Palin uses army bases to sell her books and suppress free speech, now that’s going rogue

photo credit: News Corpse flikr.com

North Carolina, the home to whacky, senile, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, (reincarnation of Jesse helms), is having a guest and suppressing free speech at the same time on a US army base! Ft. Bragg is going to be having a book signing, at first it was not allowing media at all, can you imaging the army suppressing free speech? These military bases are not supposed to be political supporters of one point of view. And even though they said Palin could not give a speech, she can only sign her book, (which now is on sale for $4.97),  Ft. Bragg has decided to allow “limited” media access. So let’s see,  IF Sarah Palin really reads, we know she would allow, NewsMax, The Frontiersman, FOX, The Weekly Standard, National Review to her party bus, (don’t ya find it funny Palin could not even think of the Bible when Couric asked her for a list?).
Shame on Ft. Bragg for using their army base to suppress the media and also the rights their soldiers are fighting for.

Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck 2012? Send the Apocalypse now and get it over with!

I heard today it might be Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in 2012, I say the Mayans were right, the end is near, bring on the Apocalypse, we deserve it if that happens…

One in Seven Of Us Hungry – HELP!

photo credit: Homerhawks.com

How can this be in America?  How can so many people be hungry and sick within our borders?  How are we neglecting our own? I understand the mechanics of losing jobs and income, and how even  low wage earners make too much to have food stamps, but must choose food items carefully, even skip meals to make ends meet, still it seems wrong to read stats like that!
I don’t understand the mechanics of my own government anymore. For nine years it’s been unsettling since George W. Bush sold us out to Asia. He made his cronies rich while in office, but liquidated the small hometown manufacturing jobs as quickly as he chalked up debt and left our borders open. Obama is just continuing the trend — how are those stimulus dollars being used? Where are the infrastructure jobs that were promised? Who is making money off this government handout bailout that George W called for?
We are looking pretty pathetic these days, the headlines are depressing, why not call it what it really is for those of us struggling, it’s a depression!
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago WASHINGTON – More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year. In all, about 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday. Saying the overall error rate was similar in 2008, officials attributed the $26 billion jump to some changes in how to define improper spending as well as an increase in overall spending due to the recession.

Obama has got a lot of burden on those shoulders. And people are lacking for many things, but to think of the children going to bed hungry because of
skimping and skipping meals to make ends meet, is just wrong in America.
What do we do when we have become number 8 on the list of the richest nations according to their GDP for 2009?  Something is off balance?
We were sold out long ago to the lobbyists and executives of the banks, insurance and medical industries. They laugh at us as they board their yachts and private planes while increasing  costs and premiums to live their luxury lifestyles. It’s come down to the masses struggling to stay afloat from medical bankruptcies every ten seconds. Capitalism has suddenly become great for the rich in our country, but left the masses behind. There has to be a better blend of socialism with so many hungry and medically denied people.
The GOP hate that word socialism, scares them, but guess what? Republicans go hungry too!  And if they accept medicare, they accept government socialist handouts!
We have had veiled socialism for years, it’s called medicare, food stamps, medicaid, welfare, disability, words meant to conceal the “S” word.   Even the ‘tea-baggers’ are locked into the ’socialist’ medicare  network they bitch about, they could not afford insurance on their own without it, everyday they should be bowing to LBJ!
The stakes are high for Obama, the rich obviously carry the burden of taxes,  but something is broken in our system, when the majority of us are just getting by, not having money to put aside and so many going to bed anxious, hungry, and diseased and sick, we are sounding like a third world country in need.
What adjustments can we make to help feed, clothe and get a doctors visit in once a year to say nothing of the exorbitant cost of dental care?
Please, if you can spare extra can of food, or some spare change, feed someone by donating to the local charities that do this.
Donations are down, need is up. Please help out, and that means you tea-baggers, quit bitching about your own life and buy an extra can of something to donate to your local homeless shelter.  If you have the means, please help AND DON’T FORGET OUR ANIMAL GROUPS – THEY NEED DONATIONS TOO!  Look what Keith Olbermann did just by asking for donations on his show for the free health clinics, he raised over a million dollars, thousands of people were seen, several taken directly to hospitals.  Help each other and we help ourselves.

Reuters Health

Monday, November 16, 2009

By Charles Abbott and Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than 49 million Americans — one in seven — struggled to get enough to eat in 2008, the highest total in 14 years of a federal survey on “food insecurity,” the U.S. government said Monday.    While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when 36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of them occasionally went hungry. “The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programs,” Vilsack told reporters. “This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem.”  About 14.6 percent of U.S. households, equal to 49.1 million people, “had difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of resources” during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when 11.1 percent of households were classified as food insecure.
About 5.7 percent of households, or 17.3 million people, had “very low food security,” meaning some members of the household had to eat less. Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.
President Barack Obama called the USDA report “unsettling” and vowed to reverse the trend of rising hunger. “Our children’s ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential — and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation — depends on regular access to healthy meals,” Obama said in a statement.

USDA’s annual report was based on a survey conducted in December 2008, soon after financial markets slumped and when the jobless rate was marching toward its current 10.2 percent.  “The numbers are even worse than people otherwise believed,” said Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group. “We all know we have the worst downturn since the Depression.” David Beckmann of the anti-hunger group Bread for the World called for stronger federal anti-hunger programs. “The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has also made it more visible,” he said.
Vilsack said the report represented “an opportunity here for the country to make a major commitment to end childhood hunger by 2015,” an administration goal. He called on Congress to make it easier for poor children to get free school meals and to improve the nutritional quality of those meals. Child nutrition programs, which cost about $24 billion a year, are overdue for renewal but Congress is not expected to act before 2010. The administration backs a $1 billion increase but has not found offsetting cuts at USDA to pay for it.  The number of Americans receiving food stamp assistance soared above 36 million for the first time in August, the eighth month in a row that enrollment set a record, the USDA said earlier this month.  As part of the stimulus package, food stamp benefits were raised temporarily through September 2010. Vilsack said it was too early to judge if the increase should become permanent.

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

0XD0f8jQW

S.E. Cupp – Comic Ann Coulter Impersonator Or ?

I saw her for the first time last night, Sarah Elizabeth Cupp, conservative author and commentator.  I watched her and laughed my butt off! Just like Tina Fey is a dead ringer for Sarah Palin, so is S.E. Cupp the best impersonator of all Ann Coulter’s mannerism and speech, spot on!
She’s either a serious conservative who so sweats anorexic Ann that she  has taken to studying her ‘girlfriend’ Coulter  in depth, watching her on Youtube tapes to emulate her every move and voice inflections, then watching and probably taping herself hour upon hour to mirror each detail of Ann’s every move and all points of speech,
Or is she a scary stalker of Coulter and sweats her and is doing this to get closer to Coulter, because if I was taking Sarah seriously, it looks like S. E. has a mad, schoolgirl crush!
OR is she a terrific actress and SNL should hire her to play herself and Coulter in parody -
Personally, I laughed thinking she was spoofing on Ann Coulter – I could not take one word seriously!  Her act runs parallel to Coulters, especially all the the hair shaking and positioning. I wondered if Coulter was flattered or insulted?!
S. E. — if you read this – in order for you to be taken seriously, if you indeed are real and not just the faker or terrific actor you seem like, you must come up with a personality of your own.  I can’t help but laugh when I see and hear you now – I can’t look or listen with a straight face!  Your loud take on man bashing feminism is hysterical, it’s like watching Carrie Fisher describe in comedic detail her bi-polar, druggie drinking moments.  I just expect you to say this was all done in jest as a book project.
Thanks for the comic relief S. E. -   now go send a clip of yourself to SNL!

FOX News loves to joke!

As FOX fake news blasts Obama for bowing in Japan, and brags that Cheney never bent over, they forget about this: Bush practically frenched the Saudi King!  Talk about someone who kissed ass! 15 of 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia – so Bush/cheney chose to bomb Iraq! FOX, your anchors are the assclowns of the news!  So easy to condemn, but forget that Google can bring the reality of the past!

02/06/2002 - Updated 06:29 AM ET Official: 15 of 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were SaudiRIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens, but said Wednesday that the oil-rich kingdom bears no responsibility for their actions. America on alert • Full coverage index Previously, Saudi Arabia had said the citizenship of 15 of the 19 hijackers was in doubt despite U.S. insistence they were Saudis. But Interior Minister Prince Nayef told The Associated Press that Saudi leaders were shocked to learn 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

what happens when opium is the baby-powder of choice

Today I was rather “down” after a lousy art venue that did not pan out until I turned on the news and put life into perspective.
I listened to the story about how many Afghan children are getting more addicted to drugs at very very young ages because opium/heron is being
fed to children to keep them warm during cold, to soothe aches and pains and to help curb hunger.   http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5226111n&tag=related;photovideo
Every week more and more children are becoming addicts.  Their mothers are doing what the tribal elders tell them to do and the children and their mothers are becoming the latest victims of drugs in the stone-age life in Afghanistan.
Below is story that is another sad tale of society taking a turn for the worst for a new generation of children that will fight addiction probably their whole lives.
I think back to the stories of the unwanted children that the police try to “eradicate” in South America so the tourists aren’t affected by the addicted, glue sniffing, begging orphans. These children are forced into lives of crime and debauchery and often sniff glue to eleviate their hunger pangs -

I see these stories and wonder still why there is no real war on drugs? Why  can’t there be some effort to somehow harness the abuse of Afghanistan’s opium over production? Oh, maybe because Karzai’s corrupt government can’t even keep Karzai’s own brother from dealing. And how does a “warlord run” country like Afghanistan ever get a hold on their illicit opium when that is their biggest money cash crop for the people besides weapons making?          Who suffers for this greed? The children of course, another generation lost to addiction and living life in squallor in “Flintstoneville”.
My life sounds like whining about a hang nail compared to the scope of reality in which children are given opium just to fake their little bodies into not feeling winters chill. What the Hell? And then again, in America we have an over abundance of  “meth lab” babies and children. It makes me ashamed that we place no real value on changing this plight, on actually controlling  drugs.  I suppose there is no hope to curb drugs.  Meth can be made cheaply and easily. Money is not available and even if it was, does anything change? Would legalizing drugs change anything? At least our government would make a lot of revenue through taxes. What’s the answer?
Children are the future – but in Afghanistan, many children will never make it to adulthood to lead a productive life  –and what is productive in Afghanistan besides opium/heroin/hashish???

Published On Tue May 27 2008-  The Toronto Star

 

Saliha, a 4-year-old opium addict, sits on a hospital bed in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province May 26, 2008 with his sister Hamida, 10, and their addicted mother Malika, 35.ROSIE DIMANNO/TORONTO STAR

 

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, AFGHANISTAN–Saliha is a recovering opium addict.  He’s 4 years old. His 10-year-old sister is an addict. His mother is an addict.  Scratch Saliha’s tummy and the wide-eyed child giggles. Press just a little harder and he bursts into tears. “It hurts,” he wails.  This is the soreness that occurs with opium addiction, along with the nausea, the cramping, the diarrhea, the listlessness. Somehow, the youngster has retained his baby fat, not yet taken on the skeletal appearance of a chronic opium user. But his growth has been stunted and Saliha looks more like a child half his age, lying on his mother’s bed in the drug-recovery section of a local hospital.

In Afghanistan, rehab – for the very lucky, the very few – can start as young as this. One patient on the ward, now gone back to his village, was a 6-month-old infant. They are only children. They never made a choice to use opium. It was put in their mouths – usually by their mothers – to still them, keep them quiet and docile.  This is what parents had been instructed to do, by their families, by tribal elders, by well-intentioned but uneducated quacks who believed opium to be the benign cure-all, or at least helpful therapeutic intervention, for everything that ails a person, and so very handy. They just didn’t know any better. Opium for colic. Opium for labour pains. Opium for women’s troubles. And, routinely, opium as pacifier to soothe a baby fussing, as babies do.  “They use it as a medicine for all kinds of illnesses,” explains Dr. Mobien Sultani, 31, who runs the Counter-Narcotics Drug Recovery program at this 20-bed unit in northern Balkh province, one of only two such specialized hospital wards in the country.   “The mothers of these children work very hard. Most of them are Turkmen carpet-weavers. In order to work, in their homes, they need the children to be relaxed, to sleep for a long time. So they put opium on their tongues.”  The problem, Sultani continues, is particularly rampant in northern Turkmen villages, where casual opium use has been common for decades. It was simply part of their culture. In one particular rural town, social workers from this hospital documented 3,500 opium addicts – nearly the entire population. It was their normal.     “They were addicted. They just didn’t know they were addicted,” Sultani sighs. “We’re seeing now more and more teenagers turning to heroin. They do this for the same reason that young people use drugs everywhere in the world – for the pleasant sensation it gives them, at first; because they’re idle, they don’t go to school, they can’t find jobs. But this is killing our communities. With few people working, because everyone is sitting around smoking opium or heroin, the bottom falls out of the local economy. Families either hide their addicts in the home – especially the females – or sometimes throw them out on the street. Then these people become garbage. Men, teenage boys, have to steal, they will even kill, to support their addiction.”
Once a nation that merely produced and exported narcotics – cranking out some 93 per cent of the world’s heroin last year – Afghanistan is now becoming internally subsumed by drugs: 920,000 users, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, out of which 120,000 are women.
According to a 2005 study, Balkh alone has 110,000 opium addicts – and this is a province that cultivated zero poppies last year, as concluded by a UN survey.   In fact, says Sultani, cannabis use – hashish, primarily – is the top addiction in Balkh, followed by opium, alcohol (despite the fact Afghanistan is a formally dry Muslim country) and heroin, the chemically refined version of opium. “The communities tend to accept hashish use,” says Sultani. “But heroin makes young people depressed, as well as useless. Heroin addiction is a big stigma for Afghans.” Saliha’s mother, Malika, 35, says she began taking opium following the birth of her first child 14 years ago.
“This is the medicine that was given to me. I didn’t know there would be side-effects for me and for my children.”  She entered the hospital with her two youngest kids a few weeks ago and, together, they have coped with the dreadful withdrawal symptoms.
For most female addicts, however, there is tremendous shame attached to admitting addiction. So they hide in their homes, growing increasingly detached and isolated. There are only six female beds in this facility.
Sultani has pleaded with the Ministry of Public Health to establish more such hospitals and increase his bed capacity to at least 50.
In another bed by the window, Khurma tells the familiar story – addiction born from delivery of her five children. The youngest, 12-year-old Khudi Bardi, is also a patient. They share this narrow cot.     “I was spending ($2) a day on opium,” recalls Khurma, 45. That would buy about two grams of opium every 24 hours. Doesn’t seem like much, in the way of cost, but the average yearly income in Afghanistan is only about $400. “My family could not afford it any more. I had to stop.”  Her son makes a ball with his fist, to express the agony of opium stomach pains. By age 10, he was stealing rice from the village to purchase the drug and also trafficking in narcotics – selling mostly to local women.
“I can remember when opium made me feel happy. I liked that feeling. But then it made me feel sicker and sicker. I was sick when I took it; I was sick when I stopped.  “But I’ll never start again.”  The in-patient detox program lasts for up to 40 days. Before qualifying for the treatment, applicants must attend three times a week, on an out-patient basis, while tapering off their drugs. Follow-up supervision – the hospital employs five social workers – extends for a year. Sultani admits there is a 40 per cent relapse among those who complete the program.     The Ministry of Counter-Narcotics operates 11 drug-education clinics in the province but this is the only facility with patient beds and detox capacity. Since it opened in December 2006, 376 patients have gone through the program.
“It’s not much but we do the best we can,” says Sultani. “The most important thing, though, is education, getting into the communities and making people understand about the dangers of opium, about harm reduction. We go into the schools, talk to the elders, at the shuras and in the mosques.
It is a very big job, a major challenge. But on our side, we also have Islam, which forbids the use of narcotics. Our faith is our strongest weapon.”

Mom tells police balloon saga was hoax

Okay, I give in to all you who can now say, I told you so!
AND -

Dick Cheney gets an award for what?” For not having to reveal it was really him who outted Valerie Plame so he could go to war in Iraq? Cheney is a whack job who is desperate to change the Bush legacy.

Is Falcon boy’s father guilty of a Hoax? Or was this the Hoax before the Hoax

My friends tell me I’m crazy, but I am still not 100% convinced this was “THE Hoax” – I am still teetering on the edge of the dress rehearsal Hoax for the real hoax. We have all seen the clips and know that Richard Heene is an out of control publicity freak trying to find a way to pitch a “reality ” show through a stunt, or hoax and now, even a conspiracy.
The guy seems to have an abusive temper, as shown when kicking something when that balloon was either launched or got away  – and by the accounts of one of the wife swap wives, he has a mean streak and a lust for being a mad scientist, and is an avid publicity seeker, but does it show that this was actually the publicity stunt they aimed for, or was this a screw up before the publicity stunt they aimed for?

Until one of the older kids comes out and finally says we lied about our brother being in the balloom because our dad told us to, thats when I will believe this was not a “before the actual “publicity stunt screw up” .  Though those kids at this point are being prepped and guilt tripped all weekend by their folks not to say anything to implicate their dad and mom or they will be orphans. I watched Mayumi stroking her one child’s arm so lovingly in one interview, she clearly loves her children, and one wonders, does she stay so silent because she is a battered wife afraid of her husband’s temper, or is she afraid of arrest?  I do see a lot of love for the kids, but is that love abusive and controlling or both? And the bigger question, was THIS the actual UFO stunt Richard wanted to bring in for publicity at all costs even the possibility of jail time and massive fines for this hoax going wrong, or did he think through all the ramifications for saying a child was missing in a flying balloon – didn’t he think of possible theories with his scientific mind?
Below is article on the Hoax out today by AP – my comments in blue:

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writers Dan Elliott, Associated Press Writers – 20 mins ago

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Investigators say they want to question an associate of Richard Heene after e-mails surfaced showing the two had discussed a balloon hoax months ago as part of a public relations campaign for a reality TV show.   (discussion does not mean guilt unless the same incident with a missing child in balloon is written and described in the emails)

Investigators said they want to interview Robert Thomas, a Denver man who claimed Heene had told him he was planning a media stunt to promote a proposed reality show. Thomas, a self-described researcher, sold his story to Gawker.com and provided the Web site with e-mail exchanges between him and Heene. Thomas said the show would feature Heene as a mad scientist who carries out various scientific experiments.
(while this part does not surprise me, the underlying issue is, did he tell Falson to hide and pretend Falcon was in the balloon for publicity? Let’s see the emails)

“This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell Crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about The Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO Phenomenon in general,” according to a copy of the show’s proposal provided to the site by Thomas.  (how is a missing child a UFO event? Was it determined a missing child was picked up by alien aircraft and whisked away?) I should be their attorney

Gawker.com editor-in-chief Gabriel Snyder confirmed the New York-based Web site paid Thomas, but declined to say how much for the story billed with the headline: “Exclusive: I Helped Richard Heene Plan a Balloon Hoax.” (no doubt Richard was a publicity whore, and sure he had a plan, but was this the actual hoax involving a missing child? – a 6 year old with rabid ADD who might tell the truth to the press?)

Snyder said Thomas was planning to meet with investigators Sunday night, though sheriff’s officials did not return messages seeking confirmation.

Thomas, 25, said in his Gawker.com story that the plan he knew about did not involve Heene’s children.
this is my point – would Henne use his an unreliable kid for the actual hoax?

The alleged stunt temporarily shut down Denver International Airport, and the National Guard provided two helicopters in an attempt to rescue 6-year-old Falcon Heene, who was believed to be inside the flying-saucer shaped homemade balloon that hurtled more than 50 miles across two counties. The drama played out on live television to millions of viewers worldwide. When the balloon landed without the boy, officials thought he had fallen out and began the grim search for his body.  (the father sounded quite distressed on his 911 call and was it calculated that he called FAA first to be on the look out and called a news station because they had a heliocopter to look for the balloon before calling 911? He was smart to call in that sequence if he thought his son was missing or for a publicity stunt. To call 911 first would have meant wasted time on the phone because the FAA would immediately seek something skyward – that sounds like a well thought out sequence, or was it a plan? (guilt points if it was part of hoax)

Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden announced Sunday that he’s seeking charges, including felonies, against Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi. Alderden said the stunt two weeks in the planning was a marketing ploy by the Heenes, who met in acting school in Hollywood and have appeared on ABC’s reality show “Wife Swap.” (again. yes they planned the stunt but was this the UFO hoax they intended at this time?

“We certainly know that there’s a conspiracy between the husband and wife, you’ve probably seen some of the e-mails and some of the things on the Internet suggesting that there may be other conspirators,” Alderden said.
Alderden said documents show that a media outlet has agreed to pay money to the Heenes with regard to the balloon incident. Alderden didn’t name the media outlet but said it was a show that blurs “the line between entertainment and news.”  (Clearly we need to see if they involved using a child in a balloon to implicate the Heenes)

It wasn’t clear whether the deal was signed before or after the alleged hoax, or whether the media outlet was a possible conspirator. (timing will be essential) Let’s call it (my statement) short of speculation that a media outlet was in on the hoax, but let’s not discount the possibility,” he said.

In an e-mail Sunday to the AP, Snyder said editors at Gawker.com had not contacted the Heene family or offered them money for their story, referring to Alderden’s reference to a deal being struck by a media outlet.”No, that wasn’t us,” Snyder said. The parents weren’t under arrest, the sheriff said. He said he expected to recommend charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, making a false report to authorities and attempting to influence a public servant. Federal charges were also possible.  (hope they are “lawyering up” - they have a lot to prove.)

The most serious charges are felonies and carry a maximum sentence of six years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Alderden said they would be seeking restitution for the costs, though he didn’t have an estimate. The cost for just the two military helicopters was about $14,500. As Alderden told reporters Sunday that the whole thing was a hoax, the Heenes were shopping for snacks at Wal-Mart, where Richard Heene told the AP he was “seeking counsel.”On Monday, the couple’s attorney, David Lane, appeared on the “Today” show on NBC, saying he expects authorities to file charges against the 6-year-old’s parents late Monday or sometime Tuesday. Lane also said the couple are willing to voluntarily turn themselves in to face charges. “These folks are absolutely willing to turn themselves in, so I don’t want to see a perp walk done for media consumption. I don’t think it’s humane to arrest someone in front of their children,” Lane also said Monday, appearing on “The Early Show” CBS. “We’re not sure what charges he’s looking at yet.” (This is key)

In a statement issued Sunday, Lane he has advised the family against making public statements. Once investigators got a good look at the “flying saucer” they determined that the thin mylar balloon covered with foil and held together with duct tape would not have been able to launch with the 37-pound-boy inside, according to Colorado State University physics professor Brian Jones. (though another “expert” said it could carry up to 80 lbs and Falcon weighs 37lbs)

Other parts of the story, including whether the 6-year-old had been hiding in the rafters of the family’s garage during an intense five-hour search also weren’t true, (now this does make it look like a hoax if they prove where Falcon was and why he was awy for 6 hours, who had him?)
Alderden said. “For all we know he may have been two blocks down the road playing on the swing in the city park,” the sheriff said.  (this evidence crucial, was their intent of committing a hoax by Falcon being asked to hide and who told him to hide and for how long – implication points there if true)

The sheriff said all three of the Heenes’ sons knew of the hoax,  (but was this particular day, the day of the actual hoax or a big screw up??? – One can see by the way Falcon pukes, he is sensitive to his fathers moods and anger, if Falcon comes out and says his dad told him to hide for 6 hours, I am sold on guilt. Otherwise this was dress rehearsal for UFO stunt) – but likely won’t face charges because of their ages. The oldest son is 10. One of the boys told investigators he saw his brother get in the balloon’s box before it launched.(another statement that needs to be expanded – when the older kid admits that their father told him to say Falcon was up in the balloon and helped him hide, then, I will be completely convinced – Falcon’s attention span is so whack that he can’ sit still for 3 minutes without squirming, how did he manage to hide for 6 hours, and with whose help, another crucial guilt point if true)

Alderden said Heene, a 48-year-old storm chaser, inventor and self-described amateur scientist, has a high school education and most recently earned a living by laying tile. Alderden said investigators had an “aha” moment that the story was a hoax when Falcon turned to his father during a CNN interview Thursday and said what sounded like “you had said we did this for a show” when asked why he didn’t come out of his hiding place.
On Friday, Falcon got sick during two separate TV interviews when asked again why he hid.(this kid seems to feel miserably guilty – like he knows he is lying and doesn’t know what to do or say to protect his folks because he knows his father will spew magma, (guilt points)

Alderden said they didn’t question the family Friday because they wanted to keep the family’s cooperation by maintaining the appearance that they believed their story. Records show that police have responded to the house at least twice in the past year, including a possible domestic violence incident in February. No charges were filed.Alderden said officials tried Saturday to persuade Mayumi Heene, 45, to go to a safe house, but she declined. (Am I the only one who thought Mayumi looks like someone with battered wife syndrome, especially when it was suggested during the Diane Sawyer tv interview that she go and help her vomiting son in the bathroom – she seemed very submissive – never allowed to comment)

Alderden said the children were still with the parents Sunday and that child protective services had been contacted to investigate their well-being. On “Wife Swap,” Heene was portrayed as erratic, at one point throwing a glass of milk on a participant on the program. “Clearly, from all indications, Mr. Heene has somewhat of a temper,” Alderden said.|(one of the wife swap wives paired with him said on an interview, she thought he was out of control and had a horrible temper, but she did not think it was a hoax because he loved the kids and would not put them at risk for harm. She also said he was a diabetic who did not keep his insulin under control and she said it was like watching a fire rage, then immediately burn out at times.)

The producer of “Wife Swap” said it had a show in development with the Heenes but the deal is now off. TLC also said Heene had pitched a reality show to the network months ago, but it passed on the offer.
Again, when was this deal made? Before or after and how was it pitched to TLC, we need to see the wording — I am still waiting for the results, was THIS how Heene was going to get his big publicity, or was this a stunt/hoax gone awry and one little child is going to pay with tremendous guilt for the rest of his life when he realizes he has told the truth, but angered his father and now the parents face multiple charges and costs, the kids might be put into foster care, and how can the parents deal and pay for all this — unless of course, they end up with a future reality show!
P/S, , it’s two days later and a full investigation is coming and I think I am wrong, they must have drugged that kid and faked it, the folks were willing to surrender, Now they will give them a reality show I bet

The Epiphany – Dick Cheney’s Bucket List means Using Liz to fulfill his War Legacy

Maureen Dowd didn’t go far enough this morning, she didn’t mention that Karl Rove who fed us that dumbass Bush on a platter is now dishing up Liz Cheney to prepare her as the new face of the GOP scare tactics force.  This new neo-con group called, “Keep America Safe ” -
One wonders when Liz runs for president, will her father name himself as VIP like he did for Bush? It won’t matter, he will be the brains behind the operation anyway, we can count on that.
Like Maureen said, Liz is trying hard to reshape her father’s legacy, she is a good daughter hating to see her father villanized. She is a dedicated to daddy, she is obsessed by how daddy thinks and talks. She is happy to keep torture and war and secrecy as part of her agenda, it’s ingrained.
And what’s with Mr. “I am responsible for pushing the invasion and occupation of Iraq” Bill Kristol? You mean he has not learned anything from his own failure of vision? Are the GOP so hard headed that they will never acknowledge a blunder in judgment because the idiots were Republicans?
Hey, they could have picked McCain and Ms. Rogue. Do they not see that while the world is still dangerous as hell, most of our allies are glad to consider us number one again — we actually have respect!
I see my GOP friends sitting home, loaded guns at their sides, watching FOX news, listening to Glenn Beck waiting for either invasion or the Rapture – to them Obama is already a failure, even though someone pointed out Obama has kept us safer longer than Bush so far.  I know all that could change in an instant, but are we as bad off as Liz Cheney, FOX Noise and the GOP minions want us to think? Am I missing something, should I not be happy or laugh?
Look at Liz, her face is stone cold sober just like that constant scowl on her fathers’ mug, and he is a corrupt man for outing a CIA agent, we know he will not stop at anything if Dick wants something, Dick… WAIT – I JUST HAD AN EPIPHANY – THAT’S IT!!!! Dick wants something, his Project For A New American Century has only netted Iraq, Dick wants to finish his bucket list before that battery in his ticker stops providing his heart with juice! Rove and Cheney, Bill Kristol and the neo-cons are back conspiring again, waiting for the opportunity to get back into office again and finish their dirty work and who better to use than young and impressionable Liz!
Who’s next Dick? You wanted Syria, Lebanon – which is the place we will spend billions on failure? Iran I bet!
Kristol’s PNAC co-founder, Robert Kagan stated, “”The United States Is, and Should Be, an Empire“. I guess that sums it up.,

Look at the stats from Iraq this morning, 85,000 dead from 2004-2008, plus there are a million Iraqi’s displaced who would not be scattered if we had not interfered and occupied, billions of dollars would still be in the treasury. But hey, this was a great money maker for Halliburton, KBR and whatever other subsidiaries of Halliburton that needed government big money contracts. They can thank Cheney who from day one of his co-presidency on the invasion of Iraq, he saw those dollar signs helping fund his pension! Wait! If Dick insisted from day one that he wanted Saddam, doesn’t that make him guilty of pre-meditated murder? Oh, and don’t forget China owns our debt thanks to Bush and Cheney, somehow the GOP always forgets that fact unless it pertains to Obama. (Hey, Dow up to 9981 as I write)
But back to the epiphany, the Bucket List apparently means using Liz as the vessel for PNAC to continue – yep, start a new foundation or group, give it a new face and familiar family name with America in the title and the GOP fall right into line. Do they even know the odds for war with this group at the helm? Anyone named Bush or Cheney is doomed to go to war, it’s genetics, and that’s 100 percent sure!
Bucket List of failures, is that what Liz wants for her father? Because when you look at what he has accomplished, it looks shady and ‘dictatorish’. But

“daughter of Dick” wants to be used if it will further the daddy cause, so the question is, should the Bucket List of Dick Cheney and Keep America Safe be the way forward, be the light and the future? Should War, aggression and occupation be the GOP mantra for our next president? Look at what Bush/Cheney left us with, unresolved Iraq and Afghanistan and now Liz is on a quest for Iran I bet, I would say Liz, become your own person, grow your own set of balls, quit riding his coat tails to make your money.
Your dad’s legacy and his Bucket List vision is not worth the toll it will take on America.
AND BIG props up to Chris Matthews yesterday when laughing at the one word associations during the recent Rush Limpballs interview.
Giving himself one word, “Rush Limbaugh”, Chris blurted out, “phone sex”… LOVE YA CHRIS!   

When war mean recruiting and killing children by cowardly terrorists to do the dirty work, then it’s time to come back home

“Pointing a gun at a child, threatening to shoot him,” Swanson recollects. “I was 25 years old at the time, and it has weighed pretty heavy on me ever since then.” Gunnar Swanson

The question is, are we gaining anything over in Afghanistan and Iraq? When you read that General McChrystal wants 40K extra troops, it feels like – here we go again, more lives and money wasted and what is our real gain? How many years must we stay to stabilize either place?
With our presence comes some positive changes in schools being built, (though apparently some of them quite shoddy) – Read below Christian Science Monitor article.
Education is the key to gaining minds and hearts to a new way of thinking, but even though we build schools, will the education itself and will girls ever be elevated to “human” status in both Iraq and Afghanistan?
We are occupiers – we have also created a class of new haters by our presence. It would take a couple hundred thousand troops, at least fifty years and a big overthrow in the middle east to get real control and peace over there.
Bush and Cheney exploited our surplus on this war folly of theirs. We have lost

billions to corruption over in Iraq. According to wiki-answers, it costs $720 million a day for war.

Now they want more of the same over there. The GOP especially want more money, more troops, more death, more contracts to be abused. When is it enough for them? When will they admit this is a sham and we are tired of their propping up Bush and Cheney and trying to save GOP face, let’s face reality! When we have to challenge kids as the insurgency because the terrorists cowards need bodies, that’s when we know they are weakest!
The article about Gunnar Swanson who started War Kids Relief, is about
a man who served 12 months in Iraq and saw how the kids at first reacted to our soldiers, they loved taking candy and were happy to see Americans. Then things changed.  According to article in October 5th, 2009 Christian Science Monitor:  “as violence increased and insurgent activity escalated, more and more Iraqi children were coerced, sometimes threatened, into joining insurgent groups, who then used them against the American soldiers. With kids now representing a potentially dangerous or deadly distraction, all contacts with children were ordered to stop…”
So how do we take a step forward over there and then get pushed two steps back  all the time? What’s the point when the Taliban rule? We are fueling the insurgency and the Iraqi and Afghan army that we train drop out and disappear. This is an unending money pit! Stability in both regions is fragile at best, the warlords own Afghanistan and Iraq might go to anyone after we leave, democracy and voting is a concept that can easily be manipulated, look at the recent fraud in the Afghan voting. Karzai was originally put in by Bush because Karzai was an oil man. And recently, BP and China’s CNPC  made a huge 20 year deal with Iraq for al-Rumeila oil field, one of the largest oil fields in the world.  Saddam could have done that himself, did we need to waste all that money just for BP and China to dominate the oil over there?
What is the answer? Let go of Iraq first, send the troops over to Afghanistan and whittle them down, get us out of this quagmire by Spring and that is my opinion. This is wrong, we only create more terrorists and they are always using children as lethal decoys, even Swanson just hated pointing his weapons at kids and threatening to shoot them. Does Vietnam ring a bell because that’s what we are fighting, a losing war. Bush and Cheney should be have their pensions raided and should be paying the American treasury back for this blunder of theirs. They gave all those damn contracts to be exploited. They hired Blackwater who shot innocent civilians.  Lets close up shop and leave. Save that $720 million a day for our own failing infrastructure and lost jobs, we need help in our own economic war zone right here. The terrorists are mostly in Pakistan with al-qaeda, let the drones smack em without us losing lives. This is a money maker only for the defense industry, deploy the troops elsewhere , but bring our money home now, this is where is should be spent first! And people like Gunnar Swanson should be acknowledged for their efforts for peace.

More about Gunnar from Christian Science Monitor:

War Kids Relief (WKR), a nonprofit organization in Northfield, Minn., that works on behalf of children in Iraq and Afghanistan who have been deeply affected by war. Economic opportunities there are extremely limited, even for those few lucky enough to graduate from high school, making young people easy targets for the Taliban.

With his bald Yul Brynner pate, warm personality, and 100-watt smile, Swanson is a big hit with children. In Cameron, Mo., 16 grade-school children at the YMCA respond enthusiastically as they learn the names of far-off cities like Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Sulaymaniyah. He tells them his first name has nothing to do with being in the military: He was named for his great-grandfather. (Gunnar is a Scandinavian name that means “brave soldier.”) The children seem pleasantly surprised to discover that children in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite their severe hardships, also play soccer and computer games.

After a short talk, Swanson and Fesler pass out paper, pens, and art supplies, and the children write letters to their peers in the two war-torn countries. “A kid over in Iraq or Afghanistan who has received a letter from a kid in the United States will probably hold onto that letter for the rest of his life,” Swanson tells them.

In all, 2,700 letters were collected and will be distributed sometime next year. “…we could really showcase why we are doing this and how we want children in America brought into this.”

Money raised by WKR will go to building a rehabilitation and job-skills training center in Mosul, Iraq, and a vocational training center in Khost, Afghanistan. WKR partners with local groups in both countries.

Swanson’s 1,000-mile walk and his encounters with children were also intended to inspire the children to undertake their own fundraising. Along the way, all manner of lemonade stands, bake sales, carwashes, and other efforts sprang up, contributing to WKR’s project.

As more funds come in, Swanson hopes that construction can begin on the projects. “[The children] can feel like they’re building the youth center in Iraq and the vocational center in Afghanistan,

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from the June 28, 2004 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0628/p01s02-woiq.html Quick school fixes won few Iraqi hearts By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD – The US government lists renovations done on 2,356 Iraqi schools in a $70 million effort as one of its major accomplishments. The idea behind it was to meet a pressing Iraqi need and quickly win goodwill from a wide swath of the population. But many Iraqis, like Mustafa Ibrahim al-Jubari, weren’t won over. Mr. Jubari is the deputy principal of the Zam Zam elementary school (named after a sacred freshwater well in Mecca). His two-story building in northern Baghdad smells far from fresh. Jubari points to a four-month-old paint job already peeling, a roof that was caulked but leaks, and new porcelain toilet bowls installed on top of backed-up sewage lines. “You’re lucky that school has been out for a few weeks,” he says. “When they’re here, the whole place stinks.” Though a tiny piece of the more than $18.6 billion committed by the US to Iraq, the money spent on Iraqi schools, and their poor state, ties together much that’s gone wrong here, past and present, as the June 30 handover approaches. Critics of US-led reconstruction efforts say it has been slow to come, poorly targeted, and occasionally littered with waste. To be sure, the real problems at Zam Zam, built in the early 1960s, aren’t America’s fault. Like almost every other piece of domestic infrastructure, the school suffered decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein, who diverted resources to fight two destructive foreign wars and to cronies to shore up his regime. Bechtel Corp., which oversaw the work at Zam Zam and about 1,300 other schools, points out that its contract, part of a larger $1 billion contract to fix Iraqi infrastructure, didn’t include money for long-term problems like sewage. Yet amid a construction program focused on the long-term, the schools program was one of the few designed to touch many Iraqi lives quickly. Education under Mr. Hussein was undermined by indoctrination, so it was a perfect symbol of the US program to transform Iraq’s present and future. But few Iraqis ended up appreciating the effort. “My kids are still on rickety desks in a broken-down school,” says Uday Jabbar Mahmoud, the father of three who works as a security guard in Baghdad. “We’re not seeing any reconstruction. We hear that millions have been spent, but nothing we can touch.” Thanoon Hussein, an engineer at the Education Ministry who checked the work at Zam Zam, says no documents were filed with the ministry on the school by Bechtel or its subcontractor, Al-Assem. He says the average amount Bechtel spent per school was $40,000. “I’d be amazed if $10,000 was spent at Zam Zam.” “We’re grateful that the US and Bechtel tried to help us,” says Nazar Mikhael, the ministry’s chief engineer. “But they didn’t coordinate with us.” Mr. Mikhael says about half of the schools worked on by Bechtel suffer from shoddy work. “The contracting process was scandalous to say the least – some of these things are subcontracted six times,” says Isam al-Khafaji, a former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) reconstruction adviser who runs Iraq Revenue Watch, a nonprofit that tracks spending here. In a press release, Bechtel says that of 52 formal complaints, only 27 schools have required additional work, 2 percent of the schools it renovated. The company says complaints it didn’t consult with Iraqis are unfair: the relevant Iraqi institutions were “not yet operational because their facilities had been looted and their personnel dispersed by the conflict” when it started work last year. Whatever the extent of the problems with the school renovation program, they illustrate one of the fundamental philosophical dilemmas to confront US administrators here. Spending money fast tends to breed waste. Going slow is safer, but progress is less apparent. “There was a great plan for the war but they failed to plan for the peace,” says Sean O’Sullivan, who runs Jumpstart, a nongovernmental organization that employs about 3,000 Iraqis to demolish war-damaged government buildings and build public housing. He says the US should have focused on short-term projects to get lots of Iraqis back to work and make identifiable progress.