Yesterday (4/27) those of us in the New York City and Northeast New Jersey with views of Lower Manhattan were treated to a flashback of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. To the horror of thousands the backup 747 serving as Air Force One when the president is aboard took several low passes through and around Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Trailing the low-flying backup presidential plane was an F-16. Imagine the fear that gripped those watching an unexplained low flying airliner and a “pursuing” fighter jet! For anyone who doesn’t remember that day clearly:
Why was this photo op (if it was a photo op) top secret? To me that’s the fundamental question which brings into question whether it was merely a photo op. A photo op of Air Force One careening around Manhattan? Huh? I’m not a conspiracy theorist but other explanations, which I will keep to myself, occur to me.
A moron could have predicted the public panic as a jumbo jet passed over ground zero and made a pass by the Statue of Liberty. Could White House Military Office Director (whatever that is) Louis Caldera be less than a moron? I don’t think so. As of this writing I don’t see President Obama asking for his resignation. The preposterousness continued as both President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates denied prior knowledge of the mission. The Defense Secretary and president didn’t know that an F-16 was going to be playing aerial games with the backup to Air Force One. In fact, Obama today expressed amazement that “someone” took his plane without notifying him. Imagine that!
Word has it that local police (NYPD and Jersey City Police) were informed of the mission with the proviso that it was top secret and should be disclosed to no one. NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was not informed. Citizens were not informed. So why were police informed? So they wouldn’t shoot down the plane? To keep order in the streets as thousands ran for their lives after evacuating buildings in Manhattan and Jersey City? Why tell the police without informing the public?
This entire incident smells. No one – not even Louis Caldera – is that stupid!
May 8, 2009 Update: Louis Caldera's resignation accepted by President Obama. Looks like that's all there was.
Straight from cable news and huffingtonpost.com, photos of April 15th’s Fixed News sponsored Teabagging Day. Charming bunch of ignorant white people, aren’t they?!
For those not in the know, “teabagging” has a non-tax-protest meaning. To teabag someone is to take your balls out of your pants and place them as embarrassingly close to another guy’s face as possible – often with a video camera present. Look it up – youtube, Wikipedia, et al.
A chemical substance used by tens of millions is tearing at the fabric of American society. Use of this substance by citizens has had catastrophic effects including and certainly not limited to:
1- Death due to over-dosing
2- Temporary alteration of the ability of the brain to properly function
3- Reckless if not criminal behavior often leading to the deaths of others
4- Thousands of motor vehicle, boating and ATV accidents every year
5- Domestic violence
6- Destruction of families and relationships
7- Loss of work productivity; loss of job
8 – Annual economic cost to society estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars
Worse news is that this substance is legal under federal and state laws. In fact, federal and state governments make billions of dollars annually by taxing its sale.
This chemical substance is alcohol.
I’ll bet each person reading this article has been negatively affected by alcohol during the course of his/her life.
While governments do not shoulder the costs of prosecuting the use of alcohol, society shoulders the costs of its fallout. The cost to society is evident in each of the eight areas of fallout listed above. From a personal perspective, my life has been affected as well as altered by numbers 2, 5 and 6. Barely a day passes where the news doesn’t report a tragic death due directly to the involvement of alcohol. The litigation resulting from these eight effects further bogs down an already overburdened court system.
This legal substance with the fallout enumerated above can be purchased at will in any quantity by anyone over the state’s drinking age merely with ID and a credit card. Attempts to ban alcohol, a substance consumed in a myriad of forms throughout history, have failed miserably. The classic example of such futility is in the United States Constitution where the 18th Amendment banned it in 1919 and then the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th in 1933.
A different chemical substance used by tens of millions of Americans has had far fewer areas of fallout, relative to those for alcohol. I don’t know if comparative statistics are available but you don’t hear a lot about Tetrahydrocannabinols, the “active ingredient” in marijuana plants, creating the havoc wrought on society by alcohol. Look for news reports prior to 1937 when marijuana was criminalized for reports of fallout comparable to that from alcohol.
Going further back to the days of cowboys & Indians, it was the cowboys who introduced alcohol (firewater) to the Indians. Prior thereto, substances used by Indians in North, Central and South America were found in nature – like marijuana. Even today some Indian tribes use ingredients provided by nature to relax and get high.
My understanding of the fear of marijuana use is that it leads to the use of “heavier” drugs like heroin, cocaine, etc. The research on this bit of fear mongering is split on whether there is chemical or psychological linkage between the two. There is no conclusive answer one way or the other. If there is conclusive research linking marijuana use with a tangible disease similar to alcoholism, I haven’t heard of it.
People needing or wanting to try drugs heavier than marijuana (or alcohol) are going to get around to them whether the pot they smoke is legal or illegal, that is if they smoke pot at all. In fact, it could be the ease of obtaining illegal pot that propels those wanting heavier illegal drugs to see illegality as less of an issue.
America’s insatiable demand for marijuana has upped the profit potential by smuggling illegal marijuana into the country. As this is criminal under US laws, law enforcement costs to stem the activity are astronomical. Prosecution of big timers, medium timers and small timers in the chain of illegal distribution sucks up massive law enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial resources. Add into the equation the prosecution of the end users who smoke a joint or bowl in the privacy of their homes. Has marijuana use been significantly decreased due to these billion dollar efforts? Don’t think so.
If/when marijuana is legalized under both federal and state laws the costs of prosecution, trial and punishment are immediately eliminated. Under federal supervision, marijuana is sold by closely regulated state stores, similar to how it alcohol is sold in many states. Price is determined by quantity and quality. Revenues are used to purchase crops from marijuana growers and, along with state and federal sin taxes, pocketed by the state and federal governments. Billions in prosecution costs are saved while billions in sales and tax revenues are pumped into state and federal budgets.
Today President Obama is in Mexico discussing the movement of drugs north and guns south. Legalization of marijuana in the United States will cut the legs out from under the Mexican marijuana lords – fewer drugs going north and fewer guns going south.
The international trend today is toward legalization of marijuana. It may not happen in the United States during my lifetime, but financial logic, a peek at reality and making me happy dictate that it should.
Look again at the list of eight. Does that sound like marijuana to you?
[Written by RandolphE. Schmid of the Associated Press]
By RANDOLPHE. SCHMID, AP Science Writer – 2/13/09 – 3:30 PM
CHICAGO – "Chemistry look what you've done to me," Donna Summer crooned in Science of Love, and so, it seems, she was right. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a panel of scientists examined the mystery of what happens when hearts throb and lips lock. Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women.
Chemicals in the saliva may be a way to assess a mate, Wendy Hill, dean of the faculty and a professor of neuroscience at LafayetteCollege, told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday.
In an experiment, Hill explained, pairs of heterosexual college students who kissed for 15 minutes while listening to music experienced significant changes in their levels of the chemicals oxytocin, which affects pair bonding, and cortisol, which is associated with stress. Their blood and saliva levels of the chemicals were compared before and after the kiss.
Both men and women had a decline in cortisol after smooching, an indication their stress levels declined.
For men, oxytocin levels increased, indicating more interest in bonding, while oxytocin levels went down in women. "This was a surprise," Hill said.
In a test group that merely held hands, chemical changes were similar, but much less pronounced, she said.
The experiment was conducted in a student health center, Hill noted. She plans a repeat "in a more romantic setting."
Hill spoke at the session on the Science of Kissing, along with Helen Fisher of RutgersUniversity and Donald Lateiner of OhioWesleyanUniversity.
Fisher noted that more than 90 percent of human societies practice kissing, which she believes has three components — the sex drive, romantic love and attachment.
The sex drive pushes individuals to assess a variety of partners, then romantic love causes them to focus on an individual, she said. Attachment then allows them to tolerate this person long enough to raise a child.
Men tend to think of kissing as a prelude to copulation, Fisher said. She noted that men prefer "sloppy" kisses, in which chemicals including testosterone can be passed on to the women in saliva. Testosterone increases the sex drive in both males and females.
"When you kiss an enormous part of your brain becomes active," she added. Romantic love can last a long time, "if you kiss the right person."
Lateiner, a classical scholar, observed that kissing appears infrequently in Greek and Roman art, but was widely practiced, despite the spread of skin disease at that time by facial kissing. And there was a potential for social faux pas by kissing the wrong person at the wrong time.
Overall, the science of kissing — philematology — is under-researched, Hill concluded.
University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins is to be commended for his steadfast refusal to rescind the school’s invitation to President Barack Obama to be its commencement speaker. The more conservative wing of the Church is in a tizzy. Ten priests from the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the order which founded the university, have joined four bishops and 120,000+ signers of an online petition in objecting to Obama’s position favoring abortion as grounds for disqualification from speaking at the university. The grounds for their objections are based on their views of Catholic tenets.
This is so wrong-headed.
UND has not sought to exempt itself, in the name of the Pope or Church dogma, from the academic freedom of scholarly debate. Even were President Obama to use the speech to promote abortion, his speech would certainly fall under scholarly debate.
Is UND to screen its speakers based on Catholic correctness no matter the subject of a speech? For example, no one who has been divorced (especially divorced and remarried – bigamy) would be invited to campus. Among US presidents to speak at Notre Dame was Ronald Reagan, divorced and remarried. So what do we have here? Hypocrisy.
To those protesting the invitation by the university:
This is the President of the United States that has been invited to deliver Notre Dame’s commencement address. Presidents don’t do many of these in any one graduation season. Hey conservative folks – rejoice – do cartwheels in your robes. Don’t be getting all holy on everyone – he’s the president and is coming to speak as the president. He is not coming to speak in favor of abortion. This isn’t and never was about abortion until you brought it up. It bears repeating that this is the President of the United States, not a rabble-rouser espousing either position on abortion. Be honored that President of the United States Barack Obama chose Notre Dame to deliver one of his remarkable speeches.
Those clergymen who go through with threatened on-site protests will succeed in only embarrassing the premier Catholic university in the country for the entertainment of the world media. To the clergymen getting all holy on this issue: Shut up!
It is estimated that, to date, just in the United States, the Catholic Church has paid out more than $2 billion to victims of abuse by priests and others associated with the church. This is probably the tip of the iceberg as more victims come forth as more suits succeed and sizeable settlements reached. This iceberg tip of $2 billion outgoing from the Church does not include the rest of the world where victims are as widespread as the reach of the Church.
A mushrooming scandal in Alaska is a microcosm of what the Church faces around the world. A lawsuit filed on behalf of 43 victims against Alaska’s Jesuit order claims that Alaska was the Jesuit’s dumping ground for “problem” priests. Another lawsuit with 60+ victims is in the works. These two lawsuits are part of an Alaska clergy scandal involving at least 300 victims and 40 Jesuit priests and volunteers. Like many suits, this suit alleges that Church officials knew of the abusive priests but failed to do anything about it. More people are coming forward as the scandal rocks the state. To date in just the state of Alaska, the Church has paid out $59 million in damages. Anchorage Daily News
Will the Catholic Church survive both the financial drain and catastrophic damage to its image? Of course – a 2,000 year old institution of world society will not perish due to a perverse minority. The Church will eventually reclaim its reputation, having purged its internal hypocrisy.
As to the hypocrisy of celibacy, that should be another article.
Two recent scary realizations: How much I know about the current economic crisis and its causes compared to others, and, how little I know about the current economic crisis and its causes compared to others. We all should know what happened. To educate myself on the causes I turned to cable TV for a guy who explained how it happened in terms and in a manner I could understand. I’m no dummy but the intricacies of the financial markets are beyond easy grasp. What did AIG have to do with banks’ toxic assets? I finally got it. My teacher? Barack Obama. Speaking at a March 18 town hall meeting in Orange County, California, President Obama laid out in terms I understood how the house of cards was constructed and how it collapsed. The president explained a complex crisis in a matter of several minutes in terms understandable to many (if not most) Americans. You may say that such a short explanation couldn’t possibly be the fully detailed story. It wasn’t intended to be, but the president gave Americans the gist of it so that more of us understand what’s going on and why. What a remarkably refreshing experience.
Wednesday’s town hall meeting was the nightcap to Obama’s promise earlier in the day to be ultimately responsible for the actions of his administration. This Trumanesque “the buck stops here” pronouncement was momentarily stunning. What?! A president willing to take rather than shift responsibility?! What a remarkably refreshing experience.
To young people: Learn from this president. Learn how our government is supposed to work, not how it worked these past 8 years where nobody took responsibility for anything.
To all readers: Watch this president govern. We will all learn.
