April 10, 2010 archive

From Ron Paul’s Youtube Channel, 07 April 2010: “A coalition of neocons, oil industry executives and religious extremists want to redraw the boundaries of the Middle East. But it’s not going to turn out the way they want: Afghanistan is a no-win situation, and reports of war crimes and torture continue to do irreparable harm to America’s reputation all around the world.”

Fox News Anchor:

The Authorization to Use Military Force which Congress enacted shortly after 9/11 is clearly unconstitutional. It has no target. It has no end. No one can concede defeat. No one can surrender. It permits every future president to attack whoever he or she wants, for what ever reason he or she wants, wherever they want to go.

Joining me now is… Congressman Ron Paul.

Poland’s President, Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and much of his cabinet, and all the passengers have been killed in a terrible airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, when the ancient Tu -154 Tupolev carrying them missed the runway in thick fog and went down.  There were no survivors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland,” Paszkowski (foreign ministry spokesperson) said. “We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed.”

The crash is likely to be a setback in Polish-Russian relations which had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders of some 22,000 Polish officers, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Rossiya-24 showed hundreds of people around the Katyn monument, many were holding Polish flags, some of them were weeping.

In a case of horrible irony, President Kaczynski and his army Chief of Staff and Deputy Foreign minister  were to attend a memorial service to mark the Kaytn Massacre, or Zbrodnia Kaytnska, near Smolensk,  when about 22,000 Polish POW officers were murdered by the Soviet Secret Service NKVD  during World War 2  by order of Stalin, in 1940.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K…

Turning the innocent, not only those who were grabbed and held for years but their countrymen and women, into potential foreign criminal terrorist, not winning hearts and minds and not being the law abiding country we not only claim but attack others for doing same!

Newly Found Planet Could Hold Water

March 22, 2010 [fair warning: FoxNews Link]

A newly discovered gas giant planet may have an interior that closely resembles those of Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System, and may hold water, the building block of life.

The newly found Corot-9b is one of a class of heavenly bodies called exoplanets — planets like Earth and Saturn that are discovered outside of our solar systems. More than 400 have been found so far, and of the billions of stars in the sky, many are likely to have planets.

[…]

Although the planet itself is a gas giant and hence has no solid surface to stand on, what if it possessed a moon like Saturn’s Titan? If the temperature were towards the lower end of the estimated range, then any moon would be an ice ball. If it were towards the upper end, it would be rather too hot for liquid water. But what if it were somewhere in the middle … ?

New worlds await.  

But do we have the ingenuity to challenge the obstacles, and one day … Manage to Reach Them?

It seems that if one wants to live in the reality? they watch on the tube one needs only be a loyal robot to the GOPers and having access to others money, spend, spend, spend and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy till caught, then whine about innocence and maybe throw in a few tears in apology or not apology.

Junior Florida Republican Party staffer had $1.3 million charged to party credit card

I was am a smoker.   I will always be a smoker.   I started smoking when I was in my early teens.  Over the last 40 or so years, I have smoked as much as not; and I have quit more times than I can count.   My longest quit was for eleven years.  My shortest quit, excluding the quits where I started up again within a day or two, was one year.   I am currently quit again and going on three plus years this time.  If I added all of my quits together, I would guess that I have not smoked 15 – 20 of the last 40 years.  If I was diagnosed with a terminal disease and told I have only a short time left to live, I would run to the store to buy cigarettes.  

Tobacco’s physical addiction is a cake walk to kick.  A nicotine patch for a few weeks clears the way for the grudge match I have to wage with myself while I try to kick my psychological additions to the habit.  Yes, I get that smoking is bad for my health.   Yes, I know stale smoke and butts smell really bad.  Yes, second hand smoke is bad for others; and yes, they have a right not to smell or breath smoke.  Cigarettes are also outrageously expensive, and there is no place left on the planet to smoke in peace except at home.  I know. I know.  I know.      Yet, cigarettes are my best friend; my entertainment when bored or restless. They help me think, and they make my mouth and hands particularly happy.  

So, you can imagine how interested I was in this piece from Reuters.  It explores why some smokers get lung cancer and others don’t.

(Reuters) – Researchers have identified a group of genes that are especially active in lung cancer patients — even in healthy tissue — and said they may be used to predict which smokers will eventually develop lung cancer.

And, they said, a natural supplement derived from food that is being tested to prevent lung cancer appears to halt the precancerous changes.

“Even in normal cells or premalignant cells prior to cancer development we see this pathway being turned on,” said Andrea Bild of the University of Utah, who worked on the study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

–snip-

Myo-inositol is also found in fruits, beans, grains and nuts, although Bild said the finding does not necessarily explain why people who eat more of these foods have a lower risk of cancer in general.

I’ll be sure to save this tidbit right next to my copy of Final Exit.

Thursday Gallup released a poll that should send shivers down every Quisling Democrat’s non-existent spine.

The results I wish to draw to your attention are these-

On Partisan Image the Democratic Party now trails the Republicans 42% favorable (R) to 41% (D).  This is down 11% from August/September ’09 and  is across all Political Identifications- -6% among Democrats, -10% among Independents, and -7% among Republicans.

Moreover Democratic UNFAVORABILITY has RISEN from 51% to 54% and now EXCEEDS Republican unfavorability by 3% (down 5% since August/September).

(h/t Jon Walker)

But that’s the good news.  The Bad News?

Does the Member of Congress in Your District Deserve Re-Election?

49% Yes, 40% No.  The lowest it’s been since 1992.  1994 as you will recall was another Rahm Emanuel orchestrated blowout disaster and the numbers then weren’t nearly this bad.

We call incumbents who’s approval is below 50%, vulnerable and with Congressional approval overall at 28% Approve / 65% Disapprove (a record) it’s not hard to understand why (though normally people approve of their own Congressperson).

(Also h/t Jon Walker)

Have fun storming the castle!

Man accused of death threats released on bail

BY CHRIS BRISTOL

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC  

YAKIMA, Wash. — Over the objection of prosecutors, a Selah retiree accused of making death threats against U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., was released from jail Friday after posting $20,000 bond.

Charles Alan Wilson, 63, had been in custody since the FBI arrested him Tuesday. At a Friday morning court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Hutton ruled the retired carpenter is not a flight risk and has no criminal history.

“While the allegations are serious, and while they have a particular edge to them, I’m convinced … conditions can be imposed to ensure the safety of the community,” said Hutton, who noted Wilson cooperated with authorities after his arrest.