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Al Qaeda's Message Spreading Through English-Language Sites Very sad news from a blogger friend Live from New York, a terror trial we'll regret - Jacoby Fox gets interview with obama Lou Dobbs explains why he left CNN Obama and 'The Great I Am' Fresno State Bulldog Football game on at 1 PM today, Channel 45 Would you like a joint with your fries? A joke for you, may be old, I dunno. Don't stop me if you've heard it. What's going in at the old 3Way Chevrolet place on California? 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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The war against affordable booksby Jeff Jacoby http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6... THE AMERICAN BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION loves people who buy books. It loves them so much that it wants to protect them from wicked retailers who sell popular titles at affordable prices. In fact, it wants to protect them from themselves. Consumers, after all, are likely to rejoice at the chance to pick up a bestseller like Stephen King's Under the Dome or John Grisham's Ford County for just $9, well below their suggested retail price of $35 and $24 respectively. The ABA, a trade group for independent bookstores, is doing all it can to preserve the republic from such pernicious bargains. In a letter to the US Department of Justice last week, the booksellers association called for an investigation into the "predatory" behavior of Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target -- behavior it said "is damaging to the book industry and harmful to consumers." That "predatory" behavior -- what the rest of the world would describe as lively competition -- has taken the form of a price war, with the three retail giants offering 10 of the season's most highly anticipated new books for as little as $8.98 each. At that price, Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target are actually losing money, since books generally wholesale for about half their list price. But that's not unusual: Merchants often promote a deeply discounted loss leader in order to attract new customers and stimulate additional sales. To hear the American Booksellers Association tell it, however, the big online retailers are engaged not in spirited competition, but in an underhanded plot to eliminate competition. Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target, the association claims in its letter to the Justice Department, "are using these predatory pricing practices to attempt to win control of the market for hardcover bestsellers." Evidence? The ABA offers none, and the proposition is hardly self-evident. Indeed, three paragraphs after accusing the big retailers of trying to monopolize book sales, the ABA's letter acknowledges that "none of the companies involved are engaged primarily in the sale of books" and that they are offering such good deals on bestsellers "to attract customers to buy other . . . merchandise" (my italics). Odder and more hyperbolic still is the ABA's assertion that Amazon et al. "are devaluing the very concept of the book" and that "the entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war." That is the sort of thing vendors always say when more efficient or productive competitors challenge them in the marketplace. (A decade ago the ABA said much the same thing about Barnes & Noble and Borders, when it attacked them for selling books at a discount.) As in every other industry, innovation and technology have changed the way books are bought and sold -- and in the wake of change there are always winners and losers. But if "the very concept of the book" is being shredded by low prices, the message hasn't reached the millions of Americans who buy books. Even amid the recession, well over 3 billion books were sold in the United States in 2008, up from 2.3 billion five years earlier -- and from less than 1 billion in 1988. The rise of discount book chains and online book sellers has certainly altered the industry, but it has only increased the American appetite for books. "While on the surface it may seem that these lower prices will encourage more reading," says the ABA, "the reality is quite the opposite." Right -- just as lower food prices lead to more hunger and inexpensive computers are causing the internet to fade away. Behind the bookseller association's strained logic and high-flown rhetoric is little more but a self-interested plea for the government to hobble its competitors. As it wrings its hands at the Amazon/Wal-Mart/Target discounts, the ABA groans that "there is simply no way for ABA members to compete." Really? The big online retailers may have a price advantage, but well-managed independent bookstores have always had other advantages to play up: attentive and knowledgeable service, eye-catching displays, a reader- and author-friendly atmosphere, community involvement, the serendipitous joys of browsing. The ABA does its members no favors by painting them as helpless victims, undone because Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target are discounting some popular books. The best neighborhood booksellers inspire affection and allegiance from customers that no online superstore can match. Prices are important, but they aren't all-important. And not everyone is looking for the latest Stephen King. (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) Herb Benham wrote an articcle today that I found really hit home. If you haven't already, take a look. http://www.bakersfield.com/...
Oh no! This is from the dreaded Fox Network. It can't be true? Can it? If you take the time to watch the videos in the article, be sure and watch BOTH and after all the nonsense, listen to what Beck says about politicians. ALL politicians. Remember the old Movietone news reels? Here's a blast from the past for you. http://www.foxnews.com/movi...
I got this from a fellow blogger and hope you are as happy as I was about it.
A Harley biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.
The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain, the lion jumps back letting go of the girl and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A reporter has watched the whole event.
The reporter addressing the Harley rider says, "Sir, that was the most gallant and brave thing I've seen a man do in my life."
The Harley rider replies, "why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid and danger and acted as I felt right."
The reporter says, "Well, I'll make sure this won't go unnoticed. I'm a journalist, you know, and tomorrow's paper will have this story on the front page...So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?"
The biker replies, "I'm a U.S. Marine and a Republican." The journalist leaves.
The following morning the biker buys the paper to see if, indeed, it brings news of his actions, and reads on the front page:
U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH
(it's an oldie but worth remembering)
I was cruisin' around and look what I ran across. For those who don't know what we look like or how we sound..here it is. I cringed but hey, they say cameras don't lie.
Now some of you really have something to throw darts at.
Peace vs. the 'peace process'by Jeff Jacoby http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...
"WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY," the late Irving Kristol once observed, "they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict." Maybe "destroy" was putting it a bit strongly, but there is no denying that American presidents seem irresistibly drawn to the belief that they can succeed where others have failed and conjure a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab enemies. This diplomacy has gone by various names -- Oslo, the Roadmap, Camp David, and so on -- but time and again it has led not to the end of the conflict but to its intensification. In his memoirs, former President Bill Clinton describes Yasser Arafat's refusal to accept the extraordinarily generous terms for a permanent settlement offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. That refusal led to a Palestinian terror war, the bloody Second Intifada, and when Arafat called Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one." Of course, if Clinton was a failure so were the two George Bushes. Each made it his goal to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, each convened a grand international conference for that purpose (Bush 41 in Madrid, Bush 43 in Annapolis), and each left the situation worse than he had found it. In his first nine months as president, Barack Obama has shown every sign of succumbing to the same temptation. Two days after moving in to the White House, he named George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, his special envoy to the region. He pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into endorsing a "two-state solution." He declared that "the moment is now for us to act" to achieve peace in the Middle East. Unlike his recent predecessors, Obama has gone out of his way to signal a distinct coolness toward Israel and its interests. At a White House meeting with the leaders of American Jewish organizations in July, he suggested that because there had been "no daylight" between Israel and the United States when George W. Bush was president, there had been "no progress" toward peace. In fact, there had often been "daylight" between Washington and Jerusalem during the Bush years. There had been plenty of movement too, from the adoption of the Roadmap to the Israeli "disengagement" from Gaza to the final-status negotiations that followed the Annapolis conference. Still: Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor, as things stand now, will there be any under Obama. Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.
"Wars end not through goodwill but through victory," Pipes writes, defining victory as one side compelling the other to give up its war goals. Since 1948, the Arabs' goal has been the elimination of Israel; the Israelis', to win their neighbors' acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East. "If the conflict is to end, one side must lose and one side win," argues Pipes. "Either there will be no more Zionist state or it will be accepted by its neighbors." Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused, therefore, on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put "on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then -- no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons." So long as American and Israeli leaders remain committed to a fruitless Arab-Israeli "peace process," Arab-Israeli peace will remain unachievable. Let the newest Nobel peace laureate grasp and act upon that insight, and he may do more to genuinely hasten the conflict's end than any of his well-meaning predecessors. (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) Related Topics: Arab-Israel Conflict, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Israel and the United States
The sale has been moved a bit due to the libarary closing on Mondays. It starts Oct 14 and runs through the 17th. The half price sale is on SATURDAY this time. Time to make the columnby Jeff Jacoby http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6...
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. was a man of many parts -- editor, columnist, novelist, sailor, harpsichordist, lecturer, TV host -- and part of his considerable charm owed to the wry cockiness he sometimes affected ("I don't stoop to conquer. I merely conquer.") But there were times when even he overreached. During an interview with NBC's Gene Shalit, Buckley once recalled, he was asked how he came up with topics to write about in his newspaper column. "Gene, when you have been at the profession for long enough," Buckley imprudently replied, "you can, if in a bind, close your eyes and point to the front page of the New York Times, and whatever story you are fingering when you open your eyes -- you can write a column on that story." Shalit didn't miss a beat. "Yes," he said, "I think I remember that column." Now, no one is ever going to catch me boasting about how easy it is to come up with column topics to write about. I find the coming-up-with almost as hard as the writing, and writing for me has never been easy. Still, there are days when even those of us who aren't Bill Buckleys can open the newspaper and spot targets of opportunity with almost every turn of the page: I'm looking at a Boston Globe from last week with a front-page story headlined "Blacks' fight for tenure roils Emerson." Boston's Emerson College is under fire (and the subject of a state "inquiry") because just three of its 76 tenured professors are black. Not enough, cry the diversity police. Yet three out of 76 comes to 4 percent -- only 1 percentage point shy of the 5 percent figure for black tenured professors nationwide. Strange to see such tumult over a discrepancy of 1 percentage point. Strange, too, the observation of one black professor who was denied tenure: "It seems they have different tenure standards for different people based on race." Are Emerson's critics demanding that tenure be granted without regard to color? While simultaneously demanding that more black faculty members get tenure? Could make a good column. Then there's "US funds dry up for Iran rights watchdog," which reports that the Obama administration wants to cut all support for the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. I've written before about the president's abandonment of the democracy promotion that was such a priority for his predecessor. But to pull the plug on what the Globe calls "the most comprehensive clearinghouse of documents related to human rights abuses in Iran" seems almost an act of malice. There's certainly a column in it. On Page A7 we have "Ohio governor delays 2 executions to review injection issues" -- those "issues" being the inability of technicians in one recent case to find a suitable vein for a lethal injection despite trying for two hours. So there will now be a "full review" and a new legal appeal, all serving no purpose except to further delay the dispatch of brutal murderers. Angle for a possible column: Forget lethal injections. Instead of drawn-out sagas with needles and veins, let killers be brought to justice before firing squads. A bullet in the brain is quick and categorical, and considerably more humane than the deaths these murderers inflicted on their victims. "Menino spends big to keep seat," which leads the Metro section on Page B1, notes that Thomas Menino is running the most expensive mayoral campaign in Boston history -- $1.7 million to date. I find it inconceivable that any voter would want to re-elect any incumbent to a fifth term in office. Yet everyone knows it would take a miracle to keep Menino from winning on Nov. 3. The more interesting question -- and grist for a column -- is why a four-term incumbent assured of re-election would spend a fortune on his campaign. Is here merely flaunting the dollars it is so easy for him to raise? Or have 16 years as mayor so addicted Menino to power that he will gladly break every spending record to keep it? On to the business pages. "Frank seeks US loans for those in foreclosure." Fodder, perhaps, for a piece on the strange economic strategy in which those who cannot repay funds they have borrowed are encouraged to borrow even more. There is also "Doughnuts the old-fashioned way," an upbeat profile of a Dunkin' Donuts in Weymouth, Mass., that still makes its doughnuts from scratch. It's one of only a handful that does -- and it just happens to be the busiest of more than 6,300 Dunkin' shops nationwide. That could make a nice column on how free markets tend to reward high quality and hard work. But there's no more time for page turning -- my deadline is approaching! I've got to come up with a column idea. What's it going to be? (Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Whether or not you believe in gun control. Whether or not you think it's a possibility here, this is a really interesting story. An email is going around about this and, as I usually do, I checked snopes.com. Nothing there so I went to google and found the complete story. Note the part where people were worried that he might be a threat to burglers like it's a bad thing. TBC didn't have the coverage today as it was a late game here. Fresno did get it on line though and here's the latest. He's sticking to his guns by golly. http://www.foxnews.com/stor...>http://www.foxnews.com/vide... I know a good share of you hate Glenn Beck but this is funny. At least to me. Just remember, if it was anyone else the rest of you would probalby think it's funny too. http://www.glennbeck.com/co... I dislike crawlies and insects of all kinds so it's creepy to me too. Really, they need to be sent back to the academy for classes in ship recognition I just clarified that because they bear no resemblance o Monty Python et al. As time goes by. Jean and Lionel fall in love during the Korean War and he is shipped out..she's a nurse. Somehow a letter gets lost and each thinks the other lost interest. They each marry and she has a daughter Judy. He marries and has a coffee plantation in Kenya. Her husband dies and she starts a secretarial business with daughter Judy and her best friend Sandy as office staff. Lionel divorces and retires back to England to write his memoirs "My Life In Kenya." Alastair's father hooks him up with Lionel to publish and promote the book and Lionel hires the secretarial service for someone to type up his book. Enter Judy. The start to date and at the same time Alistair gets the hots for "older woman" Jean. Jean and Lionel finally meet and realizes who the other is. Both are a bit hostile. On a foursomes picnic Judy and Alistair want to play badminton but the older ones are too tired. It goes on and they discover they really are attracted to the other ones so Lionel and Jean work it out. Alistair and Judy start to date. Lionels father Rocky owns the estate and is very eccentric. He marries a 70 Madge who like to play the drums and dance country. They are hilarious. Mrs Bale is the housekeeper and serves at precisely 6:07 for instance. She is an avid weather watcher for the English Channel but has never been out of Great Britain. Just eccentric and funny. She's always experimenting serving odd cocktails. She also rides an old WWII M/C with a side car. At one season Rocky and Madge decide they want to travel and not be burdened so he deeds the manor over to Lionel and Jean who find it to be expensive. Rocky is wealthy but I don't think they ever siad where his money came from. Lionel was raised at the manor and Mrs Bale has always been there that he remembers. Jeans sister in law (deceased husband has a shrewish sister) Aunt Penny and she and her befuddled husband Uncle Steve make appearances from time to time. Sandy lives with Jean, Lionel and Judy and Lionel often feels ganged up on. Lionel worries that he has no pension other than royalties off his book and doesn't want to become a "kept" man. Judy breaks it off with Alistair so he dates Sandy..mostly to make Judy jealous I believe. It's on 10 and 18 so I check the story info to see which one I want to watch. That's the snyopsis. it ran for 6-7 seasons and is just in syndication now. I think she did it just for the fun of it. There are outakes on you tube and they are really good.
Anyone have any information on a fire in an RV park on E Brundage? Will his new bride "stand by her man?" Other than the extortion angle, this is sort of ho hum in the entertainment field. What's always shocking are the stories of faithfullness. First of all I'd like to apologize for what I'm about to post. Not that it's going to stop me, but to the sensitive (and to TBC) I just can't help it. I about fell out of my chair when I got this email. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
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