoller was sentenced Monday.

The case is the California's first murder conviction connected to a dog mauling, prosecutors say.

The case turned into a tabloid sensation because of the viciousness of the attack - the dogs tore all of Whipple's clothing from her body and left her with more than 70 bites - and the seemingly cavalier attitudes of Knoller and her law partner and husband, Robert Noel, who blamed Whipple for the attack.

The couple also said they were keeping the canines on behalf of a white supremacist accused of running an attack dog ring from his state prison cell. The couple eventually adopted the prisoner, Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, as their son.

Knoller, who has served three years in prison, will have to serve 12 more years before she can apply for parole.

In denying Knoller's plea for probation, Woolard noted that Knoller didn't call 911 or otherwise try to help Whipple during the 10-minute attack. The judge said Knoller knew the dogs were dangerous, ignored numerous warnings to train them and hasn't expressed remorse for the attack.

"She has blamed the victim and has held her dogs in higher regard than humans," Woolard said.

Whipple's partner, Sharon Smith, addressed Knoller before she was led off to jail. Smith called Knoller's relationship with the two dogs and the prisoner "perverted" and expressed satisfaction with the lengthy prison sentence.

"It is very hard to find forgiveness for someone who doesn't accept responsibility," Smith said.

Experts say Stonehenge was place of healing

The first excavation of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has uncovered evidence that the stone circle drew ailing pilgrims from around Europe for what they believed to be its healing properties, archaeologists said Monday.

Archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill said the content of graves scattered around the monument and the ancient chipping of its rocks to produce amulets indicated that Stonehenge was the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, the French shrine venerated for its supposed ability to cure the sick.

An unusual number of skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury. Analysis of their teeth showed that about half were from outside the Stonehenge area.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.

He pointed out that experts near Stonehenge have found two skulls that showed evidence of primitive surgery, some of just a few known cases of operations in prehistoric Britain.

"Even today, that's the pretty serious end of medicine," he said. Also found near Stonehenge was the body of a man known as the Amesbury Archer, who had a damaged skull and badly hurt knee and died around the time the stones were being installed. Analysis of the Archer's bones showed he was from the Alps.

Darvill cautioned, however, that the new evidence did not rule out other uses for Stonehenge.

"It could have been a temple, even as it was a healing center," Darvill said. "Just as Lourdes, for example, is still a religious center."

The archaeologists managed to date the construction of the stone monument to about 2,300 B.C., a couple of centuries younger than was previously thought. It was at that time that bluestones - a rare rock known to geologists as spotted dolomite - were shipped by hand or by raft from Pembrokeshire in Wales to Salisbury Plain in southern England, to create the inner circle of Stonehenge.

The outer circle, composed of much larger sandstone slabs, is what most people associate with the monument today, particularly since only about a third of the 80 or so bluestones remain. The scientists argued that they were once at the heart of Stonehenge, and closely associated with its healing properties.

As evidence, Darvill said his dig had uncovered masses of fragments carved out of the bluestones by people to create amulets. Any rock carried around in such a way would have had some sort of protective or healing property, he said. He said that theory was backed by burials in southwest England where the stones were interred with their owners.

Today the bluestones are now largely invisible, dwarfed by the huge sandstone monoliths - or "hanging stones" - that were erected later and still make up Stonehenge's iconic profile.

"They are of course quite impressive when you see them," Darvill said. "But in a sense they are the elaboration of a structure which kicked off with the bluestones."

Both archaeologists quoted the 12th-century monk Geoffrey of Monmouth as saying the stones were thought to have medicinal properties. They also said that evidence uncovered by their dig showed that people were moving and chipping off pieces of the bluestones through the Roman period and even into the Middle Ages.

Darvill said he felt the "folklore interest" in the bluestones into modern times suggested some sort of lingering memory of their supposed healing powers.

"That would be for me the single strongest piece of evidence," he said.

Andrew Fitzpatrick, from British heritage group Wessex Archaeology, said Darvill and Wainwright's discovery was "very important" but that the healing theory, while plausible, was not the only one.

"I don't think we can rule out the other main competing theory - that the temple was a meeting point between the land of the living and the dead," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The scientists announced their findings Monday, ahead of a documentary due to air on the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel on Saturday, Sept. 27.

*****

My favorite TV channel is W-OFF, but I will be tuning in to the BBC, Saturday for the documentary.

Whar da White Wimmins be at?

To here the repugicans blubber on about it you think all white women in America are voting for McPain because he picked Palin so they would not have to vote for the "Black" man who beat Hillary!

Well ... it just isn't so, but that's not stopping them from babbling on about it.

Here is one take on it

"Every white woman I know is positively horrified. Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate
to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her
vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights
and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at
what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy,
comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic,
but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere."

Read the read here.

Caveman gets into Madison Avenue Ads Walk of Fame

Getting into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame is so easy, even a caveman can do it.

The Geico Caveman and the Serta Sheep advertising icons have been elected to the Walk of Fame in midtown Manhattan after online voting by the American public.

The U.S. Postal Service slogan "We Deliver For You" and the UPS tagline "What can Brown do for you?" also were inducted Monday, the first day of Advertising Week.

The Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame was created by Advertising Week, a weeklong gathering of marketing professionals. Organizers have filled the Walk of Fame with bronze plaques and lamppost banners honoring such past inductees as Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Geico Gecko and Colonel Sanders.

Right on cue

Right on cue ...

I posted a piece on September 20, 2008 of a study from Scotland that proves the detrimental affects of smoking and in particular second hand smoke in public by a marked decrease in health problems after smoking bans are in place.

And, they chimed right in.

Who, you might ask, chimed in?

The myopic smokers and their agents of denial (kind of like repugicans in the way they knee-jerk, but I digress).

Making false claims and issuing psuedo-science myths via links to their handlers' dogma in the comments box.

Yes, I checked the links out and they are nothing but as I stated above.

One would think they would learn, but alas I fear tis not to be.