text:
Do some politicians actually believe that America isn't waking up? Why else would Joe Lieberman pull the same stupid stunt that John McCain pulled... Going to Iraq and declaring it safe while surrounded by troops and helicopters and wearing better body armour than the military people who are having to protect his life?
Joe Lieberman in Iraq: "what I see here today is progress, significant progress."
What I see is a bigger ass than even John McCain. April 2007 is the third deadliest month for American Troops in this stupid and tragic war's history.
A soldier in Iraq: "We're not making any progress," Hedin said, as he recalled a comrade who was shot by a sniper last week. "It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at. … It's just more troops, more targets."
Lieberman was given a note card with questions from the troops. The number one question?
"When are we going to get out of here?
An Iraq veteran may lose his honorable discharge for wearing his uniform to a war protest. I don't understand this one. We had discharged vets at a highschool football game wearing their uniforms without permission. This man served in Iraq. He's worthy. He has every right to say "I am a vet, here is my uniform that I still wear proudly. The Iraq war is simply futile and wrong."
Will this man be another victim of Authoritarianism? Why can't America remember that every time we let the Authoritarians take charge, it means more tragedy and tears for our country?
Here's a clip on Authoritarianism just in case you can still sleep at night. Recognize any country you are familiar with?
Authoritarian regimes grant wide powers to law enforcement agencies; in the
extreme this leads to a police state. Authoritarian regimes may or may not have a rule of law. In the former case laws are enacted and though they may seem intrusive, unjust or excessive, they are applied to common people. In the latter case laws do not exist or are routinely ignored — government actions follow the judgments or whims of officials.
Democracies rarely exhibit much authoritarian behavior, except in transition to/from authoritarian states or when martial law is imposed (during war, for
example). Many (if not most) citizens of authoritarian states do not perceive
their state as authoritarian until late in its development. ....Wikipedia
Posted by Whites Creek at 8:31 AM 1 comment:
Why do they hate Our Health?
Republican administrations simply cannot be trusted to do anything to protect the common good and safety of America. I've said it over and over but nothing puts it in the headlights any better than this:
A small beef supplier wants to test every single head of beef for mad cow disease and provide only guaranteed safe beef. The Bush Administration is going to stop him.
So what's wrong with a supplier offering 100% testing on his product? Isn't that a "free market" concept?
"No freekin way!" says the Bush administration. That would mean that all beef suppliers would have to test their beef because consumers would prefer to buy the "safe" stuff. It would cost corporations money.
"WASHINGTON: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease."
Republicans...Keeping America Safe for Corporate Profits!
Posted by Whites Creek at 4:15 PM 1 comment:
BUH NAH NAH
Watching America is like watching an old Monte Python routine.
"You killed him!"
"No I didn't."
"Yes you did...You dropped a five thousand ton weight on his head."
"Well... he was armed with a banana."
You can apply that to about any situation the Bush Administration has gotten us into, like the Iraq war. Saddam, as it turned out, was pretty much armed with a banana.
"You lied!"
"Yes you did...You said he was going to make a mushroom cloud on America with Weapons of mass destruction."
"But I was right all along...See! He had this banana."
The Dick Cheney revelations just keep on coming in a similar vein.
"You revealed the name of a covert CIA agent in a time of war."
"Yes you did...The reports were issued yesterday proving it beyond any doubt."
"She had a banana!"
Everything Cheney has said turns out to be a lie and everything everybody else has said turned out to be true. Now it comes out that Cheney has ordered the Secret Service to destroy the official records of visits to his house, which is illegal.
So illegal act after illegal act comes to light and where is the oversight? Who protects America from a criminal in high office?
Congress.
Look out!
They're armed with a banana!
The Media and the Immorality Play
Our civilization is conducting an extremely risky science experiment with the chemical composition of the very air we breathe. The results are predicted to be overwhelmingly disasterous but we, as a society, have yet to accept the need for action.
The Knoxville News Sentinel's recent Citizen's voice feature was the source of much ridicule in my circle of friends, as we dismembered Pete Stevens irrational piece on climate change being a "Liberal" hoax. His lack of factual argument was obvious but there was a greater question that must be asked. Why do media outlets, such as KNS, give letters with glaring factual errors the same space as you do those that have been carefully checked and which provide references for verification? I'm referring to peer reviewed journals as opposed to the circular firing squads of conservative blatherers, whose quotations of each other go round and round and end up with a nonexistant basis in reality.
I think we can make fun of the outrageous claims all we want and nothing changes, unless we speak out. Those who understand truthful analysis must act to counter the hyperbole, wishful thinking, and fantasies of people like Mr.Stevens, whose main arguments consist of demonstrably false statements, which ultimately degenerate into the only real argument against climate change:
"Doing something will cost us money."
Was there ever a more immoral argument?...It's not even true!
But then there is the part that the Knoxville News Sentinel plays in this immorality play. Is there a greater immorality than giving voice to the irrational discourse of those who apparently do not care about our children's future, except to hope that their own die rich?
A news outlet that allows its pages to provide intentionally misleading information is shirking its Constitutional duty to inform the electorate. They would never allow someone to make the case that small pox was caused by demons, for instance. And yet they allow discredited information on something that will more than likely change life as we know it on this planet.
News outlets have allowed themselves to be pawns in the mass marketing of destructive ideas for long enough. I wonder how your editors can look themselves in the mirror. In more superstitious times, we might wonder if there was a reflection there.
After all, even If essentially all the scientists in the whole world could possibly make exactly the same errors in analysis, and we follow their advice and do something before it is too late to reverse its effects, it won't cost us much on average.
If we don't act now...It could cost us everything.
AS a subscriber to the Knoxville News Sentinel, I only ask that KNS be a vehicle for factual information. I would like to trust my newspaper's information. At present, I cannot. Our future is at stake here. It is important.
I use the analogy of the disasterously ill informed man who stood in the stairwell shouting through his bullhorn as the World Trade Towers burned,
"Go back to your offices, it's under control."
Those who believed him are dead, and now, The Knoxville News Sentinel is the bullhorn. Our world is on fire but it hasn't collapsed...
Memorial Day is celebrated in very different ways by Americans. One group does the pomp and circumstance thing, pins medals on war veterans, and continues on their merry way starting wars for economic rather than moral reasons.
Another small but growing very fast group of people honors our warriors by asking for peace.
I think Memorial Day ought to be a National Day of Apology.
Instead of placing a wreath in the unknown soldier's grave or whatever, I think the President ought to stand before the American people and say he's sorry for being so inadequate as a human being that he started the worst war in American history for all the wrong reasons and is simply incompetent at this point and unable to fix anything whatsoever, much less this war.
We, the People, should then look each other in the eye and apologize to each other for being so inadequate and undeserving of our freedom and comfort that we would ever elect such an inadequate person to the Presidency of the United States in the first place.
We have a "sorry" President and I'm sorry.
Peace and happy Memorial Day. May History forgive us.
The Bush War Theory Explained
Prairie Weather on how the Troops feel about the War
From our "I Hate Dick Cheney" Department:
"As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who
oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright
conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and
living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the
protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States.
Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem
to fall away."
Cheney is the kind of guy who gives slime a bad name. He must think the American Electorate is the enemy. I mean after all...We, the American People, would also like to be reassured that he would grant us the protections of the Constitution of the United States...Don't you think?
Is this a problem, Mr. Cheney?
Digby points out a fine detail:
"One more thing: the West Point honor code says, "a cadet will not lie, cheat or
steal or tolerate those who do." How in the world did they justify having Dick
Cheney speak at the commencement?"
And just to clear up one little detail...Dick Cheney isn't Not on the DC Madame's contact list.
What a piece of scum. (Hey Scum...If you're reading this, it;s a figure of speech, OK? No insult intended. What else would you prefer that we compare Cheney to? We're flexible, and always willing to do right by an honorable piece of scum. We had to take back that coment about slime mold, for instance...How were we to know slime mold was a colony of very liberal and progressive amoebas?...Sorry...The massive group sex thing had us confused...and a bit envious, actually.)
Posted by Whites Creek at 8:55 AM 2 comments:
Ab goes to Hippie Jack's Farm
Ab the Flagman
WhitesCreek's Brother, Les
Somewhere in the "lost" part of Tennessee, between Monterey and Livingston, Jack Stoddart has a lovely farm on the bank of the Obey River. Jack is a noted photographer of Americana and maybe some bluegrass. You've seen his work...most likely a picture of John Hartford, or Doc Watson, or both. Or if you've been to any number of big time photo galleries or the home of someone too rich to let me inside, you've seen something of his.
Jack also produces an Americana music series on PBS called "Jammin at Hippie Jack's." This year it will be recorded at his Americana musice festival on his farm this weekend. The artist my brother plays with closed down the show last night and I simply had to be there. Family duty, you understand...
Brothers and all.
Plus, I got to drink beer from the musician's tent and tour Jack's private gallery, while Jack was giving the Flying Pig trophy to the winner of the barbecue cooking contest. Did I mention the food was good?
In spite of the fact that there was no beer being served (officially...I mean, come on...it's a music festival...a "family" music festival) one gentleman, who I turned out to know from days gone past, managed to maintain a solid staggering drunk from 4:30 until midnight. Last I saw him he was lying face up in the grass after dancing right over the top of one of the funeral home chairs they'd rented for the crowd. His brother had asked him if he was all right?
"How the hell would I know?" he answered.
He was the exception. Mostly it was an old hippie crowd. You know...Folks who have jobs and families and aren't about to come clean to their kids about the early years.
"Don't ask me 'cause I won't tell and anyway, I'll lie if you try to corner me"... old hippies.
There were also a bunch of gray ponytails and one beard that went to the man's knees in a well done braid. I had to wonder how he dealt with it during certain personal moments but I moved on before my mind could arrive there.
The music was varied but good. One group to note was a trio of highschoolers from Greensboro , NC called Beaconwood. Young and quite accomplished, musically. I'm a fan.
At the end of the night, when everybody was tired and ready to crash, the sound checks and video checks, and whatever other kind of checks they do got done and Ab the Flagman and the X Miss Americas finally started.
Jon Schwenke on Bass.
Gabe Pline is stuck in the back on drums...but he got the Drummer Cam to make up for it.
Ab Ivens
Ab is either an Americana Artist who plays music or an Americana Musician who plays art. Both his music and art are of note and folks got to enjoy both kinds of notes because the stage had his art installed all over it. He's big on the American Flag but doesn't wrap himself up in it. Quite the opposite.
Ab wrapped the American Flag in his own self and dedicated "Drunk and Crazy" to all the women in his life. "Either you're Drunk...Or you're crazy...For loving me." Or something like that.
Anyway, the band rocks!
Creek Brother put on his skin tight super hero suit and flew his guitar around in the night.
I took pictures.
Posted by Whites Creek at 1:49 PM 2 comments:
Saturday Bird Blogging
This fledgeling Jay wasn't very happy with me and his mom and dad were sitting in the trees above, waiting to dive bomb anything that messes with Junior.
Ah, Spring.
Oh Seven
It's the Class of Oh Seven.
And it's a senior party.
Next year they will be at six different universities in at least four different states. This day they were finding out how much fun they could have with a 100 foot roll of plastic, two bottles of Dawn soap, ten bales of hay, a garden hose., and a hill
Thomas will make a big Splash at ETSU.
Bill slides over to High Point.
UT, University of the South, Saint Louis, MTSU, Pellissippi State, Roane State, and ETSU get a prime crop this coming year.
That's what two Valedictorians,
8 Varsity Soccer players (3 All District, One All Region, One MVP, One All State Nominee) ,
5 Highest Honors graduates,
4 High Honors graduates,
several senior superlatives, including Best Smile, Best Looking, Most Intelligent, Miss Roane County High, etc.
and well over a Quarter of a Million Dollars in College Scholarships
Look like.
Good Luck to an unusually great group of kids.
Posted by Whites Creek at 10:21 AM 2 comments:
"My Best Friend" by O. B. Laden
"The entire government has failed us on Iraq..."
"...And this President!
How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.
But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue
to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm's way, are bled white..."
"How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic."
Now....
President Bush just declassified a report that showed Al Queda is now operating in Iraq.
"See!" he shouted. "Al Queda is in Iraq...We have to keep fighting in Iraq because Al Queda is in Iraq!"
"Al Queda!...Al Queda!... Al Queda!"
Are you scared now? Are you ready to keep sending money to Dick Cheney's corporate partners so that more American troops and Iraqi citizens die?
Bush has not released THIS secret report that said the American presence in Iraq would be the biggest boost to Al Queda recruiting ever:
"WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence agencies warned senior members of the Bush
administration in early 2003 that invading Iraq could create internal conflict
that would give Iran and al Qaeda new opportunities to expand their influence,
according to an upcoming Senate report.
Officials familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation
also say analysts warned against U.S. domination in the region, which could
increase extremist recruiting. "
Got that?
George Bush is Osama's best friend...And he Knows it.
A Loonie friend of mine sent this response to my piece on Dark. Imagine a tall slowtalking Minnesotan tansplanted to deep deep South Carolina, where grown people are afraid of the dark, in more ways than one:
i used to think about it
then i realized that when i got up in the
night, out of the bedroom and went blind it was because of the giant WalMart
parking lot light that the neighbor across the street had in his
yard.
it's a rental, so between renters i went over and shot it
then i realized his neighbor past him had one just like it, was
also a rental, and did the same.
the side benefit was that i'd
been talking to another neighbor about the way his light shined on the
bedroom ceiling and when he found out about the ones i shot out, he turned his
another one blinds me when i come out of the shop after dark,
so i set up "bean poles" by the neighbors driveway to grow a kudzu fence
i get farther talking to people about Jesse Ventura (the mayor
of Wisconsin) than about dark.
Famous Actor for President
I think it's funny that republicans are trying to run Fred Thompson for president.
Fred is a competent character actor and a slightly less competent lawyer. Other than that, his credentials for the presidency can be summed up by the old line, "He's played one on TV."
I also note that Fred lists "Visiting Fellow" as one of the jobs he has held. He's talking about delivering his lines for the American Enterprise Institute which is a right winger's right wing talking point generator. Fred has also by his own admission, been a "visiting fellow" in another way. Says Fred, "I've chased a lot of women and a lot of women have chased me...And it's fair to say, if they chased me...they caught me."
Visiting Fellow, indeed. Fred apparently had a shotgun wedding at seventeen, but he did stay married for 25 years to the dear girl who worked to put Fred through Vanderbilt. I suppose that marriage couldn't survive his work as a visiting fellow, in spite of the three children involved.
Fred has a new wife and two new children. He's been a busy boy.
What got me going on old Fred is his acting career. Republicans have the tendency to elect second rate actors to important jobs. Their biggest hero was an actor. Ronald Reagan was best known for his movie death as the Gipper and playing second banana to a monkey. As President, Reagan was the figurehead for the most indicted Presidential administration in history up until right about now. On TV he was the announcer for "Death Valley Days." History now shows us "Death Valley Days" was also the role he played for America when he was supposed to be president.
I'm tired of incompetent figureheads who sell out my country so they and their friends can just get filthy richer.
So Fred Thompson is another second banana actor the republicans want to be president. I think that if they like actors so much, they ought to at least go for a leading man... maybe one with an Oscar?
Let me think...Hmmm...A man who played the leading role in an Oscar winning movie who has the qualifications to be President"
Hey, That would be...
Al Gore!
And by the time the election rolls around, Gore might have a Nobel Prize to go with the Oscar.
I think it's time to elect a real President, and not just someone who plays one on TV.
We don't usually think about the fact that it gets dark at night.
Darkness has been essentially banished in America and is actually pretty difficult to find. One of my personal gripes is the nightlight, several of which seem to be beaming in every bedroom window around the USA. Stop almost anywhere on any road at night and you will more than likely see them, shining all night long. Shining to banish the Boogeyman. Why else?
Richard Nixon made a grandstand play when he was president. He claimed that bright lights around the nation's Capitol kept crime down. Turned out that drug dealers liked the bright lights because it meant fewer rivals hanging out in the shadows when deals were going down. Deals were made under the bright lights where everybody could watch everybody else and then disappear into the darkness beyond the glare.
Another "common sense" idea shot full of holes.
The ubiquitous night light has several evil side effects. The glare of a light, even hundreds of yards away, actually obscures visability into naturally lighted areas...The sky, for instance.
Here in the gorge I have been admiring an old night time friend during my treks for nocturnal relief. My friend is the Milky Way. Remember the Milky Way? It's still up there, honest. It's our view from home of our galactic disc, only most of us can't see it from our homes. We look up an instead of the Milky Way, we see...night lights.
There's no real reason for this. There has been a movement to eliminate the glare from our skies that originated with astronomers but has been picked up by ordinary people who just want the stars back. It is called Dark Sky. There is no rational reason why a light should shine on anything except whatever it is that needs lighting up. Billboards, street lights, night lights, and thousands of other area lights are wasted. All they need are the proper reflectors or lenses to greatly reduce the glare and wasted light. Sure this a global warming issue. Sure this is a wasted energy dollars issue. Sure it is an issue of privacy and that your neighbor really doesn't have the right to shine his night light into your bedroom window because he is afraid of the dark.
But I want my stars back.
There are actually places in the word where the night needs banishing from time to time. In parts of Africa, babies are often born at night by the light of fires, lanterns and torches. Burning valuable fuels this way not only costs scarce resources but is a health hazard costing tens of thousands of lives each year. One group has decided to give the gift of solar light to poor regions in Africa. It functions by asking people to buy a solar flashlight. well actually Two solar flashlights.
Buy One Give One becomes BOGO.
Fascinating...
Increasingly Irrelevant?
I saw Al Gore on TV this morning and noticed that he's lost 15 pounds... And he's on the cover of Time.
"He's like the old boy friend you finally got over. He broke your heart.
You cried and cried. You worked hard to push thoughts of the tragic end of the
romance out of your mind. You promised yourself never to think about him or the
Dec. 2000 denoument ever again."
"But of course you did."
And he's still not running?
Jimmy Carter? Little old ethical-evangelical christian Jimmy turns out to have the biggest balls in the Democratic Party:
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this
administration has been the worst in history."
..the
president has presided over an "overt reversal of America's basic values,"
From deep in his bunker, White House, Bush spokesmen called it sad that Carter would issue such a "reckless personal attack" and that Carter was "increasingly irrelevant."
President Bush was bunkered up in his ranch davidian compound in Crawford Texas.
Yep, that's right...The worst president in history was on vacation again.
Everything is going so well in America.
A Fabulous Job
The Inner Circle of Roane County deviant political activists that I hang out with is having fun with the prospect of a Fred Thompson, Al Gore presidential matchup. Our elders think it is a sign of the apocolypse and salivate profusely at the very thought. Our brash youngsters think, "Huh?"
I've been wondering why people want certain other people to be president?
I think Republicans pick people for different reasons than Democrats. Dems look for a logial, thoughtful, visionary leader who can make good decisions...Republicans look for a father figure who can and will do whatever it takes to keep them in power.
Fred Thompson is a prototypical republican and fills the bill quite nicely. He is a professional liar in either of his two professed lines of work. He is an actor and a lawyer, neither of which is considered particularly respectable. He hasn't actually done anything particularly notable or worthy in his life, except pander to the financial interests of large campaign donors. He's chased a lot of women and run through several wives and at least one semi-famous country music star, and I guarantee Fred has spent just as much as, or even more than, John Edwards on what's left of his hair. In the Conservative world it is all about appearance and substance be damned...Fred LOOKS like a president, I mean, hell, he plays one on TV. No Democrat can touch that for a qualification.
Al Gore, on the other hand, started life as a rich kid but went on to make a gazillion bucks on his own. He also made an Oscar winning movie about trying to save the world...Al's silly ideas about "Saving the World" are apparently what get him high disapproval ratings with Republicans.
"Screw the world...It's all about MY money" the Republicans say...And about Cigars, and Gay Marriage, and multilple wives and girlfriends...That's what is really important for a president to understand.
Al Gore is also against torture. No way an anti-torture candidate is going to get the republican vote.
And Al thinks the Iraq war was a huge mistake. Fred says that makes him a surrender monkey. Even though Fred has no clue as to what constitutes "Winning in Iraq", Fred is all about winning. See. It's like this...Let's say Iraq is like a cliff and we are at war with the cliff, which makes about as much sense as why we are at war in Iraq. We can't surrender to the cliff...If we stop marching our American Troops right off that cliff...
The Cliff wins!
One more advantage Fred has over Al Gore...Al is married to the beautiful, intelligent, and well respected in her own right, Tipper Gore.
Right now, Fred is married to...Well, let's just say that Fred has a "type"...He's currently married to a woman who looks just like the "type" of woman Fred has always been associated with. That's the kind of consistency Republicans need in a presidential candidate.
A candidate who simply wants to "Save the World" for the sake of our children will never do. We need someone who can say to us...
"Listen, America...Sure I have no real qualifications for this job, but my current wife's boob job turned out fabulously well, don't you think?"
Election Fraud Math made Simple
Here it is, all bundled together with a ribbon on it. This is a great job of tying all the vote scams and stolen elections together with Bush's purge of the honest republicans in the Justice Department. It is worth noting that of the 93 Federal Prosecutors, all of whom were republicans appointed by Bush himself, he only tried to fire 23 of them and wound up firing 9.
See! There just weren't that many "honest" republicans in the first place.
In the previous 25 years, only 5 Federal Prosecutors failed to complete their 4 year terms and none, not one single person, had been removed for "political" reasons. Actually, these 9 weren't removed for political reasons, they were removed because they weren't corrupt! Bush fired them because they would NOT bring false charges against Bush's political enemies and pursued real investigations against actually corrupt Republicans.
Anyway, this is long but it's a great resource to hang on to.
Vaccinium arboreum
Ah...Friday.
Mom and Pop eagle are bringing in everything they can find to feed junior. A lot of it looks like road kill but I've never seen them hauling a possum. I'm thinking an epic battle is going on between the crows and the eagles for the fine carrion bounty littering Tennessee's Highway 27.
Dead squirrels make live eaglets.
I think I've finally identified the native shrubs that grow around the house. The blooms are certainly in the blueberry family but the leaves are much more waxy than you would expect. Turns out there are several hundred native blueberries...even the cranberry is a blueberry. When I told my wife that what we had so much of was called "Farkleberry" she looked at me, paused, and simply said, "Call 'em something else."
The locals call them Mountain blueberries and they are sort of edible, though not exactly tasty if conditions are right, but they have tons of tiny seeds and simply aren't good enough for pancakes. Sparkleberry" is another common name but I like "Farkle."
Well, I'm married and only rank as high as second in command on a good day.
The sparkle(farkle)berries closest to the house are in full bloom right now and they are gorgeous. In the Fall they turn a rich wine red and the leaves hang on forever. I'll post some pictures later on when I'm at a different computer and have a high speed connection. I'm glad to have a name to hang on them.
Actually, I just remembered that this flycatcher is sitting right outside my window in the very top of one of the sparkle(farkle)berries.
He doesn't care what I call it.
I like this guy
"Found myself a picker friend who's read yesterday's news"
There were some empty seats at the Tennessee Theater last night for the Tony Rice / Allison Kraus / Union Station concert. Not many but a few. I was greatly saddened for those folks who weren't there. They must be in the ICU hooked up to tubes too short to reach downtown Knoxville or they'd be there for sure.
Tony Rice is a superior guitar player in a world of superior guitar players..."Acoustic Bluegrass Transcendant" I would call it. The world's best still breathing dobro player, Jerry Douglas, joined Rice for a way too short set of trade licks and trade back instrumental amazement and the crowd was nearly silent through most of the playing, fearing that any sound of approval would make us miss something awesome that we couldn't get back. Rice even asked why we were so quiet saying it was making him "a nervous wreck up here." We obliged but the recent drunken rowdy crowd noise at the Theater was much more contained last night...not subdued because we went crazy between songs, just contained so we could hear what we came to hear.
Did I mention Allison Kraus, Barry, Ron and Dan? They were awesome, too. But I could take a permanent Tony Rice band member in Union Station. It would cost me a small fortune in cd's but whatever. I'm still hunting through my collection looking fto see if I have Tony Rice and Norman Blake doing Church Street Blues.
One thing I've learned to take with me to TT concerts is a pair of my small birdwatching binoculars. How else would I have learned how differently Rice uses a capo or that Allison wears six inch heeled boots that would make that other Rice, Condi, jealous. Tony also had a matching gold pen and pencil set in his coat pocket to set off the gold chain and three gold rings on his pick hand.
Tony Rice plays a beat up Martin but his suit and tie were immaculate. John Edwards got nothing on this guy.
"Get myself a rockin' chair
To see if I can lose
Them thin dime, hard times,
Hell on Church Street blues."
Now......
Montana Governor Switzer:
...Tuesday, Schweitzer announced he had signed a bill to "re-regulate"
NorthWestern Energy, paving the way for the state's largest utility to build or
own power plants again and pass on the costs to ratepayers. The bill is a step
toward cheaper electricity for Montanans, he wrote in his signing statement.
It also protects Montana consumers from out-of-state corporations "that
place its profits above the economic health of this state and its people," and
is the first step toward lowering carbon dioxide emissions by limiting
pre-approval to power plants that sequester the greenhouse gas, he said.
Governor Switzer is a Democrat who faces a Republican majority in the legistature and faces them well. He has a 70% approval rating in spite of Montana being a red state.
He faces token opposition but points out that a few things about a republican group airing ads against his proposals:
"They're good at that," he said of Republicans. "They do not appear to be good
at legislating.
They're good at raising out-of-state money and saying mean
things about people."
Like I said...I like this guy!
Switzer
Report from Breakfast
It's officially summer for the college aged son and the "Last week ever" for the high school senior son. The nest will empty out in August but for now it is full and happening.
Breakfast is the only time everyone is in the same room. For some mysterious reason inside the human existence, work and school days start within minutes of each other, and we as a family actually get to see ourselves together.
All parents are proud of their own children and would give their own lives to protect them. That is why I feel so incredibly sad and angry about news of this man's loss. It is his personal pain and it is ours. It is a tragedy and it will happen again and again until we do something about it, since our leaders seem to be otherwise occupied.
George Bush was waving a stick at the band and pretending to be a conductor while the news came that 1st Lt. Andrew J. Bacevich was dead in Iraq. The band was playing "Stars and Stripes Forever." George Bush's own children are partying somewhere under protection of the Secret Service.
Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. is a conservative republican who, nonetheless, has opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. Now, while our Commander in Chief acts like a complete fool, Andrew Bacevich senior must deal with burying Andrew Bacevich, Jr.
"I can only imagine the special agony reserved for a professional military man to lose a child in a war he has now spent years arguing was a mistake. "...Josh Marshall
My family has left the house headed for their various daily routines. My heart follows them leaving me incomplete until they return.
What can George Bush feel about the children whose deaths he's caused?
What must anyone who has ever supported this war feel?
I think President Bush lives in a fantasy world where all his decisions are right. I think it is up to the rest of us now.
Update (replies):
I'm READY - but what is the plan - I will be first in line !! ...charlie
The only time I ever saw your little boys was in 1989 at the first Rendezvous near Houston. Tempus fugits. My little boys are now 37 and 35, one with two kids and the other with their third being born this Thursday. Two little girls and three little boys. I'm sad for the world thats being made for them. I can't do a thing about it...bob
Mother's Day Proclamation
"From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up withOur own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of homeFor a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace..."
From the original Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe
I am surprised at how ignorant we are.
Very few people I've spoken to know that the Iraqi Parliament voted us off the island this week. A majority voted to demand that Bush set a withdrawal date, which is pretty tough to do since a fair number of the Iraqi Parliament has been killed or has left the country. But for this vote, they got a quorum.
They seem to know that Dick Cheney went to Iraq and stood behind an armored podium surrounded by camoflaged sand bags and told an assembled group of our troops that he appreciates the sacrifice they are making and will get to see their families in a couple of years, maybe. Then he got in a jet and flew away. People know about this part of the Dick Cheney news but they don't seem to know that Dick Cheney's name has popped up in the DC prostitute scandal.
Talk about service to your country. Any whore that has to service Dick Cheney...OK, I'm too grossed out to go there, sorry.
And folks don't seem to know that a billion dollars worth of Iraqi oil is missing and that Halliburton's fingerprints were left at the crime scene...Dick Cheney again. Oh wait, I read the numbers wrong...Iraq is missing between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil a DAY! Taking the lower figure of 100,000 times 365 days a year times 3 years ( I know we've been there for four years but hey...corruption on this scale takes a while to get going even if you're the vice president) times $60 a barrel is about 6.6 BILLION DOLLARS on the low end and maybe 20 BILLION DOLLARS on the high end.
Screw getting guns and robbing banks! Clyde woulda run for high office if he were around today! And judging from Clyde's absolutely weird sex life, he would have had to be a republican. "Normal" ain't in the picture for those people, as we've seen with Jeff Gannon, male prostitute, Ann Coulter (you tell me), Bill O'Reilly (falafel in the shower), Newt Gingrich(boat load of wives), Duke Cunningham(boat load of prostitutes), etc etc...The list of sex scandals from the republicans is topped only by the list of out and out corruption investigations.
Here's another little tidbit that people are ignorant about. The institution of marriage is safe. It's true...Gay people aren't going to destroy it. Actually the most destructive group as far as marriage is concerned would be Baptists and Evangelicals. a marriage is much more likely to last among catholics and muslims, who have very very strict religious laws governing divorce, and also Atheists. Yep...Atheists are very likely to stay married with a 20% divorce rate. The overall rate is between 30 and 36% so your chance of a failed marriage is at least 50% greater in church...I have just one thng to say about that...
There's a reason we are gettin stupider and its all about the media. it's RIGHT WING! As an example, CBS just fired one of their military advisors, General Batiste because he pointed out that president Bush lied when bush said that he listened to his commanders about Iraq. They kept employed seeral advisors who regularly pimp the 'Surge". Well the surge aint working and CBS is pimping for the Bush administration just like the DC Madame did for her girls.
Anyone who won't service Dick Cheney gets fired.
"Over the last seven years of the Bush Presidency, we have seen the abuse of government to promote a political agenda designed to benefit the conservative base of the Republican Party, special interests and major financial contributors. From holding secret meetings for the energy industry to re-writing science findings to cooking the books on intelligence to the firing of U.S. Attorneys, this Administration has shown time and time again that it will abuse its power and authority."
Michael Moore's letter back
Supporting the Troops
Vice President Dick Cheney addresses U.S. troops Thursday, May 10, 2007 at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq.
"Many of you have had your deployments extended, and that puts an unexpected hardship on you and your families," the Vice President said.
"I want you to know the extension is vital to the mission. The Army and the country appreciate the extra burden that you carry."
Then Cheney got in his heavily guarded plane, and with gin and tonic in hand...sneered out the window at the black of night and flew back to his home.
Rude, Rdy-er, Rudy-est
Talking Points Memo has the story but Wonkette says it so much better:
"After getting the contribution from Iowa farmers Deb and Jerry
VonSprecken, Rudy's campaign asked the VonSpreckens to host a fundraiser at
their house. They happily agreed and spent every spare moment getting the place
ready for the big event with Rudy and a hundred wealthy contributors.
But then the campaign found out the VonSpreckens are just working
farmers and don't have a million dollars. See, Rudy's campaigning to the very
wealthy in Iowa on abolition of the millionaire's death tax, so he can't be seen
with any goddamned poor people or his commitment to the ultra-rich will be
questioned."
Rudy Campaign Reportedly Snubs Farmer For Not Being Rich [TPM]
No Ruth?
I heard Hugo Chavez referred to as a "ruthless Dictator" on Fox News recently. Ignoring the fact that he was democratically elected in internationally supervised elections with far more credibility than recent American presidential elections, Hugo has about 70% approval rating in Venezuela. That's more than twice as many folks who approve compared to George Bush.
Hugo may be a socialist but he ain't no dictator. Whether or not he is without "ruth" is a matter of conjecture. So far all he has done is take back Venezuelan oil rights from the international oil cartels and used oil profits to help his own people. This of course has infuriated the American right wing, who think using perfectly good money to help your own citizens reeks of outdated American ideals, now tossed aside in favor of Corporatism and government "Of the rich, By the rich, and For the Rich".
One of these rich people who started his own religion is Pat Robertson. Preacher Robertson, being a self proclaimed man of Jesus, has called for Hugo to be shot for the crime of helping poor people with his country's oil money instead of giving it to Exxon-Mobil or Chevron.
Some people are turned off by Hugo's "Socialist" label. He is a democratic socialist, to be exact. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as George Bush and Condi Rice would have you believe. America's closest ally is an elective dictatorship and the Bush family's best friends run a dictatorial monarchy. 19 of the 20 terrorists who committed the acts of 9-11 come from Bush's best friend's country...Oh yeah...and so did the Bush family business partner's little brother...Osama Bin Laden. At least Hugo was elected by his people. Neither the Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair, nor the King of Saudi Arabia were elected by their people, and as we are finding out...Neither was George W. Bush, in all probability.
Hugo ain't perfect but he's a damned sight better than what we have, in regards to serving the citizens of his country. For instance, what do you think Hugo would have done about Katrina? I suspect he would have had a similar photo op but then there would have been a follow through, unlike what we saw with Bush, who was playing guitar while new Orleans drowned.
We have one Citgo station around here and I buy gas there when I can. If Venezuela can stand up to George W. Bush, I can help them by buying their gas.
Now if only we could get America to stand up to George W. Bush.
For another voice, here's one person's...
Letter to Hugo
Well, If it makes ME lots of Money.
I can understand people causing harm by their actions when they have no idea about the relationship between their action and the resulting harm. But most people who learn that, say, tossing a rock at Mrs. Johnson's window will shatter it and throw glass shards all over her living room and maybe cause somebody to get cut and bleed all over everything and have to go to the hospital and get stitches and then have to go back and get the stitches taken out and it'll hurt and everything...Well, once human beings learn this they pretty much try not to put a rock through Mrs. Johnson's window.
Except for those human beings we have come to call "sociopaths." This type of personality never seems to ask what they can do for others but only what can they get others to do for them. Instead of "All for one and One for all" it's more like...
"All for me, and screw you."
Psychologists estimate that there are one or two sociopaths in every 200 or so people. We have all dealt with them whether we realize it or not. The legal system deals with them a lot, but there are very successful sociopaths who never get in legal trouble. They are called Chief Executive Officers and get paid lots of money to make lots of money for large corporations. like Disney, GE, and the Gambino Crime family.
I was thinking about sociopaths because they cause a great amount of long term damage to human society and the world in which we must live. They tend to think in short term gain and don't realize that things they do today can come back to bite them later on. I was actually thinking about sociopaths because of reading, not about President Bush this time, but about National Coal company. I decided that we humans have created an entity that has the basic purpose of avoiding personal responsibility. We call this evil thing a "Corporation."
Corporations have no morals. They feel no responsibility to human beings as a whole, only their stock holders, and in reality, only their majority stockholders, as anyone who ever tries to back a stockholder initiated action at The shareholder's annual meeting will find out.
For a Corporation, it is just like I said, "All for me and screw you." Only there is actually no "ME" as far as a corporation is concerned. In legal parlance, it is called a "legal fiction".
Now there are other facets to this fiction that we should think about. For instance, since Corporations have no inherent conscience, It is up to legislation to provide one. Labor laws are one attempt to provide corporations with a functioning conscience, and corporations don't like labor laws one bit. No sociopath would, actually. The very idea of treating other people fairly doesn't make one bit of sense to an "All for Me" mindset.
Here's an example of a corporation making it a good thing to screw people. It is from the Mountaintop removal people, National Coal:
An excerpt from National Coal's Securities Exchange Commission filing:
"We are not burdened by below market long term pricing contracts and because our
workforce is not unionized we do not have the extensive union pension and health
care liabilities, including black lung liabilities and post-retirement medical
benefits, that impact many of our competitors."
Want me to translate that for you? Ok...
"Screw people...We have big machines! And so what if we leave a huge
mess that lasts for generations...we make lots of money!"
The SEC is the US government agency responsible for the Corporate Conscience but only as it relates to rich people's money, particularly rich people who are majority stockholders. You can boil the SEC philosophy down to a few simple phrases...
"It might be really bad unless it makes us money and then it's good."
"Destroy the environment? Well, if it makes us a lot of money..."
"Poison people's water wells? Well, if it makes us a lot of money..."
"Destroy entire mountain ranges, ecosystems, and the livelihoods of people who live there?..."
"Well, if it makes us a lot of money..."
"Destroy entire communities, poisoning them for generations, in order to get to high sulfur coal that we aren't allowed to burn in the United States because it poisons the very air we have to breathe, but we can ship it to China and let them burn it even though the sulfur just goes up into the air and blows right back over the USA and drops right back down on us as acid rain and poisons our water and kills fish and everything else and makes folks sick, but only those who have lungs..."
"Well, If it makes National Coal money..."
I think it is time to ask governor Bredesen to give some thought to surgically implanting a conscience into the coal industry.
http://www.ilovemountains.org/memorial/c436/
life on the other side of the window.
Flycatchers are nesting under every eave. This one sits a few feet away from my desk and sings merrily away, mocking me for being inside on a day like today.
The downies are almost tame and ignore us if there's peanut butter in the suet feeder. My home made suet can't take the heat and drips this time of year.
This is a really bad shot of the oriole hanging out on the hummer feeder. Apparently they do that. We don't see many of these here, ok, one so far ever. This one was stunning in the sun but wouldn't hang around for me to get a proper picture.
Here's How...
The Worst President in American history got re-elected..Here's how...
Break the Law and help steal the election for Bush and get appointed to a nice US Attorney's position in Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas.
So Bush starts a war by lying to America, but our troops go to Iraq anyway.
A fair percentage of those troops are minorities who tend to vote Democratic.
Republican operatives send letters to the home addresses of troops who are stationed in Iraq at the moment.
The letters are "returned" of course, since the recipient is off in another country serving their country.
Republicans demand that the recipient be removed from voter lists because thier address is incorrect, thereby "caging" 70,000 votes in Florida alone and roughly one million votes overall. Had these people been allowed to cast their votes, George W. Bush would have won Ohio and some other states by too many votes for Republicans to steal.
This theft of the 2004 election for George W. Bush was orchistrated by Timothy Griffin, former aide to Karl Rove and now US Attorney for Arkansas. The methods he used are plainly illegal under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Griffin should be in jail.
Mr. Rove should be in jail.
Mr. Bush should be impeached.
The plan to keep these guys in office in spite of clear criminality?
"Gum it to death!"
All of this has come to light as a result of Karl Rove's emails being subpoenaed. Where is our "Liberal" Media?
Why aren't we as a nation outraged? Nobody knows this crime was committed. Griffin brags about it being kept out of the news.
Our Media are traitors to the Constitution. We have a President who stole his election and appointed a criminal to the position of US Attorney General.
Yesterday the band played "God save the Queen" at the White House...They should have played...
"God save America", because there is no justice in America's Justice Department.
Kansas Governor Sebelius...
"We're missing about half of our trucks from the National Guard units," Sebelius
said. "Clearly trucks to haul this debris away would be enormously helpful.
We are missing flatbeds. We are missing Humvees, which are used to get people to
safety and security and to haul equipment around. We are missing a number of our
well-trained National Guard personnel. The equipment that we continue to harp on
that has been sent overseas when our troops are deployed and not restored at the
same level could be enormously helpful."
Last December Governor Kathleen Sebelius asked the Pentagon to replenish Kansas equipment left by the National Guard in Iraq. This is just one more dirty little secret about the Iraq War. National Guard equipment needed to keep our states safe and respond to emergencies has been taken to Iraq and not replaced. State Governors from both parties have repeatedly asked President Bush to respond to their needs but nothing has happened. I have to question whether someone lying beneath the ruble will die because heavy rescue equipment is not available? Gone for Bush's war.
Feeling safer now?
Posted by Whites Creek at 12:47 PM No comments:
Can't tell the Players...
It's tough to keep up with all the Republican scandals going on. Newt gingrich has publicly called for Republicans to pretend like George Bush is dead and to act like the Justice Department's Prosecutor gate, the jack Abramoff scandal, the DC Madame, Dusty Foggo Duke Cunningham, scandal, the Tom Delay indictments, didn't happen and what are you talking about the Iraq war, Walter Reed hospital, Katrina, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" I don't know about any Katrina, why are you bringing up old news, Republicans are so damned crooked they can't walk a straight line between oxycontin and viagra doses, yeah, like that ever happens.
So anyway, just to get us a score card so we can keep track of which Republican is indicted, which Republican is investigated, which Republican is convicted, which Republican pleaded guilty, and which Republican is in jail, which Republican is on the DC madame's phone records but only for 90 minute perfectly legal $275.00 massages (yeah right) and because there are actually a few republicans who aren't on any of these lists, well so far...Ok, breathe...
So anyway, just so we can keep track of these people, Josh Marshall has an ongoing list, appropriately called "The Grand Ole Docket" which seems to get more names and scandals added every single day, and yes, it includes all the Democrats who are under investigation, there just aren't enough to notice by comparison.
I still have the same question about bribery...If a lawmaker accepts a bribe in return for voting a certain way...Why does the legislation remain on the books? I believe our laws would be significantly different if we struck all tainted legislation, and that America would be better for it.
And why isn't bribery punished as fiercely as treason? It's the same thing, isn't it?
One reminder...As diligent as the folks at TPM work, they are behind in posting corruption information. For instance: Alaska "Bridge to nowhere" Senator Ted Stevens' son is currently under investigation for bribery. A chip off the old block, it appears.
Standards?
The eagles are flying upstream very early this morning, and that should mean they have their nest going again. When the nestling (or nestlings, they had twins last year) get to squawking, Mom and Dad fly by with all sorts of dead things in their talons. They are lazy and opportunistic, and food thieves but they'll keep the baby fed, whatever it takes. They will take road kill away from a bunch of crows on occasion.
Baby loves road kill, apparently.
I've seen them come by with rabbits, ground hogs, and squirrels, But I've never seen an eagle fly by with a possum. Even eagles got standards.
The stupid season will last much much longer this election cycle. We will have primaries before Christmas this time. I wish we could wait until next spring to start this thing. And then, instead of letting Iowa and New Hampshire pick our nominees, why couldn't we have a series of National primaries? It's all screwed up, but don't worry...Our state parties will work overtime to figure out how to screw it up far worse than it is now.
The takeover of American media by the right was excruciatingly apparent in the differences between the questions asked of the Presidential candidates in recent debates. I could only watch so much.
For the Democratic candidates, Brian Williams read questions that sounded like the "When did you stop beating your wife" sort of thing.
WILLIAMS: Senator [Barack] Obama, you go first. You've promised in your campaign a new kind of politics, but just this week, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on questionable ties you have with a donor who was charged last year for demanding kickbacks on Illinois business deals. Aren't you practicing the very same kind of politics that many of the others on this stage have engaged in?
Senator Obama answered well but there was a misleading attack on Senator Obama in the question itself. Brian Williams essentially implied that the other candidates were corrupt. If anybody practices that kind of politics they weren't on the Democratic stage but the other one later in the week. The Republican party is bleeding scandal anfter scandal but it was never brought up in their questions.
Williams also phrased a haircut question to John Edwards in such a way as to mislead folks about Edwards' haircut, which was simply billed to the wrong account. Edwards has great hair and spends a lot on a haircut..but not $4oo as was claimed.
This wasn't fair to the Republicans...Chris Matthews could not have addressed similar questions to Giuliani and McCain, because these GOP front runners...
Don't HAVE any hair.
Is it fair to ask Obama about a campaign donor he has never met but not ask Giuliani about his best friend at one point, Bernie Kerik who has connections with the Mob? And is charged with corruption?
Here's what Giuliani got asked:
Matthews: "Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan's morning in America?"
That's not a question...that's a campaign ad!
Is this what we bargained for when we invaded Iraq? Videos posted on the internet of a young girl being killed while an Iraqi security force watches?
Baghdad, May 4: "A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion... "
"A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead. The stoning happened last month, but only came to light on Wednesday with the release of the Internet video. It is feared her death has triggered a retaliatory attack. Last week 23 Yezidi workmen were forced off a bus travelling from Mosulto Bashika by a group of Sunni gunmen and summarily shot dead."
The rest of this ugly story
Un real Reality
"The fact remains that it would be easy to point our finger at the bankers and the financiers, Jewish or not, for the fact that our great nation can't compete in the market place with the Asiatics. And it would be easy to blame the liberal leftist, Jewish or not, for sacrificing our working people on the altar of
economic Bolshevism."
"We have been complacent, because we have been gullible, and we have been naive, we have allowed them to exercise their genetic need to dominate a Christian world. So don't blame the Jews for doing it. Blame it on yourselves for letting them."
Well, OK, Fred actually did say these words but they were from a tv show in 1988 when Reagan was President.
Was Fred typecast? Will this get shown on a tv commercial? will America confuse the plain dealing honest poitician and lawyer Fred plays on tv with the real Fred? Will they identify the racist, fascist, fearmonger Fred plays on tv with the real Fred? TV roles such as that may have helped him win the Senate in Tennessee, but I wonder about his chances in the rest of the country.
Remember that they killed Pee Wee Herman because the actor who portrayed him got caught kinking out in a porn movie house. There is a distinct inability for Americans to distinguish TV from reality. If Gore runs, will we see the Saturday night Live clip of him in a hot tub with Joe Lieberman? I'll bet you money!
If Fred Thompson runs, and his wife is pushing hard for her chance to be first bimbo (Hey..Republicans started this), I have to think we'll see a rerun of Fred's immortal words as he speaks at a fundraiser while holding his copy of Mein Kampf, personally autographed by Adolph Hitler :
"Open your mind and open up your hearts and open up your wallets and accept your birthright to a land of pure blood, pure spirit, pure belief and our divinely ordered superiority as a people."
Actually, that's not that different from the Republican platform right now today, is it? Fred was simply ahead of his time.
Posted by Whites Creek at 10:56 AM 1 comment:
suplemental reading for Extra Credit
This post is a liveblog from last night's debate:
You know what these guys do? They make Reagan seem kind of cuddly, don't they?
He was a real mean, stupid old man and he's looking better by the second.
Another take on the Republican debate...totally insipid, demeaning, low class...and funny.
(Parental Advisary) Note: comments are actually as funny as the piece.
Giulliani is actually nuts. Everyone who knows him or has reported on him says so.
(That's why he's such a good republican candidate)
And our President is diagnosed as a Narcissistic Sociopath?
This is not news to this group. WhitesCreek's official therapist made that diagnosis several years ago.
After the hard freeze killed back the spring foliage and blooms on our trees, everyone was wondering when we would actually see green again. We had the worst of situations, the freeze and a spring drought. not only are the trees stressed with frost damage but they got no "juice" to work with.
Normally we get a combination of springs drizzle, lasting for days, and spring storms lasting for a few minutes. This year we're missing the drizzle and the storms have been few and far between, but the ones we have gotten have been doozies. Last evening we got over an inch of rain in a few minutes. Unfortunaltely, I was driving home in the storm and couldn't really appreciate the light show and percussion that played back up to the water. Overnight we can now see green amongst the brown. It doesn't take Mom Nature long when she gets an opportunity.
I'm concerned about things though. Trees do a lot of things on many levels, to make our lives worth living, and they provide food for nearly everything in the forest. In the first rush of spring, they would normally provide pollen and nectar for a wide range of insects and the insects would be food for a wide range of bigger insects and birds, frogs, lizards, and so on, but this year I don't know what's going on up there in the tree tops. Later this year, the normal crop of nuts and berries will be nonexistant.
As a result, I predict bears in garbage cans all over the Southeast.
Next year, as a result of the missing acorn and hickory nut crop, there could be a missing bear cub crop. the food situation will be that dire in most areas of the freeze. I'm not sure how our authorities wil react to the roaming bear problem but I suspect a fair number of them ...bears, not authorities... will be killed. I hope not, but being prepared is not one of our strong points as far as local communities and their "Authorities" go.
In the meantime, I plan to enjoy our second spring. Let's hope summer takes its time getting here.
Looks like Grover Norquist was a friend/client of Debrah Jean Palfrey's, of the D.C. Madame scandal. Why is it that people like Mr. Norquist, chief economist for Bush, can't get laid on his own? He apparently is not content with just screwing our entire Nation and needs the services of prostitutes as well.
Not a day passes, now, without some new corruption coming to light in the Bush Administration. the worst one of all is the Justice Department scandal. When Justice is corrupt, who will prosecute the criminals? Albert Gonzales and his minions seem to be willing to persecute Debrah Jean but not the lobbyists who used her services to bribe Congressmen.
Hang on, though...This one is just getting started.
Bush said what?
There's a big yah-yah going on about Bush's Presidential veto of the Iraq war budget. Bush and his accolytes have called the Democratic bill, "The Surrender Bill" because it tells the "enemy when we plan to leave.
Bush is engaging in nothing more than partisan politics, doing everything he possibly can to deflect criticism of his own abject failure as a president. Everything, thst is, except suddenly becoming competent at his job.
Here is a quote from Nancy Pelosi that points out how much of a hypocrite George W. Bush is:
The president said, in his comments, he did not believe in timelines, and he spoke out very forcefully against them. Yet in 1999, on June 5th, then-Governor Bush said, about President Clinton, "I think it's important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they would be withdrawn." Despite his past statements, President Bush refuses to apply the same standard to his own activities.
Somehow I keep coming around to thinking that if President Bush were actively trying to destroy America, he couldn't be doing any better job than he is now.
Speaker Pelosi is also doing an admirable job, but a job of turning the tide against this country's Conservative enemies. Let us hope that the only people who follow President Bush over the cliff he's headed for are his goose stepping, extreme right wing accolytes who are the remaining base of the Republican party.
Peace please,
Here's a fine take on the Presidential veto from the Knoxviews.com proprietor.
Last Night's game
Kingston (blue) at Cumberland County
Everyone loves the Ref...(Before the game)
Captains Bill, Cam, and Thomas with Coach Campbell.
In spite of the hair, Number 4 was a good player
Adam takes it away
Andrew = Intensity
May Day Pecker
Linguistics explained
Paul Wolfiwitz thinks the World Bank is hypocritical for asking him to resign just for giving his girlfriend $200,000 a year in their money for sex. Pray tell, dear mr. Wolfiwitz, what exactly does the World Bank do that makes you feel so righteous in your own personal corruption?
Ok, Funniest quote yet from Wolfie:
Paul D. Wolfowitz defended himself vigorously on Monday, declaring that it would
be "unjust and frankly hypocritical" for the World Bank's board to find him guilty of ethical lapses. ...
I think what Wolfi is trying to say is that the World Bank is mostly a bunch of blod sucking leeches and how dare they call him a fungus for merely trying to get his girlfriend paid with their money instead of his own.
For the arithmetically impaired (which really means "disinterested" because it ain't that hard) let me put a $200,000 salary in perspective. At PamelaMartin.com Wolfi would have had to pay $275 a visit for whatever it was that his girlfriend was providing for him in the way of "Legal Massages" yeah right. That means that Wolfi could have had 727 nice little 90 minute massages for the same money but he would have had to pay for it himself and it may have been easy for a Jew to get a girl who "spoke greek" or could he have gotten one that "Spoke arabic" like his girlfriend does...whatever that means?
So Wolfi could have been visited twice a day, every day, all year for the World Bank's $200,000 and it could have been a different girl with a minimum education of 4 years of college plus a Masters Degree. That Pamela runs a quality line of Ho's, I mean Massage Therapists, if I do say so.
(And I might if you push me.)
Debrah Jean... Call Talon News
Here's a good overview of the DC Madam's operation. It's truthful and somewhat graphic without going overboard, but be forewarned. Andrew Tobius claims he just used PM for massages. Well maybe he did, but as you will see, the legality of a massage depends on what part of the body is getting the rub down, and that's as clean as I can say it.
PamelaMartin.com
Now let me say this...WhitesCreek's number is not, never has been, and as far as I can possibly forsee, will never ever be, in the phone log of any service like the one that Debrah Jean Palfrey was running. Having said that, I have mixed thoughts on prostitution and whether it should be legal or not.
One one hand I think that what ever freely consenting adults decide to do with each other, whether it is for a good meal and a movie or cash, is none of anyone else's business. The other hand thinks there is way too much opportunity for abuse. I get all circular in my reasoning and have no conclusion to share.
AS far as the Washington scandal is concerned I do have one question...Why is Debrah Jean Palfrey being investigated and charged for running a high class call girl operation but Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon male prostitute who spent 100 nights in the White House, skating free?
Just askin'
Conceptual Reality
I'm still repairing the yard after my septic system failure. I'm still repairing the basement as well. The basement is where most of the stuff went that was supposed to go in the septic tank.Thousands of dollars later it has occurred to me that outhouses were replaced as we became more modern and civilized, but I'm not completely sure why. I mean why is it a mark of civilization that we poop INSIDE our houses now?
Isn't there something deeply and fundamentally wrong with that? We spend truckloads of money getting crap out of the house that we could just walk a few pleasant yards and deposit things nicely where there would be no chance of it ruining the carpet in the basement should there be a malfunction. As a public service I will not release further details of any graphic sort and shift focus to a more esoteric discussion..
I've lived in several places with no plumbing and I kind of liked it. Parts of it anyway. A living style that requires us to walk out into our yard at various hours and several times a day isn't all bad. I've had wonderful encounters with the indiginous night life and then there was the stray cat that took up residence in a rather fancy johnny house behind the place where we lived in the South Carolina hills. He turned out to be mean enough to survive our yard dogs and sweet enough to give away to some folks who laughed at his story and named him Seemore Butts.
That house was interesting in that the hand dug well had an electric pump installed and we had hot and cold water for the kitchen sink which drained to the garden patch. It made us careful about what we poured into the sink. The house was also interesting in that it had originally been a chicken coop for a large family farm but had been renovated for the grandmother in her last years. It is a mark of the old South that the farm animals had better roofs than the children, so don't feel sorry for granny because she was sent to the chicken coop. I suspect it was a loving gift.
I joke with our firstborn about his start in this world., but he doesn't seem to think that we need to use it as a slogan should he ever run for office. While Abe LIncoln was born in a log cabin, The same panache doesn't ring out from being "Conceived in a chicken coop."
The "catfood eating bunting" turns out to be a Blue Grosbeak.


We can't resist a crowded garage, and this one held not one, but two S-Classes!
Our Benz tips the scales at over 3600 pounds, so we brought a larger-than-average truck to tow it home. As usual, we used a Trailer World aluminum trailer.
The cheapest new car in America–the Nissan Versa–starts at $11,990. A decent, newish used car costs about $4,000. Both of these options are still a little rich for our blood, and they lack one thing we love in our cars: a bit of character.
So, it should come as no surprise that we jumped on this $300 1984 300SD when it was offered to us by a somewhat-intoxicated man at a July 4th party. It doesn't run, it doesn't really roll, and it hasn't been driven in 5 years. Our goal is to change all three of these things.
Can we cheaply drive (or float) around in what was once the flagship of the Mercedes-Benz lineup? Or, will we be forced to abandon our wallets at the dry-dock, left kicking ourselves for not buying that Versa when we could?
Before we could answer any of these questions, we had to pick the car up. At this point, we've done this a million times. The seller actually remarked "wow, you guys are fast!" Within about 10 minutes, we had the blue behemoth up on our trailer. The car was only a 15 minute drive from our shop, so we didn't have to invest much time, effort, or even money to become proud Mercedes-Benz owners.


This Easy Vegan Tofu Sour Cream is much healthier than regular sour cream. Use as you would regular sour cream or as a dip for chips and veggies.
1–12 oz. box of firm or extra firm silken tofu.
Place all ingredients in a blender and process until mixture is smooth and creamy.


Lansky Extra Coarse Sharpening Hone.
Lansky Sharpening System stones are mounted on specially designed color coded holders with comfortable slip resistant finger grooves and are embossed with grade of stone for instant identification.
Extra coarse...super fast cutting stone to cut away large amounts of steel from extremely dull or deteriorated edges.


text:
#include <HgRenderQueue.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#include <Windows.h>

//this structure is pretty compact. It may be good to allocate as an array for better caching
typedef struct HgRenderQueue {
	render_packet* rp;
	struct HgRenderQueue* next;
} HgRenderQueue;

typedef struct render_queue {
	volatile HgRenderQueue* queue_head;
	volatile HgRenderQueue* queue_tail;
	volatile uint32_t count;
	volatile LONG wait;
} render_queue;

static render_queue to_draw;
static render_queue unused;
/*
static volatile HgRenderQueue* queue_head = NULL;
static volatile HgRenderQueue* queue_tail = NULL;
static volatile uint32_t count;

volatile LONG wait = 0;
*/

volatile uint32_t hgRenderQueue_length() {
	return to_draw.count;
}

static void _push(render_queue* q, HgRenderQueue* x) {
	x->next = NULL;

	while (InterlockedCompareExchange(&q->wait, 1, 0)>0);

	if (q->queue_head == NULL) q->queue_head = x;

	if (q->queue_tail == NULL) {
		q->queue_tail = x;
	}
	else {
		q->queue_tail->next = x;
		q->queue_tail = x;
	}

	q->count++;
	InterlockedDecrement(&q->wait);
}

static HgRenderQueue* _pop(render_queue* q) {
	HgRenderQueue* x = NULL;
	while (InterlockedCompareExchange(&q->wait, 1, 0)>0);

	if (q->queue_head != NULL) {
		x = (HgRenderQueue*)q->queue_head;

		if (q->queue_head == q->queue_tail) {
			q->queue_head = q->queue_tail = NULL;
		}
		else {
			q->queue_head = x->next;
		}

		q->count--;
	}

	InterlockedDecrement(&q->wait);

	return x;
}

static void HgRenderQueue_init(HgRenderQueue* x) {
	x->next = NULL;
	x->rp = NULL;
};

void hgRenderQueue_push(render_packet* p) {
	HgRenderQueue* x = _pop(&unused);
	if (x == NULL) {
//		printf("ALLOCATE\n");
		x = new HgRenderQueue();
	}

	x->next = NULL;
	x->rp = p;

	_push(&to_draw, x);
}

render_packet* hgRenderQueue_pop() {
	HgRenderQueue* x = _pop(&to_draw);
	if (x == NULL) return NULL;

	render_packet* rp = x->rp;

	HgRenderQueue_init(x);
	_push(&unused,x);

	return rp;
}

render_packet* create_render_packet(HgEntity* e, const Viewport& vp, HgCamera* camera, HgScene* scene, uint16_t idx) {
	render_packet* rp = new render_packet();
//	RenderElement* rp = new RenderElement();

	rp->renderData = NULL;
	if (scene == NULL) return rp;

	if (e) {
		rp->position = e->position();
		rp->rotation = e->orientation();
		rp->scale = e->scale();
		rp->renderData = e->getRenderDataPtr().get();
	}
	rp->camera = *camera;
	rp->viewport = vp;

//	rp->element_idx = idx;
//	rp->scene = scene;
//	rp->element = e;
	return rp;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


British singer and songwriter Sampha has just released a 37 minute short film - 'Process' - a visual contextualization of the 28-year-old's most recent album of the same name. Produce in January, the piece was filmed between Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Morden, South London by Pulse Films director Kahlil Joseph, the brilliant mind behind Beyonce's Lemonade and several music videos for FKA Twigs and Kendrick Lamar.
Both locations are of significant meanings to Sampha; Freetown being the hometown of his parents and Morden the London suburb he grew up in after his family's move to the U.K. The intense short film is dedicated to the artist's mother, who died of cancer in 2015. Featuring "ghostly spiritual surfer guides, crop circle dance formations, time altering narrative leaps," the film shifts between two dissimilar cultures.
"It's been a genuine pleasure collaborating with Kahlil on this film. He has such a unique visual language and has found such a beautiful way to tell this story." Sampha said in a press release. "I'm really proud of it and happy it's being shared."
Peek the snippet above, and head to Apple Music (where it's currently streaming exclusively) to watch the full film.


text:
Trump Says Bannon's Staying Put As White House Strategist
May 2, 2017 By Daniel J. Solomon
Nadav Kander / Time Magaz...
President Trump has decided to pull Steve Bannon out from under the bus, signaling in a Tuesday interview that he will be keeping on his chief strategist, who seemed for the past month to be on the ropes.
"Bannon is a very decent guy who feels very strongly about the country. Likewise, Jared. And they're getting along fine," Trump said in a talk with Bloomberg, saying that infighting between Bannon and sometime nemesis Jared Kushner had subsided.
He also described Bannon as "alt-left," a twist on the charge that some have leveled at Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, that he backs the racist "alt-right" movement. Bannon has previously said that he turned Breitbart into "the platform for the alt-right."
The new words from Trump represent a change from last month, when he coolly referred to Bannon as a "guy who works for me" and removed him from the important National Security Council.
In his interview with Bloomberg, Trump also predicted that other high-profile administration figures, like Press Secretary Sean Spicer, counselor Kellyanne Conway and Chief of Staff Reince Preibus, would still be in their offices several months from now.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
This story "Trump: 'Alt-Left' Bannon Won't Leave White House" was written by Daniel J. Solomon.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
"""
Utilities for kPAL unit tests.
"""

from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function,
                        unicode_literals)
from future.builtins import range, str, zip
from future import standard_library

from io import open
import itertools
import os
import shutil
import tempfile

import h5py
import numpy as np

with standard_library.hooks():
    from collections import Counter

# Some 8-mers.
LENGTH_8 = ['GTACATGA',
            'TAAACTAA',
            'TATCTTTA',
            'TACTATGT']

# Some 8-mers with N bases.
LENGTH_8_WITH_N = ['GNACATGA',
                   'TAAACTNA',
                   'TATNTTTA',
                   'TACTATGN']

# Some 60-mers.
LENGTH_60 = ['GTACATGATAGGTCCACAGCTCTGAGCAAGGCAGACGTCCATACTTAAAACCCAGACTGC',
             'TAAACTAAAAGAAAGAATTTTTTTAATGGTAGACTACCTAAAATTATGTCTCTTAGTCCT',
             'TATCTTTACCTATATATTTGACTAAGATTTAGTATTACTACTACCTAAAATTATGTCTCT',
             'TACTATGTCTTGAAGGACAGCACCTGACCTCCCCCTGCAAGGTGTCATCCCCAAGCTGGT']

# Some 60-mers with N bases.
LENGTH_60_WITH_N = ['GTANATGATAGGTCCACAGCTCTGAGCAAGGCAGACGTCCATACTTAAAACCCAGACTGC',
                    'TAAACTAAAAGAAAGAATTTTTTTAATGGTAGACTACCTAAAATTATGTCTCTTAGNCCT',
                    'TATCTTTACCTATATATTTGACTAAGATTTAGTNTTACTACTACCTAAAATTATGTCTCT',
                    'TACTATGTCTTGAAGGACAGCCCTGACCTCCCCCTGCAAGGTGTCATCCCCAAGCTGGTN']

# Some more 60-mers.
LENGTH_60_MORE = ['TTACAATGATTAGGTCCACAGCTCTGAGCAACGCGCAGACGTCACATACTTCAAAACCCA',
                  'TAAAAACTATATAAGAAATCGAATTTTCTCTTAATGGTAGCAGCTACCGTAAAATCTATG',
                  'TACGCCTATATATCTTTGACTAAGCATTTATGTATTACATACTAACCAAAATTACTGTCT',
                  'TACTAAGTTTTGAAGGACAGCACATCACCTGCGCAATATCGGTGTCACCCCATAGCTCCT']

# Some alternative names for these k-mers.
SEQUENCES = LENGTH_60
SEQUENCES_SHORT = LENGTH_8
SEQUENCES_LEFT, SEQUENCES_RIGHT = LENGTH_60, LENGTH_60_MORE
SEQUENCES_WITH_N = LENGTH_60_WITH_N
SEQUENCES_SHORT_WITH_N = LENGTH_8_WITH_N

def reverse_complement(sequence):
    """
    Reverse complement of a sequence represented as unicode string.
    """
    complement = dict(zip([ord(b) for b in u'ACGTacgt'], u'TGCAtgca'))
    return ''.join(reversed(sequence.translate(complement)))

def counts(sequence, k):
    """
    Simple and naive k-mer counting. Returns a dictionary of `k`-mers with
    their counts in `sequence` (implemented as `collections.Counter`).

    To be used as a reference.
    """
    if isinstance(sequence, str):
        if sequence.startswith('>'):
            sequences = [s.split('\n')[1] for s in sequence.split('>')[1:]]
        else:
            sequences = [sequence]
    else:
        sequences = sequence

    counts = Counter()
    for sequence in sequences:
        for i in range(0, len(sequence) - k + 1):
            kmer = sequence[i:i + k]
            if 'N' not in kmer and 'n' not in kmer:
                counts[kmer] += 1
    return counts

def as_array(counts, k):
    """
    Convert dictionary of k-mer counts to a list containing the count for
    every possible k-mer.
    """
    return np.array([counts[''.join(s)] for s in
                     itertools.product('ACGT', repeat=k)])

def count_index(sequence):
    """
    The index of `sequence` in a kMer profile.
    """
    nucleotide_to_binary = {
        'A': 0x00, 'a': 0x00,
        'C': 0x01, 'c': 0x01,
        'G': 0x02, 'g': 0x02,
        'T': 0x03, 't': 0x03
    }
    binary = 0x00
    for b in sequence:
        binary = ((binary << 2) | nucleotide_to_binary[b])
    return binary

def count(profile, sequence):
    """
    The count of `sequence` in a kMer profile.
    """
    return profile.counts[count_index(sequence)]

class open_profile(h5py.File):
    """
    Context manager for an open kMer profile file.
    """
    def __init__(self, filename, mode='r'):
        super(open_profile, self).__init__(filename, mode=mode)
        if 'w' in mode:
            self.attrs['format'] = 'kMer'
            self.attrs['version'] = '1.0.0'
            self.attrs['producer'] = 'kMer unit tests'
            self.create_group('profiles')

def test_profile(profile, counts, k, name=None):
    """
    Validate the given kMer profile, using `counts` as a reference.
    """
    assert profile.length == k
    assert profile.total == sum(counts.values())
    assert profile.non_zero == len(counts)
    assert np.array_equal(profile.counts, as_array(counts, k))
    if name:
        assert profile.name == name

def test_profile_file(filename, counts, k, name=None):
    """
    Validate the kMer profile in the given filename, using `counts` as a
    reference.
    """
    with open_profile(filename) as f:
        name = name or list(f['profiles'].keys())[0]
        assert name in f['profiles'].keys()
        profile = f['/profiles/%s' % name]
        assert profile.attrs['length'] == k
        assert profile.attrs['total'] == sum(counts.values())
        assert profile.attrs['non_zero'] == len(counts)
        assert np.array_equal(profile[:], as_array(counts, k))

class TestEnvironment(object):
    """
    Test class providing an isolated test environment for each test.
    """
    def setup(self):
        self.temp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix='kmer-tests-')

    def teardown(self):
        shutil.rmtree(self.temp_dir)

    def empty(self):
        """
        Create an empty file and return filename.
        """
        os_handle, filename = tempfile.mkstemp(dir=self.temp_dir)
        os.close(os_handle)
        return filename

    def fasta(self, sequences, names=None):
        """
        Create a file and write `sequences` to it in FASTA format. Filename is
        returned.
        """
        names = names or ('sequence_%d' % i for i in itertools.count(1))
        filename = self.empty()

        with open(filename, 'w') as f:
            f.write('\n'.join('>' + '\n'.join(entry) for entry in
                              zip(names, sequences)) + '\n')

        return filename

    def profile_old_format(self, counts, k):
        """
        Create a file and write `counts` to it in the old plaintext format.
        Filename is returned.
        """
        content = '%d\n%d\n%d\n' % (k, sum(counts.values()), len(counts))
        content += '\n'.join(str(counts[''.join(s)]) for s in
                             itertools.product('ACGT', repeat=k)) + '\n'

        filename = self.empty()

        with open(filename, 'w') as f:
            f.write(content)

        return filename

    def profile(self, counts, k, name='1'):
        """
        Create a file and write `counts` to it in HDF5 format. Filename is
        returned.
        """
        filename = self.empty()

        with open_profile(filename, 'w') as f:
            profile = f.create_dataset(
                'profiles/%s' % name, dtype='int64', compression='gzip',
                data=[counts[''.join(s)] for s in itertools.product('ACGT', repeat=k)])
            profile.attrs['length'] = k
            profile.attrs['total'] = sum(counts.values())
            profile.attrs['non_zero'] = len(counts)

        return filename

    def multi_profile(self, k, counts_list, names=None):
        """
        Create a file and write multiple `counts` to it in HDF5 format.
        Filename is returned.
        """
        names = names or [str(i + 1) for i in range(len(counts_list))]

        filename = self.empty()

        with open_profile(filename, 'w') as f:
            for counts, name in zip(counts_list, names):
                profile = f.create_dataset(
                    'profiles/%s' % name, dtype='int64', compression='gzip',
                    data=[counts[''.join(s)]
                          for s in itertools.product('ACGT', repeat=k)])
                profile.attrs['length'] = k
                profile.attrs['total'] = sum(counts.values())
                profile.attrs['non_zero'] = len(counts)

        return filename


text:
Q: Slow: Getting the results count of a query using a subquery All I'd like to know is how many records there are in my query results but MySQL keeps kicking me off saying I have lost my connection. The query itself runs in about  a second.
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
(SELECT my208.eid AS contact, name AS the_status, cid208.lastmod AS status_date, boo208.boo_medium
FROM the_emails.my208
LEFT JOIN the_emails.cid208 ON cid208.eid = my208.eid
LEFT JOIN the_emails.boo208 ON boo208.eid = my208.eid
LEFT JOIN the_config.classes ON boo208.class_id = classes.id) foo

Why is this taking so long and is there a better way?

A: Include the count(*) in your inner query itself. See the modified query below.
Give it a try
SELECT my208.eid AS contact,
name AS the_status,
cid208.lastmod AS status_date,
boo208.boo_medium,
COUNT(*) as total_records
FROM the_emails.my208
LEFT JOIN the_emails.cid208 ON cid208.eid = my208.eid
LEFT JOIN the_emails.boo208 ON boo208.eid = my208.eid
LEFT JOIN the_config.classes ON boo208.class_id = classes.id

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Inside our Virgin voters" series, we pay attention to what young people and first-time voters have to say about the problems that subject most to them. With increasing numbers of students promoting the Green party and environmental triggers , we ask teenagers about their frame of mind towards meat. Wow…there is a whole lot information on here my brain is spinning. I have been a vegetarian since my middle twenties. I am now an active" 55 time old that has been told I've osteoporosis in my lumbar spine. I have been questioning if not eating meat has harmed me. I really do eat eggs, dairy products and fish. I used to be told I had been very Le LT, et al. Beyond meatless, the health effects of vegan diets: Results from the Adventist Cohorts. Nutrition. 2014;6:2131.
During pregnancy, nutritional needs increase. The North american Dietetic Relationship has found vegan diets sufficient for fulfilling healthy needs during pregnancy, but pregnant women and nursing moms should complement their diets with supplements B12 and D.36 Most doctors also advise that pregnant women supplement their diet with flat iron and folic acidity, although vegetarians normally consume more folic acid solution than meat-eaters.
To make the situation worse, the mutation also hinders the development of beneficial Omega 3 fatty acid which is defensive against heart disease. Although it might not have mattered when the mutation first developed, because the industrial revolution there's been a major switch in diets from Omega 3 - found in fish and nuts - to less healthy Omega 6 excess fat - within vegetable oils.
I am in the process of going vegetarian for Vegan - This specific diet includes fruits, fruit and vegetables, beans, grains, seeds, and nut products. All animal sources of protein - including meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, milk, parmesan cheese, and other milk products - are excluded from the diet. The ethical university of vegetarianism generally originates from two viewpoints, the one that raising and eating animals for food is inherently cruel, and another that it is wasteful and taxing on the surroundings.
My husband slipped beef & pork and added fish to his diet. And we both eat tons of healthy colorful veggies, nuts & seed products, legumes, & brown rice. Most People in the usa also eat much too much low-quality proteins and non-vegetable sugars (i.e. grains), which likely accounts for almost all of the difference seen when comparing vegetarian to non-vegetarian diets.


text:
Il Guarabione è un torrente del Piemonte che, dopo un breve tratto in provincia di Vercelli, bagna la parte sud-orientale della provincia di Biella per rientrare poi provincia di Vercelli nella parte più bassa del suo corso; è tributario del Cervo.

Corso del torrente

Il corso d'acqua nasce poco a est del poggio su cui sorge il Santuario della Madonna degli Angeli, al confine tra i comuni di Brusnengo (BI) e di Roasio (VC).
Passato con andamento nord-sud nei pressi di Curavecchia (una delle frazioni di Roasio) riceve da destra le acque della Valle Camino; dopo essere stato scavalcato dalla dall'ex SS Biellese (ora SP 142) entra quindi nella Baraggia e segna per un tratto il confine tra le province di Biella e di Vercelli.
Il suo corso si divide in questa zona in due rami che corrono nettamente separati per vari km e si ricongiungono in comune di Masserano poco a monte dell'attraversamento della ferrovia Biella – Novara.
Segue un lungo tratto tra le risaie del basso Biellese al termine del quale il Guarabione rientra in provincia di Vercelli. Intersecata la Roggia di Buronzo confluisce infine nel Cervo attorno a quota 170 m s.l.m., in comune di Buronzo.

Una parte del corso del torrente è inclusa nella Riserva naturale orientata delle Baragge.

Affluenti
Il Guarabione dopo un breve tratto collinare scorre nella pianura Biellese-Vercellese dove non riceve affluenti naturali di particolare rilievo.
Il più rilevante dei canali intersecati dal Guarabione è la Roggia di Buronzo, un cavo artificiale lungo 2,680 km che preleva acqua dal Cervo poco a sud di Castelletto Cervo.

Utilizzi
Il torrente, in particolare nel suo lungo corso attraverso la pianura risicola subisce una serie di piccoli prelievi a scopo irriguo.

Come nel caso dei vicini torrenti Rovasenda e Marchiazza la sua portata non è però sufficiente per sostenere l'irrigazione di grossi comprensori agricoli e il regime idrologico è troppo discontinuo per garantire contributi idrici costanti nel corso dell'anno.

Note

Voci correlate
Idrografia del Biellese

Altri progetti

Guarabione
Guarabione
Affluenti del Cervo

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Geography and religion had in ancient times connected Ethiopia and Italy. Italy was then seen as the nearest major European country by Ethiopian Christians and hence could easily be accessed.
Italian Christians also viewed Ethiopia as very accessible since it was basically the only Christian polity outside Europe, according to history.
Even though many Ethiopians went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they observed Rome as wealthier and politically attractive.
History says that by the early 1400s, pilgrims and diplomatic representatives from Ethiopia had begun travelling to the Italian peninsula for political and religious reasons.
Through their travels, Ethiopian-European relations were formed and this lasted for more than 200 years.
As the Ethiopians travelled across Europe, they attracted scores of Europeans such as merchants and religious personalities to their highlands as well.
These journeys ensured technological transfer and cultural exchanges between the two. It further forged one of the first Euro-African political alliances between the kingdoms of Ethiopia and Portugal.
The above visits by Ethiopians were mainly believed to be made on unofficial purposes.
In 1402, however, the first visit of a sub-Saharan diplomatic mission to Europe was recorded.
This was when the Ethiopian emperor Dawit (1379/1380–1413) sent an embassy to Europe, which had reached Venice by 23 June 1402, requesting that a number of artisans are sent to his domain.
These official envoys were chaperoned by the Florentine Antonio Bartoli, carrying expensive gifts and asking for artisans to travel with them to Ethiopia.
Some historical records indicated that five artisans departed with the Ethiopian envoy that August, but not documented if they arrived in Ethiopia.
However, the arrival in Ethiopia of the True Cross and a silver chalice made in Venice has suggested otherwise.
Another possible sign of their arrival is an itinerary of a journey from Venice by Rhodes, Cyprus, Jerusalem, Cairo and Axum to the court of Preste John in Shewa, which O. G. S. Crawford, an archaeologist dates to Dawit's reign.
Even though Venice did not receive further embassies, and eventually gave way to Rome as the ultimate centre for Ethiopianist knowledge, Venice continued to facilitate transits between worlds.


Heilbronn, November 21, 2017 – Those who have experienced the beyerdynamic Aventho wireless Bluetooth headphones and their innovative sound personalization first hand will redefine individual listening pleasure forever. This is especially true for visitors at CanJam Europe in Berlin, the leading European trade fair for headphones and personal audio: The trade visitors have chosen the newcomer from beyerdynamic as the 'best headphone portable'. This does not come as a surprise: The Aventho wireless with its Tesla transducers offers an outstanding music experience that can be optimally adapted to the user's hearing with the unique Mimi sound personalization technology and the beyerdynamic MIY app.
Since the first CanJam Europe five years ago in Essen, Europe's first and largest trade fair for headphones and portable audio equipment has gathered a loyal following. In 2017, the trade fair brought exhibitors from Israel, the USA, Singapore, China and many European countries to Germany – this time to the Berlin Musikhotel nhow. At the same time, an extensive programme of lectures was held there, with many experts and exciting topics. Gunter Weidemann from beyerdynamic, who spoke together with Bernd Kopin from Mimi Hearing Technologies about audio personalization, was one of the main speakers. After the theoretical basics, the practical experience was close at hand: beyerdynamic presented the new Aventho wireless Bluetooth headphones for the first time at CanJam Europe.
The Aventho wireless are closed-back, midsize headphones. They are perfect for music consumption on the move. Due to the aptX HD Bluetooth transmission the headphones receive the audio signal wirelessly in top quality. The beyerdynamic Tesla technology offers unmatched sound quality for headphones and the compact Tesla transducers with their powerful magnetic drive enable extremely high-resolution as well as transparent and detailed music reproduction. The new mobile high-end headphones also offers innovative controls: The right ear cup is designed as a touch controller and fingertip gestures conveniently call up all functions.
The absolute highlight is the individual sound personalization: Recent research results in audiology confirm that hearing is as different as the human being itself. In order to create a "tailor-made suit for hearing" and based on these scientific findings, beyerdynamic cooperated with Mimi Hearing Technologies when creating Aventho Wireless. For the first time, Mimi's sound personalization enables an individual hearing profile for the tuning of beyerdynamic headphones. The parameters determined by the soundcheck of the "Make it yours" app (MIY app) will be saved in the device itself. Combined with beyerdynamic Tesla technology, this results in unparalleled sound quality. Never before did music sound this perfect.
Due to its outstanding qualities it is not surprising that CanJam visitors chose the beyerdynamic Aventho wireless for the 'best headphone portable' award. Such a high distinction in an audiophile audience underlines the sound quality achieved with the personalization function.


AT&T announced that it was partnering with Bolt, Berenak and Newman (BBN) to become an Internet service provider to businesses nationwide. The service will start by providing dedicated access for Fortune 1000 corporations and eventually will be extended to small and medium-size businesses. On August 1, AT&T and BBN will begin offering Internet services ranging from simple connectivity to full consulting services in selected markets across the United States. On September 1, they will expand to national coverage.
The partnership, which is expected to generate more than $120 million for BBN Planet over a three-year period, combines AT&T's networking capabilities with BBN's expertise in Internet connectivity. The two companies will jointly develop new customer services.


Editors performed at the Ziggo Dome on the 27th of March. This concert was sold out. Tickets were on sale via Ticketmaster.
Well that's not quite enough for me dear, Editors! The Brittish gentlemen rocked the Ziggo Dome with hits like "A Ton Of Love", "Sugar" and "The Racing Rats"! But "Papillon" made sure no one in the Ziggo Dome was still standing still.
Can't get enough of the Editors? Check the pictures at our Facebookpage!