Chertoff and Gut Feelings:
Summer of Risk?

Gut Feeling, Summer of Risk....
I believe we're entering a period this summer of increased risk. We've seen a lot more public statements from Al Qaeda. There are a lot of reasons to speculate about that but one reason that occurs to me is that they're feeling more comfortable and raising expectations. In the last August, and in prior summers, we've had attacks against the West, which suggests that summer seems to be appealing to them. I think we do see increased activity in South Asia, so we do worry about whether they are rebuilding their capabilities. We've struck at them and degraded them, but they rebuild. All these things have given me kind of a gut feeling that we are in a period of increased vulnerability.
Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Director (Chicago Tribune 7/10/07)


On Voters' Gut Feelings....
But this is a democracy. You vote, you do the best you can with the choices presented, and you show the appropriate opposition to the guy who seems most likely to bring trouble. (I think that is one reason for the polarity and division of politics now. No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition.)
Peggy Noonan (Wall Street Journal 7/13/07)


Just the Facts Please, Cut the Gut Feelings....
The other day, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said he has “kind of a gut feeling that we are in a period of increased vulnerability.”
Let me say this in the vernacular of my youth in New York: Gut feelings I can get from the very nice lady who takes in my shirts at the cleaners. From the Secretary of Homeland Security I expect facts.
From Luke Skywalker I expect to hear there may be a “disturbance in the force.” From Michael Chertoff I expect oversight of the Transportation Safety Administration.
Rich Galen, Mullings (7/13/07)

Big Al: The Goracle and His Lies

Thanks to Paul Atroshenko , an Australian artist for the above image of the all knowing, all seeing Albert Gore. The always controversial, but mostly liberal, Camille Paglia had this to say about the image in a recent posting:

"This is wonderful! I burst out laughing at the self-divinizing apotheosis of that egregiously pulpit-pounding, wannabe preacher, the Rev. Al Gore."


She opines further in answer to a reader's take on human caused climate crisis:

"Bravo for your invigorating deconstruction of current propaganda! I too am very concerned about the potential damage to Democrat credibility coming from the grab-bag Gore crusade, with its wild exaggerations and hypocritical sanctimony. It does make liberals look like ditzes -- the last thing the party needs in a presidential campaign where no-crap national security issues will be paramount. Environmentalism is of vital importance to our future, but it cannot be based on lies."

Bob Parks: To Our Americans Serving in Iraq

This is a "must watch" 10 minute video which sticks it to Pelosi, Reid, the Clintons et al!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Yc3wYJOtI

Also visit Bob Parks at: http://blackandright.mensnewsdaily.com/

My country, 'tis of Thee,
Sweet Land of Liberty
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring.

Samuel F. Smith 1832

Kaziah Hancock, Extraordinary American

This extraordinary woman has painted 100's of portraits of fallen U.S. soldiers and sent them home to their families. Unable to have children of her own these fallen heroes become part of Kaziah Hancock via her paintings of them.She lives on a goat ranch in Utah.These portraits are given to the families; she does not accept any money for them although she is an accomplished artist who has sold works for thousands of dollars.

Tagged: kaziah hancock

S 1639 is Dead!

Thanks to the hundreds of thousands who responded in opposition to this ghastly bill which would have bankrupted our nation. A special thanks to Dan Sargis for his forceful writings about this hastily prepared and secretly drawn legislation. Ted Kennedy, who has been wrong on immigration for over 40 years, is proven wrong again. Too bad Joe Lieberman voted to let this fiasco continue!

Bush's Betrayal.....How a President desperate for a legacy pushes all the wrong buttons and totally succumbs to "amnesty dementia".

In the harshest possible words Connecticut writer Dan Sargis dismisses President George W. Bush as a hypocrite and a liar who, in collaboration with Ted Kennedy, Mel Martinez, and John McCain, stubbornly persists in the pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform which would spell ruin for our nation. Some excerpts from the Dan Sargis June 21, 2007 column:

How is W going to secure our borders when he can’t even secure Walter Reed Hospital which is less than 5 miles from the White House? ....

But W may be the all-time best hypocritical liar...or the dumbest.

He frames himself as a Conservative and then stabs Conservatives in the back. He says he loves America and is currently trying to give it its biggest screwing in history with his Amnesty bill. He says he is a man of God and then uses God like a Beltway lobbyist. ....

He frames himself as a Conservative and then stabs Conservatives in the back. He says he loves America and is currently trying to give it its biggest screwing in history with his Amnesty bill. He says he is a man of God and then uses God like a Beltway lobbyist.

The only real friends or support that W ever had came from the Conservative base that took him at his word and now...he has decided to eat his own.

In the 2004 election, a Pew Hispanic Center analysis indicated that Bush received 40% of the Hispanic vote. I wonder how many Conservatives voted for Kerry that year?

In the 2006 midterm election, national exit polls for the House of Representatives and Senate showed that 69% of Latinos voted for Democrats and 30% for Republicans.

How many Conservatives voted for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in 2006?

Yet Bush is eager to drown his base in the Rio Grande for the love of his illegal immigrant “supporters”....and Teddy Kennedy. ....

If he ever recovers from his Amnesty dementia and looks around...well, maybe his mommy will still love him.

And that goes for every RINO Senator riding his coattails across the border.

Obama's Speech at UCC in Hartford (Update-Read It Here pdf)





Above are five important paragraphs from Barack Obama's speech yesterday at the United Church of Christ Synod. His main points:

As Americans....we know....we cannot have....more than 2000 people cross our borders illegally every day....we have a right and a duty to protect our borders

Our conscience cannot rest until we.... secure our borders (and) give the 12 million undocumented immigrants....a chance to earn their citizenship by paying a fine and waiting in line behind all those who came here legally.

Religious Hijacking..........

A.P. Photo


HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) _ Sen. Barack Obama told a church convention Saturday that some right-wing evangelical leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow division.

``But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart. Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us,'' the Democratic presidential candidate said in a 30-minute speech before a national meeting of the United Church of Christ. (emphasis added)
Source: AP via WTIC

Exactly who is sowing division here? Barack Hussein Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ was recently interviewed on radio and television about his church's 12 point vision shown below; (since removed from the church web site)

1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the Black Community
3. Commitment to the Black Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the Black Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of "Middleclassness"
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the Black Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting Black Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the Black Value System.

The above 12 points have apparently been withdrawn from the web site and have been replaced by the following statements:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community. (emphasis added)

The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

1. A congregation committed to ADORATION.
2. A congregation preaching SALVATION.
3. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
4. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
5. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
6. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
7. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
8. A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
9. A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
10. A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.

Unexpected Lightning...........

New advisory issued to protect you from lightning strikes: At the first rumble of distant thunder scurry indoors and hide under your bed!

A recent tragic story of a lightning death in Florida prompted this advice from Dan Dixon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami:

''They (thunderstorms) are very unpredictable and very dangerous. We urge people to stay indoors even if you hear thunder only faintly in the distance,'' Dixon said. ``If you're close enough to hear thunder, you're close enough to be struck by lightning.''

The alarmists strike again, providing us with yet another reason to be afraid. Chalk it up to "Man Made Global Warming"

Bernstein: Clintons Would Operate Joint Presidency

To which WSJ's Best of the Web Today added this tag line:
But Only She Would Inhale

Anyway, the above mentioned Bernstein is Karl Bernstein who is quoted in The Sun via The Daily Telegraph with these observations on a possible Clinton co-presidency:

If Americans elect Senator Clinton as president next year, they will also be re-electing her husband, according to the author of a new biography of the former first lady.

Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon, told the Daily Telegraph that the couple would operate a joint presidency in which President Clinton would advise on policy and tactics as well as act as troubleshooter.

"There is no question in my mind it would be a co-presidency because he has better judgment than she does on most political matters. He would be a constant presence," Mr. Bernstein said.

On the campaign trail to win the Democrat Party's nomination, Mrs. Clinton has said she would use her husband as a global ambassador for America. But his real role would go much further, Mr. Bernstein believes.
Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/56928

Father's Day 2007.........
The posting below is reprinted from Steady Habits of 8/31/06. I return to this subject reluctantly but wish to keep interested folks updated and encourage others in similar situations to never give up hope. "A" this day coincidentally, entered a detox facility for the umpteenth time; this time as a means to get a spot in a long term residential program. She has been waiting several months for a spot to open up without any luck. However, by entering through a detox program she anticipates being able to go within a few days to a long term facility. "A" was in a residential program for several weeks last year but yielded to temptation during a short out of house trip and left with another woman to get high. She was dismissed from the program. Since then she has remained clean, as far as I can tell, been living with friends and going regularly to meetings. Her mother and I are somewhat buoyed by her attitude that it's now or never; that she can finally beat this demon. This Father's Day finds me encouraged and tentatively hopeful.

THE SCOURGE OF HEROIN:
A DAUGHTER'S STRUGGLE,
A FATHER'S DILEMMA

---

My 30 year old daughter has been a heroin addict for around 10 years. Of course, she's had some periods of time when she was clean. I think she started mainlining in Seattle (no surprise, bad heroin scene there) and got badly strung out there. We, her mom and I, got her back to Massachusetts where she did really well for a while, had a good job etc. She's been in de-tox several times and until recently was in a program with weekly meetings and medical help with a heroin antagonist (not methadone but a newer one, bupenephrine (sp?)I think). But the last 2 years she has been sliding back into the abyss; was arrested a couple of times for possession and, most recently, was last week arrested for violation of probation. (she had tested dirty). Anyway, now she is jailed without bail with her first court appearance on 9/18. Her public defender thinks she will probably get a mandatory 30 day drug treatment program plus assignment to a halfway house deal. But, she could also get a prison sentence.

Special Glasses for Jodi and Joe:
Not Too Rosy We Hope

The Governor and Senator appeared at a rally at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford to support the company in its competition to build the engines for the Boeing 767, an aerial refueling tanker aircraft. The airplane can also be used as a cargo, passenger, and medical facility aircraft.

Senator Lieberman used the occasion to repeat his call "for the United States to use “limited military action” against Iranian camps suspected of being used to train and equip terrorists who are killing coalition troops in Iraq." He continued:

"Military action should be limited to halting Iranian training of terrorism, not to eliminate possible nuclear sites, though force could also stem Iran's nuclear ambitions, he said."
Source: The Day

In the photograph above Gov. M. Jodi Rell, left, and U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., both wearing special glasses, try out controls Friday in a flight simulator that duplicates air-to-air refueling controls of the proposed Boeing KC-767 Advanced Tanker Aircraft at the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft jet engine plant in East Hartford.

"New Best Buddies": A Bloomberg-Schwarzennegger Action Team?




Featured in the latest Time is a combined profile of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger calling them the new action team on national issues. Might this combination of the ultimate business man and the ultimate salesman presage a new era in U.S. politics? The article concludes:

That love of action is the real link between Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg, and the real source of the recent Bloomberg-for-President buzz. There's no obvious niche for a candidate who supports gay marriage and gun control while opposing the death penalty and deadlines for withdrawing troops from Iraq. But there is an obvious appeal to a businessman who can work across party lines to get things done — and could drop $500 million on a campaign without even noticing it was gone. (Fellow billionaire Warren) Buffett thinks it's a great idea, and when he first heard it, he turned to the Constitution. "I wanted to see if Schwarzenegger could be his Vice President," Buffett said. "I think he could." It states that the President must be native born, but it's silent on the Vice President. "That would be one hell of a team, wouldn't it?"
Read Time article here.
Also see "..."New Best Buddies"; NY Times 10/17/06

New Computer Simulation of Events at N. Tower WTC 9/11/01

In a project, partially financed by the National Science Foundation, scientists at Purdue University have used massive computer power to visually recreate the 1/2 second event when the aircraft sliced through the World Trade Center North Tower on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The simulation represented the plane and its mass as a mesh of hundreds of thousands of "finite elements," or small squares containing specific physical characteristics. In the visualization, these scientific data points are used to show how airplane components swept through the building and out through the other side as the fuel ignited.

"The aircraft moved through the building as if it were a hot and fast lava flow," Sozen says. "Consequently, much of the fireproofing insulation was ripped off the structure. Even if all of the columns and girders had survived the impact - an unlikely event - the structure would fail as the result of a buckling of the columns. The heat from an ordinary office fire would suffice to soften and weaken the unprotected steel. Evaluation of the effects of the fire on the core column structure, with the insulation removed by the impact, showed that collapse would follow whatever the number of columns cut at the time of the impact."
Source
The Video

Lieberman Urges Tough Action On Iran:
On Face the Nation Today



The United States should launch military strikes against Iran if the government in Tehran does not stop supplying anti-American forces in Iraq, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday on Face The Nation.

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. "And to me, that would include a strike into... over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."



Audio file Here (MP3)

Michelle Malkin Takes on Wall Street Journal Elites





Despite its otherwise excellent complement of reporters, op-eders, and editorialists the Wall Street Journal has, since 1984 anyway, been on the wrong side of the illegal immigration issue.On July 3, 1984 the WSJ wrote:

If Washington still wants to “do something” about immigration, we propose a five-word constitutional amendment: There shall be open borders........and

The nativist patriots scream for “control of the borders.” It is nonsense to believe that this unenforceable legislation will provide any such thing. Does anyone want to “control the borders” at the moral expense of a 2,000-mile Berlin Wall with minefields, dogs and machine-gun towers? Those who mouth this slogan forget what America means. They want those of us already safely ensconced to erect giant signs warning: Keep Out, Private Property.

The above was written when Congress was crafting the Simpson-Mazolli bill, the earlier amnesty that was Reagan's biggest blunder. Ms. Malkin has taken on the WSJ effete with a gorilla film that eviscerates their elitist rantings.
Text of July 3, 1984 editorial here.
Video Here

D-Day, Normandy, June 6, 1944

For Today's Liberals, an Inconvenient Truth:

FDR Confronted Evil With Faith

Franklin Roosevelt was the most successful liberal Democrat of the 20th Century. But today, many liberals would be shocked to discover that when the United States and her allies began the liberation of Europe by landing at Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, President Roosevelt went on national radio and led the American people in six minutes of prayer for our young men who were risking their lives to save our freedoms.

That's right. For the liberals today who don't understand what is at stake in Iraq, FDR would normally be their guiding light, if it weren't for this inconvenient truth: Roosevelt understood that there was evil in the world. And he understood that it was the moral duty of the United States of America to defeat that evil.

So when things grew tough at Guadalcanal, when there were great difficulties in North Africa, when there was enormous frustration in the battle of the North Atlantic, Roosevelt knew that the job of a free people was to find more resources, to acquire more courage, to innovate in more ways, and to never flinch -- to never contemplate a Congress legislating defeat -- but instead to be sure that the cause of freedom would win.

And he appealed to our faith as a nation to do it.

Audio of FDR's prayer here.

Text of FDR's D-Day Prayer here.

h/t Newt Gingrich

A Green Card in Every Pot

In her May 30 rant Ann Coulter pretty much sums up the feelings and frustrations of most conservatives regarding the immigration reform act:

Until the recipient culture is capable of doing an effective job of Americanizing immigrants, it's preposterous to talk about a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants accomplishing anything other than turning America into yet another Latin American-style banana republic. And it is simply a fact that no one is trying to turn immigrants into Americans.

To the contrary, Democrats are trying to turn new immigrants into wards of the state -- and with some success! -- so they will be permanent Democratic voters. Rich Republicans and their handmaidens in Washington are trying to turn immigrants into a permanent servant class.

She quotes Louis Brandeis, an immigrant and first Jewish Supreme Court justice:

(Brandeis)said that Americanization required that the immigrant adopt "the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here" and that he adopt "the English language as the common medium of speech."

But, Brandeis said, this is only part of it. "(W)e properly demand of the immigrant even more than this -- he must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done will he possess the national consciousness of an American."

Or as George Bush would call it, "empty rhetoric." And as Linda Chavez would call it, "racist."

Pam at Blogmeister USA has an interesting post on the immigration debate.

"The only thing worse than bombing Iran is allowing Iran to get the bomb."


John McCain above, as quoted by Norman Podhoretz in an astonishing new piece on WSJ online today. A very long article but worth reading.Some excerpts:

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush made a promise:

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.

In that speech, the president was referring to Iraq, but he has made it clear on a number of subsequent occasions that the same principle applies to Iran. Indeed, he has gone so far as to say that if we permit Iran to build a nuclear arsenal, people 50 years from now will look back and wonder how we of this generation could have allowed such a thing to happen, and they will rightly judge us as harshly as we today judge the British and the French for what they did and what they failed to do at Munich in 1938. I find it hard to understand why George W. Bush would have put himself so squarely in the dock of history on this issue if he were resigned to leaving office with Iran in possession of nuclear weapons, or with the ability to build them. Accordingly, my guess is that he intends, within the next 21 months, to order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities from the three U.S. aircraft carriers already sitting nearby..... and

Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.

Memorial Day 2007: The View From My Place

View brushbin's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

Mountain Laurel: Our Connecticut State Flower

View brushbin's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

A walk in the woods today revealed this ancient specimen. Not yet in bloom, or did we miss it? Supposedly these bloom in late May or early June so perhaps we were a week or two early. This photo taken 5/25/07 in Wadsworth Falls State Park, Middletown/Middlefield.

Immigration Bill Portends Disaster for America!

Newt Gingrich tears into the proposed immigration reform act with passion and facts. In his latest newsletter he calls the present shenanigans in D.C. "An Immigration Shipwreck in Sight". Some excerpts:

The announcement last week that the White House and a group of senators have reached an agreement on "comprehensive immigration reform" should have the same effect that the word "iceberg" had on the passengers and crew of the Titanic.

This proposed agreement is a disaster of the first order, and it will severely cripple America for the foreseeable future.

You can tell how bad this bill is by the Senate Democratic leadership's announced goal of trying to pass it before the Memorial Day weekend....

When the FBI arrested six terrorists in New Jersey two weeks ago it turned out that three of them had been in the U.S. illegally for at least TWENTY years.

These three had crossed our unprotected border and had been living in New Jersey.

But here's the even more outrageous part: The police had filed 75 (SEVENTY-FIVE!) charges against them, including drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia.

In 75 interactions, the police never once learned that these three people were here illegally.

The government failed twice: First, by failing to secure the border, and second, by failing to determine that these people were here illegally. The result was that more than five years after 9/11 we were saved from a mass killing at Fort Dix only because of the patriotism and courage of a clerk at an electronics store.

Compare the 75 charges made against the would-be Fort Dix terrorists with how we rounded up German spies in World War II. In June 1942, it took a total of 15 days to track down and arrest eight German spies who landed in Florida and New York from submarines. We executed six of them and gave one life in prison and the other thirty years. We were serious about winning that war). Go here for a more detailed comparison and a list of the 75 charges against the Fort Dix terrorists.

Faced with this level of failure of bureaucracy, how could anyone believe for a minute that this new immigration bill will work? The fact is it can't and it won't. It will rely on the same failed bureaucracy and produce more years of failure.

James Calvin Tillman: One Happy Fella!

A joyful James Calvin Tillman speaks with reporters outside Superior Court in Hartford. (BOB MACDONNELL) Jul 11, 2006

State legislators tried to calculate the incalculable Wednesday, voting to award $5 million to compensate an innocent man who spent 18 years in prison.

The House and Senate unanimously approved the settlement with James Calvin Tillman, 45, who was freed a year ago after DNA evidence exonerated him of a rape in Hartford.

Source: Hartford Courant 5/17/07

GOP Debate II (5/15/07)
My take:

Rudy: Seems too anxious to become President; he did get a round of applause when he countered Ron Paul's (sort of) conspiracy theories.

Mitt: Very suave and urbane and articulate; well prepared; stands tough on his governorship in MA as a con in a blue/black state.

McCain: He leaned hard on his military background, as well he should. His experience as a POW strongly informs his views on interrogation and whether forms of "enhanced interrogation" could be used in extreme national security emergencies. He claimed that military people are the ones most opposed to extra legal methods of intel extraction.

Hunter: The clear winner if one includes clarity of vision with determination to do whatever is necessary to preserve this nation against foreign enemies, illegal immigration, out of control spending.

Paul: Not quite the Dennis Kucinich of the right, but close.


Republican strategist Rich Galen's take on last night's debate:(excerpts)

Shorthand: Giuliani helped himself. McCain performed well. Huckabee did well enough so that the big three is now the big three and a half. Giving Romney the kindest review, he came out where he started, but I suspect he may have hurt himself by appearing too pre-programmed in his answers.....

The Giuliani campaign has signaled a major strategic shift. They will no longer attempt to portray him as a Conservative - which he is not - but will attempt to show that he is a center-right candidate running in center-right country. (emphasis added)

That is, of course, a gamble in a Republican primary campaign.....

Throughout, Giuliani demonstrated he will stay on the issue of national security. When Ron Paul said that, in essence, it was the US presence in the Middle East which invited the September 11th attacks, Giuliani demanded that Paul take it back. He refused.
Read Rich's column "Mullings" here.
Labels: GOP Debate Republican Presidential Candidates Rich Galen

Corpse Flowers are Bursting Out All Over!

Several locations are reporting the blooming of this rare plant on this Mother's Day weekend. Our own Amorphophallus titanum* (titan arum) at the UCONN greenhouses is blooming at this moment; it's last blooming was in 2004.

The plant pictured above is in the arboretum at Gustavus Adolphus college in St. Peter MN. The culmination of this plant was widely heralded with the announcement "Perry is Open". (Perry must be the plant's name) Another plant 'Ted the Titan", bloomed at UCAL Davis in June 2003.

UCONN experts say:

Once fully opened, the bright red bloom smells like three-day old road kill. It will even look like rotting meat, a perfect scenario for the insects that pollinate it _ flies and carrion beetles.

When the plant first bloomed at UConn in 2004, more than 20,000 people dropped by for a whiff.

School officials say it will be at its stinkiest in the first hour after it blooms tonight. After that, visitors will have about 72 hours, or until Sunday night, to take in the aroma.

Interesting quote:

“It smells just like a rotting corpse. In 2004, there was a medical examiner here who came to see it and confirmed that it smelled exactly like a corpse. It has the compounds that a rotting corpse has." -- Clinton Morse, plant growth facilities manager for UConn's ecology and evolutionary biology department.

Latest from UCONN website

The example below bloomed in Seattle last year.



*(the name hardly needs translation!)
Tagged: UCONN Gustavus Adolphus College Corpse Flower

What if the Shoe Bomber Had Succeeded...........
The chilling photo sequence above demonstrates the horrific power of the small quantity of high explosive hidden in Richard Reid's shoe. Had alert passengers not spotted his attempt to ignite the bomb the entire aircraft would had been destroyed with the loss of 197 lives. The still photos above were taken from an FBI video of test conducted at Quantico VA to duplicate the scenario with Reid and his shoe bomb. The full account of the experiments and video can be seen at News of the World (UK) site. An excerpt from the News of the World story follows:

This is what Reid's bomb would have done to a plane full of passengers flying at 30,000ft, if the detonator had not been faulty.

We showed the video to top anti-terror cop Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman who said: "It's only when you see the bomb going off inside a pressurised air cabin that you really see the catastrophic results. The plane is split in two.

"The video shows the shot from inside, it's taken to show you what it would look like if you were a passenger on that flight.

"You can see the plane shake and then it goes dark. I have seen this footage again and again and each time I still find it chilling."

Mr Hayman added: "What this video shows is the ingenuity and the ruthlessness that these people possess, the same ingenuity and ruthlessness you saw in the Crevice trial.

"And they're constantly refining their techniques, developing new methods of mass murder. Sometimes they sound outlandish — just like a bomb in a shoe sounds far-fetched.

"But look at the result in this video. This is what we're fighting against."

The footage is now to be used by Scotland Yard to train its officers. Reid, 33, who was born in Kent, pleaded guilty to attempting to blow up Flight 63.

The court was told he was overpowered by passengers and crew as he attempted to light a fuse protruding from one of his shoes. He is serving a life sentence in the U.S.

Mr Hayman agrees with the News of the World that the public should see the shocking simulation of what he could have done as he says another attack is "highly likely".

Tags: Richard Reid Shoe Bomber FBI War On Terror Scotland Yard

The legal gun won this fight or...

How different things might have been at Virginia Tech if Seung-Hui Cho hadn't had the only gun on campus.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Kevin O'Brien

Plain Dealer Columnist

Arthur Buford is dead, and that's a sad thing.

Arthur had his whole life ahead of him. He was just a kid, after all - a 15-year-old freshman at John F. Kennedy High School.

What he didn't know, as he approached Damon Wells' house in southeast Cleveland on Saturday night, was that his whole life consisted of just a few more seconds.

Arthur had a gun, which he and another youngster apparently thought would give them the power to take something from Wells, who was standing on the front porch.

Whatever Arthur's plan was, it unraveled. It didn't account for the possibility that the guy who looked like an easy mark would have permission from the state of Ohio to carry a concealed weapon, or that he would bother to arm himself just to walk to the neighborhood store and back.

Arthur's plan depended on catching Wells off-guard. But Wells wasn't off-guard. He had a plan of his own, against the day when someone like Arthur might come along.

Wells' plan was to avoid becoming a crime victim, and that's how Arthur ended up dying of several gunshot wounds to the chest.

Wells hasn't given The Plain Dealer much more than monosyllables, and I don't blame him. What would he say? That he's sorry he was prepared? That he's sorry he defended himself?

Unless he's a man without a conscience, he probably finds it regrettable that it came down to a him-or-me situation. But it's clear that he's not a man devoid of the desire to go on living, so he's got to be glad that it turned out to be "him, not me." But you can't just come out and say that sort of thing without the sensitivity police coming after you, so the less said the better.

The real police, however, aren't planning to charge Wells with anything. They say the shooting was justified.

It's just about impossible to argue that, but here come the arguments.

Arthur's relatives and friends are upset that the law isn't going after Wells.

They want someone to blame - other than Arthur. But they shouldn't be allowed to bully the police or the city administration into taking action against a guy who was minding his own business on his own porch when suddenly confronted by an armed teenager.

Then there's the conceptual side of the argument - the big-picture side that says citizens shouldn't be allowed to have guns and certainly shouldn't be allowed to walk around with them.

This kind of incident proves knee-jerk gun foes wrong, and they know it.

"This is one of the few where they actually used it [a legally carried concealed weapon] to stop a crime," Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence grudgingly told a Plain Dealer reporter.

But there are more than a few such cases. There are thousands every year, all over the country.

And where are the statistics on gun crimes committed by holders of concealed-carry permits? Something tells me that if they happened at anything approaching the rate of the hundreds of thousands of crimes perpetrated against unarmed Americans every year, we'd be hearing more about them.

The fact is, the concealed-carry "threat" has turned out to be malarkey, just as it was in the many states that debated such laws long before Ohio.

Three of my last four columns have had to do with young people getting killed, and that's a sad thing. In two of those cases, a teenage boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing wrong when someone shot him.

In the third, 32 college students were doing what they were supposed to do.

After I wrote about last week's outrage at Virginia Tech University, I got a series of sneering e-mails from a reader, along the lines of, "Next, you'll be suggesting that teachers should be armed."

I think I'll take him up on that.

Damon Wells is about the same age as the students killed at Virginia Tech. He's got his whole life still ahead of him, and because he was prepared, he'll actually get to live it - presuming he escapes thug-enforced street justice.

How different things might have been at Virginia Tech if Seung-Hui Cho hadn't had the only gun on campus.

From Cleveland Plain Dealer

The day after the VT massacre syndicated radio personality Mark "Great One" Levin interviewed economist and author John R. Lott. Lott's groundbreaking book, "More Guns, Less Crime", was published by University of Chicago Press and is available everywhere including Amazon. An audio record of the interview (16:06 MP3) is here.

Tags: Virginia Tech Shootings Kevin O'Brien More Guns, Less Crime John R. Lott Mark Levin

The Single Square TP Technique Explained:
Singer Sheryl Crow wants us to help save the planet by using only "one square of toilet paper per sitting". Crow's brother goes one step further and suggests washing out the single square for future use! As many military old timers know, the "one square method" does work. Details here; audio from Rush Limbaugh program (8:37 MP3) today where caller Delbert explains. Not for the dainty.
Rosie O'Doozie says "one square's not enough for me"!

Remember, only one sheet per sitting! By the way, is that roll installed properly?

Tagged: Rosie O'Donnell Sheryl Crow toilet paper Rush Limbaugh single square tp
sheryl crow

Connecticut Needs An Official Punk Rock Song?

A bill to designate an official Connecticut polka song has prompted a call for an official Connecticut punk rock song! The Hartford Advocate reports (3/29/07):

When State Planning and Development Committee Clerk Eric Stroker heard the bill, he decided Connecticut needed to be the first state to adopt an official punk-rock song........The song he’s proposing, “Connecticut Fun” — recorded in 1983 by an informal, ad-hoc group of Connecticut punk musicians recording under the name Punkestra — is pretty much the least offensive song recorded under a punk banner except for maybe the Chipmunk Punk album. It’s unabashedly pro-Connecticut, with lyrics imploring listeners to come out and enjoy punk music in the state. (You Tube video of the song below)



Now hyper enthusiasm takes over as State Rep. Diana Urban (D-North Stonington), a proponent of the idea says:

“It’s hilarious.”

“We can move something like this through the legislative process, and it gives us a chance to step back and giggle a little. I’d love this to be the state punk-rock song. If you can’t step back and have a little fun, then you’re taking yourself too seriously,” Urban said."

Further unbridled praise: "Incas Records owner Joe Snow, who recorded the song in 1983 (says), the song captures a seminal moment in Connecticut punk.

“The recording of that song was probably the single most unifying moment in Connecticut music history,” Joe Snow said.

He added: “If it were up to me, not only would it be the official Connecticut punk-rock song, it would be the official state song of any genre.”

Wow! Maybe it's just me but I think any self respecting punker would disdain anything official, musical or otherwise, and especially anything that promotes giggles. We note, however, that other suggestions have been made including a song titled Connecticut is for F*****g
from a group calling themselves Jesus H Christ and The Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse. The song begins......

We live in the dullest state
Package stores all close at eight
Malls are full of optometrists
And restaurants we hate
Swimming across Lake Quassapaug
Stealing makeup, catching frogs
Cutting our feet on broken bottles
As we wade in the Shepaug
It’s true for horses, cows and dogs…

Connecticut’s for f*****g
That’s all there is to do.
I love to listen to classic rock
and have sex with you.

(complete lyric here-adult content
or listen here MP3)
It is a funny song. Their debut video is below which contains a fragment , at the end, of Connecticut's for F*****g

Joe's Pub Video CD Release Launch


Tags: Punk Rock Connecticut Official Songs

Sample of Statements Requiring a Purge of Talk Radio (According to Media Matters):

1. ____ called Rosie O'Donnell, co-host of ABC's The View, a "fat witch," claimed that O'Donnell has "blubber ... just pouring out of her eyes,

2. ____ claimed that there are three reasons that an illegal immigrant "comes across the border in the middle of the night": "One, they're terrorists; two, they're escaping the law; or three, they're hungry. They can't make a living in their own dirtbag country."

3. _____ said that McKinney's "new hair-do" makes her look "like a ghetto slut," like "an explosion at a Brillo pad factory," like "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence," and like "a shih tzu.

4. _____ stated that if the country is faced with an impending national disaster, then "hell, yes, we should save the rich people first. You know, they're the ones that are responsible for this prosperity."

5._____ stated that "since [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL] has -- on his mother's side -- forebears of his mother had slaves, could we not say that if Obama wins the Democratic nomination and then wins the presidency, he will own [Rev.] Al Sharpton?"

6. _____ proclaimed: My "cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life" because his pet cat "comes to me when she wants to be fed," and "[s]he's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually [a] very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it."

7. _____ stated that Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf "should be baking pies, not running a major city."

8. _____ agreed with a caller's assertion that illegal immigrants "bring corrupting influences" to the United States, including "a third-world value system" that "can corrupt the education system." _____ replied: "Absolutely. And that's why the dropout rate is so high."

9._____ played audio clips from Barbara Walters' interview with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, portions of which aired on the March 16 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, and called her a "double-talking slut." _____ added: "She's an empty mind-slut. She'd peddle anything for a ratings point." _____ went on to call Walters a "mental prostitute" and said, "I think that the woman is vermin. I think she's dirt."

10. _____ declared that "[t]he radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this county," adding that gay people "threaten your very survival." _____ also stated that homosexuals are "all not nice decorators" and warned: "Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda."

Have fun guessing who said these things that Media Matters finds so horrible. That group is leading the surge for the purge of talk radio. Note that there are no lefty commentators on their hit list. Oh, did you hear the Michelle Malkin / Malik Shabazz exchange on the O'Reilly show. Listen here for audio (5:27 MP3) of Michelle's interview with Malik Shabazz (2 days ago). Shabazz blames the "N" word on George Washington! Another audio here (5:25 MP3) with her interview with Opio Sokoni about rappers and the "N" word.

Tagged: Broadcast Censorship Politically Correct Speech Media Matters Bill O'Reilly Malik Shabazz Michelle Malkin

Imus Fiasco: The Marketplace Responds

We guess that the number of these shirts we see on the street will tell us something about our public discourse and whether something really evil occurred on the Imus radio program last week. See how an unfettered marketplace responds quickly to punish bad people all the while spreading their hateful ideas. The most disturbing aspect of the fiasco was the role of the race hustlers, Sharpton and Jackson, who are probably the least qualified people on the planet to cast the first stones. In his comments on The American Thinker, Duncan Maxwell Anderson notes:

In the post-Easter crucifixion of the "Imus in the Morning" radio show that substituted for news this week, the hypocrisy would make a Pharisee blush. All of a sudden, it's supposedly shocking that Don Imus referred to the Rutgers girls' basketball team with language that is routine on millions of "rap" recordings willingly bought by white and black kids alike for lo these 20 years.......

Never mind, even, that such jokes have been a staple of Imus' show for decades. Where have these shocked detractors been? Over the years, he has referred to Gwen Ifill of the New York Times as "a cleaning lady," called tennis-playing Venus and Serena Williams "animals" and compared the forwards of the New York Knicks to gorillas. Race aside, he routinely uses foul and sexually degrading language to middle-aged women who are guests on his show.

Curiously, those abused women on his show, strident feminists all, usually giggle appreciatively. I refer to columnist Maureen Dowd, reporters Andrea Mitchell, Claire Shipman, and Cokie Roberts, and plagiary-challenged historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, to name a few. But then again, they are usually on his show to promote their books....

Tagged: Don Imus American Thinker nappy-headed ho's

Pelosi's Spring Fling!

Ahh, it's Spring Break and this "Girl's Gone Wild". Nancy Pelosi has undertaken a personal and extra-constitutional jaunt to the Middle East to undercut U.S. foreign policy, to hobnob with our enemy in Syria, and to make a fool of herself.

"Stretch"* Pelosi and Bashar "The Chinless Thug" Assad

Pelosi later (now in Saudi Arabia) sidestepped a question on how she felt about the absence of female Saudi council members, saying: "I am very pleased that after 200-plus years in the U.S. we finally have a speaker. It took us a long time."

And what a disgrace that speaker is!

Here she is Chic to Sheik....**

I'm obviously disappointed. I think it is, in fact, bad behavior on her part. I wish she hadn't done it, but she is the speaker of the House, and fortunately I think the various parties involved recognize she doesn't speak for the United States in those circumstances. She doesn't represent the administration. The president is the one that conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.

V.P. Dick Cheney (Rush via Drudge)

*h/t Mark Levin for the "Stretch" moniker.

**h/t Drudge

Tags: Bashar Assad Mark Levin Syria Nancy Pelosi

The Brit Hostages......



OK, so the hostages are being released. Good, I am happy for them and their families. There they are smiling and waving for the cameras in their new (Iranian provided and ill fitting by the looks of them) suits. Their military uniforms discarded along with any semblance of esprit and discipline. No resistance whatsoever by these marines and sailors to their seizure in Iraqui waters and no cover or protection from the mother ship not far away. It seems that every last one of them provided whatever theatrics their captors suggested. Am I wrong in suggesting that such supine obedience to the propagandistic whims of third world islamofacists is shameful and further enables the Iranians' nefarious aims?

Back in their uniforms.....

Home at last: After leaving the plane the sailors lined up for photographers

Source: This Is London

Tags: British Sailors Marines Faye Turney British Hostages

The Owners of Defeat......



Photo of the Day..........

The Wireless Art


"As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction. These few indications will be sufficient to show that the wireless art offers greater possibilities than any invention or discovery heretofore made, and if the conditions are favorable, we can expect with certitude that in the next few years wonders will be wrought by its application."

Those are the words of Nicola Tesla in an article titled "The Future of the Wireless Art" which appeared in Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, 1908. Tesla, the much maligned and eccentric genius, had long sought the answer to electrical transmission without wires. Now tentative advancements have been made and a U.S. company has introduced a system for charging small devices, i.e. cell phones, at a short distance through the air using radio waves.

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

These are baby steps, but first steps.
Oh, and here's a funny ad from "Energy Star" featuring the first static electricity powered home:



Tags:Nicola Tesla PowerCast WirelessPowerTransmission

Remember Me! (Video)

Now, More Than Ever........



....They Need Our Support.

Watch This Video by Liz Palmer on You Tube; it will bring tears to your eyes but it is inspiring. The images are stills from the video.
Technorati: Iraq War Support the Troops Liz Palmer