Deans are rockin' first here!

Thankful,

D*mn right!

Lynn in Cincinnati

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll...

Here's another article on our fire the map shows how close it is. Link slow but sure.

9:15 a.m.: Officials hope to get massive brush fires under control Thursday

A wildfire that threatened structures in Alachua, Bradford and Clay counties this week did not significantly advance overnight, although some road closures due to the blaze remained in effect Thursday morning, county officials reported.

“We're hoping,” Brian Johns with Bradford County's emergency management office said when asked if firefighters may be able to get the fire under control Thursday.

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I always say never underestimate prayer power in a town full of not much but churches LOL (no offense, churchgoers). Supposedly 30% contained up from 20% yesterday.

On the OJ thing, from what I understand he was not causing any kind of disturbance, he just came in to eat.  Ruby said that he does not like the fact that he still attracts attention so he told him to leave. 

 I have mixed feelings on this one.  I am no fan of OJ Simpson's but I am also not a fan of Jeff Ruby.  When I read the following my first thought was "would he refuse to serve W?".  I am pretty sure that he would be thrilled to have W eat at his restaurant and, although W has not personally killed anyone, he is certainly responsilbe for the loss of way too many lives. 

(for those who did not see my post from the last thread):The owner of an upscale steakhouse in Louisville said he asked O.J. Simpson to leave his restaurant the night before the Kentucky Derby because he is sickened by the attention Simpson still attracts. "I didn't want to serve him because of my convictions of what he's done to those families," Jeff Ruby, owner of Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse. What do you think about Ruby's decision.

3. I can understand the mixed feelings. I wouldn't want to serve him either, but think it was wrong to ask him to leave if those were the circumstances.
~ ~ ~

Places to go... see ya later.

Kindness is free, to any and all, even if ya don't like them ;-)

* rdorgan
Thu, 05/10/07
10:21 am
__________________________________________________________________________

Some will argue that Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin did some good things too.............Blair made his one boner, and now England has a target on her back for generations..................

Send him to the White Tower..................you know what they did there.

The finding adds a new layer of fraud to an already seamy tale of international deception.

Moreover, officials said, some of that contaminated flour, mislabeled as gluten, was mixed into fish food in Canada and exported to the United States, where it was fed to fish raised for human consumption.

Accordingly, some American fish may be laced with melamine, the industrial toxin whose spread has revealed in startling detail the many ways in which the food chains for pets, farm animals and humans are internationally intertwined.

"It shows the degree to which, with the globalization of agriculture, things that go wrong in one country can affect many of us who never thought we'd be touched," said Rebecca J. Goldburg, a biologist with advocacy group ....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/08/AR2007050801060.html?nav=rss_health

Lynn wrote "I am pretty sure that he would [Jeff Ruby] thrilled to have W eat at his restaurant and, although W has not personally killed anyone, he is certainly responsilbe for the loss of way too many lives."

I'm not sure what that has to do with it.  Having personally killed someone can hardly be the criterion for deciding to serve them or do anything else for them.  Soldiers personally kill others in combat.  Drivers kill people in accidents.  Police officers kill people, suspects along with the guilty, in the line of duty.  The pilot of the Enola Gay caused the deaths of an estimated 140,000 people.  Do you believe these circumstances provide a rationale for not serving them in a restaurant?

The danger of these decisions, obviously, are in the civil rights implications.  Places of public accommodation must be accountable for their policies of refusing service.  Simpson has been acquited of murder charges.  A policy of refusing service to persons suspected of any of a whole array of charges, regarding illegal, immoral, or merely less than model conduct, creates a very slippery slope on which it would be very difficult to regain our footing.

6.

Mike -

IMO Blair's resignation is enough.

Segwaying, I just saw this piece about how the U.S. Treasury Dept is going after Michael Moore:

http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20070510/117880002000.html

Michael Moore Faces U.S. Treasury Probe
 

Thursday May 10 5:27 AM ET

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary "Sicko," The Associated Press has learned.

...

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.

"This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba," Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.

In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of "Sicko." The person requested anonymity because Moore's attorneys had not yet determined how to respond.

...

"Sicko" premieres May 19 at the Cannes Film Festival and debuts in U.S. theaters June 29.

Moore declined to comment, said spokeswoman Lisa Cohen.

After receiving the letter, Moore arranged to place a copy of the film in a "safe house" outside the country to protect it from government interference, said the person working on the release of the film.

Treasury officials declined to answer questions about the letter. "We don't comment on enforcement actions," said department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.

The letter noted that Moore applied Oct. 12, 2006, for permission to go to Cuba "but no determination had been made by OFAC." Moore sought permission to travel there under a provision for full-time journalists, the letter said.

According to the letter, Moore was given 20 business days to provide OFAC with such information as the date of travel and point of departure; the reason for the Cuba trip and his itinerary there; and the names and addresses of those who accompanied him, along with their reasons for going.

Potential penalties for violating the embargo were not indicated. In 2003, the New York Yankees paid the government $75,000 to settle a dispute that it conducted business in Cuba in violation of the embargo. No specifics were released about that case.

...

Moore's opponents have accused him of distorting the facts, and his Cuba trip provoked criticism from conservatives including former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson, who assailed the filmmaker in a blog at National Review Online.

"I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care," wrote Thompson, the subject of speculation about a possible presidential run. "I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore's talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented."

...

* rdorgan
Thu, 05/10/07
12:17 pm
__________________________________________________________________________

Well, I think you are still all bubbly over this ireland/britain thing................what blair and bush did is unconscienable......if the governments of these nations let these guys and their administrations get away with it unpunished, then it will only encourage other misfits to replicate these inhumane and disastrous acts against humanity...............

10.  Michael, well said.

10.

Michael Ellis
Thu, 05/10/07
12:38 pm

...if the governments of these nations let these guys and their administrations get away with it unpunished, then it will only encourage other misfits to replicate these inhumane and disastrous acts against humanity.
---------
!!!

Bush's Zombie Shuffles Off

http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq05102007.html

Tony Blair's success was limited to winning three general elections in a row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician, but without much substance; bereft of ideas he eagerly grasped and tried to improve upon the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. But though in many ways Blair's programme has been a euphemistic, if bloodier, version of Thatcher's, the style of their departures is very different. Thatcher's overthrow by her fellow-Conservatives was a matter of high drama: an announcement outside the Louvre's glass pyramid during the Paris Congress brokering the end of the Cold War; tears; a crowded House of Commons. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack. Thatcher's supporters described themselves afterwards as horror-struck by what they had done. Even Blair's greatest sycophants in the British media: Martin Kettle and Michael White (The Guardian), Andrew Rawnsley (Observer), Philip Stephens (FT) confess to a sense of relief as he finally quits.

If this judgement seems unduly harsh let me quote Sir Rodric Braithwaite, a former senior adviser to Blair, writing in the Financial Times on 2, August, 2006:

"A spectre is stalking British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud's. This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the Central Intelligence Agency's box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent...

Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years--to take the highlights--we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair's total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?..."

Psychiatrists, Children and Drug Industry’s Role

Just as surprising, Ms. Bailey said, was learning that the university psychiatrist who supervised Anya’s care received more than $7,000 from 2003 to 2004 from Johnson & Johnson, Risperdal’s maker, in return for lectures about one of the company’s drugs.

...These best-selling drugs, including Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify and Geodon, are now being prescribed to more than half a million children in the United States to help parents deal with behavior problems despite profound risks and almost no approved uses for minors.

....From 2000 to 2005, drug maker payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose more than sixfold, to $1.6 million. During those same years, prescriptions of antipsychotics for children in Minnesota’s Medicaid program rose more than ninefold.

....In Minnesota, psychiatrists collected more money from drug makers from 2000 to 2005 than doctors in any other specialty. Total payments to individual psychiatrists ranged from $51 to more than $689,000, with a median of $1,750.....

======

lots more long article - very interesting

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/health/10psyche.html?th&emc=th

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/...

Blunt Putin Speech Seemed Aimed at U.S.
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW -- Who was President Vladimir Putin talking about when he said the world faces threats to peace like those that led to World War II?

Putin's statement at a Victory Day parade on Red Square on Wednesday was artfully phrased to be both blunt and vague -- but political observers have little doubt he was criticizing the United States for "disrespect for human life, claims to global exclusiveness and dictate, just as it was in the time of the Third Reich."
................


http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/...

driveby: 

The question isn't "Who lost Russia?"

it is "Who lost America?"

everyone of us needs to look in the mirror

16.
--------
!!!
There is always chance...to find itself..., the trick is to manage to handle it peacefully.

Just saw LIEberman speak in the Senate trying to explain his obstinate stance on Iraq. At some point he could be the only one left standing defending, not his homeland, but Israel.

He has gotten himself into this predicament by placing what should be his priorities in the wrong order.

Phil Specht
Thu, 05/10/07
1:54 pm
__________________________________________________________________________

Putin and Russia are hardly angels, but as Ive often said Americans need to look at our own foreign policies since 1945 and especially since 1980...............the answers are all there.......

To your tinfoil hats everyone:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bush_Chang...

Bush changes plan for emergency shadow government
RAW STORY
Published: Thursday May 10, 2007

President Bush yesterday issued a national security directive that would, in the event of a catastrophic attack on the federal government, assign the responsibility of running a shadow government to the White House, not the Department of Homeland Security, according to a Washington post report.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/20781

NEW ONE ALREADY

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I like Putin.   He offered to send 'guards' to our polling places in 2000, on I believe inside tips that a coup was about to happen. : )   I think part of their upset with Bush is that they have 'billions' of dollars worth of deals with Iran, so does China.  And I believe Europe gets their oil from Iran, too  And all of them know that any type of disruption in that area (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, even the threats from Bush)- affects them all.   And it would certainly affect us.  I mean, we've already trashed Iraq and diminished their supply of oil.     Also - remember George wants 'missiles' in Iraq.  Probably on the 14 bases he wants to keep there.....very very close to Russia.  Russia is having a ...well a Russia type of FIT.  And Condi just keeps talking 'down' about them.   Putin once said, "You think we have no democracy in our media?...you ask Dan Rather".   Putin said that Condi needs to have children and basically, get a life.   So, he's funny, too.  THIS guy can talk AND read.    : )

Perhaps the President's isn't very well liked because he has spent $300 billion to date on the war in Iraq while thousands of people around the world go to bed hungry each night. The Borgen Project states that according to the Millennium Development Goals there are elements in place to combat world hunger. The deficit in the funding to end starvation and malnutrition is over $19 billion. Perhaps if some of the funds from the war on terror were used to fight global poverty lives could be save instead of American lives lost.