I am very obviously not running for Vice President of the United States of America.
We all know, quite well, that even though there are certain members of my family that would stand up and applaud and cheer more loudly than they perhaps ever had for anything I’ve done previously in my life, there is no possible way I would ever run on the Republican ticket.
All that aside, the more I keep learning about Sarah Palin, the more I can’t help but think I would actually make a better candidate than she. I know it sounds completely implausible since I’m the naked woman on the Internet (well, yes, it is completely implausible), but I am going to share just a few of the reasons why I feel this is so.
I have experience working in Washington, D.C. for a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. A lobbyist that was often invited to lunch at the Reagan White House. Where I lunched as well. A lobbyist who represented Miller Brewing Company. Which means that I know all about the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms. And how insider Washington really works. How to get things done on Capitol Hill. What you do to assure that your initiatives are included in bills and actually do get passed into law.
I also have experience working for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I know how both of those organizations actually work and why they are important. I know how they decide to fund projects or not. I have helped to organize and have attended their global conferences. In other words, I know how to work in a truly global organization.
I have managed and have been entrusted with budgets as large as $50 million for just one simple global campaign. I have never had a project go over budget or over time. I have also been quite successful at creating global mindshare for my projects when none previously existed. I’m quite good at bringing divergent views to the table and getting everyone not only on the same page but to actually agree.
I was accepted into the Peace Corps.
I have traveled to all continents except Antarctica. I spent 20 years traveling with the Grateful Dead and while I know that creates a lot more suspicion about my background, it does mean I've been to every state in America at least once, if not more, with the exception of Alaska. Funny that Alaska is the only state I've never visited.
I am a holistic healer and master herbalist who truly understands that food is a political issue, that energy is also a political issue and that real changes must be made now if our planet and the people on it are going to survive.
I’m not a soccer mom, I do not eat moose or caribou, I can’t shoot a gun.
Sarah Palin and I are the same age. We’ve had such divergent paths in our lives that it is very hard for me to even begin to imagine my life in her shoes. I do try. Because my heart is one that tries, very hard, to embrace all people. To find the common thread that binds us all. I’m still searching for my common thread with Sarah. Other than being a woman, I’m having a hard time finding one. But I am going to continue to search. I am just really, really scared, at the moment, of the possibility that she might one day be the POTUS.
I feel like the citizen’s of the United States are being cast as extras in a very bad Disney movie. We can stop it, of course. By choosing real hope and real change and voting the Obama/Biden ticket in November. At this point it feels like the only responsible and sane thing to do. If we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves and we’ll have a woman with rather dubious qualifications a heartbeat away from the presidency.
*****
Photo from NakedJen.
She said "nucular." Twice.
I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to "first wipe off Palin's tranny makeup." I married well.)Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You're an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we're going to agree to disagree. This isn't one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I'm not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren't scared out of your freakin' mind, then you're mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.
But I like to think that anyone can change.
Stop voting for people you want to have a beer with. Stop voting for folksy. Stop voting for people who remind you of your neighbor. Stop voting for the ideologically intransigent, the staggeringly ignorant, and the blazingly incompetent.
Vote for someone smarter than you. Vote for someone who inspires you. Vote for someone who has not only traveled the world but who has also shown a deep understanding and compassion for it. The stakes are real and they're terrifyingly high. This election matters. It matters. It really matters. Let me say that one more time. This. Really. Matters.
You don't suppose the pollsters are telling lies, do you?
In the world of Gov. Sarah Palin, criticism by the press and especially by the blogosphere is unwelcomed and countered by silence or direct commands.
According to an expose today in the New York Times, Republican vice-presidential candidate had her assistant call a blogger who closely followed the Palin administration and had been critical of it actions.
One wonders what a Vice President, or President Palin might suggest to the FCC in suppressing or regulating the Internet and the freedom of speech — especially those who disagree with her!Four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an aide to the governor on the line, she said. “You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects this packing plant, its warehouse in McAllen, Texas, and a farm in Mexico are among the sources of the United States' largest outbreak of food-borne illness in a decade, which infected at least 1,440 people with a rare form of salmonella.
A plant manager confirmed that workers handling chili peppers aren't required to separate them according to the sanitary conditions in which they were grown, offering a possible explanation for how such a rare strain of salmonella could have caused such a large outbreak.Our seas are suffocating under a layer of slime.
That slime - algae feasting on pollutants and fertilizers and starving the ocean of oxygen - is growing rapaciously and killing off sea life at an alarming rate.
Read the entire article from Canada.com here.
Above, snapshot of a rally organized by "Alaska Women Against Palin" this weekend. Some 1500 people are said to have participated, making it possibly the largest political rally in the state's history. Photo from Mudflaps
Buried on page 4 of a 5-page New York Times article on Sarah Palin's political history in Alaska we find this:
[L]awmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.” Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”
Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.
Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows. Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.
“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.
Judging from the excerpts shown Thursday on ABC's World News and Nightline, there are several appropriate responses to watching Sarah Palin answer Charlie Gibson's questions on foreign policy and national security—sorrow, pity, incredulity, fear.
Read the rest of the story here.
Photo from Slate.
Challenged by Gibson on her “national security credentials,” Palin cited her experience as the governor of a “state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy” as a credential that she “brings to the table“.
But, as the non-partisan FactCheck.org points out, Palin’s claim about Alaska producing 20 percent of America’s domestic energy supply is “not true. Not even close.” In fact, “Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent.”
According to the complaint, Brown wanted to get her high school degree and become a cheerleader because she didn't have a childhood and wanted to regain a part of her life that she'd missed.Brown allegedly attended cheerleading practices before school started, received a cheerleader's locker and went to a pool party at the cheerleading coach's house.
The $134.50 check Brown gave to the cheerleading coach for her uniform bounced, the complaint said.
From the Reuters news wire:
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin defended her record as governor of Alaska on Friday in the face of fierce Democratic attacks, while a state ethics panel subpoenaed her husband.
In the last installment of an exclusive interview with ABC News, Palin rejected her critics’ insistence that she had initially been in favor of building an Alaska bridge project held up as a symbol of wasteful government spending.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has denounced Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” as a place where government fat needed to be cut. The $398 million bridge would have been built to a small island with only about 50 residents, and has since been shut down.
Palin insists she helped kill the project but Democrats emphasize that she was in favor of the bridge when she was a candidate for governor. It is an assault on her attempts to present herself as a reformer.
Palin, who was mayor of tiny Wasilla before becoming governor less than two years ago, told ABC News she did seek money for infrastructure in the state,” saying it was “not inappropriate for a mayor or a governor” to seek such funding.
But ultimately, she said, “I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. We’re not going to spend it on the bridge.’”
She also defended, as Wasilla’s mayor, seeking and obtaining $27 million in federal funding in the form of individual spending items that U.S. lawmakers called “earmarks.” McCain has made cutting “earmark” projects a pillar of his campaign.
“We have drastically, drastically reduced our earmark request since I came into office,” she said.
National Security Policy
1. McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
2. McCain insisted that everyone, even “terrible killers,” “the worst kind of scum of humanity,” and detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,” even if that means “releasing some of them.” McCain now believes the opposite.
3. He opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
4. In February 2008, McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
5. McCain was for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay before he was against it.
6. When Barack Obama talked about going after terrorists in Pakistani mountains with predators, McCain criticized him for it. He’s since come to the opposite conclusion.
Foreign Policy
7. McCain was for kicking Russia out of the G8 before he was against it. Now, he’s for it again.
8. McCain supported moving “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
9. McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas. Now he believes the opposite.
10. McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria. Now he believes the opposite.
11. McCain is both for and against a “rogue state rollback” as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
12. McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
13. McCain was against divestment from South Africa before he was for it.
Military Policy
14. McCain recently claimed that he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
15. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good and a bad idea.
16. McCain was against additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan before he was for it.
17. McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”
18. McCain has repeatedly said it’s a dangerous mistake to tell the “enemy” when U.S. troops would be out of Iraq. In May, McCain announced that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013.
19. McCain was against expanding the GI Bill before he was for it.
20. McCain staunchly opposed Obama’s Iraq withdrawal timetable, and even blasted Mitt Romney for having referenced the word during the GOP primaries. In July, after Iraqi officials endorsed Obama’s policy, McCain said a 16-month calendar sounds like “a pretty good timetable.”
Domestic Policy
21. McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization (though he actually still supports it.)
22. On Social Security, McCain said he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Soon after, asked about a possible increase in the payroll tax, McCain said there’s “nothing that’s off the table.”
23. McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.
24. McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
25. He argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
26. In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a $0.61-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.
27. McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
28. McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
29. McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
30. McCain opposed a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.
31. McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.
32. McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.
33. In 2005, McCain endorsed intelligent design creationism, a year later he said the opposite, and a few months after that, he was both for and against creationism at the same time.
34. And on gay adoption, McCain initially said he’d rather let orphans go without families, then his campaign reversed course, and soon after, McCain reversed back.
35. In the Senate, McCain opposed a variety of measures on equal pay for women, and endorsed the Supreme Court’s Ledbetter decision. In July, however, McCain said, “I’m committed to making sure that there’s equal pay for equal work. That … is my record and you can count on it.”
36. McCain was against fully funding the No Child Left Behind Act before he was for it.
37. McCain was for affirmative action before he was against it.
38. McCain said the Colorado River compact will “obviously” need to be “renegotiated.” Six days later, McCain said, “Let me be clear that I do not advocate renegotiation of the compact.”
Economic Policy
39. McCain was against Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy before he was for them.
40. John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.
41. McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal. And soon after that, McCain abandoned his second position and went back to his first.
42. McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.
43. McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
44. McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”
45. McCain has changed his entire economic worldview on multiple occasions.
46. McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off economically than they were before Bush took office.
47. McCain was against massive government bailouts of “big banks” that “act irresponsibly.” He then announced his support for a massive government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Energy Policy
48. McCain supported the moratorium on coastal drilling ; now he’s against it.
49. McCain recently announced his strong opposition to a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.
50. McCain endorsed a cap-and-trade policy with a mandatory emissions cap. In mid-June, McCain announced he wants the caps to voluntary.
51. McCain explained his belief that a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax would provide an immediate economic stimulus. Shortly thereafter, he argued the exact opposite.
52. McCain supported the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.
53. McCain was for national auto emissions standards before he was against them.
Immigration Policy
54. McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. In 2007, he announced his opposition to the bill. In 2008, McCain switched back.
55. On immigration policy in general, McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own bill.
56. In April, McCain promised voters that he would secure the borders “before proceeding to other reform measures.” Two months later, he abandoned his public pledge, pretended that he’d never made the promise in the first place, and vowed that a comprehensive immigration reform policy has always been, and would always be, his “top priority.”
Judicial Policy and the Rule of Law
57. McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.
58. McCain’s position was that the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.
59. McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.
60. In June, McCain rejected the idea of a trial for Osama bin Laden, and thought Obama’s reference to Nuremberg was a misread of history. A month later, McCain argued the exact opposite position.
61. In June, McCain described the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush was “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” In August, he reversed course.
Campaign, Ethics, and Lobbying Reform
62. McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
63. In 2006, McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.
64. McCain supported a campaign-finance bill, which bore his name, on strengthening the public-financing system. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.
65. In May 2008, McCain approved a ban on lobbyists working for his campaign. In July 2008, his campaign reversed course and said lobbyists could work for his campaign.
Politics and Associations
66. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist John Hagee. Now he doesn’t. (He also believes his endorsement from Hagee was both a good and bad idea.)
67. McCain wanted political support from radical televangelist Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.
68. McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.
69. McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church.
70. McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.
71. In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.
72. McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.
73. McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.
74. McCain believed powerful right-wing activist/lobbyist Grover Norquist was “corrupt, a shill for dictators, and (with just a dose of sarcasm) Jack Abramoff’s gay lover.” McCain now considers Norquist a key political ally.
75. McCain was for presidential candidates giving speeches in foreign countries before he was against it.
76. McCain has been both for and against considering a pro-choice running mate for the Republican presidential ticket.
 | Yeah--You and Whose Army? |
So everyone's talking about the nasty spike of nastiness in the presidential race--a spike brilliantly orchestrated by the Republican machinery--and Republican John McCain takes a moment to point out that even this is Barack Obama's fault.
Y'see, all the crap being thrown at Obama--the fear-mongering, the half-truths, the full lies--all the character assassination hurling Obama's way, is in fact, his own doing.
"I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America," the Senator from Arizona tells us.
Am I just losing my freaking mind? Seriously. I keep looking around the room to see if I'm living in some suddenly altered state where everything we know is now called the opposite, and nobody notices. Or can stop it.
"I wish I didn't have to take your lunch money, but you shouldn't of hadda brung it."
We're in the 3rd grade again. The skinny, smart kid who just moved in to the neighborhood is getting roughed-up by the asshole bully. The kid who hits you in the head with your hand and says, "Why're you hitting yourself? Why're you hitting yourself?"
"Um, actually I'm not. You're hitting me."
"You calling me a liar?"
"No, I'm just pointing out that..." SMACK!
"Why're you hitting yourself?"
And there seems to be no one to appeal to. There're no grown-ups around when you need 'em. No one to step in and say, "Alright, that's enough now. We don't do that here, fella." And in the absence of any authority, the asshole gets to keep doing it.
"Why're you hitting yourself? SMACK! Why're you hitting yourself?"
From the few minutes of the GOP convention I could stomach watching, all I could think was that Giuliani and Sarah Palin were doing some big-person, lethal version of "I know you are, but what am I?"
America: "Well, respectfully, Governor Palin, it could be argued that you are, in fact, relatively inexperienced."
Her: "I know you are but what am I?"
"Hm? No, perhaps you misunderstood. We are talking about you."
"I know you are but what am I."
"Well, Governor, just listening to your speech, you seem awfully caustic."
"You are."
"And, frankly, a little bitter."
"You're bitter."
"I mean, where's your sense of humility?"
"I'm rubber, you're glue. It bounces off me and sticks to you."
"My God - you're... dangerous."
"I know you are, but what am I?"
Maybe that's the problem. Obama treats us like adults, and McCain's team treats us like children.
Obama seeks to inspire and raise us as a nation. McCain's people want to reduce us to infants.
Obama asks us to be deep. And courageous.
McCain prays that we're simple. And cowardly.
Now everyone is calling for Obama to "get angry." "Get out there and frown this way, curl your lip that way, and clench your fist like so." And, I don't know...That'd be cool. Sure. But I don't think the fix can come just from him. There's only so much the guy can do. It's going to have to be us. I don't know what exactly we need to do, but I know we'll do it. I have to believe--I mean I really have to believe we're big enough, strong enough and smart enough to reclaim what's ours. I love my children too much to let the assholes take over the school yard.
Former Congressmen Warn Troops: As Senator He Abandoned American POWs Trapped in Indochina; as President He’ll Abandon You
Special to the U.S. Veteran Dispatch
By former U.S. Congressmen Bill Hendon (R-NC)
and John LeBoutillier (R-NY)
August 16, 2008
“He [McCain] has told me several times over the years that the myth of live POWs was a cruel hoax on the families. He chaired hearings into the issue in the 1990s and found nothing. ‘The committee … pored over thousands of records and every claim of a sighting, no matter how outlandish,’ says Salter. ‘It was all untrue.’” Jonathan Alter, When Ross Perot Calls…, Newsweek.com January 16, 2008 ...
Roommates often fall apart over the politics of the shared fridge. There’s always a roommate with low hygiene standards and another with sticky fingers and leftovers compulsion. With the Flatshare fridge, everyone gets there own very separate compartment that still has a tall section for bottles and a smaller side for veg and there can be no arguments about who’s turn it is to clean it out. When another roommate moves in, they can simply buy another unit to go on top.
"Perhaps there would have been a delay in implementation, or at least a limited deployment (e.g., to supervisors or their designates and to tactical squads)."The review, which questions the safety of stun guns — especially when used on pregnant women, drug users or people with medical conditions — argues that there should be national standards to guide Taser use by police forces across the country. The standards could be developed with the help of the Canadian Firearms Centre and Public Safety Canada.
Today, September 12th 2008 will be remembered as the day we finally caught one of the bad guys ...
A 4th grader with a broken pencil sharpener.
A 10-year-old Hilton Head Island boy has been suspended from school for having something most students carry in their supply boxes: a pencil sharpener.The problem was his sharpener had broken, but he decided to use it anyway.
The boy -- a fourth-grader described as a well-behaved and good student -- cried during the meeting with his mom, the deputy and the school's assistant principal.
He had no criminal intent in having the blade at school, the sheriff's report stated, but was suspended for at least two days and could face further disciplinary action.
A startled homeowner got a visit from Orem Police Tuesday afternoon. They were interested in a plant that he was growing by his mailbox in the front yard. They were so interested that they put a call into Homeland Security. No, it wasn’t marijuana. It was a Castor bean plant...He says with a laugh, “I’m not a terrorist, but I was terribly frightened when the call came in. I was terrorized (for) my humble little plant that’s over there in the corner.”
All the district's hydrants, including those in Alexander Ranch, have had their water turned off since just after 9/11 - something a trade association spokesman tells us is common practice for rural systems.Turned back on with a tool? So these fire-hydrants will prevent terrorists who could poison the water supply through them, but only if they cannot of get a tool?!"These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines," Hodges said.
But Hodges says fire departments know, or should have known, the water valves can be turned back on with a tool.
Little John Gray Jr., three months old when these pictures were taken, has seldom been outside of this glass house in which he lives.
His showcase home is temperature and humidity controlled, dirt-free and has a built-in air filter.
It is partially sound-proof-he can bellow without straining the family nerves.
He doesn’t catch cold; visitors can’t pass their germs through the glass and the house’s temperature never varies from 84 degrees.
At the slightest deviation, a bell rings.
There are no drafts and neither is there the fear of smothering; there are no bed covers.
Papa John Gray Sr. built the ingenious baby house in the workshop of his home in Sea Cliff, Long Island, New York.
Only time will tell whether the child will escape the usual ills.
The unusually strong wording came in a weather advisory regarding storm surge along the shoreline of Galveston Bay, which could see maximum water levels of 15 to 22 feet, the agency said.
"All neighborhoods ... and possibly entire coastal communities ... will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide," the advisory said. "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death."
When the federal government this year published its first estimates of salvia use, the data astonished many: some 1.8 million people had tried it in their lifetimes, including 750,000 in the previous year. Among males 18 to 25, where consumption is heaviest, nearly 3 percent reported using salvia in the previous year, making it twice as prevalent as LSD and nearly as popular as Ecstasy.
Recent studies at college campuses on both coasts have yielded estimates as high as 7 percent. The herb’s presence on military ships and bases has prompted enough concern about readiness that the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was asked to develop the first urinalysis for salvia and is now testing 50 samples a month....
“We have this incredible new compound, the first in its class; it absolutely has potential medical use, and here we’re talking about throttling it because some people get intoxicated on it,” said Dr. John Mendelson, a pharmacologist at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute who, with federal financing, is studying salvia’s impact on humans. “It couldn’t be more foolish from a business point of view.”
The Large Hadron Collider -- a $9 billion particle accelerator designed to simulate conditions of the Big Bang that created the physical Universe -- was switched on at 0732 GMT to cheers and applause from experts gathered to witness the event.
While observers were left nonplussed by the anticlimactic flashing dots on a TV screen that signalled the machine's successful test run, among teams of scientists involved around the world there were jubilant celebrations and popping champagne corks.
Now if it only doesn't create a 'black hole' we should be okay.
The McCain folks are really going to try to pull a Freaky Friday and turn McCain into Obama and Obama into McCain. McCain is the change candidate? That’s absurd on its face. Obama is more of the same? If “the same” were sane foreign policy, true energy independence, affordable health care for every American, and tax cuts for the middle class, then McCain would be right.
But the fact is that he’s simply lying and expecting that folks won’t notice. It’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen."
About 1.5 million people and entities are eligible to share in the distribution of the money, according to Dan Newman, a spokesman for the law firm that represented the lead plaintiffs.
"Investors will get an average of $6.79 per share of common stock and an average of $168.50 per share of preferred stock," Newman said.
To be eligible for the settlement, investors and shareholders needed to have purchased Enron or Enron-related securities between September 9, 1997, and December 2, 2001.
Please help
i've got two uncles in there
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We recieved a Devastating
call from My uncle himself
who's trapped.
Many have died due to the raging fired