Volume 188
Volume 187

Well, you wake up in the mornin', you hear the work bell ring
And they march you to the table to see the same old thing
Ain't no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan
But you better not complain, boy, you get in trouble with the man

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me
Let the Midnight Special shine a everlovin' light on me

SEATTLE (AP) -- Seattle voters have elected a socialist to city council for the first time in modern history.

Kshama Sawant's lead continued to grow on Friday, prompting 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin to concede.

Even in this liberal city, Sawant's win has surprised many here. Conlin was backed by the city's political establishment. On election night, she trailed by four percentage points. She wasn't a veteran politician, having only run in one previous campaign.

But in the days following election night, Sawant's share of the votes outgrew Conlin's.

"I don't think socialism makes most people in Seattle afraid," Conlin said Friday.

While city council races are technically non-partisan, Sawant made sure people knew she was running as a socialist -- a label that would be politically poisonous in many parts of the country.

His games have been seen on every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines. Franchises Miyamoto has created include Mario (the best-selling franchise of all time), Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, Pikmin, and the Wii series. Noteworthy games include Super Mario Bros., a pioneer of the sidescrolling genre; Super Mario 64, a pioneer of 3D control schemes; The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is widely considered the greatest game ever made; and Wii Sports, the best-selling game of all time. He currently manages the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development branch, which handles many of Nintendo's top-selling titles.

Recreational marijuana is legal in Colorado. But that doesn't mean residents want the air to smell like a pot rally. Denver is getting more calls to enforce an odor ordinance that can impose a buzz-killing fine on violators. To find them, the city relies on a device called the Nasal Ranger.

And that's where licensed smell investigator Ben Siller comes in. A member of Denver's Department of Environmental Health, he's trained to use an olfactometer to determine if people are breaking laws that protect the purity of Denver's air.

SNIP

In Denver, the scent of marijuana would have to be very strong -- exceeding a level of detection when one volume of the scented air is combined with seven volumes of clean air -- to trigger a formal response and possible fine.

Siller tells the Post that it's been nearly 20 years since anyone broke that threshold. A violation could bring a fine of up to $2,000, Denver's ABC 7 News reported this summer.

When his family went to collect him after the execution, they found that he was still alive.

So, the Iranians took him to a hospital where they said they would get him back to health, and then hang him again.

I thought about those freaky clerics. Yuch.

Yesterday, I saw a film on tv called, "Honk". It was about capital punishment in America...
And guess what...
A man who had been exonerated by the Innocence project (with help from the FBI) told of his 23 years on death row in Oklahoma.

The one thing he said he would never get over was what happened to a fellow denizen of death row. On the day of his execution, he took a massive overdose of drugs to kill himself. He was found comatose, taken to a hospital, stomach pumped, and two hours later was taken to an execution chamber and killed. They saved his life so that they could kill him.

A hidden world, growing beyond control

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
  

[...snip...]
In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

...MORE (7 pages more...)

On the other hand, we knew all of this, 46 years ago, For What It's Worth

We better stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?

The unspeakable disaster in the Philippines is the most recent example.

Major polluters, like ourselves, are announcing that they will assume no financial burden to compensate those most injured.

The United States and other rich countries have made their opposition to large-scale compensation clear. Todd D. Stern, the State Department's envoy on climate issues, bluntly told a gathering at Chatham House in London last month that large-scale resources from the world's richest nations would not be forthcoming.

Mr. Stern explains:

"The fiscal reality of the United States and other developed countries is not going to allow it," he said. "This is not just a matter of the recent financial crisis. It is structural, based on the huge obligations we face from aging populations and other pressing needs for infrastructure, education, health care and the like. We must and will strive to keep increasing our climate finance, but it is important that all of us see the world as it is."

Notice the blame is squarely placed on our "aging population" - those old mfkrs - semi-existent "healthcare" (paid for in large part by citizens, not the government), non-existent "infrastructure" (oh yes. The New York Transit system is a glowing example), education (no comment) "and the like". (Whatever "the like" is.)

Nowhere mentioned is the multi-billions or trillions squandered on wars and weapons. No. It's the fault of old people and greedy citizens clamoring for the good life - like public transit, public schools and healthcare.

When Obama came into office, one of his first acts was to attend the climate control conference in Copenhagen. There were high hopes around the world for this "not-Bush" new Kennedy. Hopes were dashed extremely quickly as the new Kennedy showed his lack of commitment to combating global warming and his unswerving allegiance to powerful vested interests.

"I'd rather have Frank babysit my children than George, since Frank has molested less children than George."

"Sure the supermarket sells poisoned food, but all the other markets sell it too - they need to stay competitive."

"Yes I know the guy I'm seeing is a rapist, but what am I supposed to do? STOP DATING!?!?"

This is literally what you sound like when you claim you voted for lesser evil.

• Always beware the Ides of November, i.e., those six- and seven-win teams who are still in contention for a conference title, and who aren't paying any attention to Kirk Herbstreet's repeated contentions that they're really not supposed to be here.

• Florida State's 41-14 win over the Hurricanes two weeks ago is looking less impressive with each of Miami's subesequent quarters.

The SC/UF game was closer than I expected and there was excitement at the end.  The UCF/Temple game was maybe the most exciting game of the day and had a real one handed circus catch.

Vol. 189
Vol. 188