The link Raymmmondo posted this morning on a local give-away list [like freecycle, but not] brings me to his websitepackratmom.com where he starts off telling his mother’s eBay saga with the phrase, “My mother is insane.” Raymmmondo proves that statement with pictures showing every room in the house where he lives with his mom overflowing – just filled to bursting point – with boxes, paperweights, dead plants, empty bird cages and a few years of saved junk mail. Everything, bought from eBay.
Obama told the truth. Thanks, Hillary, for pointing that out to us.
On Twitter Dave Winer mentioned that Obama was calling Pennsylvanians’ – and the nation’s – attention to the fact that it’s true that rural American people are angry and bitter as a result of patiently waiting 25 years for politicians they elect to stop selling them out and help them get their lives and their jobs back. I guess Obama became one of my heroes twice this weekend, because he told a really uncomfortable truth about American politics and refused to back off it. Then he admitted he was wrong for having made a poor choice of words when he originally made the statement.
Hillary lashes out and covers up, way too often.
Carl Bernstein wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, and this week he published an article about her presidential campaign. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the article. It’s well worth reading.
It happens that Mark Penn, the campaign manager Hillary recently fired, is the brother of a guy who was my physician for a long time. Deane Penn retired from practice maybe two years ago, but for many years I knew him as a thoroughly decent person, a committed activist in the Jewish community and an excellent doctor. Dr. Penn always referred to his brother’s work as one of the nation’s major pollsters, with great pride.
Seton Hall Law files immigrant abuse suit against Feds
Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler, PC, filed suit today in federal court, alleging that federal law enforcement officials violated the ten victims’ constitutional privacy and due process rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by entering their homes without consent or a judicial warrant during pre-dawn “raids”.
. . . immigration agents forced their way into each plaintiff’s home in the early hours of the morning without a judicial warrant or the occupants’ consent. Most of the plaintiffs were awakened by loud pounding on their doors and answered the door, fearing an emergency. ICE agents subsequently either lied about their identity or purpose to gain entry, or simply shoved their way into the home. During each raid the agents swept through the house and, displaying guns, rounded up all the residents for questioning. In some cases they ordered children out of their beds, shouted obscenities, shoved guns into residents’ chests, and forbade detained individuals from calling their lawyers. In at least half the raids, the officers purported to be searching for a person who did not even live at the address raided.
Singulair linked to suicide, depression
Since last October, Singulair allergy and asthma medication labels have warned that the drug is linked to, “suicidal thinking and behaviour.” The Wall Street Journal reports:
Singulair, made by Merck & Co., is approved to treat asthma and allergy symptoms such as sneezing and stuffy noses, as well as to prevent exercise-induced asthma. The FDA said in a so-called early communication that it is reviewing postmarketing reports of behavior and mood changes, suicidal thoughts and actions, and actual suicides by patients who took Singulair. The regulator also asked Merck to look at its own database for signs of trouble.
Dolphin rescues stranded whales
Moko the dolphin came to the rescue on Wednesday of a whale and her calf in New Zealand who were in danger of death. The pygmy sperm whales beached themselves several times while rescue personnel tried to find a way to guide them safely back out to sea.
“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”
Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.
New stove design fights global warming
Bob Crosby is putting years of experience in mechanical engineering and appropriate technologies to good use. He’s going to build a wood-burning stove that helps fight global warming …
Crosby said his stove will produce heat while providing fuel for cars, fertilizer for gardens and electricity for its own bellows.
A key fact scientific fact makes this possible.
Wood itself doesn’t burn. When exposed to extreme heat, wood gives off biogas, which subsequently burns. While these two occurrences typically happen in conjunction, this doesn’t need to be the case.
Fly-fishing for breast cancer survivors
Casting for Recovery is physical therapy for women after breast removal surgery. Fly-fishing requires the same range of motions traditional therapy offers to strengthen and develop muscles in the upper arm and body. CFR operates in the United States, Great Britain and Canada.
More info at Casting for Recovery.
Montel: “I want to talk about” Iraqi troops
Fox effectively fired Montel Williams after he stated during a televised interview that we ought to be at least as concerned about the 28 boys of ours who have died in Iraq since January, as we are about Heath’s death. He also shared the idea that the media community shouldn’t be discussing Ledger as an object in order to drive up ratings. This “young man . . . has not even been buried yet,” Williams admonished. He was, “somebody’s child, somebody’s father.”
How the Rabbi beat City Hall
Fair Lawn, Dec. 9 – An 8-foot-tall menorah has been placed in a yard across from Borough Hall, but even after all its electric candles are lighted, it will not outshine the Borough Hall and its tree, which have hundreds of lightbulbs.
A sign on the menorah – symbol of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which began Tuesday night – reads, “There will be liberty and justice for all when I am across the street.” Rabbi Levi Neubort of the Anshei Lubavitch Outreach Center in Fair Lawn has erected what he calls a “defiant menorah” on private property facing the municipal building, because borough officials have consistently refused to allow the menorah on town property.
NJ joins California lawsuit against EPA
by Star Ledger Staff and wire reports
January 02, 2008, 5:07 PM
California sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for denying its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, challenging the Bush administration’s conclusion that states have no business setting emission standards.
New Jersey joined the lawsuit and other states were expected to follow. The legal challenge was anticipated after the EPA on Dec. 19 denied California a waiver it needs under the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuit was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Making it isn’t all about hard work.
The myth is simply this: that if an individual will work hard, follow the rules, and be patient that they can be successful. . . The truth is that in accumulating wealth hard work plays a very small role . . . no group has worked harder than the slaves that built this country, the Chinese that built the railroad, or the Mexicans that continue to do the menial labor that drives our information society.
Today, as Tim Wise writes in “The Mother of All Racial Preferences” white baby boomers are benefiting from the largest transfer of wealth in American history as they inherit their parents’ estates. Some of that wealth dates back to the years of slavery, when Blacks were forced to work for free while their white owners and the American economy accumulated the benefits of their toil. Another large category of the transferred wealth is land, much of it stolen by the American government from Native Americans and Mexicans and sold for a pittance to white settlers. For the average white family, however, some of the largest sources of wealth are the result of racial preferences in government policies that were started in the 20th century.
Kids’ toy putting kids in coma
Aqua-dots, which were supposed to be the latest and greatest kid toy, are putting kids in coma and their lives at risk.
The toys were supposed to be made using 1,5-pentanediol, a nontoxic compound found in glue, but instead contained the harmful 1,4-butanediol, which is widely used in cleaners and plastics.
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The Food and Drug Administration in 1999 declared the chemical a Class I Health Hazard, meaning it can cause life-threatening harm.
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Both chemicals are manufactured in China and elsewhere, including by major multinational companies, and are also marketed over the Internet. Â
Verizon tinkers with dns & search settings
Overrides Internet Searches With Its Own Results
by Martin H. Bosworth, November 3, 2007
Subscribers to Verizon’s high-powered fiber-optic Internet service (FiOS) are reporting that when they mistype a Web site address, they get redirected to Verizon’s own search engine page — even if they don’t have Verizon’s search page set as their default.
“It was the very first thing I noticed when Verizon finally got FiOS installed here the other day. Very annoying and hardly in the spirit of net neutrality, eh?,” wrote one Webmaster World user, who originally had Google set as his default search engine.
More profound than chocolate
Vanilla has converted a new addict.
The truth is, I bought my very first vanilla bean only last week when I was making rice pudding. It’s not that I didn’t know how fantastic they are in all of their clarity of flavor and little-goes-a-long way charm, I was just both too cheap to buy them, and too afraid to go down that slippery slope whereby no extract would do ever satisfy me again . . .
This hasn’t kept me from feeling despicably posh in the week since as my worst fears were quickly confirmed: nothing else will ever do, ever. Fine, brownies don’t need freshly-scraped vanilla speckles, and maybe not banana bread either. Apple pie can do without and, yes, butter cream frosting as well. But custards, creams, puddings and, for certain, white cakes just hit the big time because, sweet mercy, fresh vanilla is a flavor more profound than chocolate. More profound. Than chocolate. Hold me.