Weekend Potpourri 4/2/06: Interesting, Disgusting, Amusing, and Thought-provoking ... shared with you, from
~~Suz~~ = = = = = = = = = = = = http://www.ken-welch.com = = = = = = = = = = = = Low-income S.F. seniors to lose food boxes to federal cutbacks Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, March 28, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/mrna2 Ola Mae White, who retired 30 years ago, is proud of her knack for stretching a nickel. The 93-year-old San Francisco resident lives on $819 in monthly Social Security benefits and a tiny pension from her days as a cafeteria worker. Once a month, like thousands of seniors in the city and around the country, she picks up a supplemental food box packed with canned juices, milk, meat, vegetables, fruit. "I worked hard all my life to keep off public assistance,'' says White. "I never wanted any help from the government. But I need the extra food. What is President Bush trying to do to us? It would really hurt me not to get the extra food.'' But starting next month, about 1,000 low-income seniors in San Francisco will lose their monthly food boxes as cutbacks in a U.S. Department of Agriculture program trickle down to beneficiaries. Tens of thousands of other seniors across the country are also losing their boxes. More than that, pending before Congress is a Bush administration proposal to completely eliminate the food program in the coming fiscal year. It is a move administration officials say is necessary in tight budgetary times. They say the food boxes duplicate other federal nutrition programs, but advocates for seniors say that older Americans will be left with empty pantries. … Too long to post it all in email ... Read the full article here: http://tinyurl.com/mrna2 = = = = = = = = = = = = = Global Warming Might Sink America's Coasts: Cities Like New York, Miami and New Orleans Face Threat http://tinyurl.com/rjpa3 March 26, 2006 - - With glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica melting into the ocean at up to double the speed of just a few years ago, all the water has to go somewhere - - and that could mean an end to America's coastlines as we know them. The water wouldn't come crashing down city streets the way it did in the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow." Instead, according to the new issues of the journal Science, the oceans fed by rapidly melting glaciers would rise steadily over years - - a total of 13 to 20 feet by the end of this century, threatening huge chunks of American cities like New Orleans, Miami, Charleston, S.C., and New York. In the future, storms could regularly swamp New York's subways and tunnels if barriers aren't built to hold back the rising tides, according to Vivien Gornitz, a sea level specialist for NASA. Even pricey riverfront properties in the borough of Manhattan may be under water periodically. This is the sort of thing that happens in Venice, Italy. Each winter they have floods or high tides and have to put down temporary boardwalks as walkways to keep people out of the water. 'We've Got to Take Some Action' In Miami, a team is trying to figure out how to keep the sea from spilling into the city's drinking water reserves. "We know we've got to take some action," said Harvey Ruvin, who leads the team confronting the issue. "Certainly building a dike 500 miles long wouldn't work. It's too expensive. But maybe building a desalinization plant or moving our oil well fields further to the west [would work]." Any of the solutions could run into the millions or billions of dollars, but scientists say the cost of inaction is much higher. "There is no point waiting until we've reached that tipping point," said Tim Flannery, the author of "The Weather Makers." "It's then too late. It really is." In Holland, where 50 percent of the land is below sea level, they are way ahead of the game. The Dutch spent $8 billion over 30 years to fortify the coastline with state-of-the-art dikes, dams, levees and a 6-mile-long hydraulic sea wall. That system is 50 times stronger than the defenses that failed New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. "To the Dutch standards, New Orleans was not very well-protected," said Huib de Vriend of Delta Hydraulics. But the ocean can't be contained forever, and experts agree the only true way to protect the precious shoreline is to make serious cuts in the greenhouse emissions that are warming the Earth and melting the polar ice caps. = = = = = = = = = = = = = Watch Loose Change Second Edition On Line – Free !! Courtesy of TvNewsLIES.org with special thanks to Dylan Avery! http://tinyurl.com/l5sxu (broadband only … 1 hr 21 minutes … may also be downloaded and saved) = = = = = = = = = = = = = Who was Mae Brussell? 1922 - 1988 http://tinyurl.com/mg9va Born in Beverly Hills 1922, Mae Brussell was the daughter of prominent Wilshire Boulevard Temple Rabbi Edgar Magnin and great-granddaughter of Isaac Magnin, founder of the I. Magnin clothing stores. ** By the time President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 Mae was married with five kids and living in Southern California. Like many Americans, she wasn't convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, so she bought the 26-volume Warren Commission Hearings and began reading, filing, and cross-indexing. With the massive addition of books, articles, and government documents, Mae not only found connections to the CIA and Germany, but began to see relationships to many other current and past events throughout the world. ** Mae began to realize that the international terrorist network that made up the Axis powers during World War II had effectively gone underground and continued their worldwide fascist campaign even before the War had officially ended; As one country after another changed hands, Mae recognized many of the same familiar names, methods, and tactics that were used to swallow up Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. ** Unfortunately this growing list of countries does not exclude the United States; Most anything Americana is being infiltrated, raped, murdered, infected, poisoned, or deregulated. As Mae stated at the University of California in Santa Cruz: "What is happening to us is a classical case of totally destroying us. And by the same people who've been at the top doing it since World War Two." ** In May of 1971, after seven years of research and now living in Carmel, California, Mae appeared as a guest on KLRB, a local FM radio station independently owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bob and Gloria Baron. Mae discussed her views on political assassinations and the New York Times release of the Pentagon Papers. The response was so good she became a regular weekly guest and before too long had her own show, Dialogue: Conspiracy. (She later changed the name to World Watchers International hoping it would spread like Weight Watchers did.) Almost every week for seventeen years Mae shared with her audience her voluminous daily research in her rapid-fire, no-holds-barred style. ** Occasionally Mae's research produced predictions with stunning accuracy: ** On May 29, 1968 Mae confronted Rose Kennedy at the Monterey Peninsula Airport and handed her what she said was a poem, but actually a note telling her Robert Kennedy would soon be assassinated. A week later Senator Kennedy was shot to death at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. ** A month before Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick incident Mae warned his office of "the nest of rattlesnakes" that surrounded him and his upcoming bid for the White House. ** Two weeks before the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst she told a Syracuse University audience that the SLA shooting of black school superintendent Marcus Foster was just the beginning of what would be terror and psychological sabotage in the same vein Germany had been subjected to in the 1930s. ** In August 1977 (broadcast #282) Mae discussed Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple move to Guyana. She speculated that this might be a training camp for assassination teams – - this was more than a year before 913 members of the church were massacred. ** But Mae's most shocking crystal ball research was probably her March 29, 1981 evening broadcast when she spent much of the hour listing the reasons she believed the Reagan White House were at war with one another and asked who will kill off their team members first. The following morning President Reagan was shot in Washington D.C. ** In addition to Mae's close friends and weekly listeners, she corresponded and networked with such people as Jim Garrison, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, and Larry Flynt. Her first published article in Paul Krassner's The Realist was actually financed by John Lennon. And Frank Zappa once gave her a computer for filing and cross-indexing her research (but she never used it). ** There were times when death threats drove Mae off the air: once by Charles Manson family member Sandra Good in September 1975. Sometimes Mae resorted to recording her shows at home on her small cassette tape recorder and privately mailed out copies to her subscribers. ** Many of the articles Mae wrote tackled subjects that to this day remain unparalleled by anyone in the United States. The epitome of Mae's journalism "The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination" appeared in Larry Flynt's premier issue of The Rebel magazine in November 1983. ** Her countless list of German and White Russian fascist fingerprints to President Kennedy's assassination reached its peak in May of 1988 when she discovered the name "Adolf H. Schicklgruber" handwritten in Marina Oswald's notebook of poetry in the Warren Commission exhibits. ** In 1983 Mae's show was picked up by listener-sponsored KAZU FM in nearby Pacific Grove. Five years later she was forced off the air, for the last time, from death threats; but continued sending out her weekly tapes to subscribers until June 13, 1988 (tape #862). ** Mae died of cancer on October 3rd of that year. She was 66. We are looking for tapes of Mae's broadcasts and articles and books relating to her research. If you can help, please contact us: MaeBrussell.com P.O. Box 24553 San Jose, CA 95154-4553 USA http://MaeBrussell.com is maintained by Tim Canale = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Tom DeLay Movie Teaser: http://tinyurl.com/e7zgt = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = No, I’m NOT a turncoat … I review BOTH sides, liberal AND conservative! An excellent article from The Conservative Voice: http://tinyurl.com/gz52b by Chuck Baldwin Remembering The Lessons Of Germany's Past June 18, 2005 06:25 AM EST For years, I struggled to comprehend how the good people of Germany could allow someone such as Adolph Hitler to lead them into what became World War II. After all, before Hitler’s rise to power, Germany had a rich Christian heritage. The Reformation out of the Dark Ages had its roots deeply imbedded in Germany and surrounding countries. ** Furthermore, Germany has long produced some of the most intelligent and creative people on the planet! Many of the world’s greatest engineers and scientists have come from Germany and Austria. When it comes to knowledge and education, the Germanic people take a back seat to no one. ** How, then, could the good, intelligent people of Germany follow and support someone such as Hitler? For years I struggled to find the answer to that puzzle. Now, I believe I understand. ** Obviously, one does not gain the trust and confidence of people by portraying himself as a monster. Does anyone truly believe that the German people would have supported Hitler if they had thought he was some kind of ogre? As with most leaders, Hitler preached faith, family, and patriotism. His speeches were laced with references to God. He personally claimed Christ to be his Savior. Even his adopted Nazi symbol was created around the Christian cross. As far as the German people were concerned, Adolph Hitler was loyal to historic, conservative Christian values. Why should they have thought otherwise? ** However, it did not take long for Hitler to begin turning Germany from an independent, peaceful republic into an aggressive global empire. And it is at this point that the German people, and especially the German church, must share culpability for Hitler’s sins. ** First, On March 23, 1933, the newly elected members of the Reichstag (the German Parliament) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler’s "Ermächtigungsgesetz" or, The "Enabling Act." This Act was officially called the "Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich." ** Opponents of the "Enabling Act" rightly warned that, if adopted, the Act would make Hitler a de facto dictator. They worried that the Act would dismantle constitutional liberties. History would prove that their worries were valid. ** At the time, however, it was anything but certain that Hitler would prevail in convincing German lawmakers to pass his "Enabling Act." Then, suddenly, terrorists struck the Reichstag building. ** After the Reichstag was burned on February 28, 1933, President Hindenburg and Hitler invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which permitted the suspension of civil liberties during national emergencies. As a result, freedom of the press, free expression of opinion, individual property rights, right of assembly and association, right to privacy of postal and electronic communications, states’ rights of self-government, and protection against unlawful searches and seizures were suspended. Shortly afterward, the "Enabling Act" was passed, and the rest, as they say, is history. ** Of course, historians have widely speculated that it was Nazis, themselves, that had set the fire in order to facilitate passage of the "Enabling Act" and ensconce Hitler as Germany’s Fuhrer. No one knows for sure who burned the Reichstag, but what we do know is that Hitler used that act of terrorism to gain the support of the people as a "wartime president." ** The German people were convinced that their country was under attack and that Hitler was the leader who could protect them. Consider the statement of one of Hitler’s most trusted cabinet members, Hermann Goering, "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." (Source: Transcript of Nuremberg Trials) ** Compare Goering’s statement to former Attorney General John Ashcroft who, in defending the USA Patriot Act (which does much the same thing as Hitler’s "Enabling Act") said, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve." (Source: Press Report, Center for Public Integrity) ** Is it only a coincidence (or a repeat of history) that Republicans have introduced a bill in Congress to nullify the 22nd Amendment thereby opening the door for President George W. Bush to become permanent president? (Source: U.S. House of Representatives, H.J. Res. 24 "Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution" introduced February 17, 2005.) ** Add to H.J. Res. 24 the World Net Daily report that "A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001: "Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush’s first term, says the official story about the collapse of the Twin Towers is ’bogus’ and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed them and adjacent Building No. 7." ** WND quotes Reynolds as stating further, "Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings." ** Whether the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down via "an inside job" or not, one thing is certain: the attacks of September 11, 2001 became the catalyst that propelled Congressmen to quickly pass the USA Patriot Act even though none of them had read it. ** Much is being made over the fact that on Wednesday of this week, the House of Representatives removed some "sneak and peek" features regarding public libraries from the Patriot Act. Of course, President Bush is livid and is threatening to veto the bill without that segment of the Act included. However, what few people seem to notice is that a host of egregiously unconstitutional abridgments of freedom remain intact in the Patriot Act. ** Under the Patriot Act, government agents can conduct searches in your home or business and search your belongings without informing you and without a court order. Government agents are permitted to arrest and detain individuals and to hold them indefinitely, without being charged with a crime, and without being allowed access to an attorney. In other words, the Patriot Act (like Hitler’s "Enabling Act") expunges our Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and seizures and our right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects. ** Furthermore, the Patriot Act (like Hitler’s "Enabling Act") destroys our Fifth Amendment right to be held for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, without an indictment of a grand jury. The Patriot Act also eviscerates a citizen’s constitutional right of Habeas Corpus. ** The point is, as with Hitler’s Germany, so, too, the American people, and especially America’s churches, are willingly and enthusiastically surrendering constitutional liberties in order to accommodate President Bush’s desires for authoritarian power as a "wartime president." ** Consider, too, Hitler’s invasion of Germany’s neighbors. People cheered as German troops attacked other nations. And even though those nations had not participated in any attack against Germany, Hitler had convinced people that preemptive attacks against those nations were necessary as they would make Germany "more secure." Does this or does this not sound just like President Bush’s justification for invading Iraq? ** Once again, please remember that the German people believed Hitler to be a patriotic, Christian man. As a result, Hitler had the unflinching support of Germany’s conservative Christian ministers. How else would they be persuaded to follow Hitler into the nightmare of the Nazi regime? ** Remember, also, that to most German ministers, the Nazi Party was "God’s Party." They really believed they were being faithful to God by being faithful to Hitler. Therefore, should we not be concerned today when we hear of Christian ministers excommunicating church members who do not support President Bush or the Republican Party? Should not "red flags" go up in our minds when we hear Christian ministers excuse Bush’s unconstitutional conduct by proclaiming, "Bush is God’s man for America, therefore, we cannot criticize him!"? ** Yes, my friends, it is now obvious to me how Adolph Hitler seized power in Germany, because the same principles that Hitler used in the 1930’s are being used by America’s leaders today. ** Am I saying that I believe President Bush is another Hitler? Of course not. I am saying, however, that the same tactics and strategies being used by President Bush are eerily similar to those of the former German leader’s. Certainly, we all pray for a fate far better than that of Hitler’s Germany. But to obtain a better future for America, it is obligatory that we remember the lessons of Germany’s past. = = = = = = = = = = = It’s time to play that old game again, “What’s Under Bush’s Shirt?” http://tinyurl.com/nzqb6 = = = = = = = = = * Only 1,024 days remaining until Inaugural Day 1/20/09 * Mark Twain: “The only time the children are safe is when Congress is not in session.” * "The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their 'vital interests' are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the 'sanctity' of human life, or the 'conscience' of the civilized world." - James Baldwin * Jeff Foxworthy: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12188.htm * "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." GWBush, 43rdPresident,CNN.com, December 18, 2000 * IMPORTANT!! Click here: http://tinyurl.com/cfsrc --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [RobsList] A progressive group that is part of http://robwire.com You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RobsList" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Robslist -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
