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Fresno State Game Tonight The public's best option: Less government, more choice part 1- Jacoby The public's best option: Less government, more choice Part 2- Jacoby Computer problems Poetry ~ Share yours Will Rogers wise sayings Examples of the left and it's vitriol. The war on affordable books - Jacoby HERB BENHAM: After we were finished, life raised our children Obama Hits Campaign Trail, Schedules Full Week of Political Stops August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 
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Received in email from motopoet (Ryans Proud Pa). Apologies if I violated any copywrite laws. Here is a short interview with Ryan....
Countdown to Kickoff: 4 Days
Aug. 28, 2008
FRESNO, Calif. - Last year Ryan Matthews shattered Fresno State's freshman records and led the nation in both touchdowns and average by a freshman. Matthews looks to continue that success in 2008. With less than a week before the first game, Matthews sat down with GoBulldogs.com to talk about the training, upcoming season, and life as a Bulldog. GoBulldogs.com: What's been the most important adjustment you've made from playing high school football to college ball? GoBulldogs.com: What have you done to increase your speed? GoBulldogs.com: Where do you get your explosive speed? GoBulldogs.com: What are some things you have done in the offseason to help prepare you for the season? GoBulldogs.com: What goals have you set up for yourself this season? GoBulldogs.com: What are you most looking forward to this season? GoBulldogs.com: Who are you closest to on the team? GoBulldogs.com: What personal goals would you like to accomplish before leaving Fresno State? GoBulldogs.com: Do you have any superstitious behaviors you have to do before each game? GoBulldogs.com: What do you like to do for fun outside of football? GoBulldogs.com: The number 21 was retired for Dale Messler, so it took a long process to bring the number out of retirement. What's so special about 21? GoBulldogs.com: Tell me something fans don't know about you that you'd want them to know.
Motopoet sent this to me and gave me permission to post it. _________________________________________________ _____________ I am sick of hearing politicians whine about the spiraling cost of healthcare while at the same time trying to convince me that the government can do it cheaper and more efficiently OR that they have some sort of plan to force healthcare insurance costs on employers, many of whom would be put out of business by such legislation.
The issue should not be THAT healthcare is so costly, but rather, WHY it is so costly. Healthcare is not free. SOMEONE has to pay for it and that someone is those of us who do have insurance or provide our own payment in whatever form. Who is NOT paying for it are illegal immigrants who receive care with no intention of ever paying for it because they know they don't have to and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.
Save this to your favorite places so the next time you want to whine about the plight of illegals in this country and tell me that a wall between us and Mexico is somehow immoral, pull this testimony up and think about it then multiply this number by about 40. That's about 4 BILLION dollars a year in unpaid medical bills by illegals. This problem will not go away until people stop trying to be politically correct about this and stop worrying about hurting peoples feelings.
Getting rid of the illegal immigrant problem would make a huge difference in the cost and availability of healthcare in America.
If I stepped on your toes..Rub the damn things or go to the ER and wait four hours behind the very people I have just denounced so you can get those toes looked at....
Mark
Just for a little fun, you guys really need to see this. Can your kids or grandkids do this at that age? THE MYTH OF THE COMING WHITE MINORITY By Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
http://www.boston.com/bosto...
When the Census Bureau announced last week that white Americans would dwindle to less than half of the US population within a generation, the media quickly spread the word.
"A new census report says that whites in the US will be a minority by the year 2042," announced NPR's Farai Chideya, while over at CNN Tony Harris proclaimed that "the complexion of America is changing and a lot faster than you think: In just 34 years, the Census Bureau says whites will no longer be a majority in this country." The Associated Press moved a story headlined "White Americans no longer a majority by 2042." In the Wall Street Journal, a graph depicted the "declining share" of whites in three age groups -- three lines sloping sharply downward. Once again, the government’s unhealthy obsession with sorting people into categories based on color and ancestry was in the news.
But there was another problem with all this coverage of how white America is rapidly becoming a minority: The Census Bureau never actually said it.
No need to take my word for it -- you can see the numbers for yourself on the Census Bureau website. In a spreadsheet titled "Projections of the Population by Race and Hispanic Origin for the United States: 2008 to 2050," the bureau forecasts a rise in the number of whites from about 243 million today to 325 million at midcentury -- an increase of 82 million. A related spreadsheet gives the percentages: Whites today account for nearly 80 percent of the US population. In 2050, they'll constitute 74 percent -- somewhat less, but still a very hefty majority.
So what explains the persistent drumbeat about the impending white minority? A statistical distortion: the exclusion of Hispanic whites. If only non-Hispanic whites are counted, the white population today amounts to 66 percent of the total, and will fall to around 46 percent by 2050.
But excluding whites of Hispanic origin from the overall white population makes no more sense than excluding whites of Slavic or Scandinavian origin. "Hispanic" is not a race. It is an ethnic category. As the Census Bureau repeatedly points out, Hispanics can be of any race. In the 2000 census, 48 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as white; Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has characterized them as "white in every social sense of this term." Bottom line: Of the 46.6 million Hispanics in the United States today, at least 22 million are white -- even if it suits some people’s racial or political agenda to pretend otherwise.
On both right and left, there are pressures to treat Hispanics as a distinct racial category. Many on the left covet the political attention and affirmative-action largesse that comes with minority-group status. In some quarters of the right, meanwhile, immigration alarmists warn that Hispanics are overwhelming the nation's "white" culture, dissolving the bonds of language and patriotism on which American civilization depends.
One of the lessons of US history is that racial categories are anything but meaningful scientific classifications. For generations, "whites" have been hearing that they are about to be engulfed by unassimilable foreign races, and for generations those "races" have gone on to become -- white! Benjamin Franklin worried mightily about the threat posed to white American culture by the influx of German immigrants. "Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens," he demanded in a pamphlet published in 1751, "who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us
Another German-language American newspaper, the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, was the first to break the news of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. instead of our Anglifying them?" Those "swarthy" Germans, Franklin was quite sure, "will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can adopt our Complexion."
A century and a half later, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge witheringly described the Russians, Poles, and Greeks entering the country as "races with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States." In the early 20th century, federal immigration officials classified the Irish, Italians, and Jews as separate races. Yet today all these groups are viewed collectively, and benignly, as "white."
And so in time, we may hope, will Hispanics, who give every indication of being just as assimilable as earlier groups. Most third-generation Hispanic Americans, for example, marry non-Hispanics. The overwhelming majority speak English -- in many cases, only English. With a little luck, common sense, and goodwill, it will seem as odd in 2050 to focus on "non-Hispanic whites" as it would today to insist that only "non-German whites" are really white.
Better still, perhaps by then we will have really progressed, and abandoned the pernicious notion of racial categories altogether.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) -- ## -- To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) Jeff Jacoby's mailing list, please visit http://www.JeffJacoby.com. To see a month's worth of his recent columns, go to http://www.boston.com/bosto.... Jeff Jacoby welcomes comments and reads all his mail. Unfortunately, he receives so many letters that he cannot answer each one personally. -- ## --
A fellow blogger sent me a really nice inspirational story this morning and reminded me that we could all use a little something to inspire us. The story was of a young man with Downs Syndrome who was a bagger at a grocery store and put a thought for the day in each bag. As I explained to my fellow blogger, I used to put one on the whiteboard at every group and later printed them up and passed them out to the groups. Sometimes their inspirational, sometimes a little sappy, sometimes funny. But always with a message. I am going to try, the operative word being "try", to put one out each day again and would love it if you'd contribute any that are appropriate. I forgot which of you posted one I used to use a lot but I thank you for reminding me. When I saw it, it reminded me that a few words can say volumes. My version of the one posted which I used in the recovery programs is "When your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail." In my field at least, it simply means if the only way you know how to handle problems is with drugs or alcohol, then the only way you will handle them is with drugs or alcohol. Goes toward anger management too. In any case I'll start off with this one. Please feel free to join in. "When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves." attributed to Anthony J. D'Angelo By Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe Wednesday, August 13, 2008 http://www.boston.com/bosto...
Apartment buildings in the Georgian city of Gori, which was bombed by Russia on Saturday Henry Kissinger used to say that while it can be dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, to be a friend is fatal. The people of South Vietnam learned that bitter lesson when the United States abandoned them in 1975. The Poles learned it after Yalta, the Hungarian freedom fighters learned it in 1956, the Cubans learned it at the Bay of Pigs. And tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites learned it in 1991, when at the urging of George H.W. Bush they rose against Saddam Hussein, only to be slaughtered when American support never materialized. We can now add Georgia to that list. Yet last week, when Russia contemptuously wiped its boots on that map, sending tanks and bombers to smash and kill their way across Georgia's frontier, Bush's response was feckless. As the president horsed around in Beijing, posing with bikini-clad Olympic volleyball players, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin -- no longer pretending to have relinquished executive power -- was in the Caucuses directing Russian military operations against Georgia. The first response from the White House to Moscow's naked aggression was milquetoast: evenhanded mush about the need for "a stand-down by all troops." It took four days before Bush finally blasted Russia's "dramatic and brutal escalation" in Georgia, and declared such behavior "unacceptable in the 21st century." By then it was too late. Not only had Russia seized control of the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it had taken the Georgian city of Senaki with its military base, and was bombing two other key cities, Poti and Gori. This was a "3 a.m. phone call" if anything ever was, and the White House bungled it. So did Barack Obama, whose first response was the same as Bush's. "Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint," he announced, seemingly unwilling to choose between the imperialist invader and its weaker neighbor. It took Obama three tries to catch up with John McCain, who had recognized at once the import of Russia's first military offensive beyond its borders since Soviet rule ended in 1991. McCain denounced Russia's aggression as soon as the news hit, then followed it up on Monday with a forceful explanation of the moral and strategic stakes in this crisis. And what are those stakes? Simply put, whether Russia can intimidate the countries on its periphery into toeing Moscow's line and keeping their distance from America and the West. Putin couldn't care less about the rights of South Ossetians or Abkhazians. But he cares intensely about restoring Moscow's Cold War hegemony in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In 2005, Putin characterized the end of the Soviet Union -- i.e., the emancipation of Eastern Europe and tens of millions of human beings -- as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Putin, the apparatchik who spent 17 years in the KGB, aims to restore the glory that was the Brezhnevite USSR, and has revived every Soviet technique in pursuing that goal: The jailing and exile of political opponents. The murder of aggressive journalists. Gross interference with foreign elections. Top-down control of the media. Advanced weapons sales to villainous regimes. Anti-American obstructionism at the UN. Cyberwar against Estonia. Energy extortion against Ukraine. Savage destruction in Chechnya. About the only Brezhnev-era tactic not tried was the invasion of a neighboring country. Now that line has been crossed too, and with impunity. For months, the United States has claimed to be ready for a military alliance with Georgia; that is what NATO membership means, after all. Yet it was unready to do a thing when its potential ally came under attack, except ferry Georgian troops home from Iraq. "Why won't America and NATO help us?" a distraught Georgian farmer asked a Western reporter this week. "If they won't help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?" (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
-- ## -- To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) Jeff Jacoby's mailing list, please visit http://www.JeffJacoby.com. To see a month's worth of his recent columns, go to http://www.boston.com/bosto.... Jeff Jacoby welcomes comments and reads all his mail. Unfortunately, he receives so many letters that he cannot answer each one personally. Why are you a Republican? http://www.youtube.com/watc...
'HONOR' KILLING COMES TO THE US By Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe Sunday, August 10, 2008 http://www.boston.com/bosto... No one knows just how many Muslim girls and women are murdered each year in the name of family "honor," since their deaths frequently go unreported and unpunished. The cases that do come to light are ghastly. "Women and young girls are set ablaze, strangled, shot at, clubbed, stabbed, tortured, axed, or stoned to death," a United Nations report noted in 2004. "Their bodies are found mutilated with their throat slit, or they are chopped into pieces and thrown in a ditch." The report singled out as especially horrifying the honor killing in Pakistan of "a 16-year-old girl who was reportedly electrocuted to death after being drugged with sleeping pills and being tied to a wooden bed with iron chains." Her offense: marrying a boy from the wrong community. Countless others have lost their lives for refusing an arranged marriage, wearing Western-style clothing, having a boyfriend, or even being raped. Recently, the Saudi human rights activist Wajeha al-Huwaidar wrote a scathing essay characterizing honor killings as a scourge peculiar to the "Greater Middle East," with its entrenched culture of misogyny and male supremacy. Her article, which appeared on the Arab reformist website AAfaq.org, was prompted by the lynching of 17-year-old Du'a al-Aswad, a Kurdish girl stoned to death by a mob of Iraqi men. (The essay has been translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which also provides a link to a gruesome cellphone video of the lynching.) "From Pakistan and Afghanistan through Iran, the Middle East, and all the way to Morocco," Huwaidar wrote, "this entire part of the world [is full of] defeated and dejected men, whose only way to gain some sort of victory is by beating their women to death." Sadly, evidence is not hard to come by. In the last few months, there have been news reports of a Jordanian man murdering his daughter "to cleanse the family's honor" after she kept leaving home without permission; another Jordanian, 22 years old, who gave the same reason -- "family honor" -- for killing his pregnant sister; a Saudi woman beaten and shot by her father after he discovered her having an online correspondence with a man on Facebook; and two Arab brothers in Israel, who strangled their sister after learning that she was involved in a romantic relationship. But while honor killings may be more prevalent in the Middle East, no longer are they unknown in the West. In the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro last month, a Pakistani immigrant allegedly strangled his 25-year-old daughter with a bungee cord because she was determined to end her arranged marriage and had gotten involved with a new man. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sandeela Kanwal's father, Chaudhry Rashid, "told police he is Muslim and that extramarital affairs and divorce are against his religion [and] that's why he killed her." In court last week, a detective quoted Rashid: "God will protect me. God is watching me. I strangled my daughter." In upstate New York a few weeks earlier, Waheed Allah Mohammad, an immigrant from Afghanistan, was charged with attempted murder after repeatedly stabbing his 19-year-old sister. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that Mohammad was "infuriated because his younger sister was going to clubs, wearing immodest clothing, and planning to leave her family for a new life in New York City" -- she was a "bad Muslim girl," he told sheriff's investigators. On New Year's Day in Irving, Texas, the bullet-riddled bodies of the Said sisters -- Sarah, 17, and Amina, 18 -- were found in an abandoned taxi. Police issued an arrest warrant for their father, an Egyptian immigrant named Yaser Abdel Said, who had reportedly threatened to kill them upon learning that they had boyfriends. According to the Dallas Morning News, Yaser Said was given to "gun-waving rants about how Western culture was corrupting the chastity of his daughters." While many authorities say that Islamic religious tradition does not sanction honor killing, it has long been accepted in many Muslim societies all the same. Perpetrators are typically punished lightly, if at all. In 2003, Jordan's parliament overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to impose harsher penalties for honor killings; Islamists objected on the grounds that more severe punishment would violate religious traditions and damage Jordanian society. “There must be violence against women,” proclaimed the headline on a column in the Yemen Times earlier this year. The beating of wives and sisters, the columnist argued, is sometimes necessary “to preserve the morals and principles with which Islam has honored us.” It is appalling that such lethally barbaric attitudes could persist anywhere at this late date -- and all the more alarming, now that the shame of honor killing has made its way here. (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
-- ## -- To subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) Jeff Jacoby's mailing list, please visit http://www.JeffJacoby.com. To see a month's worth of his recent columns, go to http://www.boston.com/bosto.... Jeff Jacoby welcomes comments and reads all his mail. Unfortunately, he receives so many letters that he cannot answer each one personally. Manure: In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large
shipments of manure were common.
It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when
wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the
process of fermentation began again, of which a by product is methane gas.
As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen.
Methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came
below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!
Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just
what was happening.
After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term 'Ship
High In Transit' on them, which meant for the sailors to stow it high
enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would
not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.
Thus evolved the term ' S.H.I.T ' , (Ship High In Transport) which has
come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.
You probably did not know the true history of this word.
Neither did I.
I always thought it was a golf term.
[Received in email]
[edited....This is a joke received in email. Not to be mistaken for an urban legend and bears no facimile to the truth other than the reference to playing golf where I used to use it quite frequently.]
I was talking to a friend of mine's little girl, and she said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do? She replied, "I'd give houses to all the homeless people." "Wow - what a worthy goal," I told her, "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I 'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward a new house." She thought that over for a few seconds 'cause she's only 6. And while her Mom glared at me, she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?" And I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party." Her folks still aren't talking to me.
(joke time)
I really enjoy hearing from fellow bloggers off the blog. Some of us have had some personal conversations that don't need to be aired (girl stuff, health, family etc, even knowing mutual aquaintences) in public. I appreciate the ones who write and send me funny jokes and articles. I appreciate the caring that they show as an indication that they are real people and not just a name on a blog. Occasionally a bad one slips in. I have no idea why someone would feel the need to send a hateful email but it happened today. I've had a few in the past but it was long, long ago and this one surprised me. Since there was no friendship involved, or any apparent attempt at humor, I'm posting the email here on this blog. Full name and all. If it's deemed inappropriate so be it. This is the kind of thinking and talking that I mentioned earlier today on the blog. Michael, if you thought it was ok to tell me this, I see no reason why the rest of the bloggers shouldn't share in it.
Bakersfield.com user Micheal Jeske wanted to tell you the following:
"Dear Nancy: I am proud to say that I am ashamed of our country. I am proud to say that I hate America. "
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[edited to include the header. Happy to forward it to anyone who might doubt it's authenticity]
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