Janice Brown Nominated to Federal District Court!
Final TALLY COUNT:
AYES- 56
NAYS- 43
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Rumors Spring Up About American Teen Missing in Aruba
It was bound to happen. For Natalee Holloway has been missing for nine days.
The most recent rumor is that Natalee has been sold into a white slavery ring. No, we don’t believe this for a minute.
Another puzzlement. For Aruba law, as various pundits have explained it in various ways, allows the police to detain suspects without a “substantial” amount of evidence. A Dutch Judge ruled that there was enough suspicion to detain two men while investigators try to get more evidence.
Whatever the prevailing law and how it is applied, two men are being held for the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. From all I’ve heard, and there has been no “official” police statement, there is a witness who alleges to have seen one of the men, in his uniform, talking to Natalee early in the morning she disappeared. Yet other scuttlebutt has it that the Holiday Inn surveillance tapes show no sign of Natalee on the morning she disappeared.
It does seem to this American pretty flimsy evidence to justify taking away someone’s freedom. Friends and families of the men being held are coming forth.
Cynthia Degraf is a girlfriend of one of the suspects being held, an Abraham Adams I believe his name is. She swears that SHE is his alibi, that she and her boyfriend went to a concert then went back to her house. She and the mother of one of the suspects have been shown screaming and crying that their beloveds are but scapegoats.
What puzzles me is that there’s three fellows who admitted having been with Natalee after she left the Aruban nightclub. They all went swimming or so the scuttlebutt goes. Yet these fellows, alleged to be prominent in the Aruban community, are not being held. If nothing else, the last person or persons known to have been with a missing person are generally the focus of such an investigation.
It’s getting so very odd.
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The Michael Jackson Case
Other than the jury STILL being in deliberations, the latest on this case is the denials of all press conferences and spokespeople by Jackson’s family and lawyers.
There is one spokesbabe who has been talking to the press and holding press conferences. When asked, she said that she never utters a word without clearing it with Jackson’s defense attorney, Tom Mesereau.
From Jackson’s Official Web Site:
The efforts of Michael Jackson's friends and supporters are noticed and very much appreciated at this time. However, only Michael Jackson's attorneys of record have been authorized to speak on his behalf.
Statement of Defense Attorney Thomas Mesereau - June 8, 2005
Created: Wednesday, 08 June 2005
I have not authorized anyone to speak or hold any press conferences on behalf of Michael Jackson or his family.
A gag order is in effect which the defense team will continue to honor.
Thomas Mesereau
A couple of things going here with all of this and something to look out for in the next couple of days.
First, there has been a gag order issued by the Judge in this case. But if one wants to get the word out, it’s simple enough to send somebody out there, do the deed, then deny any sanction or authorization of their words.
Or, and this is very possible, Michael Jackson himself is giving the spokesbabe AND Jesse Jackson permission to speak. Said permission given against, I would imagine, his attorney’s advice.
I suspect that MJ is a very passive-aggressive personality type. He’s used to being a celebrity, he’s used to being surrounded by sycophants, and no one as small as his mere defense attorney is going to tell him what to do.
OR, finally, there’s camera hog Jessie Jackson. All of the denials could be about this guy. One of these days Jessie Jackson will receive the total ignoring that he deserves. The man is absolutely pathetic and very irrelevant.
My best guess is that the jury will return a verdict within the next two days. The worst sight bite in the world would be Michael Jackson seen with handcuffs on in the event of a “guilty” verdict and being led from the courtroom to jail.
The scene has been set to have Jackson taken to the hospital when the jury has reached a verdict. There is supposed to be a one hour notice when the verdict is in and the judge has agreed to allow the verdict to be broadcast over close circuit television. All this week there’s been rumors of Jackson’s illness including everything from backaches to an earache of all things.
I’m not sure that Jackson has to be in the courtroom when the verdict is read. But you can believe that his PR people will do anything to keep that horrific sight bite of Jackson being led from the courtroom in handcuffs.
So the verdict might well go on even though the defendant is not present due to illness.
A Democratic Strategy Session
“This better be good,” Hillary said as she walked into the room, dropped her purse next to the sofa then slumped down into the cushions. “I missed two parades and a couple of other events on this Memorial Day to be at this meeting.”
Harold Ickes and James Carville winked to each other. They knew Hill would be mad. But when James called her up and said that fireworks were going to be hitting the Senate next week Hillary said she’d be right there.
Only these three attendees were present but they were the ones that mattered. It was no secret that 2008 was Hillary’s year. As such she had a vested interest in helping to control events in the Democratic party so as to set a tone and framework that would enable her to win a presidential victory.
“Rumors from the White House are that Bush is going to bombard the Senate with judicial nominees starting Tuesday,” Ickes informed Hillary.
“They might even do the nuclur option,” Carville said, pronouncing “nuclear” the same was as the president. The intention was mockery and Hillary and Harold laughed in response.
“If that man gets to push through all his nominees then I’ll have lost a very important plank in my election campaign,” Hillary said. She was looking at the ceiling when she said this. James and Harold understood her sentiments exactly. It had been part of their political strategy since Hillary was first lady.
“My base will figure ‘why bother’ if Bush pushes a slew of conservative zealot judges through leaving me with no vacancies.”
All in the room remained silent for over thirty seconds as they considered Hillary’s words.
“Christ we’ve already held Bush back for four years,” Ickes exclaimed, jumping from his chair with a start. “How the hell we going to hold him back another three years?”
“Yeah, it was me that came up with the idea of the filibuster,” Carville responded. “It was good while it lasted but sooner or later the American Joe Blow’s going to get tired of it.”
Hillary emitted a long sigh. “How’s the plan going?”
“Hill, we keep at it every day,” Harold began. “Right now we’re working on getting a congressional inquiry into Gitmo. Also, in response to the judicial fireworks next week we’re putting the ‘impeachment’ word out there.”
“How’s Dean doing?” Hillary asked.
Carville snapped his fingers brightly. “He’s doing great. We got him floating the Repubs are rich, they inherited their money thing now. Last week we had him say “Delay” and “jail” in the same sentence.”
Hillary nodded her head in approval and both men smiled from the beam of delight.
“You got good rebuttals coming back?” she asked.
“Last week we had Barney Frank. He drove a hard bargain but let’s just say you’ll be contributing some money to his campaign from your PAC.”
“This week we had Biden all over denying any association with Howard Dean,” Carville said, cutting off Ickes who was getting entirely too much attention.
“Hey we’re getting the most liberal people we can,” Ickes said to Hillary’s frown.
“Just keep Howard on track,” Hillary said. “Make sure he gets the nastiest most ridiculous sound bytes out there. Then be sure we have a liberal member of the party deny any affiliation. I’m thinking of doing it next week.”
Carville and Ickes both nodded. They had heard this so many times. Both men were a bit resentful that Hillary insisted on going over what was already working.
“How’s the Gitmo strategy going?”
Carville and Ickes looked at each other with an ominous glare. The Gitmo strategy wasn’t going all that well.
“The Koran abuse story isn’t resonating,” Ickes said softly.
“We can’t find anything else? We had amnesty international come out on it. You been looking for disgruntled soldiers? Anything?”
Ickes loosed the collar on his shirt. “This week I’m working on hinting at a congressional inquiry. It ain’t easy. The media tells me that the viewers aren’t tuning in for Koran abuse.”
Hillary stared again at the ceiling. “Let me think about this a little more. You say the impeachment strategy will be out there soon?”
“Yes,” Carville said quickly before Ickes could take a breath.
“Are you sure it’s time for this?” Hillary said.
Both Carville and Ickes shrugged.
“You said the idea was to keep it all negative,” Carville said in a plaintive tone. “If we can get hearings on GITMO, maybe talk of impeachment …”. Carville’s voice faded off under the heat of Hillary’s glare.
“Look, if I’m going to have a chance at this thing we’ve got to start bringing down not just Bush, but the Republican party. We’ve got to show they’ve botched this war, that they lied about weapons of mass destruction, that Bush’s performance of president is worthy of impeachment even if it never comes to that.”
Hillary took a breath and sighed.
“It’s really a matter of sound bytes,” she told both men in a much softer tone. “Keep Howard working at it. Biden’s always willing to help. I told him I’d put him on the cabinet and he’s ready. Meanwhile, let’s start working on that impeachment strategy.”
All three attendees at the meeting took a seat at the conference table and began to plan. The fly that had been sitting on a stale Danish got bored and flew away.
The fly had heard enough.
When Is a Book Review NOT a Book Review?
Answer: When it’s a book “complaint”.
Which my recent review of “Sleepers” by Lorenzo Carcaterra was.
I received much commentary on this book review, most of which were posted in the “comments” blog post earlier this week.
However, one comment held my interest:
You give a lot of credit for being fooled to the books you\'ve read, and very little to the reader...
The comment is a slam against me, the reader. Who was fooled by the authors who either inadvertently or intentionally set out to deceive me.
In my defense, I’d hardly be considered a person with a reading comprehension problem. Besides the fact that I read quite a bit and besides the fact that on every reading comprehension test I’ve ever taken I’ve scored off the top of the charts. And yet, as the commenter points out, I was fooled by a few books I’d read and I wonder…is it me?
First the three books that I read and as a result formed an ideology or ”mission” of my life.
I read “The Ugly American” by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick when I was a tender fourteen years of age. Yon reader might guess that this was quite a few years ago and I’ll not ever read that book again.
So from my memory I pull out two things that so moved me about that book. Yes I was so moved that I immediately sent off for information on joining the Peace Corps with a determined vow that I would join up just as soon as I was of age.
I remember the women in the book’s fictional Southeast Asia setting as having very humped and aching backs from sweeping floors with brooms that were way too short for the job. I also recall a scene depicting beautiful four lane highways as they snaked through the jungle, driven on by nobody.
The point being, duh, that Americans were over in Burma or Cambodia or where ever that fictional place was supposed to be, building big and useless highways so valued by us in the US but useless in the jungle. This American bungling is going on while even the dimmest of the Americans did not have enough sense to use the useless highways funds to make these poor women decent brooms.
It was a stupid notion and based on no fact whatsoever.
I was fourteen! A fresh dewy teenager I was, determined to go to bug-ridden little hell holes and give those women decent brooms!
Surely I wasn’t the only one fooled? The book was a best seller and became a movie. In due course the book was proven false.
But my mindset was forming. No, this one book didn’t create the muddled mess that was my young mind. I also lived during an era when black people had separate bathrooms, when Martin Luther King preached and was killed, and when young men were drafted and forced to go to some little vegetative hellhole of a war that the politicians would not conduct properly.
“The Ugly American”, yea even its title, was part of that formulated mindset.
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It was Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” that really broke my heart with its untruths and distortions. Not to mention the harm done to the poorer countries of the world which think they are saving eagles while they’re killing their own citizens.
I was much older when I read this book but believe me, the notion of thinning egg shells of raptors due to DDT seemed very possible to me. I was also forming a love of the bird fellows and the thought of a silent spring horrified me.
In short, Ms. Carson was not right with her biology. Subsequent tests of birds and the density of their eggs has been done extensively. No scientific proof could be gleaned from the laboratory results that DDT caused the birds’ egg shells to get so thin they could not handle the weight of the incubating mother.
Any decrease in the raptor population was as likely to be due to cyclical changes in population as it was due to extensive use of the DDT pesticide.
Just one rebuttal HERE: There’s plenty more out there.
In the late 1960s, some researchers concluded that exposure to DDT caused eggshell thinning in some bird species, especially raptors such as eagles and peregrine falcons. Thinner shells meant fewer hatchlings and declining numbers. But researchers also found that other bird species, such as quail, pheasants, and chickens, were unaffected even by large doses DDT.
Meanwhile, Carson’s disciples have managed to persuade many poor countries to stop using DDT against mosquitoes. The result has been an enormous increase in the number of people dying of malaria each year. Today malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people annually, killing as many 2.7 million of them. Anti-DDT activists who tried to have the new U.N. treaty on persistent organic pollutants totally ban DDT have stepped back recently from their ideological campaign, conceding that poor countries should be able to use DDT to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
As for Carcaterra’s “Sleepers”, well this author out and out lied. He called his book “non-fiction” when it was as made up as my own book “Attention, Please!”.
Let me go on record now and state that “Attention, Please!” is totally fiction; that so far there hasn’t been a child molesting presidential candidate.
See? It’s not that hard to tell the truth. Carcaterra lied that his book about NY’s reform schools was a true story of his own childhood. Hey, it was good as FICTION book.
No, this book didn’t change my life or my mindset. But I really did think the author wasn’t lying when he called it non-fiction. For sure the mighty publisher wouldn’t let him get away with that?
Wrong!
I like to believe that no one loves the written word more than me. Perhaps I was too naive. I did subscribe to the theory that if it’s written and published, then it must be true.
Wrong! Again!
So go ahead with the brickbats. This grandmother Blogger believes NOTHING she reads until she checks it out.
Only took me fifty years to learn this.
For any yon readers interested in learning more about Rachel Carson, who I really do believe was a very sincere lady, in the interest of fair and balanced,
a link to her website HERE.
As the afternoon progressed, the winds whipped up and the thunder and lightning began to roll. The boy's mother was concerned that her son would be frightened as he walked home from school and feared that the electrical storm might harm her child.
Worried, the mother got into her car and drove along the route to her child's school. Upon finding her son, she noticed her boy was walking along just fine, but at each flash of lightning, the child would stop, look up and smile. More lightning followed and with each one the boy would look at the streak of light and smile.
Puzzled, the mother approached him in her car, lowered the window and asked him, "What are you doing?"
The child answered, "I am trying to look nice, God keeps taking my picture."
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