The unseen files of Marilyn Monroe

From a review of the book, MM – Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe by Lois Banner:

What is certain is that sometime on the night of 4 August the cabinet in the guest cottage was broken into, and that crucial files were removed – perhaps pertaining to Monroe's relationship with the Kennedys and their links with the Mafia boss Sam Giancana.
...
Monroe's horror at the idea of not being able to get pregnant is made starkly and rather zanily clear by a handwritten letter she taped to her stomach before having her appendix removed in 1952: "Cut as little as possible," it reads. "I know it seems vain but that doesn't really come into it. The fact I'm a woman is important. You have children and you must know what it means. For God's sakes Dear Doctor no ovaries removed."

Monroe suffered three miscarriages in the mid-1950s while married to the playwright Arthur Miller, and the archive is full of reminders of how painful that time must have been.
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Would Monroe have been a good mother? Who can tell? But letters she wrote to her stepchildren, Bobby and Jane Miller, reveal a playfulness and understanding of childhood needs and disappointments that would surely have stood her in good stead.

In August 1957 we find her writing to them at summer camp in the guise of their basset hound, Hugo (she also wrote to them as their Siamese cat, Sugar Finney): "It sure is lonesome round here! I made a mistake and I am sorry, but I chewed up one of your baseballs. I didn't mean to. I thought it was a tennis ball and that it wouldn't make any difference but Daddy and Marilyn said that they would get you another one, so is it all right for me to keep playing with this one as long as you are getting a new one? Love from your friend and ankle-chewer."
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Despite knowing how infuriating she could be, it remains impossible not to like Monroe. She had a wit worthy of Mae West ("There is only one way he could comment on my sexuality and I'm afraid he has never had the opportunity!" she wrote of Tony Curtis, though he would later claim to have been her lover) and an ability to remain winsome even in adversity.

After she was fired from the film Something's Got to Give in 1962, as her drug habit escalated, she wrote to George Cukor, the director: "I blame myself but never you. The next weekend I will do any painting, cleaning, brushing you need around the house. I can also dust."
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Equally moving is a note from the mother of a soldier who saw Monroe perform in Korea in 1955. She quotes from the letter her son sent her: "When she appeared on the stage, there was just a sort of gasp from the audience – a single gasp multiplied by the 12,000 soldiers present… The broadcasting system was extremely poor… However, it didn't matter. Had she only walked out on stage and smiled it would have been enough."

If representatives of the Kennedys did remove documents from the filing cabinet on the night of Monroe's death, and Lois Banner is certain that they did ('I know who took them and what happened to them, but I don't feel at liberty to say at this point,' Banner told me), they were pretty thorough. The archive now has almost no material relating to Monroe's relationships with JFK and Robert Kennedy, which are thought to have dominated the final months of her life.

My man: Chris Christie

Like a stand-up comedian working out-of-the-way clubs:

Chris Christie travels the townships and boroughs of New Jersey­, places like Hackettstown and Raritan and Scotch Plains, sharpening his riffs about the state’s public employees, whom he largely blames for plunging New Jersey into a fiscal death spiral. In one well-worn routine, for instance, the governor reminds his audiences that, until he passed a recent law that changed the system, most teachers in the state didn’t pay a dime for their health care coverage, the cost of which was borne by taxpayers.

And so, Christie goes on, forced to cut more than $1 billion in local aid in order to balance the budget, he asked the teachers not only to accept a pay freeze for a year but also to begin contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. The dominant teachers’ union in the state responded by spending millions of dollars in television and radio ads to attack him.

“The argument you heard most vociferously from the teachers’ union,” Christie says, “was that this was the greatest assault on public education in the history of New Jersey.” Here the fleshy governor lumbers a few steps toward the audience and lowers his voice for effect. “Now, do you really think that your child is now stressed out and unable to learn because they know that their poor teacher has to pay 1½ percent of their salary for their health care benefits? Have any of your children come home — any of them — and said, ‘Mom.’ ” Pause. “ ‘Dad.’ ” Another pause. “ ‘Please. Stop the madness.’ ”

By this point the audience is starting to titter, but Christie remains steadfastly somber in his role as the beseeching student. “ ‘Just pay for my teacher’s health benefits,’ ” he pleads, “ ‘and I’ll get A’s, I swear. But I just cannot take the stress that’s being presented by a 1½ percent contribution to health benefits.’ ” As the crowd breaks into appreciative guffaws, Christie waits a theatrical moment, then slams his point home. “Now, you’re all laughing, right?” he says. “But this is the crap I have to hear.”

The rest is worth reading even if it is in the NYT. Yep, the NYT. Even some of their writers are fed up with teachers' unions like the rest of us.

Snow in San Francisco?

For the first time in 35 years:

There have been snowflakes on Twin Peaks as recently as 2009, and flurries peppered even lower spots in San Francisco in 1988, '89 and '98.

But the gold standard of true snowfall is to have it hit sea level - and to stick long enough to make a snowman. That hasn't happened since Feb. 5, 1976.
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If the storm hits California with its expected frosty ferocity by then, daytime highs will drop to the 40s and showers will start. By late Friday night, after a couple of days of frigid sogginess, the stage should be set for a traditional winter wonderland.

If the thermometer in San Francisco dips into the mid- to upper 30s as expected after dark, rain continues to fall and the earth stays chilled so it won't melt everything hitting it, there should be snow everywhere from the Financial District to the Sunset, forecasters say.

As for higher Bay Area spots such as Mount Diablo, Mount Hamilton and Mount Tamalpais, which sported snow blankets last weekend - count on a repeat show of the same, forecasters said. Mount Diablo alone had 8 inches of snow Friday.
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Previous snowfall at sea level in San Francisco:

Dec. 25, 1856 2.5 inches

June 12, 1868 2 inches

Dec. 31, 1882 3.5 inches

Feb. 7, 1884 1.5 inches

Feb. 5, 1887 3.7 inches (most snow ever recorded in the city)

Jan. 16, 1888 0.1 of an inch

March 3, 1896 1 inch (latest ever)

Dec. 11, 1932 0.8 of an inch

Jan. 15, 1952 0.3 of an inch

Jan. 21, 1962 2 inches

Feb. 5, 1976 1 inch
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February 5, 1887: The photo was taken on Shotwell Street between 22nd and 24th. I'm betting those houses look almost exactly the same now, with a few more cars parked in front.

More photos here.

I really love global warming. It snowed here yesterday for the third time this winter.

Daffy the Duck is just an aging old drag queen

The embattled dictator said he was like the Queen, who he says has not been overthrown for 57 years:

"You need to listen to your parents. If people disobey their parents they end up destroying the country," he said. "The same case as in Britain (where) for 57 years the Queen has been ruling. I have been in the same situation."

Daffy says Osama bib Laden is the real villain:

He says those revolting are "loyal to bin Laden ... This is al Qaeda that the whole world is fighting."

He says al Qaeda militants are "exploiting" teenagers, giving them "hallucinogenic pills in their coffee with milk, like Nescafe."
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Seriously, why are you guys even directing this rage at Qaddafi to begin with? He's just a gentle old man who smiles and waves to people and drinks tea and wears white gloves to protect his delicate hands and hosts foreign dignitaries and unleashes mercenary death squads on his people and takes leisurely strolls through floral gardens.

Libya supplies 50% of Europe's oil

They should deal with Momo the Daffy Duck:

Libya's violent upheaval has taken 1.2 million barrels of oil off the global market as energy plants and ports are shut down, according to Italy's Eni, the largest producer in the country.

The figure represents most of Libya's total daily production, which before the crisis was about 1.6 million barrels of crude. The country sits on the biggest proven oil reserves in Africa.

The end of the American oil "empire"

I put "empire" in quotes because the USA was never a real empire like Rome and Britain but there are some good observations in How will America handle the fall of its Middle East empire?

The British empire reached its fullest extent in 1930. Twenty years later, it was all over.

Today, it is reasonable to ask whether the United States, seemingly invincible a decade ago, will follow the same trajectory. America has suffered two convulsive blows in the last three years. The first was the financial crisis of 2008, whose consequences are yet to be properly felt. Although the immediate cause was the debacle in the mortgage market, the underlying problem was chronic imbalance in the economy.

For a number of years, America has been incapable of funding its domestic programmes and overseas commitments without resorting to massive help from China, its global rival. China has a pressing motive to assist: it needs to sustain US demand in order to provide a market for its exports and thus avert an economic crisis of its own. This situation is the contemporary equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine which prevented nuclear war breaking out between America and Russia.

Unlike MAD, this pact is unsustainable. But Barack Obama has not sought to address the problem. Instead, he responded to the crisis with the same failed policies that caused the trouble in the first place: easy credit and yet more debt. It is certain that America will, in due course, be forced into a massive adjustment both to its living standards at home and its commitments abroad.

I don't agree completely with the author's world-view but the rest is worth reading.

The Christchurch quake

Two days before the quake in New Zealand I made contact after 50 years with someone there with whom I had grown up in a small village in South Africa. He had recently published a book about that village. We chatted by email for a few days and then the quake happened and I have not heard from him since.

This was the scene (click to enlarge) just seconds after the quake struck, kicking up a cloud of dust that choked the streets of Christchurch. More pictures here:

What would the budget look like if the United States were a middle-class household?

A thought experiment:

[T]he Obama budget throws around some very big numbers, a dizzying array of billions and trillions, and they are difficult to parse and compare. So let's cut them down to a useful, human, household size. Next year, the government plans to take in $2.63 trillion—and to spend $3.73 trillion. For our purposes, let's use $60,000 as the government's income and $85,000 as its expenses.
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Where does all of that spending go? Mostly, to mandatory programs, spending that does not change much year-to-year and is not easily reduced. But given that mandatory spending makes up about 60 percent of spending, if the debt is going to come down, these are the line items that need to change. Next year, Obama is requesting $17,400 for Social Security, $10,700 for Medicare, $6,100 for Medicaid, and $13,600 for other mandatory programs such as food stamps. There's no way around any of those expenditures, which total about $48,000—or more than three-quarters of the federal government's annual income. (Last year, mandatory spending alone actually exceeded income.)
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But wait—there's more, as they say. You have to pay for all the debt you're ringing up. This year, you are on the hook for $5,500, and that is just for interest payments to creditors. So you see the problem here: Before you've even gotten to anything that anyone even talks about cutting, you're already about 25 percent over budget.

Then, we come to nonsecurity, discretionary programs—all of the money for bridges, schools, nuclear power plants, foreign aid, space flight, and everything else. Obama is asking for $10,400 for all of this, or about 12 percent of total spending. In the discretionary budget, the sums are astounding not because they're so huge, but because they're so puny: $400 on energy, $500 on agriculture, $1,000 on housing and urban development, and $1,800 on education, for example. Nuff said.

We can't throw stones at the greaseballs in Greece because our house is also built of glass.

Do solar flares cause earthquakes?

Solar activity peaks every 11 years. Reading about the quake in New Zealand today made me realize that the worst earthquake I lived through (San Francisco in 1989) happened 22 years ago.

Did solar flares trigger the Christchurch earthquake?

The theory that solar flares trigger earthquakes is far from widely accepted, but has received some serious attention from geophysicists. According to the theory, disturbances from the Sun upset the Earth’s magnetic field, which may somehow lead to instability in tectonic plates.

It turns out that today’s devastating Christchurch earthquake has occurred just five days after a major solar flare. As a result of the flare, a few websites went so far as to predict a high probability of earthquakes.

This blogger predicted possible major earthquakes in the northern hemisphere, which thankfully have not eventuated, but also this:

Southern Hemisphere there is a potential event around 45-50 Degrees Latitude, most likely fit region is the base or South Island New Zealand extending down towards Macquarie Islands, possible magnitude could be 6.2 to 6.5.

With the Christchurch earthquake rating at 6.3 on the Richter Scale, this would have to go down as a good call. This website also predicted possible earthquakes in light of the solar flares.

From the American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2007, abstract #IN33A-03:

We present the study of 682 earthquakes of 4.0 magnitude observed during January 1991 to January 2007 in the light of solar flares observed by GOES and SOXS missions in order to explore the possibility of any association between solar flares and earthquakes. Our investigation preliminarily shows that each earthquake under study was preceded by a solar flare of GOES importance B to X class by 10-100 hrs.

Do solar flares stimulate political rebellions?

Chas recently did a post about a theory that solar flares affect people and stimulate political rebellions:

Excitability, due to solar activity? I had previously posted about this last May. But with the recent increase in solar activity as we enter our Solar Maximum, I can't help but think of the Middle East. Compare what Tchijevsky said, and what is happening there now:

A. L. Tchijevsky’s Theory of Sunspot Activity and Human Activity

[...] That sunspot cycle activity increased and decreased in a cycle of approximately 11 years was established in the 1750s when astronomers began to make the first charts of the numbers of sunspots over time. During World War I, A. L. Tchijevsky, a Russian professor of Astronomy and Biological Physics who continued his studies at the war front, noticed that particularly severe battles regularly followed each solar flare during the sunspot peak period of 1916-17.

To test his hypothesis that sunspot cycle influenced human activity, Tchijevsky constructed an Index of Mass Human Excitability covering each year form 500 BC to 1922 AD. He then investigated the histories of 72 countries during that period, noting signs of human unrest such as wars, revolutions, riots, expeditions and migrations, plus the numbers of humans involved.

Tchijevsky found that fully 80% of the most significant events occurred during the 5 years of maximum sunspot activity. (Tchijevsky's merely noting that the 1917 Russian Revolution occurred during the height of the sunspot cycle earned him almost 30 years in Soviet prisons because his theory challenged Marxist dialectics.)

Chas also posted more info on the recent increase in solar activity.

Get rid of government unions

Many people reminded us last week that the patron saint of the working-class, FDR, did not agree with government unions. So I decided to find an actual quote.

In a letter to a public employee union, Roosevelt explains that, yes, they do have a right to organize, but there are some restrictions:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
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Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

Oregon Congressman is insane

So what else is new? They're all Democratic nuts but this one takes the cake.

The USA and the Middle East

From Pillars of Sand:

America used to be the essential trade partner for the Gulf countries, but this has now changed. In 2009, Saudi Arabia exported 57% of its 2009 crude oil to the Far East, and just 14% to the US. Responding to this underlying shift, King Abdullah has been pursuing a “look East” policy since 2005, resulting in trade worth more than $60 billion.

This eastward shift has made China a bigger trading partner than the US for both Qatar and the UAE. And almost a quarter of Qatar’s trade is with China, compared to just over 5% with the US. Likewise, 37% of the UAE’s trade is with China, India, and South Korea. To many Middle East states, what China wants is now just as important as US interests.

Bahrain is home to the Fifth Fleet and hopefully somehow we can keep that base open as it our eye on the Persian Gulf. But...

There's No Turning Back in the Middle East:

The central, underlying feature of the Middle East's crisis is a massive youth bulge. About 60% of the region's population is under 30. These millions of young people have aspirations that need to be fulfilled, and the regimes in place right now show little ability to do so. The protesters' demands have been dismissed by the regimes as being for Islamic fundamentalism or a product of Western interference. But plainly these are homegrown protests that have often made the West uneasy as they have shaken up old alliances. And what the protesters want in the first place is to be treated as citizens, not subjects. In a recent survey of Middle Eastern youth, the No. 1 wish of the young in nine countries was to live in a free country, although, to be sure, jobs and the desire to live in well-run, modern societies ranked very high as well.

The uprisings in the Middle east will probably eventually be co-opted by Islamicists. It would be nice if we could let go and let the Chinese handle the the Muslims. They might be able to put them in their place. It would also be nice to pull our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrate on our immediate problems.

We've got a 1,000 mile "border" with Mexico. That's our real problem. There are two solutions. We could build an impenetrable wall and become a paranoid police state or - we could accept that Mexico will one day be the 51st state. Meanwhile both Mexico and Canada have all the oil that we need. So why not annex Canada also. It could be the 52nd state. That will probably happen anyway eventually. Lines in the sand are not real borders.

Noble savages - yeah right!

Ancient Britons were cannibals:

Ancient Britons stand accused today of ritually killing each other, boiling and eating human flesh and drinking out of hollowed out skulls – including the skulls of children. This may be a startling revelation to the general public, but I doubt that it will be much of a surprise to anthropologists. And it may even come as a relief to champions of aboriginal peoples around the world who have tried to dismiss evidence of native cannibalism as a white colonialist smear. At least now they can say: the Brits were at it, too.

The most significant thing about the discoveries, arguably, is the relatively sophistication of the society that committed these atrocities. These cannibals were Ice Age hunter-gatherers, not savages. They chopped up the bodies and hollowed out the skulls with meticulous culinary precision. (It’s sheer coincidence, I’m sure, that the ancestors of these Cro-Magnon people came from France.)

It’s an uncomfortable truth that cannibalism isn’t confined to the most primitive people, but survived among societies – even civilisations – that Western scholars have depicted as “noble”, “peaceful” and “advanced”. For most of the 20th century, for example, there was a romantic cult of the Mayans of Central America as a gentle theocracy ruled by priest-astronomers. Then the murals of Bonampak were discovered – gorgeous works of art, but obviously the product of a people whose warrior-kings were ankle-deep in gore. Now the consensus is that the Mayans practised Aztec-style human sacrifice and ate the hearts of the the victims.

Theories involving cannibalism can wreak havoc in an age when archaeologists have to work in a politically correct academic environment. There was an explosive row in the late 1990s when evidence emerged that the Anasazi, ancestors of the revered Hopi Native Americans, sometimes butchered human victims like game animals.

Some Native American spokesmen, meanwhile, just refused to countenance the hypothesis. So have the representatives of other aboriginal peoples confronted by evidence of ancestral cannibalism, particularly if the practice occurred recently. As for New Age worshippers of the noble savage, the whole subject induces acute cognitive dissonance.

Modern liberals know for sure that all of our ancestors lived on tofu. I hope those French cannibals cooked better than the native Brits. At least their menus would have been fancier. Any one for Granny a la coq au vin?

Teachers teaching kids it's okay to lie

On the "sick-out" by teachers in Wisconsin.

Jay Nordlinger:

One thing about all these teachers — 40 percent of the union — calling in “sick”? They’re lying. And it’s not nice to lie, yes? These are the adults, of course, who are expected to set examples for “the children”: those vaunted children in whose name the unionists pretend to be doing everything they do.

Ace:

Public employees should not be allowed to unionize or if they are, they should be forbidden to contribute to political campaigns. The current system essentially allows the employees to buy off the managers (politicians) in order to rip off the owners (the public). It's a system that is corrupt by it's very existence. The proof of this is the public pension and benefits schemes that threatens to crush the fiscal solvency of many states.

Even that well known conservative, anti-labor President Franklin Roosevelt knew this.

I despise all unions but have a special hatred for public employee unions.

Why I left San Francisco after living there for 25 years

Sarah and the San Francisco Poster Wars by Ray Gross at American Thinker:

I am gay. I live in San Francisco. For the last few years I've had a terrible secret, one I felt necessary to hide from hateful and intolerant people. Who would these people be, and what am I hiding?

I am hiding from the Liberal Left. I am hiding that I'm a conservative.

Gay people are used to feeling the fear of backlash and intolerance. It's been a common theme for me, and I hid being gay for a good part of my life because of that fear.

But here I am, hiding again, hiding from those who have been telling me my whole life that they are the tolerant, loving and accepting ones. And I believed them, joining them in pinning the labels of hate and intolerance on the political right.

Now I fear them. They are not tolerant or accepting. They accuse others of hate and intolerance and yet, by their behavior they show themselves again and again to be the hypocrites they are. They are incapable of seeing the irony of the situation; that those who preach "tolerance" are intolerant, and those who champion "love" exude hate.

Like Pavlov's dog they are trained by the left and the liberal media to salivate at the mere mention of the words "conservative" "Republican," "right," "Christian," and "Bush". Now, they have a new favorite victim for their hate and intolerance, Sarah Palin.

The rest of the article is quite an eye-opener.

HT Gay Patriot.

The "third rail"

After Obama's "budget" came out today, everyblogger and his auntie posted some sort of graph or pie-chart.

This one got my attention because it is wrong in a significant way. It defines Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as "insurance."

















Those programs may have started as insurance but they are now entitlements unlike REAL insurance. Home-owners and auto insurance are real insurances. Health "insurance" has been so perverted that it can no longer be called insurance. Real insurance is what you pay IN CASE something bad happens. Health "insurance" has now become more like an "extended auto maintenance plan."

And Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are definitely not insurance. As any sane person knows, they are all basically Ponzi schemes, wealth redistributive socialist "entitlements." They consume 41% of all taxes. Together with "welfare" and other socialist schemes/scams, they account for 70% of our budget.

And sadly we are stuck with them. No politician (except maybe Ron Paul who's dreaming) will advocate scrapping them. But they will have to be curtailed or limited. The problem with socialism, as Maggie said, is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money. Socialism/welfare statism is unsustainable.

The Baby Boomers are going to have to bite the bullet and start treating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other "welfare" scams as insurance - a safety net for those who are disabled. You don't get it if you don't need it.

That means "means testing." It's the only compromise that is possible, feasible and likely. There will be a lot of jostling about the way "means testing" is instigated but all "entitlements" will have to be limited to an "as needed" basis and treated as real insurance. That is: you pay IN CASE something bad happens and you don't collect unless "something bad happens." You don't get it if you don't need it.

How much we each pay into or collect from this insurance against disability or other calamity must be determined on real actuarial data and the proceeds need to be invested just as insurance premiums are.

Let the food fight begin.

The South African bulbul

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War:

Some battles aren’t worth fighting. The rewards of victory are too small or the costs of combat are too high. Good generals know this, and so does evolution. The natural world is full of intense arms races between predators and prey, hosts and parasites. If one side evolves a small advantage, the other counters it with an adaptation of their own, and both species are locked in an ever-escalating stalemate. But sometimes, these arms races never take off. The costs of engagement just aren’t worth it.

Oliver Kruger from the University of Bath has found one such example in South Africa, where a small local bird called the Cape bulbul is plagued by the Jacobin cuckoo. Like many other cuckoos, the Jacobin is a “brood parasite”, an animal that relies on others to rear its young. It lays its eggs in a bulbul nest, palming off its own young to unwitting surrogate parents.

Cuckoos and their hosts are usually excellent examples of evolutionary arms races.

The cuckoo and the bulbul:

Why are Muhammad cartoons taboo?

Mmm?

Traditional Islamic doctrine offers little explanation for this violent response. There is no explicit ban on figurative art in the Quran, and representations of Muhammad, though absent from public spaces, appear in illuminated manuscripts up until the seventeenth century; they still feature in the popular iconography of Shiism, where antipathy to pictures of the Prophet is much less prevalent. There are numerous such depictions—faceless or veiled as an indication of his holiness, or even depicted with facial features—in manuscript collections. It is only quite recently that Muslims living in the west have begun lodging objections to the reproduction of these images in books. The objections are by no means confined to a militant fringe. Populist sentiment—fuelled by the Salafist or “fundamentalist” trends emanating from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, has produced a near consensus among a majority of Muslims that representations of the Prophet and other holy figures are forbidden by Islam.

All the more puzzling, the recent iconophobia in popular Islam has largely ignored the spread of such images on the Web.

An engraving from Gustav Doré’s version of Dante’s Divine Comedy depicting the punishment of Muhammad in the Eighth Circle of Hell, 1880.


















And my favorite from Jesus and Mo:

Oregon news with a South African connection

Oregon lawmaker tells Euros to butt out:

Oregon state Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli says he doesn't need any advice from foreigners about protecting wolves.

The Republican from John Day, in Eastern Oregon, sent a blunt reply to a South African singer living in Greece, Louise du Toit, when she wrote him to urge opposition to a bill that would remove wolves from Oregon's endangered species list, The Oregonian reported.

Ferrioli said input from European Union residents makes no difference to him.

"You are delusional if you believe U.S. elected officials will bow to activist pressure from outside our borders," the lawmaker fired back in one of several e-mails he shared with the newspaper. "Let your friends, family and fellow Europeans in their thousands write passionate emails. We will ignore them."

Ferrioli noted the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Doug Whitsett, is a fellow Republican from Klamath Falls, and is a veterinarian who understands the complex issues involved.

"By the way, perhaps I should be writing to EU ministers to stop bailing out Greece. Clearly it has become a haven for morons," Ferrioli wrote to du Toit, adding: "Go away!"

Ferrioli's response enraged wolf advocates from around the country and in Europe, who wrote to demand that he apologize.

"To think that we, as a nation, have voted such rude and closed minded individuals as yourself into office, is unfortunate," wrote Susan Williams of Salt Lake City.
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Furthermore, he said, Europeans simply "don't have a dog in this fight."

Du Toit, however, wrote back to Ferrioli: "There are NO borders in our fight for endangered species."

Du Toit said in an e-mail to The Oregonian that she has been "fighting vigorously for the suffering wolf populations of Sweden" and that it was "totally natural to me to stand up for the precious wolves of Oregon."

Wolves are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, so there's debate about whether Whitsett's bill to remove them from the state list would have any immediate impact.

But supporters of the bill say it is part of their effort to halt the spread of wolves and the threat they pose to livestock.

Louise du Toit can be called a "singer" only if you regard modern mediocre crap as music. But she's definitely a moron; one of those international multi-culti commie cows whose IQ is the same size as her bra cup. I would say: "Louise, just shut up and sing" except I wish she's just shut up period.

Mubarak and Mandela

Mubarak and Mandela are simply symbols: one hated and one loved.

But really it's all about the middle-class; the tipping point; the demographics. A growing middle-class has more aspirations and expectations.

I watched what happened in South Africa as I grew up. When I was little, quite a few Africans still captured kids and ate their hearts for muthi. Fifty years later only a few do so and most Africans now have middle-class aspirations.

Egypt will probably go the way of Turkey and be an uneasy blend of Westernism and Islamism. Islam is not the worst and, as the lesser of two evil, it beats animistic muthi anyday.

Animism is close to animalism. Islam is a step in the direction of having your tail cut off just as Judaism was a step up from idolatry and Catholicism was a step up from Roman emperor worship.

I'm convinced that naked apes are slowly evolving into human beings. There may be a few bumps in the road like Socialism in the West and Islamism in the East but one day we'll all lose our tails.

But some of us will always have horns. There will always be a few evil people which is why we will always need the Declaration and Constitution. Our Founders were smart and probably a few centuries ahead of their time.

Today in history

On this day 32 years ago the Iranian revolution took place when the Shah's forces were overwhelmed. And 21 years ago today Nelson Mandela was freed by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Will Egypt be another Iran or another South Africa? My hunch is that it will be a mixture: part intolerable Islamofascist and part relatively tolerable left-wing lunacy and multi-culti mayhem.

Firewood

Some tips:

All freshly felled timber needs to dry before burning. By splitting the wood you create a larger surface area from which water can evaporate and wood dries faster.

This is called seasoning. For the best burning results, store wood in a ventilated area and protect it from driving rain for a year.
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The latest chainsaw from Bosch does away with electrical and starter cables and smelly fuel. A neat machine, it combines all that is great about chainsaws with safety and efficiency.

The lithium ion battery provides enough power to slice through up to 100 4in timbers on one charge and takes one-and-a-half hours to recharge.

The 12in blade is brilliant for larger branches and small trunks, too large for handsaws and loppers. It starts effortlessly and stops faster than safety standards require.
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Traditionalists will like the new range of seven wood-choppers from Fiskars. The axe head has been integrated into the blade design so it doesn't fly off.

The handle is virtually unbreakable and ultralight to minimise fatigue; the axe is finely balanced to facilitate a safe and efficient swing.

The blade geometry makes it easier to remove from a log when splitting and the safety sheath doubles as a carrying grip.
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If you have a large garden or lots of wood, the petrol-powered Ardisam Earthquake is a monster, with a 12-ton force - and it turns splitting wood into a matchstick-modeller's delight. It effortlessly dealt with a huge pile of large logs in a short time.

Perfect if you have access to free timber and a wood burner, it even has a trailer hitch for towing and a second hitch at the back. It's female-friendly (I used it with ease) but ideally needs two people for efficient working.
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An electric wood splitter such as the five-ton force Alko KHS5200 (pictured) or the four-ton force Ryobi ELS52, 1,500-watt model is good for beginners. Both chomped through a variety of green and seasoned rounds and cope with medium logs up to 20in long.

La Hacienda's latest range of chic chimineas in oxidised Cor-Ten steel can double as sculpture.

There are cheaper terracotta chimineas too. (I first heard the word "chiminea" from my son when he bought one for his mom-in-law recently.)

Mubarak - it's the demographics, stupid!

Maybe he's an evil tyrant and maybe not. I tend to see the good in everybody until they slit my throat - and then...oops!

Mostly his speech today was too little too late.

He's gotten rich off the USA as he has done our bidding to keep the Suez canal open and don't provoke Israel into nuking the Nile and all its inhabitants - and keep the mad imams on a short leash.

All well and good but he is out of touch with the zeitgeist - the demographics. He probably only knows and mixes with other plutocrats nowadays and no longer groks the growing expectations of a new middle-class which is springing up all over the world.

Who does? Certainly not Americans and definitely not Europeans. They all have their heads up each others' multi-culti politically-correct assholes.

But the one thing that the wily old serpent of the Nile probably does know for sure is that this growing Third World middle-class is only half-civilized and, in their enthusiasm for "freedom", could cut off the branch on which they are sitting as they have done in Iran, Venezuela and South Africa.

Mubarak is playing for time but it's already the eleventh hour and...well, not all the monkeys in the Third World have had their tails removed and Egypt will probably go the way of Turkey.

It could be worse but it won't. Things really are getting better every day as more monkeys lose their tails.

So call me a "white supremacist" but white men do have a burden. Well, maybe not "white men" - because God knows there are plenty of white trash - maybe just "relatively civilized humans no matter what color."

I'm a "human supremacist" and not all naked apes are fully human yet. We live in interesting times but I probably won't live to see all naked apes lose their tails. If you're young, you may.

GOP Congressman quits after Craigslist scandal

If he'd been a Democrat, Pelosi would have said that he had a bad reaction to his psych meds and he would have been given a plum committee job:

Republican Christopher Lee had just begun his second term representing New York's 26th District. Just hours after the scandal broke on Gawker.com, Lee announced that he was quitting Congress, and a clerk read his letter of resignation on the House floor.
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The controversy erupted when Gawker reported that a Maryland woman had sent in emails supposedly written by Lee in response to a dating ad that she had placed on Craigslist. Gawker said the ad had asked: "Will someone prove to me not all CL men look like toads?"

In response came emails from a man representing himself as a divorced lobbyist younger than Lee's actual age of 46. The woman responded.

Gawker published a shirtless photo that he had taken of himself, flexing his muscles. One of the emails described him as a "fit fun classy guy."
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Gawker said the flirting ended when the woman concluded after an online search that Lee had lied. She then sent the material to Gawker.

Lee and his wife, Michele, live in Amherst, N.Y. They have one son.

The GOP is better off with0ut him. What an idiot. Doesn't he know that you never put anything on the Net that you wouldn't your mom (let alone your wife) to see? At least he didn't post a photo of his family jewels on the Net which seems to be de rigeur nowadays - so I've decided to post a pic of my big cock below the pic of Lee's tits,

Tahrir photos

Count me among those who have been impressed by the protests in Egypt. Apart from the pro-Mubarak thugs, the Egyptians have behaved in a very civilized fashion - a lot more civilized than the unionist protestors in Greece or the student protestors in the UK.

There were plenty of horrible photos but there were also some heart-warming ones. It's nice to see Muslims smiling for a change. These are some of my favorites from top to bottom: one of the "horrible photos" which turned out to look unintentionally funny; Christians holding hands to form protection around praying Muslims; a wedding etc. The last picture is one of the photos of make-shift helmets worn by protestors seen here.

Today's naked redneck chick post: cocks can be dangerous

I guess no one told this fellow:

A 35-year-old man was killed after being stabbed in the thigh by a cock-fighting rooster. Jose Ochoa died after suffering a wound to his leg from a razor sharp blade attached to one of the fighting cocks. It is not known if he bled to death or suffered an infection.

The 35-year-old was admitted to hospital in Earlimart, California, shortly after suffering the injury. Police said he was among a group of men attending an illegal cock fight. The birds had sharp blades attached to their feet and after police raided the fight Ochoa was fatally stabbed in the calf. It is thought he owned one of the birds taking part in the fight and had been attempting to scoop him up when police arrived.
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Last month a man in India was killed after his champion rooster slashed his throat. The bird is said to have attacked owner Singrai Soren when he was pushing it back into the ring after it repeatedly tried to escape. The bird slit his throat with razor blades he had attached to its legs.

We have a half dozen fighting cocks. They can be a problem as they are also gang rapists but they are also our best defense against predators and will stand up to any varmint to protect their harems of egg-laying hens.

Big Brother bans man from having sex

Only in Airstrip One:

The 41 year-old had been in a relationship with a man whom he lived with and told officials “it would make me feel happy” for it to continue.

But his local council decided his “vigorous sex drive” was inappropriate and that with an IQ of 48 and a “moderate” learning disability, he did not understand what he was doing.
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Under the judge’s order, the man is now subject to “close supervision” by the local authority that provides his accommodation, in order to ensure he does not break the highly unusual order.

The judge concluded: “I therefore make a declaration that at the present time Alan does not have the capacity to consent to and engage in sexual relations.

“In such circumstances it is agreed that the present régime for Alan's supervision and for the prevention of future sexual activity is in his best interests.”

It is the latest controversial case to come before the Court of Protection, a little-known authority whose proceedings are held behind closed doors.

Under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, its judges have the power to make life or death decisions for people deemed to lack the intelligence to make them for themselves – such as ordering that they undergo surgery, have forced abortions, have life-support switched off or be forced to use contraception.

In the latest case, the man known as Alan was described as “sociable” and “presented as an able man” but who was “seriously challenged in all aspects of his mental functionality”.

He lived in a home provided by the council, where he developed a sexual relationship with a man called Kieron.
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In June 2009 the town hall began court proceedings to restrict his contact with Kieron on the grounds that he lacked mental capacity, and an interim order was made to that effect.

“Since then Alan has been subjected to close supervision to prevent any further sexual activity on his part.”

"The Court of Protection?!?" Is that in the same building as the Ministry for Peace? Orwell is spinning in his grave. Actually Airstrip One doesn't even need Big Brother. Half the British population seems to be interfering busy-body nosy-parkers.

Of course the rule that good intentions often have unintended bad consequences will probably be proven once again. If this guy is anything like the mental retards I've known, he's extremely affectionate and horny as hell. Let's hope he doesn't rape a child out of sheer frustration.

Justine Bieber's boobs

I just found about this critter. I was quite surprised that she has such mature tits for such a young kid.

Just kidding - I couldn't resist giving him a sex-change considering how much lipstick he wears.

Mona Lisa 'was a boy’

Leonardo da Vinci modelled the “Mona Lisa” on the face of his young male apprentice and lover:

Most scholars believe Leonardo’s most famous portrait depicts Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine silk merchant.

But Silvano Vinceti, the head of a team of researchers, believes instead that the painting was inspired by Gian Giacomo Caprotti, who began working with the Renaissance master as a child and became one of his most trusted companions.

He said several of Leonardo’s works, including two paintings of St John the Baptist and a lesser-known drawing called “Angel Incarnate,” were based on Caprotti.

All of them portray a slim, rather effeminate youth with curly hair.

There were striking similarities between those works and that of the Mona Lisa, particularly in the depiction of mouths and noses, said Mr Vinceti, the head of the National Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.

“Salai was a favourite model for Leonardo,” he said. “Leonardo certainly inserted characteristics of Salai in the ... Mona Lisa.”

Caprotti is thought to have entered Leonardo’s household around 1490, when he was about 10 years old.

Working as Leonardo’s assistant for the next 20 years, he acquired the nickname Salai, or Little Devil. He was the subject of several erotic drawings produced by the Renaissance genius.

“Salai was very handsome and probably Leonardo’s lover,” said Mr Vinceti. “He stole from Leonardo and caused him many problems, but the artist always forgave him.”

I decided to look and see for myself and found Da Vinci's St John. There is a similarity - especially the mouth.

My favorite YouTube this week: Landing in LA

I've landed in LAX dozens of times. I wish I'd had this view. It's been sped up so that 30 minutes only takes about 4 mins. It's a fabulous city but I wouldn't want to live there.

Hump day hottie - Carla Sarkozy nee Bruni

After three years of marriage to France's president Nicolas Sarkozy she "no longer feels left-wing".

Picture from right-wing lesbian Tammy Bruce. Tammy also loves Sarah. She sure has good taste in babes.

Former Oregon governor Goldschmidt child sex abuse

Victim details recounted:

A woman sexually abused by Neil Goldschmidt, former governor of Oregon and mayor of Portland, said before she died that the abuse began earlier and lasted years longer than he has admitted, the Oregonian newspaper reported Tuesday.

Goldschmidt denied that part of a story written by former Oregonian columnist Marge Boule, who interviewed the woman often after the scandal became public in 2004.

The victim's name was not disclosed. She died last month at age 49 after a serious illness, the newspaper reported.

Goldschmidt acknowledged in 2004 that he had sex with a 14-year-old girl in 1975, when he was Portland's mayor and a rising political star. The statute of limitations at the time barred prosecution more than three years after the commission of a crime.

Boule said the woman's parents were active supporters of Goldschmidt's political career and developed a friendship when he was mayor. That, according to Boule's account of her interviews with the woman, led to a first sexual encounter with Goldschmidt.

The woman told Boule she was in eighth grade when Goldschmidt attended a birthday party for her mother. She said, "He asked if I wanted to play ping pong. We went down (to the basement) and then he said, `Oh, do you want to come give me a hug?' "

Boule said the woman told her the encounter turned into oral sex, adding she had "never even kissed a boy."

The woman told Boule that sex with Goldschmidt continued throughout his tenure as mayor; his years in Washington, D.C., as U.S. secretary of transportation; the years he worked at Nike; and even into his term as Oregon's governor.

"It lasted until I was 27," she told Boule.
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On Tuesday, the newspaper printed a statement from Goldschmidt that said he was saddened by the woman's death but that many of her accusations "vary substantially from the truth."

"I wish to express publicly my enormous personal guilt and remorse for the damage I contributed to her young life experiences. The fact that these actions have haunted me since is no punishment for what I did," his statement said.

But he added: "Sadly, it appears that much of her account is fabricated and I can only speculate as to her reasons."

Boule said that over the past five years, the woman called her every few months to check in.

Her life was marked by alcoholism, mental illness and a brutal rape. When she was 27, she said, Goldschmidt helped get her a job at a Seattle law firm. "I was very happy in Seattle," she said. "It was like a new start. I had a beautiful apartment with a view of Elliott Bay."

But just three months after she began her job at the law firm, a man named Jeffrey L. Jacobsen kidnapped and brutally raped her. He was convicted and is now in prison. She moved back to Portland.

She died of undisclosed causes Jan. 16 in a hospice.

Goldschmidt was born in Eugene, Oregon on June 16, 1940 and was Governor of Oregon from 1987 to 1891:

In May 2004, Neil Goldschmidt, former governor of Oregon and Secretary of Transportation under Jimmy Carter, admitted that he had conducted a nine-month sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s while he was mayor of Portland. After this information was made public, he withdrew from participation in his various business enterprises.

I'll open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot when both Neil Goldschmidt and Jimmy Carter are behind bars or locked up in loony bins. Ugh! Are there any Democrats who not nuts, crooks or child molesters?

Local news: Andy Jackson RIP

One of our three county commissioners kicked the bucket last night. We only elected him in November:

Jackson, 66, took office as commissioner Jan. 3 after defeating incumbent Kevin Stufflebean in the November election. Before that, he served as Coos County sheriff for 12 years.

Under Oregon law, the two remaining commissioners -- Bob Main and Nikki Whitty -- will choose Jackson's successor. That person will serve until after the 2012 election, Main said.
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A Georgia native, Jackson came to Coos County in 1974 after serving in the Navy.

He initially worked for the county Road Department but soon moved to the sheriff's office. He served as a deputy and corrections administrator before running for sheriff.

Jackson is survived by his wife, Linda; his children; and numerous grandchildren.

"He was a rare person," Main said. He said when Jackson went to community events, "he was just like a great big teddy bear magnet."

He said Jackson "was very sharp and perceptive and read people very easily."

"He was always trying to teach other people how to be nicer to others," Main said. He also said Jackson was "a strong believer in the Second Amendment and in individual rights."
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Jackson served on the Coquille City Council and held leadership positions in numerous local organizations, including the Coos County Republican Party, American Red Cross, Coos County Commission on Children and Families, Coquille Library Board, Coos County Human Rights Coalition, Myrtle Point Rotary, Coquille Lions and Leadership Coos.

He was also a board member of the Oregon State Sheriffs Association, as well as being an Elk and a Mason.

Jackson raised cattle on his Coquille property, and also enjoyed golfing, fishing, hunting, and participating in his grandchildren's activities.

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Is this creature capable of exposing shocking internet illiteracy?

Donald Leu, a researcher from the University of Connecticut, conducted a U.S. Department of Education-funded study of internet literacy among so-called “digital natives,” fabricating the tree octopus to test students’ ability to evaluate information they find on the internet.

Researchers asked students to find out information about the endangered Pacific Northwest tree octopus. Students had no problem locating a Web site dedicated to the cause, http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ “but insisted on the existence of the made-up story, even after researchers explained the information on the website was completely fabricated,” according to a press release.

(Author’s note: You gotta check out this Web site, you can actually buy posters and T-shirts through Cafe Press.)

Most students “simply have very little in the way of critical evaluation skills,” Leu said. “They may tell you they don’t believe everything they read on the Internet, but they do.”

The study also found that students shunned search engines in favor of typing what they think is the right site directly into the address bar, such as Georgewashington.com. When they did use a search engine, they skipped right over legitimate pages ”because it didn’t look like what they had in mind,” Leu said.

“That’s what children do with their rock stars and their other cultural stars. They are accustomed to typing in the name and adding ‘.com.’ That often doesn’t work for real academic research,” Leu said.

Leu’s conclusions are serious. As the internet becomes the primary tool for research, we are failing to teach kids how to critically analyze information they find there.

But darn it, that tree octopus thing is funny. I’m not laughing. Really. I’m not.

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus:

Kucinich the Na'avi

As soon as I saw this guy, I realized that he's a pod-person from outer-space. Of course as soon as his mom realized that her son was an alien body-snatcher, she clipped his ears and bleached his blue skin.