Ancient mummy hair suggests drug use

Researchers have found evidence of psychoactive drug use in the hair of ancient mummies found in Chile's Azapa Valley. The scientists detected harmine, an ingredient used in the psychedelic brew ayahuasca, in hairs from an adult and baby who lived between 800 and 1200 years ago.

From National Geographic:

"These individuals probably ingested harmine in therapeutic or medicinal practices, some maybe related to pregnancy and childbirth," said study co-author Juan Pablo Ogalde, a chemical archaeologist at the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile.

"However, it is possible also that consumption of harmine was involved in religious rituals, said Ogalde, whose research appeared online October 14 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

X-rays showed that the adult male—who was buried with items of social prestige such as panpipes, a four-pointed hat, and a snuffing tray—had damage near the nose, perhaps from sniffing.

As for the baby, Ogalde speculated that the mother had consumed the drug and passed it on to her offspring during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

"The fact this mind-altering substance was found even with a one-year-old shows how much a part of their life it was," said archaeologist Alexei Vranich of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not participate in the study.

Drugs Found In Hair of Ancient Andean Mummies

As of his moment ...

551 Brave men and women will not be returning from Afghanistan
ALIVE!

Jewish, Nazi objects found in dump near Berlin

Yaron Svoray scrapes caked layers of dirt from a shard of glass, revealing a sunflower at the heart of a Star of David.

He carefully turns it, speculating it may have been a bowl used for Passover ceremonies in pre-World War II German Jewish homes.

The fragment is one of a handful of artifacts Svoray has pulled from mounds of debris in this former dump about an hour north of Berlin that locals say was used by the Nazis to deposit rejected loot from the 1938 pogrom known as Kristallnacht, or "The Night of Broken Glass."

"Most of the people in Israel I know who went through the Holocaust, if I take this to Israel, to Yad Vashem, you'll get every visitor who is a Jew will say: 'Oh this is what was in our house 50 or 60 years ago,'" Svoray said recently at the site.

"For me as a Jew, if this turns out, and I'm not saying it is, but if this turns out to be a Jewish bowl from before the war, it's a treasure."

Svoray was hunting for a downed Nazi plane in the area's vast stretches of woods when a former forester tipped him off to the dump, used from 1935 to 1945, outside the village of Klandorf in the largely rural eastern state of Brandenburg.

After two hours of digging with his bare hands and a rusty spade found among the refuse, Svoray had unearthed what appeared to be a beer bottle stamped with a Star of David and a plate-sized alloyed metal swastika. Several weeks later he returned and found the jagged shard of the bowl.

"I don't claim to say this is from Kristallnacht, I claim there is enough evidence here to provoke a further investigation," said Svoray, 54, an Israeli journalist who made his name infiltrating German neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s. He would like to see the dump excavated.

Thomas Kersting, an archaeologist employed by the state of Brandenburg to care for buried memorials and archaeological sites, said Svoray's finds - which he has yet to examine - may give the area historical value.

"A place like this where we have objects with a Star of David directly next to a Nazi swastika, that is of course meaningful ... that gives it a certain quality of a memorial," Kersting said.

But Kersting played down the likelihood of an archaeological dig, citing a lack of funds and arguing that such a disruption would be in direct opposition to his bureau's aim to maintain the sanctity of such sites.

Arno Gielsdorf, who owns the strip of land where the dump sits, said his father told stories the arrival of "garbage" trains after Kristallnacht.

Since the collapse of communism in 1989, he said, bands of scavengers have picked over the area, selling their finds at weekly flea markets in Berlin.

But he is convinced the dump holds valuable artifacts.

"The things from Kristallnacht were buried in the deepest places," Gielsdorf said. "They are still there."

The redistribution of wealth

Apparently "the redistribution of wealth" is only bad when "poor" people get a piece of the pie.

The gap between the nation's ceos and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. in the bush era, economic inequality is on the rise. ...so where did all the economic growth go?

It went to a relative handful of people at the top. the earnings of the typical full-time worker, adjusted for inflation, have actually fallen since Bush took office. Pay for CEOs, meanwhile, has soared -- from 185 times that of average workers in 2003 to 279 times in 2005. And after-tax corporate profits have also skyrocketed, more than doubling since Bush took office. those profits will eventually be reflected in dividends and capital gains, which accrue mainly to the very well-off: more than three-quarters of all stocks are owned by the richest ten percent of the population. -

professor Paul Krugman in Rollingstone

The wingnuts are foaming at the mouth because they fear "redistribution of wealth" and calling Obama a socialist.

Question: What do they have to say about the shrub's "redistribution of wealth" that actually undermines America and it's future?

Election Fraud

The Virginia Pilot reports today that a phony Virginia board of elections flier is being distributed in Hamption Roads, Virginia telling Democrats that they are now scheduled to vote on November 5.

The flier falsely claims that “an emergency session of the general assembly” adopted a new voting schedule to “ease the load” at polling places on election day.

From Think Progress

You want to talk 'voter fraud'!?!
How about ELECTION FRAUD!

Those manufacturing and/or distributing these fliers are committing election fraud on the highest order.

The repugicans are trying to steal another election and there is growing sentiment that if they do dare to declare McPain the winner on November 4, 2008, that, the little dust-up between the Confederate States of America and the rest of the states a ways back was a slight misunderstanding compared to what would be the mood of the country.

They quit rather than lie

Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McPain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

Nina williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake county, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Talking Points Memo Election Central

*****

It's really bad when telemarketers won't lie for you!

ACORN: The Facts

Despite the howls of the wing-nuts there is NO evidence of ACORN wrongdoing.

All the "evidence" repugicans are using to trash ACORN are the fraudulent registrations that ACORN itself flagged, and legitimate registrations that repugicans has incorrectly identified as false.
When the repugicans provided a list of the worst cases of "registration fraud" from ACORN, every single one was found to be legitimate upon investigation.

Below are some of the FACTS about ACORN.

Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast

First the facts about ACORN. Months ago, we obtained, as part of our investigation for Rolling Stone magazine, the Republican's list the GOP alleged were the very worst cases of vote and registration fraud by ACORN and similar groups. We went through the names the GOP asserted were "obviously, undeniably and clearly fraudulent" voter registrations.

First, there was Melissa Tais, a dubious ACORN registrant. Her two voter registration forms show, admittedly, suspiciously different signatures. Republicans suggested Melissa was part of a massive fraud to allow Democrats to vote twice. They were wrong. Ms. Tais, a Cerrillos, New Mexico, waitress, told us she had signed one form on a table and one form holding the paper in her hand. Hence, a second, wobbly signature.

Then there was Patricia White, who Republicans claimed was a fictitious voter. When we filmed her at home in Albuquerque, she seemed real enough. And so on, through the entire GOP list -- not one fraud. And these were their best cases out of the five million "illegal voters" who Republican leaders claim have infiltrated America's voting rolls.

The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC's election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. "We took over 100 complaints," from the GOP, he told us, "We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn't find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico." Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. "They were looking for politicized -- for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases."

Certainly ACORN collected some bad signatures. But despite McCain's claims, now morphed into media theology, none of ACORN's actions will have any impact on any election. ACORN hired 13,000 canvassers to register new voters. A small number of these workers defrauded ACORN by handing in phony registration forms using names they had invented (e.g. Mickey Mouse), or copied from phone books. In one case ACORN canvassers used cigarettes to bribe a homeless man, now a Fox News regular, to register 17 times. None of these activities constituted voter fraud. It is no crime to register 17 times; only the final registration counts. His multiple registrations would not allow the tobacco lover to vote 17 times. Nor is there any evidence the phone book registrants will cast multiple ballots.

Finally, the removal by GOP officials of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from voting rolls over the past year provides ACORN with a sound rationale for obtaining new registrations, even from voters who believe they are already registered. ACORN took pains to screen its registrations and cull out those it considered dubious.

However, federal laws make it a felony for voter registration groups like ACORN to discard registrations even when it believes them fraudulent. So ACORN flagged the forms it considered doubtful and handed them in to the registry. Ironically, it was those flagged forms -- the fruits of ACORN's diligence -- that have been flogged by Republicans as their best evidence of widespread election fraud.

Voter fraud is a phantom according to Lorraine Minnite, an expert on voting crime at Columbia University. Only 24 cases of federal voter fraud have been uncovered between 2002 and 2005 despite massive government efforts devoted to uncovering evidence of a voter fraud crime wave.

A call to arms!

Bush wants Mukasey to suppress votes in Ohio.

This year, there are over 600,000 newly registered Ohio voters, but President Bush has asked Attorney General Mukasey to investigate as many as 200,000 of them. Why? Because Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner won't let voters be disenfranchised simply because of a typo in a state database.
Secretary Brunner has refused to challenge voters based on faulty database matching because it would erroneously deprive tens or even hundreds of thousands of Ohioans of their right to vote.
Now, President Bush is trying to end-run the Supreme Court by getting the Department of Justice to intervene. On Friday, October 24th, Bush reportedly asked Attorney General Mukasey to investigate whether as many as 200,000 voters need to reconfirm their registrations before November 4th.
This is hugely problematic, and we need to fight back.
President Bush is doing his best to politicize the Department of Justice and suppress the rights of Ohio's voters, but Attorney General Mukasey doesn't have to bend to this insidious tactic. With the election only days away, the time to act is short.
Please click here to tell Mukasey to say no to President Bush's request. Ohio's voters are counting on us.
Thank you for working to protect every citizen's right to vote.
Kate Stayman-London, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Gerard Damiano, 'Deep Throat' director, dead at 80

Gerard Damiano, director of the popular pornographic film "Deep Throat" that lent its name to a Watergate whistleblower, has died.

He was 80.

Damiano died Saturday at a Fort Myers hospital, his son, Gerard Damiano Jr., said Monday.

He had suffered a stroke in September.

Damiano's "Deep Throat" was a mainstream box-office success and helped launch the modern hardcore adult-entertainment industry.

Shot in six days for just $25,000, the 1972 flick became a cultural must-see for Americans who had just lived through the sexual liberation of the 1960s.

Who the F#@k is that guy?

Jon Stewart does it again!

Letter to the Editor

The Republican party is going to have to make some tough choices in the final days of this election.

Where does the GOP spend their remaining money? (Certainly not on more clothes for Palin.)

Do they go all in behind McCain who is almost certain to lose, or do they cut their losses for
President and put all their money into holding on to seats in close races the House and Senate?

McCain could be a death sentence for the Republican party.
The McCain/Palin campaign is so bad that even Bush is distancing himself from them!

Marc Perkel
San Bruno, CA.

*****

That's bad ... when the shrub is distancing himself from you, you know you're f#@ked.

And I Quote

"If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying.
You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, DC, which we will surround and shut down until this
attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
We may be there for days or weeks or months.
But we must be there. We must be there by the millions.
We must show each other, and the nation, and the world that we have had enough,that we will not stand for one more stolen election, that we will not give in to fear, lies, theft, and intimidation."

~ David Swanson,
speaking for everyone

Full text

And I Quote

"Putting Palin one 72-year-old heartbeat
from the leadership of the free world is
just too risky at this time."

~ Anchorage Daily News

Editorial here

German traffic cops angered by British driver who mocks traffic cams with a Muppet

Someone in Germany is driving an automobile built for UK roads and has installed a Muppet in the passenger seat. The speed cameras in Germany are made to take photos of drivers who sit in the left side of the vehicle, so drivers of UK-style cars driver can't be easily identified.

A German police source said: “The number plate is not enough. We need clear evidence of who is driving the vehicle too.

“But because this is a British vehicle we can never get a decent picture. The driver has obviously worked this out because he has placed a large puppet in the passenger seat.

“This may be an example of the famous British sense of humour but it is still dangerous driving. The driver has been caught on camera on several occasions and the puppet is on the passenger seat every time. We suspect he positions the toy deliberately before accelerating past the camera.”

German police seek speeding British Muppet

Ashley Todd pulled hoax hijinks in Ron Paul campaign, too

When you're too whacked-out for the Ron Paul campaign, you really do have a problem.

Below is an excerpt from an article about previous victim-hallucination hijinks by Ashley Todd:

In March, Ms. Todd was asked to leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms. Todd posed as a supporter of former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies.

"She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information," Mr. Costine said last night. "We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her."

About a month earlier, he said, Ms. Todd sent an e-mail to the Ron Paul group saying her tires were slashed and that campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Mr. Paul. "She's the type of person who wants to be recognized," Mr. Costine said.

McCain Volunteer Admits to Hoax

White Supremacists Plotted to Assasinate Obama, Behead Black Children

White supremacist terrorism persists in America: Two neo-nazi skinheads planned to assassinate Barack Obama and shoot or behead 88 black people, but their plot was thwarted by a federal investigation. In the photo below: Daniel Cowart, 20, of Tennessee vamps for a MySpace vanity snapshot with one of the guns seized by ATF agents. His plot partner, also arrested: Paul Schlesselman 18, an Arkansas native.

From the New York Ttimes:

The assassination was to be the culmination of a “killing spree” that would also single out children at an unnamed, predominately black school, federal officials said. The men talked of “killing 88 people and beheading 14 African-Americans,” according to the affidavit.

The two men each had “very strong views” about Aryan white power and “skinhead” ideology, the federal officials said, and the numbers 88 and 14 have special significance in the white power movement. The number 88 is shorthand for “Heil Hitler” — H is the eighth letter in the alphabet —and 14 signifies a 14-word mantra among white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Officials said the two men met via the Internet through a mutual friend.

Arrests in Plan to Kill Obama and Black Schoolchildren

Crap like this makes me ashamed to be a man. Actually, not ashamed more than a little PISSED OFF is a better description.

Plotting to kill a man and children is the act of a coward but doing so because of the color of their skin is beyond reprehensible.
And with the look of the moron in the photo, I could make him piss and soil himself just by saying 'boo'.
It is no wonder the ladies lament that there aren't many real men out there - with examples like these two ignorant assholes.

Guilty of Corruption

Stevens found guilty.

The senator from Alaska is guilty of corruption.

Now, we can get the other Alaskan that is guilty of corruption.

Hockey mom, me arse!

Daily Funny

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU PLAY COUNTRY & WESTERN MUSIC BACKWARDS ?
You sober up, your wife comes home, and your dog comes back to life.

Geezer and Dingbat

Read this over on Gloria Brame's Blog and felt it pretty much sums up how many feel this election cycle so I am posting her one and only 'rant' on the election here ...

By Gloria Brame

To start, this image pretty much sums up my take on the Republican candidates this year:

The first and biggest problem I have with McCain is that I think he'll die in office, making Palin our president. If the job doesn't actually kill him, he will at least be down for the count time and again, as doctors desperately work to keep him alive. The fact is that being a US president is, more than ever, an exhausting, demoralizing, mind-fuckingly stressful job. Look at Bill Clinton's before and after pix, then look at George W. Bush's. Does anyone really believe a 72 year old man can take all the kicks to the stomach that go with the job and come out alive? McCain could live to 100 as a Senator, but as President, the stress will take an already physically and mentally fragile old guy and put him in an early grave. (Note: no need to explain why Sarah Palin in the Oval Office is a nightmare none of us can face, right?)

The next problem with McCain is that he is a sociopath. When the devoted wife who stood by him during his time in a POW camp got into a terrible car wreck that destroyed her figure, put her in a wheelchair, and caused her to gain weight, McCain promptly dumped her and his kids cold and ran off with a rich, young woman who he married only one month later. That's why none of his grown kids show up at rallies or speak out in support of him: they hate his guts for what he did to their mother. I can't help wondering why his new kids don't show up at rallies either. The GOP has made a point of dragging Palin's kids on stage, even the baby who shouldn't be passed around like a political prop in the first place. But where is McCain's little adopted daughter? Is he afraid he'll lose the support of his racist constituents if they were frequently reminded that his wife adopted a darling little girl of color?

Leading to another thing that makes me hate McCain. I've read thousands of anti-Obama rants by McCain supporters. And I'm afraid I can only draw one conclusion from the gobbledy-gook of their addled arguments. They're damn racists. I don't care how vociferously McCain supporters may deny it, but his camp's political fortunes rest on the shoulders of hate-mongers and ideologues. McCain's most fanatical supporters believe in white supremacy and in keeping women in their place. A good number believe the Rapture's right around the corner, so we might as well blow up the world now, because they're floaters and the rest of us can go to hell.

As I see it, there's room for everyone in America, even the ignorant and deluded; but I am certain that if the ignorant and deluded run America, they won't make room for me or anyone else who doesn't think like them.

I still can't believe that the female lobbyist McCain philandered with (and no doubt made illegal deals with) has not even been an issue in this campaign. I can't believe anyone thinks that McCain, who played a role in the S&L fiasco, could possibly do shit about Wall St., except fuck it up even more. I can't believe that anyone could see McCain as a man of the people when he married a filthy-rich, Mafia-connected heiress who puts up with verbal abuse and worse from him, while he uses her money to buy office. McCain called her a cunt in public and yet no one links this with his character. WTF. Everything about McCain screams sociopath.

I'm not madly in love with Obama, but I respect him. More than that, I think he will be a great president. If he can live up to his potential, well, I think he could be the greatest president of my lifetime, maybe even the greatest American president since FDR. But he is a politician, and I am incapable of ever fully trusting any politician, no matter how much I love what he stands for. To be a politician is to compromise: if you don't compromise, you don't win. And those compromises inevitably disappoint. When Obama caves to oil interests, when he goes along with bills that infringe on our Constitutional rights to privacy, well, it is what it is: a politician trying to please too many camps, listening to too many advisors, and trying to make the most politically advantageous compromise.

But I believe Obama can be a great president. He is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime thus far who has demonstrated the same qualities as the best presidents in American history. He is that wondrous, mythical creature: a liberal Christian. He has shown himself to be rational, generous, kind, respectful and considerate in the face of adversity, even when he's been viciously attacked. Obama has overcome incredible odds in this campaign, and in his life as well. He was the disenfranchised, underprivileged outsider who, through hard work and more hard work, has risen to lead a nation. He combines the charisma of Bill Clinton with the affability of Ronald Reagan, the social concern of Franklin Roosevelt with the towering intelligence of Abraham Lincoln.

His political enemies have done everything in their power to discredit and humiliate him. He's survived dirty tricks (like the Obama "food stamps"), hoaxes (like the campaign worker who scratched a B on her face and blamed it on an Obama supporter), lies (such as the claim that he's a Muslim terrorist) and McCarthyism (e.g., re-heating Cold War hysteria and calling Obama a Commie for wanting to restore social equality to America). More amazingly, he's done so without resorting to the GOP's favorite ploy: whining like babies about media bias. ( Which is really fucking hilarious, btw, since nearly all major media outlets and talk-radio stations in the US are owned by right-wingers.) Obama has weathered every possible political storm with courage and elan.

Obama seems to be a man who always valued his family, and particularly the women in his life: his mother, his grandmother, his wife. Unlike Cindy McCain, Michelle doesn't seem to freeze up in terror next to her husband. Mrs. Obama is beautiful and strong and acts like her husband's equal and friend, unlike Mrs. McCain, who looks like she's hiding domestic abuse and drug addiction under three compacted inches of make-up. That Obama appears to have such warm and progressive relationships with his female relatives probably explains why he has a progressive attitude about women's issues. That McCain looks like the poster-child for tyrannical males may explain why he doesn't think women have a right to choose what to do with their bodies.

Obama doesn't have to engage in name-calling to win points. Whether or not you thought he won the debates, Obama certainly classed them up. He exudes leadership qualities. McCain looked and acted like a creepy old Wal-Mart greeter. Obama is articulate. McCain is loud. Obama looks like he smells of good cologne. McCain looks like he smells of Ben Gay. Obama gets personally informed on issues and makes original, interesting statements. McCain gets memos from staff telling him what to say. You can "listen" to McCain simply by turning on Fox News where talking heads read off the same notes that McCain was given.

But perhaps the most important reason I support Obama is because I believe that he is uniquely capable of getting America out of the horrible shit-hole we've sunk into over the past eight years. Obama has the character, the intelligence and, most importantly, the will to get us out of Iraq. Obama understands social inequality and financial hardship, and can make the right choices to restore financial stability to the country, just as he made good choices in his own life and lifted himself up by the bootstraps. McCain's greatest personal financial accomplishment was to marry a rich woman. McCain's innate sense of entitlement, coupled with his greed, spell doom to our economy. If McCain's a friend of the working class, I'm the tooth fairy.

I took advantage of early voting this year. I don't know if, in the end, Obama will prove to be the man I think he is. Who can say? But I'm kind of hoping that he will prove that he is even better than we can yet imagine. Kind of like Lincoln, who stepped into office equipped with little more than an insanely bright mind and a passionate commitment to serving his country. Lincoln's resources were tested and stretched beyond all human limits once in office, yet he managed, despite his personal agony and despair, to rise above and lead this nation towards truth and justice. I see that potential in Obama. I see that same strength, and clarity, and sense of honor and duty to a cause larger than himself.

McCain and his minions are the same old boys who created the mess America is in now, and they're still living in the past. Obama has a vision for a better future and the talent to make it happen. He is our only hope for change, and we need change badly. I pray to God that you, and yours, and most Americans this election year will vote for Barack Obama.

*****

I know how Gloria feels when it comes to politicians and I think she has Obama sussed pretty well. She definitely has McPain's number - as do a whole lot of people.

Guess Who's Birthday Is Today?

Theodore Roosevelt

(10/27/1858 – 01/16/1919)

What is so striking about him in today's political climate is that he would be considered a 'Flaming Liberal' by the wing-nuts.
Although he was a member of the 'right' party, his views and positions where akin to his 'left' cousin Frank better known as FDR.

Boy Killed At Gun Show

An 8-year-old boy died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine gun under adult supervision at a gun fair.

The boy lost control of the weapon while firing it Sunday at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club, police Lt. Lawrence Valliere said.

The boy, Christopher Bizilj of Ashford, Connecticut, was with a certified instructor and "was shooting the weapon down range when the force of the weapon made it travel up and back toward his head, where he suffered the injury," a police statement said.

Christopher died at Baystate Medical Center.

*****

Two things - beyond the tragedy of a child losing his life - Why in the name of all the holies was a child of 8 firing an Uzi and there was NO ADULT supervision because no adult would allow a child to fire an Uzi.

Learning to handle firearms is one thing and knowing what types are manageable for someone else or yourself is a crucial part of that learning ... something this young lad will never learn and something those "adults" obviously have not learned.

Emblem Change

Well, they waited until the eleventh hour to release this, but they finally have come clean and told the truth.

Lucky for us see knew this a while back and we will be restoring the proper emblem on November 4, 2008.

Eligible voters are being 'purged' from voter rolls

• Story Highlights
• Kyla Berry got a letter saying to vote, she must prove she's a U.S. citizen
  
• She and others like her have been flagged for mismatched information
  
• Experts say lists of people with mismatches are being purged from voter rolls
  
• Cases like Berry's raise fears of potential vote suppression in crucial swing states

Read the full story here.

So much for the "calls" by repugicans for people to get out and vote for if they do the repugicans stand less chance of winning than a fart in a wind storm does of staying cohesive.

150,000 Rally for Obama

150,00 people rallied for Obama in Colorado. 100,000 of them in Denver and another 50,000 in Fort Collins.

What gives?

Colorado is a "RED" state, remember.

Maybe it has always been "Blue" just like we have been in North Carolina and the repugicans just haven't realized it before.

Meanwhile McPain only drew paltry crowds totaling 7000 for two rallies if you can believe their tallies. They claimed the same number last week when McPain rallied in Concord, North Carolina.
If true that gives McPain 14,000 'votes' from three rallies.

Using three rallies held at the same time for Obama (he drew 100,000 in St. Louis you know) - he has 250,000 'votes'.
That's a quarter-million folks to less than 20K.

I don't know about you but the math I learned says 250K is a bigger number than 20K.
However you can bet your sweet bippy, McPain will claim 20K is greater than 250K, after all he still proclaims, "I'm going to win it".

If just those rally 'votes' where all the votes that counted McPain would so not "win" and the trend of those rallies follows the general trend of the nation so just when and in what lifetime do the delusional repugicans think McPain is going to 'win it'?

The numbers that I and many others have maintained as to the actual numbers of voters in each respective 'party' are really showing - with the Democrats holding a vastly superior numerical count as they always have and this time they are being joined by Independents, Greens, Libertarians and others ... and even some Republicans.
(Note: I use republicans for those voting for Obama, not repugicans because some are the moderate and even left leaning conservatives that are trying to reclaim what is their's and some are recovering repugicans who have had the epiphany that the wing-nuts are crazy and insane.)

Palestinians host first international soccer game

Palestinians may not have a state, but now they have a way to express their national pride - through soccer.

On Sunday, October 26, 2008, the national team hosted an international match for the first time, in the West Bank's only regulation-size stadium.

Located in a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem, the stadium was renovated with the help of FIFA, soccer's governing body, and other donors.

Thousands watched the friendly game against Jordan, and the crowd roared as Palestinian forward Ahmed Kashkash scored several minutes after kickoff.

Jordan tied early in the second half.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter was on hand to cheer.
"We are here to realize a dream, that is the national team of Palestine playing in its own stadium," Blatter said, calling the event "historic."

*****

This is a good thing folks ... if everyone could just get together to play a game and then go to dinner afterwards some of the world's problems just might be not problems anymore.

It might be a pipe dream, but pipe dreams do have an odd habit of becoming reality at unusual times.
If only we could control the soccer hooligans from ruining the dream in the first place. And you know who you are!

I Need You

The Fab Four being Fab

Daily Funny

A dirty, decrepit bum stops a man and asks for $2 to buy food. The man starts to give the bum the money and then asks, "Are you going to spend it on booze?"

"No," says the bum. Are you going to gamble with it?"

Again, "No," says the bum."

"Are you going to spend it on golf?"

"I haven't played golf for more than 20 years." the bum answers.

"Well says the man I am not going to give you this money, but I will take you home with me for a great home cooked meal."

The bum asks, "Won't your wife be angry. I smell and I am dirty."

The man answers, " She might be, but I want her to see what happens to someone who doesn't drink, gamble or play golf."

Gas Prices Drop Record Amount

A 53-cent drop in gas prices over the last two weeks has set another record, and the publisher of a national survey predicted Sunday that prices will continue to decline -- but at a slower pace.

The average price of self-serve, unleaded gas in the United States as of Friday was $2.78 a gallon, compared to $3.31 on October 10, said Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the nationwide Lundberg Survey.

Manish Boy

Mississppi Muddy Waters

As of this moment ...

4188 Brave man and women are never going to return from Iraq
ALIVE!

The last howls of a dying monster

This is pathetic.
This is insane.
This is the repugicans at their finest!

"Could Lucifer play a role in this presidential election? It may sound crazy, but one of the candidates in this race has publicly praised, even emulated, a writer-activist who himself paid tribute to Lucifer. That’s right, Lucifer, also known as the Devil, Satan, Beelzebub—you get the idea." ~ James P. Pinkerton

Desperate desperation .... the last howls of a dying monster.
Trying to equate Obama with the the boogey-man.

It must be a very sad place - the fantasyland these sleazeballs inhabit.

Garbage to Energy

Standing atop the 400-acre 1-E landfill, you get a panoramic view of the Meadowlands sports complex to the north and the New York City skyline to the east.
You're also standing on a critical part of New Jersey's, and the nation's, energy future.

Decades' worth of household trash, construction waste and assorted refuse buried in the landfill are providing electricity to thousands of homes.
"It's like you're buying back your own garbage, but in a different form," said Tom Marturano, director of solid waste and natural resources for the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, which owns and operates the 1-E site.

The Kearny site is among 21 landfills in New Jersey where methane gas produced by decomposing garbage is used as fuel to generate electricity, according to the state Board of Public Utilities.

Bee swarm kills 3 dogs, injures woman in Florida

A 70-year-old woman is injured and three dogs are dead after a swarm of bees terrorized a neighborhood in South Florida.

Authorities say crews removed 50 pounds of honeycomb from the side of a home in Palm Beach County after Friday's attack.
The hive has been contained.

The bees swarmed Nancy Hill and her two dogs.
Hill was treated at a hospital, but the dogs died.

The bees also attacked two other dogs in the neighborhood.
One of those died and the other was injured.

Lab tests should determine whether the bees were Africanized bees, also known as killer bees.
Their stings are no more potent than an ordinary bee's, but they are far more aggressive and attack in swarms.

First the "B" hoax now this ....

Just when you thought the slimey -ness of the repugicans could not get any slimier ...

On Thursday the Pennsylvania repugicans sent out an email to 75,000 Jewish voters in the state warning that electing Obama could lead to a second Holocaust:

"Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008," the e-mail reads. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!"

A copy of the e-mail says it was "Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008."

It warns "Fellow Jewish Voters" of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts repugican presidential candidate John McPain's (lack of)qualifications over those of Obama.

Olive harvest becomes West Bank battleground

The olive harvest was off to a bad start for Said Abu Aliya - branches torn from the Palestinian farmer's trees lay scattered on the ground, along with bright-green olives.

He blamed Israeli settlers in a nearby hilltop camp, and Israeli soldiers patrolled as a buffer while he and his family picked the remaining crop.

"Without their presence, we wouldn't be able to enter our lands because the settlers would attack us," said the 47-year-old.

For many Palestinians, the fall harvest of some 10 million trees used to be a joyful ritual steeped in tradition. But the West Bank's olive groves have increasingly become a target of extremist Jewish settlers who, hilltop by hilltop, seek to expand their control over land they say they were promised by God.

Just in the first two weeks of this season, farmers say, assailants beat a 63-year-old olive picker, slashed another man's car tires, tried to chase Palestinians out of several groves and stole or damaged some of the crop. In one incident captured on video, four settlers punched and kicked a Palestinian photographer and a foreign activist in an olive grove.

Compounding the farmers' problems, more trees are harder to reach because they lie beyond Israel's lengthening West Bank separation barrier or close to Jewish settlements and their multiplying satellite camps.

Israeli human rights activists say securing the harvest is an important test of Israel's obligation as an occupying power to protect Palestinians. They say the military and police are doing a better job than in the past, but have failed to protect crops or bring vigilantes to justice.

This week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas complained that the army isn't doing its job, raising questions about whether Israel is serious about peace with Palestinians. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak denounced those attacking farmers as "hooligans," but said troops are making a major effort to protect farmers. The military said soldiers have been briefed about the importance of the harvest, jeeps patrol trouble areas and officers are given maps to rule on ownership disputes.

In the past, Israeli troops have destroyed thousands of Palestinian olive trees along roadsides to protect against snipers and stone throwers. Palestinians still complain that settlers are often given free rein by the military. For example, the settlers who were filmed attacking the photographer were allowed to walk away, while police arrested three Israelis helping with the harvest for entering a "closed military area."

A settler leader, Yitzhak Shadmi, dismissed reports of vandalism as staged.

Growing numbers of Israelis and foreigners are flocking to the groves to help the farmers. Yaakov Manor's Harvest Coalition helped arrange West Bank trips for hundreds of Israelis last year.

Thousands of Palestinians take part in the harvest, with students given time off to help and professionals returning to their villages. Olive oil is a food staple, and even the leftovers from the oil presses are used as fuel.

The economic benefits are relatively modest - about $100 million from an expected 21,000 tons of olive oil this year - but the extra income reaches some 100,000 families. For some, it's just pocket money, for others enough to plan a wedding or build a house.

Near the village of Burin, Amneh Abdel Qader sat on a tarpaulin under a tree, as her son, daughter-in-law and three grandsons combed the branches with handheld rakes. The olives tumbled onto the tarp, and the 70-year-old sorted them, the plumpest for eating and the rest for oil.

"We used to bring a radio and have fun, sing and enjoy ourselves," Abdel Qader said. "But from the day they came," she said, referring to Israeli settlements near her village, "we can't relax anymore."

Burin's farmers can only reach lands near the settlements of Yitzhar and Bracha with special coordination from security forces. Farmers say they're allowed to visit those areas only twice a year, for planting and harvesting, and that they need more access to hang traps for olive flies, prune branches and clear underbrush.

Israel's Civil Administration, the branch of the military dealing with the Palestinians' day-to-day life, denied any quota on visits, but a senior official said the idea is to keep settlers and farmers away from each other.

"You can smell the fuel in the air," the official said on condition of anonymity, in line with briefing regulations. "We don't want to have a situation where the olive harvest is setting off the atmosphere again."

At times, there's also lack of coordination within the military.

In the village of Naalin this month, near Israel's separation barrier, border police fired tear gas and stun grenades as villagers and volunteers tried to reach a grove. The army had given a permit for the Naalin harvest but apparently not briefed the border police, said Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights. Several Israelis were injured and three detained, he said.

The Palestinian olive harvest falls about 5 to 10 percent short of its potential every year because of settler violence and Israeli restrictions, estimated Palestinian economist Samir Hleileh. Israel requires permits for villagers who have land in the roughly 10 percent of the West Bank swallowed up on the "Israeli" side of the barrier.

Eighty percent of the people who used to work these lands no longer get permits, according to U.N. monitors.

Mohammed Jabareen, mayor of the village of Taibeh, which has 250 dunams (60 acres) of land beyond the barrier, said landowners have received permits, but not all of the workers needed for the harvest. The army says it's issuing extra permits during the harvest.

Some are trying to improve output by teaching farmers how to grow premium oils for export. Industrialist Bassem Khoury has invested in a premium oil storage facility with 30 steel vats, even though business prospects are uncertain.

"To me," he said, "the olive tree is a symbol of Palestine."

Character - Less

This is a very telling item about Miz Pale-lyn's character (actually the lack thereof)

Governor Sarah Pale -lyn's signature accomplishment—a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48—emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an investigation shows.

• Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Pale-lyn slanted the terms away from an important group—the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.

• Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Pale-lyn had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

• The leader of Pale-lynn's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Pale=lyn's pipeline team.

• Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Pale-lyn, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.

And, contrary to the ballyhoo, there's no guarantee that the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away as TransCanada must first overcome major financial and regulatory hurdles.

Yet, McPain/Pale-lyn spokesman Taylor Griffin says: "There was an open and transparent process that subjected the decision to extensive public scrutiny and due diligence."

Yeah, and I am an innocent doe-eyed virgin.

Achorage Daily News

Even Alaskan's don't want Pale-lyn in the White House.
ADN endorses Obama.
They don't want her in Alaska, either.

Hate and Bile

Caution: reading further will turn your stomach - unless your are a repugican!

*****

I was reading the 'letters to the editor' section of the Asheville-Citizen Times on-line Topix and there was a piece about Obama taking time to visit his grandmother in Hawaii who he said he said might not live until election day.

In lieu of expressions of well wishes and hopes for her recovery the wing-nuts are attacking and spewing hate and some of the 'comments' from the troglodytes is sickening.

Here are some examples of the foulness:

Frustrated said ... I was reading this morning that someone has a tape of his grandmother saying he was born in Kenya - not Hawaii. The tape is going to be released in two or three days. Won't that be interesting?

Onofriendofwomen said ... Looks like Obama is trying to use the sucker sympathy vote. He threw grandma under the bus months ago for his own political gain and now he's using her impending death for political gain as well.

There are more and some responding to their bile and hate with more hate and bile, but some calling them on it.
If you want to read and see just how hate-filled the wing-nuts are you can find it here, just have your barf bag ready.

12,484 Can't Be Wrong

12,484 discriminating readers read Carolina Naturally.
And an average of 206 new readers a day have joined them this month alone.

Imagine what the readership would be if I actually advertised it?

Two Thousand

Can't stop a good thing, now can you!

Slade

Run Runaway

My oh my

Two sides to a vastly underrated band.

A reader responds

Earlier today I posted a piece about Greensburg, Kansas and how they were rebuilding their town and doing so 'Green' and I received this message from Anita - a resident of Greensburg, Kansas:

Anita said...

I just want to thank you for featuring Greensburg... I am a life-long resident of Greensburg, my children are the 6th generation of my family to live here...
I now work for a non-profit organization, Greensburg GreenTown We help residents learn about green building and green living, and help them find the resources they need. We are also building demonstration homes featuring various green building techniques that will eventually be bed and breakfast inns. People will be able to come and stay a few days and experience what living in these sorts of houses is like, and how the alternative energy sources really work.

Glad to help Anita. While I cannot claim to be the 'greenest' person out there (probably at the fence looking in on the game if the truth be told) I am trying to green up my life. I hope to do more and improve my life in the process. I know you're going to be a success in Greensburg.

As of this moment ...

4187 Brave men and women will not be returning from Iraq

Alive!

Support OUR Troops ... Bring them home now!

Question of the Day

Why do those who are always 'playing games' think everyone is like they are?

*****

This is actually a repeat question of the day because recent events have reminded me of a group of 'games players' who had perverted a forum into a place where blathering idiots ran roughshod over any who had the temerity to stand against them.
Yet another forum was assaulted by these 'games players' - this one a new forum still in its infancy ... though growing exponentially because the 'games players' where/are absent - but failed miserably.

I left the former forum because of the 'games players' and led the successful defense of the other forum.
Some just will not learn.

The Curly Shuffle

A little musical interlude.

It's A Classic!

Curly vs. The Oyster

Who's on first

You can't top the classics!

Christians feud over Church of Holy Sepulcher

From the "Oh, my aching back!" Department:

Two rival monks are posted at all times in a rooftop courtyard at the site of Jesus' crucifixion: a bearded Copt in a black robe and an Ethiopian sunning himself on a wooden chair, studiously ignoring each other as they fight over the same sliver of sacred space.

For decades, Coptic and Ethiopian Christians have been fighting over the Deir el-Sultan monastery, which sits atop a chapel at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The monastery is little more than a cluster of dilapidated rooms and a passageway divided into two incense-filled chapels, an architectural afterthought alongside the Holy Sepulcher's better-known features.

And yet Deir el-Sultan has become the subject of a feud that has gone far beyond the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. The Ethiopians control the site, but the Egypt-based Copts say they own it and see the Ethiopians as illegal squatters.

The quarrel has erupted into brawls - in 2002, when the Coptic monk moved his chair into the shade and too close to the Ethiopians, a dozen people were hurt in the ensuing melee. And today, the Ethiopians claim the fight could result in the monastery's collapse and even in damage to other parts of the church, one of the holiest sites in Christendom.

Since the 1970s, the Israeli government has refused to allow renovations or significant repairs at the disputed monastery until the Ethiopians and the Copts come to terms. That hasn't happened, and the Ethiopian Church says the years of neglect have put the structure in danger. The Copts suggest the Ethiopians are merely trying to further cement their hold.

The Ethiopian Church commissioned a report from an Israeli engineer backing up its claim, and in early October the Ethiopian patriarch, Archbishop Matthias, asked the Israeli government to carry out urgent repairs. The archbishop attached the engineer's assessment that the humble monastery structure could collapse - and possibly damage the chapel below - if steps are not taken to repair it.

The report, compiled by Yigal Berman of the Milav engineering firm, cited "safety hazards" that "endanger the lives of the monks and the visitors," according to a report in the daily Haaretz newspaper. Yifredew Getnet, a spokesman for the Ethiopian Embassy to Israel, confirmed the report. A committee made up of embassy representatives, churchmen and lay leaders has been appointed to oversee the monastery, he said.

Outside the monastery, Coptic monk Antonious El-Orshlemy said his church owns Deir el-Sultan, and that the Ethiopian claim that the monastery is about to collapse is false.

"The building is very fine, and not dangerous to someone," he said.

The most recent round of the feud began in 1970, when Ethiopian monks changed the locks while the Copts were at services on the eve of Easter and moved in.

The Ethiopian Church has six monasteries and 70 monks in the Holy Land, according to the office of the patriarch. A handful are stationed at Deir el-Sultan. The main parts of the Holy Sepulcher are divided between the Catholics, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox.

Three years before the Easter takeover, Israel captured the Old City from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast War and found itself in charge of the Holy Sepulcher.

The Copts appealed to an Israeli court, which ruled that the Ethiopians should not have altered the fragile status quo at the church but said it was the government's job to decide what to do. The government decided not to take action, according to Daniel Rossing, director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and an expert on the city's fractious religious mosaic.

International politics likely played a role in the decision: At the time, Israel had warm ties with Ethiopia and was at war with Egypt. Later that was reversed: Communists came to power in Ethiopia and cut ties with Israel, and Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement. But Israel still did not act, possibly because of concerns that angering Ethiopia could hamper the emigration of the country's Jewish community.

Feuds like the one over Deir el-Sultan "don't have a solution, period," Rossing said. "The trick, then, is to do the very best job to make things as livable as possible, within the limitations of never being able to solve these issues."

Israel's interior minister, Meir Sheetrit, now plans to mediate the dispute, and the government will help renovate the site as soon as the sides can agree on a course of action, said spokesman Ilan Marciano. But with each side entirely rejecting the other's claim to the monastery, it is unclear if an agreement is possible.

The feud is only one of a bewildering array of rivalries among churchmen in the Holy Sepulcher, where each group remains on guard against any encroachment onto their turf. Fights have flared over issues such as who is allowed to sweep which steps, and Israeli police occasionally intervene.

The Israeli government has long wanted to build a fire exit in the church, which regularly fills with thousands of pilgrims and has only one main door, but the plan is on hold because the sects cannot agree where the exit will be built. In another example, a ladder placed on a ledge over the entrance sometime in the 19th century has remained there ever since because of a dispute over who has the authority to take it down.

Strokin'

Clarence Carter sings to ease the tensions.

McPain aides say Pale-lyn's 'going rogue'

With 10 days to go until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between repugican vice presidential candidate Sarah Pale-lyn and key aides to senator John McPain have become so intense they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McPain advisers have suggested that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Pale-lyn "going rogue." A Pale-lyn associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McPain sources say Pale-lyn has gone off message several times, and they privately wonder if the incidents were deliberate. They cited that she labeled robo-calls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McPain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McPain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McPain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Pale-lyn associate defended her by saying she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robo-calls were answers to process questions.

But this Pale-lyn source acknowledged that Pale-lyn is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu press conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Pale-lyn's press secretary, was urgently called over after Pale-lyn wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt unsuccessfully tried several times to end the unscheduled session.

"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Pale-lyn adviser recently said, arguing, "It's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.

The Politico reported Saturday on Pale-lyn's frustration, specifically with McPain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Pale-lyn's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McPain sources admit were highly damaging.

But two sources, one Pale-lyn associate and one McPain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was first picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McPain's record.

Pale-lyn spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from governor Pale-lyn down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Yet another senior McPain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind, it brings out the worst in people fingerpointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.

*****

Are we surprised?

In a word, NO.

TALKING CLOCK

After closing time at the bar, a drunk was proudly showing off his new apartment to a couple of his friends. He led the way to his bedroom where there was a big brass gong and a mallet.

'What's that big brass gong?'' one of the guests asked.

'It's not a gong. It's a talking clock,' the drunk replied.
'
A talking clock? Seriously?' asked his astonished friend.

'Yup,' replied the drunk.

'How's it work?' the friend asked, squinting at it.

'Watch,' the drunk replied.
He picked up the mallet, gave the gong an ear-shattering pound and stepped back.

The three stood looking at one another for a moment.......

Suddenly, someone on the other side of the wall screamed,'You asshole! It's three-fifteen in the morning!'

No rest for dead at foreclosed funeral home

Even the dead can't escape foreclosure in suburban Detroit. Five bodies and the cremated remains of 22 people were evicted Friday from a funeral home in Pontiac.

The remains from the House of Burns Memorial Chapel were delivered to the Oakland County medical examiner's office for storage. A medical examiner's administrator, Robert Gerds, said some of the cremated remains date to the 1990s.

The county will send the bodies to another funeral home if a family member makes a claim.

A pastor who went to the building Friday to attend a funeral service says he disapproves of the timing and the way the eviction was carried out.

Detroit television stations also aired video of caskets being removed. Gerds says no bodies were inside.

Lightning strikes only once - but kills 52 cows

In this picture released by the police department of San Jose, some of the 52 cows that were killed by lightning lie along a fence on a ranch in Valdez Chico village near San Jose, Uruguay, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008. The cows were killed when lightning hit the wire fence during a fierce storm, according to police.

Lightning struck only once - but 52 cows are dead at an Uruguayan ranch. The newspaper El Pais reports that the cows had pressed against a wire fence during a storm when the lightning bolt struck in the northern state of San Jose.

A photograph released by the San Jose Police Department shows the black and brown cows lying dead in a long row.

The newspaper said Friday that veterinarians at the scene confirmed the cause of the deaths, which happened Wednesday. The veterinarians told the newspaper that cows often crowd around fences to seek protection during storms.

Meteorologist Fernando Torena told the newspaper he wasn't surprised that a single lightning bolt killed so many cows. But he called it "very bad luck."

200-lb wild boar struck by car

This was no ordinary road kill. Massachusetts State Police say a 200-pound Russian wild boar was euthanized after being struck by a vehicle on a road in Lancaster earlier this week.

That was a big surprise to state wildlife experts. They say although some wild boars are known to live in northern New England, there never has been a native population of feral swine in Massachusetts.

Ohio woman gives birth to triplet granddaughters

Not only has a 56-year-old Ohio woman given birth to triplets, but they're her own granddaughters. Jaci Dalenberg, of Wooster, carried the babies as a surrogate for her daughter, Kim Coseno. The two identical twins and their sister were born by Caesarean section Oct. 11 at the Cleveland Clinic's Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights and are still in the hospital's care. They were more than two months premature and each weighed less than three pounds.

A Cleveland Clinic news release says infants and grandmother are all doing well.

According to a Clinic spokesman, Dalenberg offered herself as a surrogate when Kim Coseno and her husband, Joe, were waiting to adopt. The couple used in vitro fertilization, and embryos were implanted in Dalenberg's uterus.

Civil War re-enactor's injury shakes die-hards

In the passionate world of Civil War re-enactors, authenticity is everything - from uniforms with historically correct stitching to hardtack made from scratch.

A battle re-enactment last month pushed realism to the limits: a retired New York City police officer portraying a Union soldier for a documentary film was shot in the shoulder, possibly by a Confederate re-enactor.

The shooting sent the 73-year-old to the hospital and left the Isle of Wight Sheriff's Office in rural southeastern Virginia with a Civil War-style CSI case. Investigators used film to piece together what happened and have narrowed a suspect to one re-enactor.

The Sept. 27 injury also sent ripples through the tight-knit re-enactment community, which can be understandably sensitive to public perceptions of thousands of enthusiasts toting swords and firearms in roughhewn uniforms, often on horseback.

"We were sort of freaked out because this hits the hobby hard," said Ed Hooper, editor of Camp Chase Gazette, a monthly magazine aimed at re-enactors. "It is so out of the norm."

The shooting of Thomas R. Lord Sr. in a Suffolk park violated the cardinal rule of re-enacting - no loaded weapons. Black powder brings the flash and bang to the pageantry, but even that primitive explosive is used gingerly.

Re-enactors said Lord's shooting may have happened in part because walk-ons were used. These are re-enactors who typically are not affiliated with a unit and unfamiliar with the chain of command or safety rules, akin to a football player showing up on game day to play for a team the athlete has never met.

Lord's shooter was among several Confederate re-enactors who showed up at the filming, said John C. Jobe, a member of Lord's unit who witnessed the shooting.

Re-enactors who have worked in filmed battles said the camera itself might have been a factor, saying filmmakers sometimes put realism over safety and ignore the hobby's strict rules of engagement. The re-enactors who were there when Lord was hurt said they weren't sure whether the film crew checked for loaded weapons before the battle commenced.

Sheriff C.W. "Charlie" Phelps said he didn't have evidence that the filmmakers were negligent.

"I can't say that anybody dropped the ball," he said.

Lord was shot in the shoulder while portraying a member of the 7th New York Cavalry. The unit answered an Internet casting call from a film company called Alderwerks.

Officials with the Virginia Film Office were not familiar with the company or the director, listed on the casting call as Matthew Burchfield, who was credited as a casting assistant on director Terrence Malick's 2006 film "The New World," starring Colin Farrell and Christian Bale.

Re-enactors' attention to detail was on display again this month at Cedar Creek Battlefield in northern Virginia, when thousands participated without any serious injuries, according to Jake Jennette, who commanded the Confederate forces that weekend.

With the cadence of a retired Marine Corps infantry officer, Jennette ran through a laundry list of inspections his troops must undergo, from weapons inspections to repeated drills.

"When we go on the field we are satisfied that the weapon is cleared," Jennette said. "We've trained these guys. We start them out as a private in the ranks."

Walk-ons would not be allowed to fight under Jennette's command.

"We don't let strangers fight," he said. "We fight together, we trust each other."

Rookies typically will have faces smudged with powder to signal a new arrival - known as "seeing the elephant," he said. Bayonets are removed, and weapons are aimed upward during a charge.

According to witnesses, Lord was raising his arm in victory when a musket ball ripped into him. "I felt like I got hit in the shoulder with a baseball bat," Lord told The Daily Press of Newport News.

The hobby has come a long way from its ragtag origins to the near-fanatical authenticity modern purists demand.

The National Park Service allowed 2,500 re-enactors to stage a battle in 1961 on Manassas National Battlefield Park, in what some view as the birth of Civil War re-enacting. A horse-drawn caisson bolted and had to be chased down and someone was knocked down by a cannon blast.

The park service no longer allows battlefield re-enactments.

Hooper, the editor of the re-enactor magazine, believes the hobby has been surprisingly injury-free despite the frenetic battle scenes.

The most serious incident he could recall was a shooting 20 years ago at the re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. A Charlottesville man was wounded when he was accidentally shot by a re-enactor from France, according to news accounts.

Phelps said the shooter could face a misdemeanor charge of reckless handling of a firearm up to a felony, malicious wounding.

For his part, Hooper said the shooting will only amplify safety.

"This will make people, especially the commanders, take a good look at the men in his unit," he said.