Too Young At 61

So Elizabeth Edwards died today. Very sad news. She was pretty brave in her fight against cancer, but ultimately, cancer won (as it does far too often!)

It's also sad that the last few years of her life were not totally happy ones for her and that every article I've read today refers to her (ex) husband's philandering and the child.

Finally!!!!

President Obama will address the nation tonight from the Oval Office and will announce the formal end to the war in Iraq. "Ending this war is not only in Iraq's interest - it is in our own," the President will say, according to prepared remarks. "The United States has paid a hug price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people. We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices and have spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home. We have persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people - a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization."

Very well said and long overdue! Now kindly send our men and women home!

Still Pissed

I haven't blogged much lately. Mostly it's because I am too lazy. I'd rather be on facebook or playing games on Pogo.

Also, it's because I am still pissed off. I'm especially pissed that there is a republican in office where Ted Kennedy was. Really, what were those voters in Massachusetts thinking?

The polls all say that the Masshole voters are upset with the slow process of getting us out of the mess from when that Idiot Bush was in office.

What I want to know is this: Why weren't you people pissed off for the 8 years that Bush was ruining our country and the world?

So, I'm still pissed. Not at Obama, I'm giving him as much time as he needs to get this effing mess fixed. I think he's doing all that is humanly possible seeing that our economy was on the brink of collapse when he was elected.

Warning, I'll probably post on the blog again soon and I'll still be pissed.

MLK Day

Happy Birthday Dr. King

Some Interesting Facts

Wrapping paper -

The global packaging market is worth $429 billion.

Nearly 1/3 of Americans' waste is packaging. Just 43% is recycled after use.

In 2007, Americans threw away 78.5 million tons of packaging - 520 pounds per person!

Between Thanksgiving and New Years, Americans produce more than 1 million tons of additional garbage per week.

If every family reused the wrapping from 3 gifts, it would save enough paper to cover 50,000 football fields.

Last year, clam shell-type packages sent more than 5,700 Americans to the ER.

Americans annually buy enough plastic wrap to cover Texas.

A Gun In The House

Here's the best reason I can think of to not have a gun in your home:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33251920/ns/us_news-life/

From Michael Moore

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

How outstanding that you've been recognized today as a man of peace. Your swift, early pronouncements -- you will close Guantanamo, you will bring the troops home from Iraq, you want a nuclear weapon-free world, you admitted to the Iranians that we overthrew their democratically-elected president in 1953, you made that great speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, you've eliminated that useless term "The War on Terror," you've put an end to torture -- these have all made us and the rest of the world feel a bit more safe considering the disaster of the past eight years.

In eight months you have done an about face and taken this country in a much more sane direction.

But...

The irony that you have been awarded this prize on the 2nd day of the ninth year of our War in Afghanistan is not lost on anyone. You are truly at a crossroads now. You can listen to the generals and expand the war (only to result in a far-too-predictable defeat) or you can declare Bush's Wars over, and bring all the troops home. Now. That's what a true man of peace would do.

There is nothing wrong with you doing what the last guy failed to do -- capture the man or men responsible for the mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11. BUT YOU CANNOT DO THAT WITH TANKS AND TROOPS. You are pursuing a criminal, not an army. You do not use a stick of dynamite to get rid of a mouse.

The Taliban is another matter. That is a problem for the people of Afghanistan to resolve -- just as we did in 1776, the French did in 1789, the Cubans did in 1959, the Nicaraguans did in 1979 and the people of East Berlin did in 1989. One thing is certain through all revolutions by people who wish to be free -- they ultimately have to bring about that freedom themselves. Others can be supportive, but freedom can not be delivered from the front seat of someone else's Humvee.

You have to end our involvement in Afghanistan now. If you don't, you'll have no choice but to return the prize to Oslo.

Yours,
Michael Moore

www.michaelmoore.com

Very well said. acdc

WoW

President Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize - that is something!

Priorities

Being a news junkie (though I wish I weren't) I check the home pages of all the networks a few times a day. Listed on CNN's page tonight in the following order is:

Students can't name the first President http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2009/09/20/holmes.perry.dumbkidz.cnn

Kid scores 1,019,000 on Guitar Hero http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/09/15/dnt.guitar.hero.record.king


You think maybe one has to do with the other?? Hmmm...

A Sad Loss For America

Sgt. Bill Cahir

As I have posted before, I am particularly fond of our military and veterans. One of my favorite bloggers is Jon Soltz, Co-Founder and Chair of VoteVets.org, is a leader of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans community and is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

From May to September 2003, Soltz served as a Captain during Operation Iraqi Freedom, deploying logistics convoys with the 1st Armored Division. During 2005, Soltz was mobilized for 365 days at Fort Dix New Jersey, training soldiers for combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He also served his country with distinction in the Kosovo Campaign as a Tank Platoon Leader between June and December 2000. Soltz is a graduate of Washington & Jefferson College with dual degree in Political Science and History. He has completed graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Here is some sad news from Jon:

This week brought tragic news that particularly hit hard for the VoteVets.org family. Among the painful and heartbreaking losses of those Killed in Action was Bill Cahir, a Marine Sergeant, killed in Afghanistan.

Bill epitomized what is so great about so many who serve our nation in uniform. At the age of 34, he enlisted, motivated by the September 11th attacks. But, his first action wasn't taking on al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He was deployed twice to Iraq, from 2004-2005, and again from 2007-2008. If Bill, a political progressive, thought Iraq wasn't the war we should be in at the time, his willingness and readiness to go and stand by his men sure took precedence over his personal feelings. Then, this May, he was sent to Afghanistan, serving in the Helmand Province, which is one of the most violent areas in the region that very few Americans know about.

Between his time in Iraq and his service in Afghanistan, Bill ran for Congress. It would have been incredibly easy - and everyone would have said advisable - to come back and rest after two tours in Iraq. But Bill, whose line of work was journalism, saw that Capitol Hill needed more leadership. His own comfort took a backseat to his sense of responsibility.

The seriousness with which he took that responsibility is why VoteVets.org PAC endorsed him in his primary race, which he ultimately lost.

And though he will never be able to make a run for office again, we at VoteVets.org are not done talking about him, or the people like him all over America who are still alive, and mix patriotism, progressivism, and sense of duty. Continuing to remember Bill and what he stood for, and standing up for the people like him, is the best way to honor his memory.

It's essential that everyone know about people like Bill Cahir, whose overriding purpose in life was to help and defend others. That's why we were heartened to see Chris Matthews devoted a segment to Bill's memory on Hardball the other day.

We're hopeful that other news shows took notice, and remember that as we debate health care or energy or stimulus funds (all of which ostensibly are meant to improve America) there are real American lives being risked every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. They want to make America better, too. It doesn't take much for the news to put a talking heads segment aside for the day (including any that I might be called to do) to tell amazing stories like Bill's.

Note: Bill left unborn twin daughters and a wife. A memorial fund has been established to help provide an education to the daughters who will never be able to meet their amazing father. You can help by making checks payable to the "Bill Cahir Memorial Fund" and sending them to: Burk and Herbert Bank, c/o Mark Ragland, P.O. Box 268, Alexandria, Va., 22313.

Crossposted at VetVoice.com and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Bill Cahir will be buried at Arlington Cemetery. Funeral plans at this time are incomplete.

Exxon Mobil Pleads Guilty

WASHINGTON (AP) — Exxon Mobil Corp. will pay about $7,000 each for dozens of birds killed at various company properties.

Exxon Mobil pleaded guilty to causing the deaths of approximately 85 protected migratory birds, most of whom died after exposure to natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities. Birds died in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas between 2004 and 2009.

The firm will pay a fine of $600,000 and has also agreed to make changes to prevent such bird deaths in the future. The company says it has already spent $2.5 million in the effort.
Justice Department officials are discussing the case following a guilty plea by the corporation in federal court in Denver.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Bill Maher wrote a column for the Huffington Post that was right on target - all about just how stupid so many Americans are.

I know, I know, but as I've said many times; Stupidity Should Be Painful.

Funny, though maybe that's why I'm always in pain. HaH!

Just wish I didn't care so much and could get away from watching and living the news.

Here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-smart-president_b_253996.html

Life Sucks

Fatty's wife Susan died on the 5th and he has written a beautiful tribute to her. She was very brave and spent over 5 years battling this awful disease called cancer.

With all of the truly awful and horrible people in the world, I have just one question. Why?

Why a nice woman with 4 young kids? Why not that guy in Pawtucket who is accused of raping his 4 month old daughter. Why can't cancer find him and make him suffer for 5 years or even 10 years?

I realize that I will never understand everything that happens, but it sure would be nice to know why every now and then.

You can find and read his blog in the column on the right of this page.

Dusting Or Huffing

Years ago, when working at Sonitrol, we had dispatched the Providence police to Harris Lumber which used to be located on Atwells Avenue for a break-in. We could hear that someone was in the building moving around. When the police arrived, they found a teenage girl inside the store sniffing paint. Seems she needed to get high so bad that she broke a window to get inside.

I have never forgotten that. It just seemed so sad. Nowadays, there is a newer way of getting high. It's called dusting or huffing and it's deadly. Compressed air to clean your computer is being inhaled and killing kids, many dying the first time they use it.

Here's a link to an article on Snopes about a 14 year old boy who died. It's tragically sad and I hope that people read about it and learn.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/dustoff.asp

Today In Rhode Island History

Wow, I don't remember this at all!! At that time - 30 years ago - I was five years out of high school and obviously wasn't paying attention to what was going on around me. It's a little scary that the law needed to be changed to keep your name.

Projo.com - Maria Armental

It was 30 years ago today that women gained --- in the eyes of the law --- the right to decide what name when married to use in registering a car once they were married.

Until then, women had to take their husband's names.

Requiring married women to use their husbands' names, said the state registrar of motor vehicles at the time, Eugene Petit, "is in the best interest of the safety of the community. It will keep bad drivers off the road and give us better control of the registry." The safety of the community??? Holy smokes, this guy was completely out of touch!

Petit, whose comments were including in the landmark state Supreme Court case Traugott v. Petit, called the requirement "patriotic."

"Listen," Petit is quoted as saying, "I respect gals in every phase. I hope they just respect society in this." Gals??? Certainly doesn't show a lot of respect when he called women gals!

To the ACLU and the women --- and supportive men -- for whom they filed suit, the matter was a simple one: "The very least you can have in this damned life is your own name." That's how Sheila Cabral-Sousa, the volunteer lawyer who successfully litigated the case for the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, summed up the case at the time. Damn right!

The ACLU issued a press release Monday recalling the anniversary, and adding: ""It is true that the past thirty years have seen many victories for women's rights. ... However, the struggle against gender-based discrimination continues to this day in the fight for equal pay for equal work and similar issues. A look at some of the comments made by public officials only 30 years ago in this case serves as a stark reminder that gains for women's rights remain of recent vintage and, therefore, remain far from complete." Sometimes, ya just gotta like and agree with the ACLU!

Walter Cronkite

I didn't grow up on CBS News - we were a NBC News family - goodnight Chet, goodnight David!

So I didn't really discover Walter Cronkite until after he retired. And that's when I realized what I'd missed all those years!

In 1996 he wrote his autobiography "A Reporter's Life" and it help cement my affection for a truly remarkable man and the impact he had on our lives. Even though I didn't really know him when he was the face of CBS, his impact did affect my life and I'm so grateful for him.

I know there are others who feel as I do; but, with all the media coverage, you'd have thought that MJ gave more to us than Walter Cronkite did, instead of the other way around.

JFK Jr.

Remember this little guy? He was cute, that's for sure.


Of course he came from some pretty people.



And he grew up to be one of the most handsome of handsome men.

But looks don't mean everything. From everything I understand about him, JFK Jr. was a pretty nice guy also.

It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since his death. It was a Saturday morning. As usual, I didn't have the TV on and I wasn't on the internet as much as I am nowadays. I drove to Warwick in the early afternoon to visit with Chelsea and Matthew. My sister-in-law Beverly opened the door and I knew that something was wrong. What's going on, I asked and she was surprised that I didn't know. We sat in front of the TV and were glued there for the rest of the day.

It's still hard to believe that he's gone. If I happen to see a photo or some TV coverage, it all comes rushing back and brings tears to my eyes. He had such potential and we'll never know what could have been. Just like with his dad.

One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind

I love the moon! I love it so much I always use it as my profile picture. I feel so connected to it and, as a kid, thought it was mine.

Forty years after America's launch of Apollo 11, the U.S. space program is at a different crossroads, challenged in recent years to return to the moon and to recapture the ambition that launched the space race in 1961. Back then, a dazzled nation heard the big dreams of a youthful Ivy League-educated, senator-turned president.

"I believe," President John F. Kennedy told Congress, "that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth."

That was the same year Barack Obama was born. Forty-eight years later, Obama, a similarly youthful Ivy League-educated former senator is now in charge, and the nation wonders what his vision is for the U.S. space program.

Forty years ago this week was the Apollo 11 lift-off and, on July 20, the first landing on the moon! I can remember it so well. It was so exciting and I'm looking forward to the next time the US lands on the moon.

27,900 Counts Of Accessory To Murder

That number is kind of staggering, isn't it? Twenty seven thousand nine hundred deaths are attributed to a monster who came to the United States and hid behind a job as an auto worker after committing atrocities.

I'm not Jewish. I don't even know that many Jewish people. What I do know is that the Holocaust was wrong in every possible way. Too many people got away with murder, literally. How right it is that someone is being brought to justice, even all these years later.

"The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator," says Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

German prosecutors formally charged John Demjanjuk on Monday with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp during World War II. He is accused of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Being the sort of murderer he is, of course he denies it. He was a victim too, saying he was a prisoner of war.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by U.S. justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at the Sobibor death camp and information that he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, which was also in occupied-Poland.

"This is obviously an important step forward," Zuroff said by telephone from Jerusalem. "We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment."

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison in Germany. Even I can do that math 27,900 X 15 years each = a death sentence for a man who is 89 years old. I just hope he lives through the trial.

Give Me A Break

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The country's smallest state has the longest official name: "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."

A push to drop "Providence Plantations" from that name advanced farther than ever on Thursday when House lawmakers voted 70-3 to let residents decide whether their home should simply be called the "State of Rhode Island." It's an encouraging sign for those who believe the formal name conjures up images of slavery, while opponents argue it's an unnecessary rewriting of history that ignores Rhode Island's tradition of religious liberty and tolerance.

The bill permitting a statewide referendum on the issue next year now heads to the state Senate.

"It's high time for us to recognize that slavery happened on plantations in Rhode Island and decide that we don't want that chapter of our history to be a proud part of our name," said Rep. Joseph Almeida, an African-American lawmaker who sponsored the bill.

Rhode Island's unwieldy name reflects its turbulent colonial history, a state that consisted of multiple and sometimes rival settlements populated by dissidents.

Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his unorthodox religious views, minister Roger Williams set out in 1636 and settled at the northern tip of Narragansett Bay, which he called Providence Plantations. Williams founded the first Baptist church in America and became famous for embracing the separation of church and state, a legal principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights a century later.

Other settlers made their homes in modern-day Portsmouth and Newport on Aquidneck Island, then known as the Isle of Rhodes.

In 1663, English King Charles II granted a royal charter joining all the settlements into a single colony called "The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." The name stuck. Rhode Island used that royal charter as its governing document until 1843.

Opponents of the name charge argue that "plantations" was used at the time to describe any farming settlements, regardless of slavery.

Rhode Island merchants did, however, make their fortunes off the slave trade. Slaves helped construct Brown University in Providence, and a prominent slave trader paid half the cost of its first library.

Still, Stanley Lemons, a professor emeritus of history at Rhode Island College, said changing the state's name ignores the accomplishments of Williams, whose government passed laws trying to prevent the permanent servitude of whites, blacks and American Indians.

"There are different meanings for this word," Lemons said. "To try to impose their experience on everyone else wipes out Roger Williams."

By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 25, 2009