Teddy is spinning in his grave about now

Plans to turn a secluded Badlands trail into a major road and river crossing might not have created such a stir if not for where it is: near the ranch where Theodore Roosevelt helped conceive the American conservation movement.

But as it is, hundreds of people and groups have flooded the officials in charge with their thoughts on the proposal, which has been stalled for years but now appears to be moving closer to reality.
Billings County officials want a crossing over the Little Missouri River and a road north of Medora to connect state Highways 16 and 85.
Proponents say it would cut as much as 100 miles off commutes, encourage economic development, and help fire trucks and ambulances respond faster."Our plan is not an evil plan, and we are not trying to terrorize the people who love the Badlands," said Jim Arthaud, a county commissioner. "We need this and we have a legal right to it."

But opponents fear it will become a road heavy with RVs and traffic from the area's oil booming industry, ruining an area that inspired the conservation-minded president.
"Teddy Roosevelt would be going nuts over this," said Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra Club. "It's going to alter the whole feel of the area if this road goes through."

All the county's proposed routes are within 2 1/2 miles of Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch, said Theodore Roosevelt National Park Superintendent Valerie Naylor.
"We're very concerned about the soundscape and any potential visual intrusion and dust," Naylor said. "It would forever impair a very special place."

Public comment is being accepted until Friday, said Doug Hecox, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration.
An environmental impact statement could be done by next spring, with a final decision in 2010, he said.
Sentiment is running about half and half, Hecox said, noting that locals' comments would hold more weight with regulators.
"A lot of folks are very supportive of it, and would like the benefit of shaving 90 to 100 miles off their commute," Hecox said.Billings County has just under 800 residents, according to the Census Bureau.

"Locals are all for it, but I wonder how heavy they (federal officials) will weigh it in a county ... losing population," Schafer said.

Arthaud, who also is a rancher and owns an oil trucking company, said an engineering firm hired by the county has identified three alternatives for the river crossing and road, all of which would at least partly traverse federal land.
Two of the routes would go through a 5,200-acre parcel, the former Blacktail Creek Ranch, next to Elkhorn.
The U.S. Forest Service completed the $5.3 million purchase last year, with $4.8 million coming from the federal government and $500,000 from conservation groups, including the Boone and Crockett Club, started by Roosevelt himself.
But the county won a court battle in 2005 to build a 6-mile long road and a low-water crossing through the Blacktail ranch when it was privately owned.
Forest Service spokeswoman Sherri Schwenke said the county still has a right to the road, which currently is little more than a jeep trail.
The three routes eyed by the county already have an existing roadbed and can easily be tied into existing farm-to-market road systems, Arthaud said.
"It's not like we just threw a dart. This is not only the logical location, but the only place that is feasible because of terrain," Arthaud said. "Otherwise, we'd have to plow through 6 miles of untouched Badlands."

Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, set aside millions of acres for national forests and wildlife refuges during his administration.
He spent more than three years in the North Dakota Badlands in the 1880s.
He helped conceive the idea of conservation during the years he spent in the Badlands, said Lowell Baier, executive vice president of the Boone and Crockett Club, started by Roosevelt in 1887."We see it as the cradle of conservation, where the concept of conservation started in this country," Baier said."Find another route," he said. "Leave the sanctity of this place in silence."

Daily Funny

Definition:

Inflation (n) - is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten dollar haircut you got for five dollars when you had hair.

You can't stop the wind

And it keeps on rolling along ...

All 197 countries of the world have visited this little ol'blog and since I added the Flag Counter 108 have been back ... not bad for this humble Southern Boy's musings.

Some of the things they are saying about Carolina Naturally ...

"I found you blog to be very informative" - Malaysia
"Sacred elephants don't stand a chance of escaping unscathed" - Germany
"News with humor, Jon Stewart couldn't do any better" - United States
"I feel renewed inner peace when I read Carolina Naturally" - Nepal
"Scots rule, nice to read a fellow Scot's work" - Scotland
"Keep it up" - Australia
"I like the way all are treated fairly" - Pakistan
"Awesome, a Top Rank blog for sure" - United States

It's in the name

Carolina Naturally is read in ...

Olathe; Piscataway; Ooltewah;
Harve; Cle Elum; Pinckney;
New Braunfels; Olney;
Normal, Seal Beach; Chicopee:
Acton; Yulee;

'Least of my brothers ,,,'

Senator Barack Obama said today that the country's -- and his -- greatest moral failure has been selfishness.

"We still don't abide by that basic precept of Matthew -- whatever you do to the least of my brothers ... you do to me," Obama said.

As for himself: "I had a difficult youth ... I experimented with drugs and drank ... I trace this to a certain selfishness on my point ... I couldn't focus on other people," Obama told Pastor Rick Warren. "It's not about me."

Obama took the stage to a standing ovation at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency at Warren's church in southern California, home to nearly 20,000 members.

*****

While he was citing a christian biblical quotation the way we treat others is a basic human tenet and reflected in all religions (granted in some cases it is a bit of a stretch, especially with fundamentalists - of every stripe).
It is refreshing to see and hear a politician actually make sounds that form real words and in a coherent pattern, the fact those words are closer to the truth (all politicians 'lie', that's a given) than we have heard in many years - particularly the last eight - is a bonus.

Horse-whipping is too good for him!

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is urging a change in state law after two kennels shot and killed 80 dogs.
Current state law allows kennel owners to euthanize their dogs.
Rendell said Saturday that he wants only veterinarians to be allowed to do so.

Officials say Elmer Zimmerman and his brother shot the dogs after an inspection July 24.
Wardens had ordered some of them to be checked for insect bites and had issued citations for their living conditions.

A hundred people attended a vigil outside the property Friday.

Elmer Zimmerman apologized, saying he thought he would face legal action if he didn't do something immediately.

Horse-whipping is too good for him ... too good by far!

Support the troops

If you support the troops then you must support Obama, otherwise you are not supporting the troops as they support Obama 6 to 1.

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain’s haul.

Despite McCain’s status as a decorated veteran and a historically Republican bent among the military, members of the armed services overall — whether stationed overseas or at home — are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008, by a $55,000 margin. Of federal contributions by military personnel to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama.

If military personnel are putting their hard earned monies somewhere you can bet your bottom dollar they know what they are getting. The fact that they are giving it overwhelmingly to the Democratic candidate should be a wake up call to the troglodytes and sycophants howling about 'supporting our troops' all the while doing their ever-loving best to not support them.

I cannot wait to hear the 'spin' on these facts the smear mill will be generating, can you?!

Pot and Kettle

If there ever was a more clearer example of the Pot calling the Kettle 'black' than the shrub's recent vocal machinations toward Russia, I don't know what it could be!

Here are a few examples of the almighty gall the nincompoop has:

BBC

CBC

The idiot actually said ... "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century," speaking to reporters at the White House.
He said Georgians have cast their lot with the free world and "we will not cast them aside."

Damn, that is one strange planet the shrub lives on and it is sure not like the one we humans inhabit. Bullying and intimidation are the bulwark of the foreign policy of the cabal and it is biting them in the arse now.

Oh, but there's more ... September's Vanity Fair has a feature editorial on the shrub's hubris.

This excerpt from the feature is but a small sampling of the idiocy that is the shrub:.

“Your eminence, you’re lookin’ good!,” Bush bellowed when he met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in June. A few weeks later, at the G-8 Summit in Japan to discuss climate change, he exited with an air punch and a cheery “Good-bye from the world’s biggest polluter!” The remark was met with stony silence by the other attendees, who didn’t seem to appreciate this attempt at hilarity from a man whose nation consumes a quarter of the world’s oil. The president’s vaunted ability to assess others in high office was also on display during this trip. After gazing into the eyes of Dmitri A. Medvedev, he pronounced the new Russian president to be “a smart guy.” They say that opposites attract, and the two really did seem to hit it off.

The entire feature can be found here.

Men Are Just Happier People --

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED:


Your last name stays put.

The garage is all yours.

Wedding plans take care of themselves.

Chocolate is just another snack.

You can never be pregnant.

Car mechanics tell you the truth.

The world is your urinal.

You never have to drive to another petrol station restroom because this one is just too icky.

You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.

Wrinkles add character.

People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.

New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.

One mood all the time.

Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.

You know stuff about tanks and engines.

A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.

You can open all your own jars.

You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.

Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.

Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.

You never have strap problems in public.

You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.

Everything on your face stays its original color.

The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.

You only have to shave your face and neck.

You can play with toys all your life.

One wallet and one pair of shoes -- one color for all seasons.

You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.

You can "do" your nails with a pocket knife.

You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.

You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

No wonder men are happier!

Editor's Note: Sounds like a woman compiled this list to me, how about you?

Fool's Overture by Supertramp

Free Speech Mistrial

A teenager's free-speech lawsuit against a school dress code that banned Confederate flag clothing ended in a mistrial Friday when a jury in federal court failed to reach a verdict.
The panel of five women and three men deliberated about 13 hours over three days before telling U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan they couldn't reach a unanimous decision in the case of Tommy DeFoe, 18.
Lawyers for DeFoe and for the Anderson County School Board both claimed victory.
DeFoe's attorneys felt they convinced at least some jurors of the rightness of their claims.
The school board's attorney said the result leaves the ban against the Confederate flag in place.

Varlan dismissed the jury without polling it and told lawyers he would hold a hearing in the next few weeks to "talk about where we go from here."
Both sides suggested a second trial was more likely than a settlement.
"I am up for a new trial. I am ready. This ain't over yet," DeFoe, who wore a belt buckle with a Confederate battle flag every day of the five-day trial, said outside the courthouse.

DeFoe's lawsuit, the latest in a string of similar claims from Texas to South Carolina since the 1990s, argued the teen's rights to free speech, due process and equal protection were violated by a dress code in Anderson County, near Knoxville, that bars the Confederate symbol from student clothing.
The flag is considered a symbol of racism and intolerance by some, while others, like DeFoe, consider it an emblem of their Southern heritage.

School officials said they worried that displaying the banner would lead to racial tensions and violence at Anderson County High, which has had problems before, and at nearby Clinton High School, which was bombed two years after becoming the first public school desegregated by court order in the Old South in 1956.

DeFoe's lawyers countered there was no evidence that racial problems resulted directly from the apparel.
They also criticized the dress code for being a blanket policy that left no discretion to school principals.
DeFoe attended the high school at a time when just one out of 1,160 students was black and then went to an all-white county vocational school.
By the time he finished vocational school last fall, he had been suspended more than 40 times for wearing Confederate flag apparel.
He sued the school system in 2006.

Anderson County High Principal Greg Deal said he backs the dress code even if there was only one black student who might be offended.
"My feeling is, it doesn't matter how many kids I have in the school. I have the right to make sure that none of them come to school under fear of intimidation," Deal said.

DeFoe's attorney Van Irion said other, similar cases in the past have typically not gone to juries but instead were dismissed by judges or settled out of court."The fact that we have gotten this far and the fact that we came so close to a victory ... should send a message to all school boards in the country that if you are banning things based on the fact that it is offensive, that violates the Constitution," he said.

The panel was all white, though that was not the result of a selection strategy by either side.
No blacks were in the small group of randomly selected people from which the panel was selected, a reflection of the significant white majority in East Tennessee.

Eleven Hundred Posts In The Ground

Texan denies teaching kids to perform at sex club

Texas again ...

A Texas man accused of starting a "kindergarten" where children as young as 5 learned to have sex with each other and were given Vicodin-like "silly pills" to help them perform denied the charges Friday, saying the children were lying.
Patrick "Booger Red" Kelly, 41, is charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and aggravated sexual assault of a child.
He is accused of helping teach the kids to have sex with each other and dance provocatively.
He also allegedly helped run the Mineola Swinger's Club, where prosecutors say the children performed for paying audiences.
The children, ages 5 to 7, were given Vicodin-like drugs passed off as "silly pills" to help them perform, prosecutors said.

Kelly denied knowledge of such pills.
He said he didn't touch the children or make the kids do any kind of sexual dancing.
He said he has never even been to the club, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported Friday on its Web site.
Four of the five child victims testifying for the state identified Kelly as one of the adults who sexually abused them.
If convicted, Kelly could face life in prison.
That was the sentence jurors handed down this year in the trials of two others linked to the club, Jamie Pittman and Shauntel Mayo.

Four other defendants in the case are awaiting trial.

To my way of thinking upon conviction ... life in prison is too lenient ... a dark alley -- five minutes and no questions asked about what happened to the convicted person in that dark alley is more fitting.

Finally....

As Skippy the Bush Kangaroo says:

"Finally ...

Testicular fortitude is shown by the congresscritters of the donkey varietal.

House judiciary chairman John Conyers has taken the highly unusual step of calling
his committee back from summer recess in order to investigate allegations by
Ron Suskind that the bush administration forged a letter to buttress the links
made between Saddam and 9/11, and Saddam and WMD."

Let's see if these newly grown Cajones are brass or glass and the guilty (and the world knows they are) are punished.

Should Mein Kampf Be Un-Banned in Germany?

Adolf Hitler’s notorious Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a manifesto pretending to be an autobiography, has long been banned from German bookshelves “out of a responsibility and respect for the victims of the Holocaust.”
They should let it be read so all will know what a crackpot ol'Adi really was
But 83 years after it was first published, some Germans argue it should be made available again in order to drain it of whatever power it might still have.
A debate over the book is slowly growing in Germany, in part because Mein Kampf’s copyright, held by the state of Bavaria, will expire in 2015.
Then the book will enter the public domain, and anyone will be able to reprint the text. Academics and officials who fear that a flood of new editions may be abused by far-right extremists are now demanding that a carefully researched and critical edition of the 800-page tome be prepared as a way to demystify it.

Full Story: Time

They should let it be read by all so all will know what a crackpot ol'Adi really was (as if most don't know all ready).

It should be pointed out though that the nutcase did contribute one small thing positive to society ... he helped design the 'People's Car' or as it is known the Volkswagon (referred to affectionately as 'the Beetle'), ok, so maybe that is a poor example of a positive thing to contribute to society.
He did set the bar for hatred so damned low that even today's neo-nazi types have a hard time going under the bar - but some manage, anyway.

RIAA has to pay $107,951 for court costs in failed suit against disabled single mom

The RIAA has lost its lawsuit against Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother, and have been ordered to pay her court costs of $107,951. But the good news keeps on coming: Ms Andersen is now countersuing for damages arising from her having to defend the suit.

"Well, Phase I of the RIAA's misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn't compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she's sustained. And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution. Should be interesting."

RIAA Pays Tanya Andersen $107,951

Karma is a bitch at times you know!

Paying the Piper

Monkey diplomacy is expensive

Full Story

Excerpt:

Well, it has finally happened. The crisis born of unilateralism, strategic overreach and bravado
has come to pass. With U.S. forces tied down in two protracted wars, American credibility
at a record low and our dependence on foreign oil painfully obvious, a revitalized Russia is
on the move. And the blow has fallen where most analysts expected it would: on America's
closest ally in the Caucasus, the tiny Republic of Georgia.

Conciliation, not confrontation, should have guided American foreign policy in Eastern Europe
during the past decade. Instead, Washington continued to poke the Russian bear with a stick.
If the U.S. could act unilaterally to invade a sovereign state, why couldn't Russia?

Woman who had dogs cloned wanted in Tennessee

A woman who made headlines by having five pups cloned and was linked to an abduction case in England is also wanted in Tennessee on charges she tried to plan a burglary in 2004, a defense attorney and prosecutors there said.

Joyce Bernann McKinney was charged in Carter County with criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and failure to appear in court, said attorney David Crockett, who represented her in the Tennessee case.
Authorities there said she instructed a 15-year-old boy to break into a house, and Crockett said she needed the money to buy a false leg for a beloved horse.
Crockett said Thursday he hasn't heard from her since she skipped a court date, but after seeing television coverage of the cloning case, he's certain she's the same person known to the world as dog lover Bernann McKinney.

Prosecutors are reviewing charges against the 58-year-old McKinney to decide whether to pursue the case, said Melanie Widener, an assistant district attorney for the county in the northeast part of the state near the North Carolina state line.
"It'll depend on where she is now, how important the case is, how much it would cost the taxpayers and whether witnesses are still around," she said.

McKinney declined comment when reached by phone Thursday.
McKinney was arrested in November 2004 in Tennessee in a van with the 15-year-old, according to a Carter County Sheriff's Department arrest report.
McKinney, then living across the state line in Avery County, N.C., needed money to help her three-legged horse, Crockett said.
"She loved it dearly," Crockett said.
"She was a rather bizarre character, and seems to have a strange circumstance now."
He recalled that McKinney had two or three dogs in her car when she conferred with him about her case.
"There was a strong aroma about her, and I told her this needed to be taken care of before I went to court with her," Crockett said.

McKinney made news around the world this summer when she had five pups cloned in South Korea from her beloved pit bull Booger.
She later confirmed she was Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 became a British tabloid sensation over the kidnapping case.
She faced charges of unlawful imprisonment after she was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.
She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.

"She is bold to put herself on worldwide television," Crockett said. "She must know she's a fugitive in at least one state."

With the previous post so sadly making its words ring hollow I thought I would remind us all of the entire text of the oft quoted "Give me your tired ..."
Come this November the words may not ring as hollow as they do now.

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This is wrong plain and simple

This is how the cabal treats us ...
They make a mistake and we are responsible for it ...

Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children

A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk, taken on long, bumpy drives while official demanded that he drop his immigration appeals. The jailers who caused his death were private contractors with fat deals with the DHS to lock up immigration detainees.

As he lay dying, his family -- wife and two children, aged 1 and 3 -- were denied access to him while the warden considered their request to visit.

"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands