After ISIS/ISIL released a video showing terrorists lighting a Jordanian pilot on fire, our president contrasted his death and the destruction of group with the ‘benefits’ of Obamacare, which he claimed makes ‘people healthier’ and ‘their lives better.’
“We’re here to talk about how to make people healthier and make their lives better, and this organization appears only interested in death and destruction,” he said.
Obama’s an out-of-touch nut job!
Patrick Creek Campground is where Patrick Creek and the middle fork of Smith River meet about seven miles east of Gasquet in Del Norte County, California. It is one of the places we used to go on family outings when I was a kid.
The campground has steps, rock walls, restrooms and sunken campfire circles built-in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. There is no electricity, water or sewer hookups making it a rustic place to spend the night.
Dad wasn’t known to wade into cold water above his knees because of injuries sustained in the Korean War; they would begin to ache and swell making walking hard. Also in the water is Deirdre, who appears to be dunking Adam under water.
When Adam turned nine-years-old, he asked to have a party at Patrick Creek. This is him opening one of his presents — a Big Jim Camping Set. I was jealous, because I wanted one too, but at 12, I was too old for such a toy.
This me with an inner-tube in hand on the bank opposite from our campsite. We always camped in the same spot, year-to-year.
Adam was our family’s ‘class clown,’ doing whatever he could to stir-the-pot from imitating John Wayne to threatening to splash whom ever was taking the picture. Nearby is Deirdre, possibly chasing a fish, while Marcy is wondering along the far bank.
Ever the ‘momma-bear,’ Mom is again shouting instructions to one of us kids. (Not me this time as I’m taking the picture.) Maybe it was to Marcy — who may have wondered to far from the campsite.
Eventually, Dad would zone out, fall asleep and snore, sounding like a freight train in a canyon, letting nothing bother him. No wonder Mom was always hollering at us kids.
How I miss those days.
The idea of net neutrality is that all Internet traffic is equal — whether it’s a movie streaming from Netflix or a Tweet and is to be treated the same by Internet Service Providers (IPS’s.) But a current proposal could allow the federal government to become the gatekeepers of cyberspace.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to recommend regulating Internet service like a public utility. This would reclassify high-speed Internet service as a telecommunications service, instead of an information service, under Title II of the Communications Act .
The change, pushed by President Obama, would give the federal government the authority to make sure that content is not blocked and no so-called pay-to-play fast lanes exist. However Texas Senator Ted Cruz calls the president’s plan, “Obamacare for the Internet.”
That’s because Title II was meant for the bygone era of telephone service monopoly. It wasn’t intended to be applied to services not characterized by monopoly, like Internet access.
Wheeler insists that “a light-touch approach” would be used, instead of directly regulating pricing decisions. He also suggests putting wireless data services under Title II and adding regulations for companies that manage the backbone of the Internet.
One study released in December 2014 shows consumers could pay an extra $84 per year if IPS’s are regulated like public utilities. This is because they would be forced to give to state and federal programs that seek to make sure access to telecommunication services.
A vote on the proposal by the full commission is scheduled for February 26.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” — George Orwell
The White House insists the Taliban isn’t a terrorist organization, but the Treasury Department designates it as such and it’s well known that Taliban engages in acts of terror. It’s a question White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest tried to explain after his deputy spokesman, Eric Schultz claimed the Taliban is an “armed insurgency” while the Islamic State is a “terrorist group.”
“They have a classification that does allow us to pursue financial sanctions against them,” he added. “And that is different than an organization like Al Qaida that has a much broader global aspiration to carry out acts of violence and acts of terror against Americans and American interests all around the globe.”
The issue came up after the White House insisted a prisoner exchange between Jordan and ISIS/ISIL is different from the one it made last year with the Taliban to gain the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
But the White House isn’t the only one on a ‘word-ban’ kick as Al Jazeera English executive Carlos van Meek is prohibiting journalists from using words like “terrorist,” “Islamist,” “extremists,” and “jihad.”
Van Meek suggests reporter use words like “fighters and “militants,” but only in certain conditions.
“For example,” he writes in a memo, “we can use the term (militant) to describe Norwegian mass-killer Andres Behring Breivik or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.”
Furthermore, The Oxford University Press is warning its writers not to mention “pigs,” “sausages” or “pork-related words,” in children’s books, in an apparent bid to avoid offending Muslims. The existence of the publisher’s guidelines emerged after a radio discussion on free speech in the wake of the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
And finally, City University of New York’s graduate school is banning the titles “Mr.” and “Ms.” from official written communication. The decision came as part of an “ongoing effort to ensure a respectful, welcoming and gender-inclusive learning environment … and to accommodate properly the diverse population of current and prospective students.”
Orwell is spinning in his grave and we’re locking the door to ‘Room 101,’ behind us.
This can be eaten as a dessert by topping with honey or powdered sugar, etc., or for a main dish by topping with taco ingredients.
Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 tbs. baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tbs. powdered milk
1½ cups warm water
1 cup shortening
Extra flour to flour your hands
Directions:
Put flour in bowl, add baking powder, salt and powdered milk. Mix.
Mix in warm water to form dough.
Cover hands in flour.
Knead dough by hand until soft but not sticky. Cover with a cloth and let stand for 15 minutes.
Shape dough into balls about two inches across then flatten by patting and stretching the dough.
Melt shortening about an inch deep in frying pan. When hot put dough in pan. Fry one side till golden brown, then turn and fry the other side.
The S.S. Donbass III began its life as a lend-lease tanker, launched at Kaiser Ship Building, in Portland, Oregon. The ‘T-2’ was nearly identical to all the other tankers that served as oilers in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Tankers of this type were constructed similar to the Liberty Ship and both were considered weak in the keel. They were known to break in half under the right conditions and were even referred to as ‘Kaiser Coffins’ for this reason.
Originally named S.S. Beacon Rock when launched in 1944, she was given to the Russian Navy that same year and renamed. Her main role was transporting fuel from the U.S.’s west coast, through the Bering and Okhotsk Seas and the Sea of Japan to Vladivostok, Russia.
Several U.S. Nay ships were ordered to proceed to the Aleutian Islands, near Adak, Alaska in February 1944. When they got there, they found the bow section of the vessel still afloat with six survivors aboard after encountering a gale and breaking in two.
The Navy tried to get the stranded crew of the dying ship, but they refused aid until the Soviet ship, Belgorod, arrived and took them aboard and towed the section of remaining vessel away. The bow was later scrapped.
The aft section was located and assisted by the American tanker S.S. Puente Hills, which removed another 23 crew members including a woman, before towing it to Port Angeles, Washington with another 20 crew members aboard.
Eventually the U.S. Maritime Commission sold it to Pacific Power & Electric for $125,000, after the company learned the engineering section with its GE turbine-generator, was still working. PG&E towed the section to Eureka, California and beached so it could serve as a power plant, providing Eureka with five-megawatts of power following World War II.
It was dismantled about ten-years later after a new power-plant was built to serve the city and surrounding area.
The Soviets named the vessel after the Donbass region of eastern and southern Ukraine. A coal mining area since the late 19th century, it has become a heavily industrialized territory.
In March 2014, large swaths of the Donbass region became gripped by unrest. This grew into a war between pro-Russian separatists affiliated with the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, and the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government.
The planned roundup of 332 wild horses in Nevada’s Pine Nut Mountains is on hold until late February. ‘Protect Mustangs’ and ‘Friends of Animals’ filed a lawsuit alleging the Bureau of Land Management failed to prepare an environmental assessment as required and didn’t provide adequate public notice of its plans.
The lawsuit also alleges the government has ignored studies showing the fertility control drug PZP alters horse behavior as well as the birthing cycle. The BLM planned to gather all but 132 horses from ranges south of Dayton and east of Carson City and Gardnerville.
Of the 132 to be captured and released — all 66 mares would have received a 22-month treatment of the vaccine to prevent future reproduction.
The BLM contends an overpopulation of horses in the area has damaged the range, including valuable sage grouse habitat, and reduced availability of native forage grasses needed to support a healthy horse population. The agency will likely proceed with other wild horse gathers planned near Tonopah and Battle Mountain in the meantime.
Apple reported a huge net profit in its fiscal first quarter, topping the nearly $16 billion made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012. Record sales of iPhones were behind the surge in profits.
NBC’s Brian Williams put it this way: “The richest company in the world is Apple to the tune of the most profitable quarter of any company ever — a new record — $18 billion in profits in one quarter. Cash on hand, including investments, $178 billion. No other company even comes close.”
But then he added, “It’s enough money to give every American $556, though they have no plans to do so. Their business model, you see, only works the other way around.”
Evidently, Williams believes a company which makes a profit should give that money away to people who did nothing to earn it. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to ‘take-down’ the tech giant or the U.S. Constitution.
In December 2012, he sat down with Apple CEO Tim Cook, where Williams wondered why the company couldn’t be a “made-in-America company.” He went so far as outlining a political scenario where President Obama was all-powerful.
“Let’s say our Constitution was a little different and Barack Obama called you in tomorrow and said, ‘Get everybody out of China and do whatever you have to do, make these, make everything you make in the United States.’ What would that do to the price of this device?” Williams asked.
Cook changed the argument.
“Honestly, it’s not so much about price it’s about the skills, et cetera,” Cook responded. “Over time, there are skills that are associated with manufacturing that have left the U.S. Not necessarily people, but the education system stopped producing them.”
Two years of free college ought to fix this. Not!
Governors in six states declared emergencies, but shortly afterwards weather forecasters began to see that they had gotten it wrong. Initially, the National Weather Service said a monster storm would bring up to three-feet of snow, powerful winds and widespread coastal flooding along a 250-mile stretch of the Northeast.
This caused people to rush to local stores to stock up on supplies, transit systems closed down, and the airlines grounded their fleets. Then near-marshal law, keeping people inside and vehicles off of the street was enacted.
This cost NYC businesses over $7 million in lost revenue.
News of this monster storm led the evening newscasts on all the major networks. And by the time it was over only a few inches fell in New York’s Central Park while another few inches dropped on Long Island.
These are the same people who claim they can predict climate change, 100-years from now, but can’t get a 24-hour forecast correct.
But there’s story far more important than the threat of a few snowflakes. The federal government charged Russian three men with operating a spy ring operating in New York City.
Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy are charged with gathering economic intelligence for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. Buryakov posed as a banker for Russia’s Vnesheconombank, while both Podobny and Sporyshev worked for the Russian Federation in New York.
‘Economic intelligence’ concerns production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, as well as labor, finance, taxation, and other aspects of a nation’s economy or of the international economic system. It also allows a nation to estimate the size of possible military threats and is also valuable in estimating the intentions of a potential enemy.
And this isn’t the first time this has happened. In June 2010, federal agents broke up a 10-person Russian sleeper cell embedded in various U.S. communities. That operation was also managed by two Russian intelligence agents posing as low-level Russian diplomats.
Going a step further — it isn’t a far stretch to think ‘Radical Islamic’ sleeper-cells are already operating within the U.S. After all, a member of ISIS/ISIL admitted to the Jerusalem Post last August, following the murder of American journalist James Foley, that they are already within our borders.
“They infiltrated us with those who pretend to be Muslims and we have also penetrated them with those who look like them,” he claimed.
We’re being snowed when it comes to what is and is not important.
A major fire broke out in downtown Fortuna during the early morning hours today, engulfing part of a block of Main Street. Engines from Ferndale, Scotia, Eureka and elsewhere helped battle the blaze and provide coverage.
The structure involved is the historic Star Hotel building. Located on the corner of 11th and Main Streets, the Star Hotel was a popular destination from the 1880’s to the 1950’s.
So far no word what caused the fire.
In 1876 the Star Hotel building was named in honor of Andrew and Jacob Starar, who owned a ranch near the Mad River. They kept a herd of elk in a fenced area in town, which was probably the town’s source of meat at that time and Andrew even owned most of the town at one time, selling part of it to Henry Rohner, for whom Rohnerville is named.
Rohner purchased 350 acres donating it to Fortuna for its first city park. The deed of the parkland was signed by Abraham Lincoln, and a replica is housed at the Park’s Depot Museum.
In the early 1900’s Henry’s widow, Mary sold the town a total of 53 acres of the family’s land in three installments. This is now the location of the present-day Rohner Park.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Rohner, sold the third section of land to the City for one dollar with the stipulation that the park’s name never be changed.
The brothers are also Fortuna’s connection to the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, believed to be in the Superstition Mountains, near Apache Junction, east of Phoenix, Arizona. The mine’s named after Jacob Waltz, who discovered it in the 19th century but kept its location a secret.
After leaving California the Starar brothers went to Mexico, and then sometime in 1866 or ‘67, returned to the U.S. settling in Arizona next to Waltz. Andrew purchased a part of a mine claim from Waltz on August 8, 1878.
Many speculate that the diggings he purchased was part of the famed mine.
The Old Blog in the Desert 