Kepler View

Robert "Bob" Lee Carlson Dies At Age 40 And Memorial Service January 4, 2010 At Travelodge Meeting Room 12-3pm

2010-01-20T14:43:00.003-06:00

June 23, 1969 to January 4, 2010
Rest In Peace My Friend

Robert "Bob" Lee Carlson passed away peacefully at his home in Iowa City, on Monday, January 4, 2010, at the age of 40. He was buried at Riverside Cemetery, Spencer, Iowa on Friday, January 7, 2010. A Memorial Service Pot Luck will be held on Sunday, January 24, 2010, between 12-3 p.m., in the Meeting Room of the Travelodge Motel, where he was the Assistant Manager. A Memorial Fund has been set up to assist his wife and daughters. Please drop in the card box at the service, or send to Melissa Carlson, 1017 Dover Street, Iowa City, Iowa 52240. Thank you!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!

2009-03-17T15:46:00.000-05:00

I have not been posting as I have been worried about not having a job and am spending every waking moment trying to raise enough money to buy this business before he has to shut it down. In addition to that I have been applying and interviewing all over in case it doesn't work out!!
We just received our new Signed Limited Edition Shonn Green Prints, which turned out extremely well, and sales should pick up with this new item.
It is so nice out, that the Coral Ridge Mall has been pretty slow this week, so it is actually an excellent time to stop by and do some shopping, if you are in the area.
Have A Happy St. Patrick's Day and please follow the link to Yahoo News, to learn about the Real St. Patrick!!
:)
LINK TO REAL ST PATRICK

13 Facts About Friday The 13th Link

2009-02-13T16:28:00.000-06:00

How is your Friday the 13th going?
I can see that Friday the 13th is already going bad, as the House has just passed the Stimulus Bill to kill America, and snow is flying, so I guess we are in for a scary evening ;)
Here is the story at Yahoo News:
If you fear Friday the 13th, then batten down the hatches. This week's unlucky day is the first of three this year.
The next Friday the 13th comes in March, followed by Nov. 13. Such a triple whammy comes around only every 11 years, said Thomas Fernsler, a math specialist at the University of Delaware who has studied the number 13 for more than 20 years.
By the numbers
Here are 13 more facts about the infamous day, courtesy of Fernsler and some of our own research:
13 facts link

Take Care!!

America's Greatest President Turns 200 Today!

2009-02-12T13:43:00.000-06:00

200th Birthday Of America's Greatest President
My birthday wishes to Abraham Lincoln on his 200th birthday, :"Today, Thursday , February 12th, is the 200th birthday of the Greatest President in American history, and I just want to say Rest In Peace Mr. President,
what?...sorry someone just looked over my shoulder and "didn't" know who the Greatest President in American history was.
Actaully, no one did "this" year, but I like that line, so I put it in whenever I write or talk about Abraham Lincoln:)
Wow, I was surprised, as Obviously it was Abraham Lincoln. There follows two links to show anyone who cares how great he was!
The first is to the "Lincoln Institute Presents Abraham Lincoln's Classroom" which has days and days of material for a Lincoln fair weather friend or a true fanatic.
The second link is to a website that has a great deal of information about the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois, and their preparations for his 200th birthday next year!!Happy 200th Birthday, Mr. President!!
Your Number 1 fan!!
Daniel

abraham lincoln classroom

abraham lincoln museum

Depression Ends As Senate Passes Stimulus Bill

2009-02-10T13:50:00.001-06:00

Well, Hell, they just passed the economic stimulus bill in the Senate, and the economy is already recovering~~I mean it will turn around shortly, once the House and Senate agree on which frisbee golf courses, and atv parks, can stay in the bill, and which are just "pork".
I will make no qualms about it, I am opposed to this additional waste of our great-great-great granchildrens money, just as I opposed the original bank bailout bill, which has been wasted and accomplished nothing.
I do want to congratulate President Obama for his win in November, but the approach he is taking with the economy is right out of Comrades Pelosi and Reids communist playbook, and will doom his Presidency, and our country. If he really wanted to stimulate the economy by throwing billions of borrowed dollars at it, it would have been quicker, and more efficient to let the workers of America receive it as a direct $7340 to each of the 109 million people who are employed right now.
I mean, this is simple simon stuff, and while Rushie, and Seanie and the other blithering goats on the right are attacking this bill, because they are going to attack everything Obama tries to do, I am attacking it, because I hope he succeeds in making America a better place, but I do not think this is a good way to accomplish that goal.
Anyway, here are links to the House and Senate bills, if you have the stamina to read through this entire piece of crappy legislation.
I shall write more about this in the future, but a friend of mine, who has retained his Republican identity, and has called me a traitor for having voted for Obama, "just to shake things up", asked me to remind everyone that George W. Bush, kept us safe from terrorists for 7 years. Oh, this friend also says if we just kick all of the muslims out of the country, we will stay safe:)
Yes, I do have a very interesting, and diverse group of friends;)
It is part of the fun of knowing most of my friends from the Coral Ridge Mall, which has an exotic mix of people working there.
Oh by the way, this is an excellent opportunity for you all to travel to the Coral Ridge Mall, Coralville, Iowa, and spend some money, which would help "our" economy. There are sales nearly everywhere, and people who will appreciate your presence, and try and make your shopping experience incredible. It is slower during the week, so that would be a prime time, and of course Saturdays are huge, with last weeks crowd, equalling the numbers during the holidays. I invite you to stop by the art kiosk and say hi, anytime you are here.
On a lighter note former Vice-President Dick Cheney, "accidently" shot his next door neighbor, while clearing brush with his shotgun. I did not check the accuracy of this report, because that would have required effort, so take it as fact or not, it really doesn't matter to me, as I just thought it was amusing.
Have a Great Tuesday, and be sure to take everything I write as fact, as it will be a lot easier for me to succeed in this whole change of character to try and grow my ranks of minions:)
As my "friends" at Fox News, say but don't practice, "We Are Fair, Balanced, and Unafraid", whatever--anyway besides, "take care", that will be my other catch phrase, so make sure you practice saying it out loud, so you can chant it with me at my future "rallies"!!
Now I just need to work on getting a radio talk show, and I can blather on as well, and get me some of those "ditto heads"!!
Oh this is going to be sweet fun!!
Take Care!!
Daniel
house bill link

senate bill link

Dawn Of Dementia: Another Devils Advocate~Oh My!!

2009-02-07T13:34:00.000-06:00

I hope the New Year is being good to all of you out there. I have been very busy through the holidays and January, as I have been trying to find a way to purchase this business, and avoid having it close. I am getting to the end of that rainbow, and will know if my friends can swing it and assist me financially, or if I will be working somewhere else after next week. I have come to a place of acceptance in whatever happens. My preferred situation would be to stay here, buy the business with these silent partner friends, and keep doing what I do, selling framed art prints.
During this whole time I have also been trying to figure out what i want to do with my blogs, and after much soul searching, I have come to conclusion that other than the funny hump day humor posts, I wasn't doing anything more usually than passing on news, that people could get if they just were bored enough, or searched enough. That is all well and good to impart information to others, but I on the whole, will leave that to others from now on.
I look around and see blithering idiots out there who have radio shows, t.v. shows, blogs, and minions of "special" mindless followers, from morons like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on the right, to Randy Rhodes and Chris Matthews on the left, and I think Wow, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to say anything and not worry about facts, figures, or truth!
These are but a few of the "geniuses" out there, and the American people seem to want to see, hear, and read this type of content all of the time.
Therefore, I have decided to allow my inner demented Devils's Advocate to decide what I shall write about, and that way I can just write whatever I want, and if the facts, figures, and truth do not line up with what I am writing, too bad. After all it worked for The Great Communicator "Fabricator" Ronald Reagan when he was in the White House, and it has worked more or less for everyone in public office, and the news media as well, which is Never Fair Or Balanced, but bring their own agendas to every story, everyday!!
I do hope you shall stop by and read my first "new" post tomorrow, which will be a mixture of "my" facts, "my" figures, and "my" truth, and may it please, annoy, or anger you, at least I hope it will get you to think.
Anyway, that is my goal, I invite you to stop back and see how the first attempt turns out!!
Have A GREAT SATURDAY!!! :)
The above post and information may not express the views of any blog sites on which I post, and strictly are the facts, figures, and truths of the demons which control me! Thank You and Take Care!! ;)
KeplerView
by
Daniel Kepler

Hooray We Survived The Black Friday Weekend :) !!

2008-12-01T19:14:00.001-06:00

Just a very quick post to let you know that I survived black friday and the whole weekend, and I would like to thank everyone who came to the Coral Ridge Mall and spent your time and money.
I will comment at a later date about the abysmal way that people acted at the mall on Long Island, where the 34 year old man was trampled. Hopefully, everyone who trampled him will do prison time. Enough said for now!!
Anyway, back to our Coral Ridge Mall, I believe nearly everyone acted appropriately, even though I am sure you can tell me of individuals who were idiots. I found most people amusing and upbeat even though there was such a mass of people, even the employees had a good time. We were exhausted by Monday, but all in all it was a GREAT way to start the Christmas shopping season.
The Coral Ridge Mall did an awesome job of arranging the longer hours more toward the end of the month, when it really does help. We are working hard to beat our competitors at Jordan Creek, as we are a much better place to shop :) Personal bias I realize, but we are easier to get to and much happier to have you shop here.
Again this year, the Mall has it set up on the weekends that vehicles coming to the Mall from the South side, come in turn right, and then leaving the mall you continue in the same direction to get out. I personally wish this was year round, but this year it does seem like there are less people unfamiliar with the Mall, who drive toward you in your lane after dark.
Anyway a big hand to everyone from management, office, maintenance, and janitorial, for making the monster weekend a pleasant experience, and I hope shoppers came away with the same feeling. Thank You!!
Now I am getting some things done, and have to be up by early tuesday (day off), as I am doing a nice thing for my boss. I am going to take a one way trip to Des Moines on the 5:40 a.m. Greyhound to pick up his Suburban full of prints, which he allows me to drive the whole month, so I can have backup prints. This saves him driving it over and having to have someone follow him to give him a ride back to Des Moines. This will save him time and money, and only eat part of my one day off. Got to build up those Karma points whenever possible!!
So thanks for shopping and keeping it local, and please come see us again ALL month!!
If you have any good stories from this weekend please leave them in comments or send them to me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com and I shall do a post on them!!
Take Care and Goodnight!!
Daniel Carvel Kepler

Wrongly Obama Wants Rescue Plan Approved Immediately

2008-11-24T12:47:00.000-06:00

Well, it is an interesting Monday morning as we wake up to hear that high government officials and bankers from Citigroup worked through the evening to "steal", I mean receive a bailout of billions more of our taxpayer dollars. Isn't it nice to see such diligent servants toiling through a weekend night?! Personally, I wish they would have taken the day off and not given anymore of our money away to legalized criminal enterprises like Citigroup. If anyone else did what they did, we would call it extortion, but because they are a bank which is "to big to fail", we give them money until it hurts "US".
What a crock of something smelly this bailout nonsense has become, and daily the line of "bailoutees" grows and grows, and so does the anger out here in "real" America. We have had it with giveaways, and want our elected leaders to do as we say, and not as the "monied" interests want them too. Remember we have elections to send you people to Washington to do our bidding, and giving all of our money away was not what we had in mind. If you are going to do the same thing we did before, then what is the point of even holding elections. We could hire permanent civil servants to give our money away if that is what we want our country to do, instead of wasting all of the time, energy, and money to elect "new" leaders who are going to do the same old thing.
WASHINGTON~~~Wake up now before you drown us in your bailout madness. The markets cannot stabilize when you keep propping up bad companies, instead of allowing them to fail, and letting other better run companies to take their place. Simple common sense should be the mainstay of our government, not this fairy tale that they are trying to sell us, that they know what is best for the country. Just look at how inefficient the government is run, and then tell me that we want the whole economy to be run that way. Nonsense, Nonsense, and more Nonsense!!
Here is a story at Yahoo News concerning President elect Obama's economic recovery plan, and after reading it you may well be asking yourselves where his catch phrase of "Change and Yes We Can", come in, when it is just more Bushie economics. Perhaps it will just be transitionary, but please know that you are not doing what you were elected to do, if you follow Bush policies which have already failed. You promised a fresh approach and that is what we expect~~thank you very much!!

Anyway here is the lead into the story at Yahoo:
With the economy in crisis, President-elect Barack Obama called on the new Congress to act quickly in passing a costly stimulus package to create jobs as a follow-up to the hundreds of billions of dollars the Bush administration has committed to rescue financial markets.
"The economy is likely to get worse before it gets better," Obama said in a downbeat forecast, delivered 57 days before he takes the oath of office and with Americans heading into the year-end holiday season.
"Most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year," he said, urging the newly elected Congress to act quickly on his plans after opening its session on Jan. 6.
At a news conference, Obama was critical of the Big Three automakers, saying he was surprised they did not have a better-thought-out plan for their future before asking Congress to approve $25 billion in emergency loans.
link to full story

103 Years Later Einstein Is Proven Right

2008-11-21T12:14:00.000-06:00

It has been a busy week as we prepare everything for "black friday" and the onslaught of customers. I have arranged all of the art prints so they will be easier to flip through, and for me to access any multiples that I might have for very popular prints. Don't let the economy scare you, sales are already ramping up this week, and it looks like it will be a sprint to Christmas.
Anyway, this is the first moment I have had to get anything posted for a few days, and I read this interesting story concerning Einstein's e=mc2 equation being verified after 103 years, and thought this was a good way to start Friday!!

The Yahoo News story begins: It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists. A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are bound by gluons. The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95 percent? The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons. In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.
link to the full story

Abraham Lincoln News: Copy Of Famed Lincoln Letter Turns Up In Dallas

2008-11-17T11:49:00.000-06:00

It has been a few days since last posting as thankfully we have been very busy at the Coral Ridge Mall. People took advantage of the cold weather to come out and shop heavily Friday, Saturday, and to a lesser extent Sunday, but all in all it was a very good weekend!! Thank you to the patriotic shoppers who made the effort to pull the retail sales out of the doldrums:)
I see there have been many bad stories out there, from the wildfires in California, to the taking of another ship by Somali pirates, but I found this "cool" story at Yahoo News this morning, and beings I am a huge fan of Abraham Lincoln wanted this to be the first post of the week!!

A Texas museum hopes a document found in its archives turns out to be an authentic government copy of Abraham Lincoln's eloquent letter consoling a mother thought to have lost five sons in the Civil War. The famed Bixby Letter, which the Dallas Historical Society is getting appraised as it prays for a potential windfall, has a fascinating history. The original has never been found. Historians debate whether Lincoln wrote it. Its recipient, Lydia Bixby, was no fan of the president. And not all her sons died in the war.

The letter, written with "the best of intentions" 144 years ago next week, is "considered one of the finest pieces of American presidential prose," said Alan Olson, curator for the Dallas group. "It's still a great piece of writing, regardless of the truth in the back story." Historians say Lincoln wrote the letter at the request of a Massachusetts official, who passed along news of a Boston woman grieving the loss of her five sons. The letter is addressed to "Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass." and begins with an acknowledgment that nothing written could possibly make a grief-stricken mother feel better about such a horrific loss.
"I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming," Lincoln wrote. After thanking Bixby on behalf of a grateful nation, Lincoln wrote that he would pray that God relieve her anguish and leave her with only the "cherished memory of the loved" along with "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." The letter, as was the president's custom in his personal correspondence, is signed "A Lincoln."
link to full story

Day After Hump Day Humor: A Week After The Election~~Financial Crisis Edition

2008-11-13T17:09:00.001-06:00

Happy day after Hump Day, a week after the election edition. In that week, we have had Wall Street show utter confidence in the new situation by tanking nearly everyday, and continuing to whine for more bailout money. They continue to waste our money on resorts, and vacations, as AIG executives did right after receiving $125 billion more dollars from Uncle Sucker!!
This behavior was anticipated by those of us, who opposed helping anyone out, and now that Uncle Sucker is open for business, everyone is asking for a handout. After GM and Chrysler, it will be Ford, then the airlines, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, and we will continue working 63 hours a week, with no relief, nor end in sight, as the debt rises well above $10 trillion!!
I am too angry at the media for gleefully reporting the bad news everyday, and ignoring any positive signs that could turn this "recession" mentality around. Even local news is jumping on the band wagon with stories plastered on the front page about GGP, which owns Coral Ridge Mall, as well as many others throughout the country, and are in a financial "pinch" since the credit markets have dried up.
Well, let's also show that this is one of the strong malls, and that if credit turns around quickly, they should do just fine. Please, let's have the positive spin, and make sure to tell consumers to get out and do your Christmas shopping early. Perhaps you will even cut back a little, but if you have a job, and are reasonably sound, don't let the doom and gloomers, keep you out of the stores!! Come on out and see our cheerful, smiling faces, and spread the wealth in your own personal way!! Thank You!! :)
Now let us show a little American spirit and have a good day with some jokes, that may even be humorous ;)

A man was driving down a country road when his car stalled inexplicably. He got out and lifted the hood to see if he could find out what had happened. A brown and white cow slowly lumbered over to the car and stuck her head under the hood beside the man. After a moment the cow looked at the man and said, "Looks like the cylinder head gasket to me!" Then she just turned and walked away. Amazed, the man walked over to the farmhouse where he met a farmer. "I say, is that your cow in the field?" he asked. The farmer replied, "The brown and white one? Yes, that's old Mary." The man said, "Well my car's broken down, and she just said, 'Looks like the cylinder head gasket to me!" The farmer shook his head and said, "Don't mind old Mary, she doesn't know anything about cars!"
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A drunk man got on to a bus late one night, staggered up the aisle, and slumped down next to an elderly woman. She looked the man sternly and said, "I've got news for you young man - you're going straight to hell!" The drunk man jumped up and screamed, "I'm on the wrong bus!"
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Rules For Buying Gifts For Men:
Rule 1: When in doubt - buy him a cordless drill. It does not matter if he already has one. As a man, you can never have too many cordless drills. No one knows why. Rule 2: If you cannot afford a cordless drill, buy him anything with the word ratchet or socket in it. Men love saying those two words. No one knows why. Rule 3: If you are really short of money, buy him anything for his car. A 50 cent ice scraper, a small bottle of deicer or something to hang from the rear view mirror. Men love gifts for their cars. No one knows why. Rule 4: Rope. Men love rope. It takes us back to Boy Scouts or some other such organisation. Nothing says love like a hundred feet of 3/8" nylon rope. No one knows why. Rule 5: A new TV remote control to replace the one he has lost. If you have a lot of money buy him the latest all-singing, all-dancing widescreen TV. Watch the smile on his face as he flicks, and flicks, and flicks. Rule 6: Label makers are nearly as good as cordless drills. Within a couple of weeks there will be labels absolutely everywhere. Men really enjoy using these. No one knows why. Rule 7: Never buy a man anything that says "some assembly required" on the box. He will be too preoccupied to speak to you for hours and he will always have parts left over. Rule 8: Men enjoy danger. That's why they love to barbecue. Get him a big gas barbecue. Tell him the gas line leaks. Such excitement! Who wants a hamburger?" Rule 9: Tickets to a football match are a smart gift. However, he will not appreciate tickets to "Creative Flower Arranging for Beginners." Everyone knows why. Rule 10: Men love chainsaws. Never, ever, buy a man you love a chainsaw. If you don't know why - please refer to Rule 6 and what happens when he gets a label maker. Rule 11: It's hard to beat a really good wheelbarrow or an aluminium extension ladder. Never buy a real man a step ladder. It must be an extension ladder. No one knows why!
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A very drunk man turns up at his house at 6 o'clock in the morning with his hair and clothes dishevelled. His long suffering wife, who has been waiting up all night, shouts at him furiously, "I hope you have a good reason for getting home blind drunk at this time of the morning!" "Yes," replied the man, "I'd like some breakfast!"
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A minister was delivering a sermon on sin. "Is there anyone here who is without SIN?" he shouted, glowering at the congregation. Embarrassed parishioners stirred nervously in their seats, but no one stood. Feeling he really had them this time, the preacher said, "Is there anyone here who thinks he or she is PERFECT?" One small man, seated next to a rather imposing woman, rose nervously to his feet. "So, Mr Jones, you think YOU are PERFECT?" "No, sir", the man replied, "I'm just standing for my wife's first husband!"
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Uncle John was in the fertilized egg business when I was young. He had several hundred young layers, called pullets, and 8 or 10 roosters whose job was to fertilize the eggs. My uncle kept records, and any rooster or pullet that didn't perform well went into the pot and was replaced. This took a lot of time. So, my uncle got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. He could then sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by listening to the bells. My uncle's favourite was Brewster Rooster. A very fine specimen he was,but his bell had not rung all morning, so Uncle John went to investigate. Several roosters were chasing pullets, with bells ringing. Well, Brewster had his bell in his beak so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one. Uncle was so proud of Brewster he entered him in the county fair, and he was an overnight sensation. The judges not only awarded him the "No Bell Prize", but also the "Pullet Surprise!"
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How To Annoy A Policeman (If Your dare And If You Are Stupid!!)
1. When you get pulled over, say "What's wrong, ossifer, there's no blood in my alcohol!" 2. If he asks if you knew how fast you were going, say no, my speedometer only goes to 70. 3. If he asks you to step out of the car, automatically throw yourself on the bonnet. 4. Trip and fall into him. 5. Accuse him of police brutality when he pushes you away. 6. Ask him if he ever worked in a prison. If he says yes, ask him how the plumbing was. 7. Try to sell him your car. 8. Ask if you can buy his car. 9. Tell him you like men in uniform. 10. Ask if you can borrow his uniform for a Halloween party
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Mary offered to care for the eight-year-old daughter of neighbours who were going away for the weekend. On the Saturday morning, she made breakfast, laying a generous helping of bacon and eggs in front of the child. "Mummy always serves hot pancakes for breakfast," said the eight-year-old. So Mary, very eager to oblige, hurried into the kitchen and quickly prepared a plate of hot pancakes, which she laid in front of the girl. "No, thank you," she said. "But I thought you said your mother always has hot pancakes for breakfast!" said Mary in surprise. "She does," said the child. "But I don't eat them!"
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Technical Support: "I need you to right-click on the desktop." Customer: "Ok." Technical Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?" Customer: "No." Technical Support: "Ok. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?" Customer: "No." Technical Support: "Ok, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?" Customer: "Yes, you told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'."
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A nervous postman on his first round walked up to a garden fence. There was a large Doberman lying on the grass. An old man was sitting on the patio. "Excuse me, sir, but does your dog bite?" the postman asked. The old man replied, "No, he never has done." So the opened the gate and went into the garden. The dog ran over snarling and growling and bit him on his arms and legs. As the old man dragged the dog off, the postman yelled, "I thought you said your dog didn't bite!" The old man replied, "He's not my dog!
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A primary school teacher was giving her pupils a lesson in logic. "Now imagine this," she said. "A man is standing up in a boat in the middle of a river, fishing. He loses his balance, falls in, and begins splashing and calling for help. His wife hears the noise, and knowing he can't swim, runs down to the bank. Why do you think she runs to the bank?" A little girl raised her hand and asked, "Was it to draw out all his savings?"
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A student was flying home to London from Edinburgh. At the check-in, he said to the operator, "Now I want you to send my black case to London and my blue case to Amsterdam." The check-in operator replied, "I'm sorry sir, we can't do that!" "Oh really," said the student, "that's what you did the last time I flew with you!"
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The convent had been presented with a new car, a red Mini Metro. Sister Lucy, the only qualified driver, became the chauffeur for all and sundry. Every Saturday she would drive Reverend Mother into town for the shopping. All went well till Bank Holiday weekend when the town was so packed with people and cars that it became evident that there was no earthly place to park. 'Don't worry, Mother,' said Sister Lucy. 'You go into the supermarket and I'll drive round the block until you come out.' Off sped the car, and Reverend Mother bustled round the store quickly, picking up all the necessary goods and then rushing back to the kerbside. There she stood for five minutes, ten, fifteen, twenty. No sign of Sister Lucy. Where could she be? Eventually Reverend Mother approached a patrolling policeman. 'Excuse me, officer,' said she, 'have you seen a nun in a red Mini?' 'No,' replied the policeman, 'but these days nothing would surprise me!
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A young blonde lady had the windows in her house replaced with new double-insulated energy efficient windows. Twelve months later, she got a call from the contractor, complaining that the work has been done for a year and she had yet to make the first payment. The blonde replied, "Now don't try to pull a fast one on me. The salesman who sold me those told me that in one year they would pay for themselves!"
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Three elderly ladies were discussing the trials of getting older. One said, "Sometimes I catch myself with a jar of mayonnaise in my hand in front of the refrigerator and can't remember whether I need to put it away or start making a sandwich." The second lady chimed in, "Yes, sometimes I find myself on the landing of the stairs and can't remember whether I was on my way up or on my way down." The third one responded, "Well, I'm really glad I don't have that problem, touch wood." She didn't just touch it - she rapped her knuckles enthusiastically on the table and then said, "There's someone at the door, I'll get it!"
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"I see you were last employed by a psychiatrist," said the employer to the applicant. "Why did you leave?" "Well," she replied, "I just couldn't win. If I was late to work, he said I was hostile. "If I was early, I had an anxiety complex. "If I was on time, I was a compulsive neurotic
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Here Are Some LeftOver Quips About The Recent Election On LateNight Television:
"Just one week left to go in this election. It's amazing, isn't it? To give you an idea, do you realize that when this whole thing started, John McCain was just 47 years old?" --Jay Leno "And Ralph Nader, God bless him, still out there campaigning. Ralph Nader said today he has set a record for the most campaign speeches given in one day. He gave 21 speeches in one day. Of course, we have to take his word for it, because of course, there are no witnesses." --Jay Leno "Well, political experts say that John McCain’s only chance of winning the presidential election next week is to attract swing voters. Unfortunately, McCain thinks swing voters are people who listen to Glenn Miller." --Conan O'Brien "John McCain said that Barack Obama is already measuring the drapes in the White House. That's what he said. I understand Sarah Palin is already driving McCain around to look at assisted living facilities." --Jay Leno "But they say that McCain insiders are calling Sarah Palin an out-of-touch diva. They say Palin has a quick temper and ignores her staff. It’s like I have a twin. --David Letterman "The other day, a guy who played a game of basketball against Barack Obama said that Obama spent the whole game trash talking. He also said Obama’s trash talking is 'eloquent, high-minded, and inspirational.'" --Conan O'Brien "With Halloween coming this weekend, they say not one person in the country is planning to dress up as Governor Sarah Palin. You know why? ... The costume costs $150,000." --Jay Leno "But they say Ahmadinejad is exhausted from overwork. And you know, thank God that will never happen to George Bush." --David Letterman "Sorry to disappoint the liberals who tuned in tonight to gloat about Obama's lead in every poll, but I am not worried. McCain may be behind, but the man is a fighter. He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'quit.' He used to, but it was stored in the same part of his brain that remembered to vet his running mate." --Stephen Colbert "The longest-serving Republican Senator, Alaska's Ted Stevens, found guilty just a few hours ago on all charges in his corruption trial. Do you know this story? He failed to report he had some work done on his house. Yeah, here's the bad part. You know who did the work? Joe the plumber. Unlicensed." --Jay Leno "By the way, if you want to get Hillary a gift, you can't go wrong with a gift certificate from Bed, Bath and Bitterness." --David Letterman
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Frankenstein was sitting in his cell when suddenly through the wall came the ghost of his monster, with a rope round his neck. Frankenstein said, "Monster, monster, what are you doing here?" The monster said, "Well, boss, they hanged me this morning so now I've come to meet my maker."
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Joe: Why don't you play golf with Bob any more? Mike: Would you play with someone who curses after each shot, cheats in the bunkers and enters false scores on his card? Joe: No! Mike: Neither will Bob
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Carpe Diem -- Seize the DayCarpet Diem -- Seize the carpetCarpayment Diem -- Seize the checkbookCarpe Duh -- Seize an idiotCarp Diem -- Fish of the dayCrampy Diem -- Seize the MidolCarpe Diet -- Seize the rice cakeCarpal Diem -- Seize the knucklesCarpe Dig'Em -- Seize the chips 'n dipCarpe Carp -- Seize the fishCarp Diem -- complain dailyCarpe Per Diem -- seize the checkCarpe Canem -- seize the dogCarpe Devo -- seize the recordCarpe Calypso -- seize the DAY-OSharpei Diem -- sieze the wrinkled dog
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Two cowboys came upon an Indian lying on his stomach with his ear to the ground. One of the cowboys stops and says to the other, "You see that Indian?" "Yeah," says the other cowboy. "Look," says the first one, "He's listening to the ground. He can hear things for miles in any direction." Just then the Indian looks up. "Covered wagon," he says, "About two miles away. Have two horses, one brown, one white. Man, woman, child, furniture in wagon ..." "Incredible!" says the cowboy to his friend. "This Indian knows how far away they are, how many horses, what color, what's in the wagon -- just amazing!" The Indian looks up and says, "Ugh ... not amazing ... wagon ran ... over me ... 30 minutes ago!"
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The man looked a little worried when the doctor came in to administer his annual physical, so the first thing the doctor did was to ask whether anything was troubling him. "Well, to tell the truth, Doc, yes," answered the patient. "You see, I seem to be getting forgetful. No, it's actually worse than that. I'm never sure I can remember where I put the car, or whether I answered a letter, or where I'm going, or what it is I'm going to do once I get there -- if I get there. So, I really need your help. What can I do?" The doctor mused for a moment, then answered in his kindest tones, "Pay me in advance."
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It was Halloween and three vampires went into a saloon and walked up to the bar. "What will you have?" the bartender asked. "I'll have a glass of blood," the first replied. "I'll have a glass of blood, too, please," said the second. "I'll have a glass of plasma," said the third. "Okay, let me get this straight," the bartender said. "That'll be two bloods and a blood light?"
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Thank You.....Thank you very much...and have a great night!! If you have any jokes to add, please leave them in the comments or send them to me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com. Now I need to check my Fantasy Football Team line-ups before tonight's game ;)
Good Luck To Us ALL!!!:)
.

Hawks BEAT Penn State And Monks FIGHT For Jesus

2008-11-10T13:45:00.000-06:00

Well it is another Monday full of happiness and hope, as the University of Iowa Hawkeyes BEAT Penn State on Saturday in the last seconds, with a field goal, finishing the game 24 to 23. I was working at my Art Kiosk between Bennigans, and Chick-fil-A and Target. As the game wound down, a crowd was gathering just outside Bennigans on myside, as people watched the big screen television Bennigans has on their east wall through "their" windows.
There was alot of murmuring and quiet hopes as the Hawkeyes moved down the field and lined up for the field goal. A HUGE cheer went up as the ball went through the uprights, and a great deal of congratulations ran through the hallway, as whoops and hollers continued for a few minutes.
It was an awesome ending and it was a joy to wake up Sunday morning and find out that it was not just a dream!!
Congratulations to the Hawkeyes who participated in this Awesome Win, and Best Of Luck on the upcoming Purdue game, this Saturday!!
There are a few stories of interest this weekend, from the sad news of the deaths of 20 Russian submariners in the accident onboard their new sub, to the moderately amusing story of the fight between the Orthodox Greek monks and the Armenian monks at the Church of The Holy Sepulchre, which is supposedly were Jesus (the Prince of Peace) was killed, buried, and arisen!?! I know violence shouldn't be amusing, but I guess it is the irony of it that got my attention. So here is the "Brawling For Jesus" story at Yahoo News with a link to the full text and photos.
Have a Good Monday!!

Israeli police rushed into one of Christianity's holiest churches Sunday and arrested two clergyman after an argument between monks erupted into a brawl next to the site of Jesus' tomb.

The clash between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks broke out in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The brawling began during a procession of Armenian clergymen commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

The Greeks objected to the march without one of their monks present, fearing that otherwise, the procession would subvert their own claim to the Edicule — the ancient structure built on what is believed to be the tomb of Jesus — and give the Armenians a claim to the site. The Armenians refused, and when they tried to march the Greek Orthodox monks blocked their way, sparking the brawl.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police were forced to intervene after fighting was reported. They arrested two monks, one from each side, he said. A bearded Armenian monk in a red-and-pink robe and a black-clad Greek Orthodox monk with a bloody gash on his forehead were both taken away in handcuffs after scuffling with dozens of riot police.

Six Christian sects divide control of the ancient church. They regularly fight over turf and influence, and Israeli police are occasionally forced to intervene.

link to full story

Friday Humor:Lighten Up And Stop Hating Already Edition!!

2008-11-03T11:44:00.001-06:00

Well it has been 2 days since the results of the Presidential election have had time to sink in, and Wall Street is handling the news well, with only a small 1,000 point drop, over wednesday and thursday, but is up a little friday.
I heard on the news that guns sales are brisk as people stock up, before President Obama bans all firearms.?.
The hate filled emails are filling the inboxes, and threats/jokes about the new President being assassinated are making workplaces fun again!?!
What the Hell is wrong with this country?
The President doesn't even take the oath of office until January 20th, 2009, and already there is such contempt and hatred, that I worry for this nation!
Let's lighten things up a little bit, and give our New President a chance, before getting all fired up and hateful!! After all the worst thing that could happen is that Obama would end up like the last three utter Presidential failures; George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan!! I know some fellow "delusional" Republicans cannot understand Ronald Reagan being listed, as they loved him, but he was an evil failure nonetheless, and being loved is no appropriate way to gauge success or failure, as there are people who loved Hitler, and yet he was still an evil failure, just like Reagan( Sorry to Reagan Lovers, But My Hatred Is Very Personal, And Very Deep)!!
Anyway, enough politics for the week!! We can all pray that our Nation will get back on the right track, and one way to do that, is by spending money and reigniting this economy. I have been receiving "tons" of prints for the last week, and have been busy finding room for them, and that is why I have been unable to write for a few days.
The Coral Ridge Mall should be a wonderfully packed "house" with happy shoppers this weekend as Penn State comes to play the Iowa Hawkeyes in football on Saturday. So stop in Friday after work, and spend Saturday and Sunday "buying" Christmas gifts!
The weather is perfect for shopping, and many places are already bringing in special merchandise and having sales!!
Here is some humor that is obviously lacking for alot of disappointed people this week:

Recently, I got to thinking about my first skydiving instructor. During class he would always take the time to answer any of our stupid first-timer questions. One guy asked, "If our chute doesn't open, and the reserve doesn't open, how long do we have until we hit the ground?" Our jumpmaster looked at him and in perfect deadpan and answered, "The rest of your life."
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A doctor, an engineer, and a lawyer go out hunting in the woods one day. Each of them brings along his hunting dog, and they spend most of the morning arguing about which of the dogs is the smartest. Early in the afternoon, they discover a clearing in the forest. In the middle of the clearing is a large pile of animal bones. Seeing the bones, the doctor turns to the others and says, "I'm going to prove to you two that my dog is the smartest. Watch this!" He then calls his dog over and says, "Bones! See the bones? Go get 'em!" The dog rushes over to the pile, rummages around for a bit, and then proceeds to build a replica of the human skeleton, perfect down to the last detail. The doctor grins smugly; after all, his dog has just built a human skeleton from animal bones. The engineer, however, is totally unimpressed. "That's nothing," he says. "Watch this." He calls his dog over, and points out the pile. "Bones! Get the bones!" The dog rushes over, tears down the skeleton, and in its place builds a perfect replica of the Eiffel Tower. It even has a little French flag waving at the top. The doctor is forced to agree that the engineer's dog is, in fact, smarter than his own. The lawyer, however, is still not impressed. "My dog is smarter," he says. "Watch." He then calls his dog over, points to the pile, and says simply, "Bones." The dog rushes over to the pile, tears down the tower, eats half the bones, buries the other half, and takes the rest of the afternoon off.
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Three friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of the business. They ignored her too. So the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that Hugh, and only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
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A man sentenced to prison was put in a cell with an older convict who had been there for many years. One day, they were talking about their pasts, and the old man said, "Look at me. I'm old and worn out. You'd never believe that I used to live the life of Riley. I wintered on the Riviera, had a boat, four fine cars, the most beautiful women, and I ate in all the best restaurants of France." "What happened?" his new cellmate asked. "One day Riley reported his credit cards missing."
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In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility, a coalescent cogency and a concatenated consistency. Eschew obfuscation and all conglomeration of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descants and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy and vain vapid verbosity. If you are really interested to know, the above means: "Be brief and don’t use big words."
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A new business was opening and one of the owner's friends wanted to send him flowers for the occasion. They arrived at the new business site and the owner read the card, "Rest in Peace." The owner was angry and called the florist to complain. After he had told the florist of the obvious mistake and how angry he was, the florist replied, "Sir, I'm really sorry for the mistake, but rather than getting angry, you should imagine this...somewhere there is a funeral taking place today, and they have flowers with a note saying, 'Congratulations on your new location.'"
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A farmer walked into an attorney's office wanting to file for a divorce. The attorney asked "May I help you?" The farmer said, "Yea, I want to get one of those day-vorce's." The attorney said, "well do you have any grounds?" The farmer said, "Yea, I got about 140 acres". The attorney said, "No, you don't understand, do you have a case?" The farmer said, "No, I don't have a Case, but I got a John Deere." The attorney said, "No you don't understand, I mean do you have a grudge?" The farmer said, "Yea I got a grudge, that's where I park my John Deere." The attorney said: "No sir, I mean do you have a suit" The farmer said, "Yes sir, I got a suit, I wear to the church on Sundays." The exasperated attorney said, "Well sir, does your wife beat you up or anything?" The farmer said, "No sir, we both get up about 4:30." Finally the attorney says, "Okay, let me put it this way. "WHY DO YOU WANT A DIVORCE?" And the farmer says, "Well, I can never have a meaningful conversation with her."
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Former college basketball coach Abe Lemmons made the following observations concerning the differences between doctors and coaches: - Doctors can bury their mistakes - Coaches still have theirs on scholarships. - Finish last in your league and they call you an idiot - Finish last in medical school and they call you a doctor. - Just once I'd like to see the win-loss records of doctors right out front where people can see them: Won ten, Lost three, Tied two.
))))))))))))))))))))))))Okay the next one is not so nice;)
One of the presidential candidates was visiting an elementary school, and the 4th grade class he sat through began a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the candidate if he would like to lead the class in a discussion of the word "tragedy." So, the candidate asked the class for an example of a tragedy. One boy stood up and said, "If my best friend who lives next door is playing in the street and a car comes along and runs him over, that would be a tragedy." "No," said the candidate, "that would be an accident." A girl raised her hand and said, "If a school bus carrying 50 children drove off a cliff, killing everyone on board, that would be a tragedy." "I'm afraid not," the candidate said. "That's what we would call a Great Loss." The room went silent. No other children volunteered. The candidate searched the room and asked, "Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?" Finally, way in the back of the room, Johnny raised his hand, and in a quiet voice, he said, "If your campaign plane, carrying yourself and your running mate, was struck by a missile and blown to smithereens, THAT would be a tragedy." "That's right! And can you tell me WHY that would be a tragedy?" asked the candidate. "Well," Johnny said, "because it wouldn't be an accident and it sure as heck wouldn’t be a Great Loss..."
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Why engineers don't write recipe books. Chocolate Chip Cookies: Ingredients: 1.) 532.35 cm3 gluten2.) 4.9 cm3 NaHCO33.) 4.9 cm3 refined halite4.) 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride5.) 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O116.) 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O117.) 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde8.) Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein9.) 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao10.) 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10) Directions: To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction. Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston’s first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
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According to "The Australian," an airliner recently encountered severe vibration in flight. The captain decided to make an emergency landing, and switched on the seat belt sign. The vibration stopped immediately. A passenger emerged from a lavatory and explained that he had been jogging in place inside.
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On little Larry's first day of first grade, he raised his hand as soon as the teacher came into the room and said, 'I don't belong here, I should be in third grade!' The teacher looked at little Larry's records and told him to please take his seat. Not five minutes passed when little Larry stood up again and said, 'I don't belong here; I should be in the third grade!' Larry did this a few more times before the principal came along and the teacher explained Larry's problem. The principal and the first grade teacher told little Larry that if he could answer some questions that they could decide in which grade he belonged. Well, they soon discovered that Larry knew all the state capitals and country capitals that the principal could think of. The teacher suggested they try some biology questions. 'What does a cow have 4 of but a woman has only 2?' asked the teacher. 'Legs!' Larry immediately replied. "What does a man have in his pants that a woman doesn't?' asked the teacher. 'Pockets!' said Larry. The teacher looked at the principal, who said, "Maybe he should be in third grade, I missed those last two questions!'
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Two psychiatrists were walking down a hall. One turned to the other and said, "Hello." The other one thought, "I wonder what he meant by that
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A guy goes into a bar, orders twelve shots and starts drinking them as fast as he can. The bartender says, "Dang, why are you drinking so fast?" The guy says, "You would be drinking fast if you had what I had." The bartender says, "What do you have?" The guy says, "Seventy-five cents."
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A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet. "My dog's cross-eyed. Is there anything you can do for him?" "Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him" So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says "I'm going to have to put him down." "What? Because he's cross-eyed?" "No, because he's really heavy"
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A man walks into a bar with a pork pie on his head. He orders a drink and the barman asks, "Why are you wearing a pork pie on your head?" The man replies, "It’s a long-running family tradition. We always wear pork pies on our heads on Tuesday." To which the barman remarks, "Then I have some bad news for you - it’s Wednesday." Sheepishly, the man says, "Oh dear, I must look like a real fool!"
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One day the zoo-keeper noticed that "Cheech" the orang-utang was reading two books — the Bible and Darwin’s Origin of Species. Suprised, he asked him, "Why are you reading both those books/' "Well," said the orang-utang, "I just wanted to know if I was my brother’s keeper or my keeper’s brother."
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Aunt Bessie loved to visit her nieces and nephews. However, she had relatives all over the country. The problem was that no matter how much she enjoyed seeing them, she hated flying. No matter how safe people told her it was, she was always worried that someone would have a bomb on the plane. She read books about how safe it was and listened to the stewardess demonstrate all the safety features. But she still worried herself silly every time a visit was coming up. Finally, the family decided that maybe if she saw the statistics she’d be convinced. So they sent her to a friend of the family who was an actuary. "Tell me," she said suspiciously, "what are the chances that someone will have a bomb on a plane?" The actuary looked through his tables and said, "A very small chance. Maybe one in five hundred thousand." She nodded, then thought for a moment. "So what are the odds of two people having a bomb on the same plane?" Again he went through his tables. "Extremely remote," he said. "About one in a billion." Aunt Bessie nodded and left his office. And from that day on, every time she flew, she took a bomb with her.
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A man had been drinking at the bar for hours when he mentioned something about his girlfriend being out in the car. The bartender, concerned because it was so cold, went to check on her. When he looked inside the car, he saw the drunk's buddy, Pete, and his girlfriend pitching woo in the back-seat. The bartender shook his head and walked back inside. He told the drunk that he thought it might be a good idea to check on his girlfriend. The drunk staggered outside to the car, saw the spectacle, then walked back into the bar laughing. "What's so funny?" the bartender asked. "That dumb Pete!" the drunk chortled, "He's so drunk, he thinks he's me!"
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The below are valid reasons as to why drinking should be allowed at work. If you use them wisely, you may even be able to convince your boss into allowing alcohol. 1. It’s an incentive to show up. 2. It reduces stress. 3. It leads to more honest communications. 4. It reduces complaints about low pay. 5. It cuts down on time off because you can work with a hangover. 6. Employees tell management what they think, not what management wants to hear. 7. It helps save on heating costs in the winter. 8. It encourages carpooling. 9. Increases job satisfaction because if you have a bad job you don’t care. 10. It eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work. 11. It makes fellow employees look better. 12. It makes the cafeteria food taste better. 13. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted. 14. Salary negotiations are a lot more profitable. 15. If something does something stupid on the job, it will be quickly forgotten.
And I Believe We Shall End On This VERY Good Idea, Hopefully, This Practice Shall Be Instituted At Your Work Locations Immediately!!;)
Thanks for reading, and If you wish to send any jokes, stories, or hate filled emails, please write me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, or just leave a comment!!
Good Luck And Take Care!!
In the next few days we shall get on with important stories, like the beginning of the Presidential campaign for 2012!!!!!!!!

Fact Check: The Myths That Wouldn't Go Away

2008-11-03T11:44:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is the "big" day, when half of the country will be elated, and the other half devastated, as the election finally arrives and our 44th President is chosen by "We" the people.
Before that there is still time for many things to occur and perhaps change the outcome. One thing that has not changed is the myths that have refused to die.
The following story is at Yahoo News, by Calvin Woodward, an Associated Press Writer, confronting and correcting the myths on both sides:
Facts have taken a beating in Campaign '08.
Each in his own way, John McCain and Barack Obama have produced enduring myths, amplified by their running mates and supporters. When a non-licensed plumber who owes back taxes and would get a tax cut under Obama is held out by McCain as a stand-in for average working Americans who should vote Republican, you know truth-telling is taking a back seat to myth-making.

McCain has clung tenaciously to many of his distortions throughout the campaign, yielding on a few. Obama has taken a different tack when he is called on his misstatements. Although perhaps too late to really set the record straight, he's edged closer to the facts. You might need a microscope to tell the difference, but slight variations in a pitch or accusation can make all the difference between bogus and real.

Obama saddled McCain with a bum rap when he accused the Republican of wanting a 100-year war in Iraq back in the spring. Finally he relented and said McCain sees U.S. troops being in Iraq for 100 years. That's closer to right — as a peacekeeping force like the one in South Korea. But McCain might be long associated with war without end.

Obama accused McCain of wanting to privatize Social Security, which he doesn't. Now he accuses McCain of wanting to privatize "part" of Social Security, which he does, as one option that younger workers could choose.
link to full story

The Real Salem Witch Trials

2008-11-02T14:15:00.000-06:00

This has been a nightmare end of the week, as Internet connectivity problems have battered me for four days. I am hoping that this is something "they" were doing, i.e., some local work, and that is what was causing the loss of signal, but perhaps it is just this computer, as it is getting ancient.

Anyway, here is a little something left over from Halloween, and tomorrow I shall tell you who you must vote for and why;)

The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later.

Salem StrugglingSeveral centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Hundreds of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset.

In 1689, English rulers William and Mary started a war with France in the American colonies. Known as King William's War to colonists, it ravaged regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia and Quebec, sending refugees into the county of Essex and, specifically, Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Salem Village is present-day Danvers, Massachusetts; colonial Salem Town became what's now Salem.) The displaced people created a strain on Salem's resources. This aggravated the existing rivalry between families with ties to the wealth of the port of Salem and those who still depended on agriculture. Controversy also brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's first ordained minister in 1689, and was disliked because of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling was the work of the Devil.
link to full story

Hump Day Humor Wednesday October 29th Edition

2008-10-29T20:29:00.001-05:00

It is nearly Halloween, which shall be awesome, and then just a few days later, we shall finally have the November 4th election, and a new President. I am sure everyone is looking forward to this long contest coming to an end.
I hope that everyone takes there opportunity to vote serious, but if you cannot bring yourself to vote for anyone, that is fine as well, because part of our rights as an American, is the right to not vote. I have exercised that option before, in elections where I loathed both candidates. So sit back enjoy the jokes today, and add some if you like. It is always fun to see a joke that is "new" to me!! :)

A couple was having a discussion about what to see and do now that they were safely in Florida on their honeymoon. Trying to assert himself right off the bat, he exploded, "If it weren’t for my money, we wouldn’t be here at all!" The wife replied, "My dear, if it weren’t for your money, not only would we not be in Florida, we wouldn’t on a honeymoon, nor would there be any "we" in the first place."
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A man joins a big corporate empire as a trainee. On his very first day of work, he dials the pantry and shouts into the phone - "Get me a coffee, quickly!" The voice from the other side responded, "You fool you've dialed the wrong extension! Do you know who you're talking to, dumbo?" "No," replied the trainee. "It's the CEO of the company, you fool!" The trainee shouts back, "And do YOU know who YOU are talking to, you fool?!" "No." replied the CEO indignantly. "Good!" replied the trainee, and puts down the phone
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A guy walks into Dunkin' Donuts. He says, "Excuse me, miss. How many cups of coffee do you think this thermos will hold?" She says, "I think it's a seven-cup thermos." He says, "All right...give me two black, three cream and sugar."
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12 step program for recovering web addicts:
1. I will have a cup of coffee in the morning and read my PAPER newspaper like I used to, before the Web. 2. I will eat breakfast with a knife and fork and not with one hand typing.3. I will get dressed before noon.4. I will make an attempt to clean the house, wash clothes, and plan dinner before even thinking of the Web.5. I will sit down and write a letter to those unfortunate few friends and family that are Web-deprived.6. I will call someone on the phone who I cannot contact via the Web.7. I will read a book... if I still remember how.8. I will listen to those around me about their needs and stop telling them to turn the TV down so I can hear the music on the Web.9. I will not be tempted during TV commercials to check for email.10. I will try and get out of the house at least once a week, if it is necessary or not.11. I will remember that my bank is not forgiving if I forget to balance my checkbook because I was too busy on the Web.12. Last, but not least, I will remember that I must go to bed sometime... and the Web will always be there tomorrow!
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Did you hear about the farmer who ploughed his field with a steamroller? He wanted to grow mashed potatoes!
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I once wrote a book called How to Keep an Idiot Entertained for Hours. It went like this: To keep an idiot entertained for hours, read the next sentence. To keep an idiot entertained for hours, read the previous sentence." It didn’t sell very well. I thought with the short attention span of people these days it may have been too long, so I rewrote it. The 2nd edition went: "To keep an idiot busy for hours, re-read this sentence." It’s doing pretty good. I have a deal for the sequel. The 3rd edition is going to go: "Re-read this line." Trouble is, I’m not as sharp as I used to be, so it’s become my favorite book to curl up with on a rainy day. It absorbs me for hours.
========
Do you know about the two TV antennas that got married? The wedding was terrible, but the reception was terrific.
=======
The Crist family worked at a zoo. Each year they predicted the general luck and overall mood of the year by watching the the gnu. If the gnu's ears were forward, that meant a successful, joyous year was almost certain to happen. But if his ears were laid back flat against his head, it meant that an unlucky or very unhappy year was sure to come. One year it was young Mary's turn to "survey" the animal and come up with the prediction. It was her first time solo, and in her excitement, she forgot to take the key to the cage. She was late in coming to check on the gnu. Well, she saw the wrong ear position and predicted a bad year, when in fact it was quite good. To explain the error, the local newspaper ran the following headline a year later: MARY CRIST MISSES AN HAPPY GNU'S EAR!
=======
After Quasimodo’s death, the bishop of the cathedral of Notre Dame sent word through the streets of Paris that a new bell ringer was needed. The bishop decided that he would conduct the interviews personally and went up into the belfry to begin the screening process. After observing while several applicants demonstrated their skills, he decided to call it a day. Just then a lone, armless man approached him and announced that he was there to apply for the bell ringer’s job. The bishop was incredulous. "You have no arms!" "No matter," said the man, "observe!" He then began striking the bells with his face, producing a beautiful melody on the carillon. The bishop listened in astonishment, convinced that he had finally found a suitable replacement for Quasimodo. Suddenly, while rushing forward to strike a bell, the armless man tripped and plunged headlong out of the belfry window to his death in the street below. The stunned bishop immediately rushed down the stairways. When he reached the street, a crowd had gathered around the fallen figure, drawn by the beautiful music they had heard only moments before. As they silently parted to let the bishop through, one of them asked, "Bishop, who was this man?" "I don’t know his name," the bishop sadly replied, "But his face sure rings a bell."
========
An idiot was taking sky-diving lessons. The instructor explained that it was time for his first jump, and all he had to do was jump from the plane, count to six, and pull the rip cord. A truck would be waiting for him in the field where he would land. The man jumped from the plane when he was told to, and counted to six. When he pulled the rip cord, the parachute wouldn’t open. He tried the reserve chute and that didn’t open. Frustrated, he muttered to himself as he fell, "I’ll bet the truck won’t be waiting for me either."
========
Teacher: If you multiplied 50 by 8 and then divided by 4, what would you get? Student: The wrong answer.
========
There were these two blondes standing outside in a parking lot next to there Mercedes vehicle. They were locked out so they were trying to get the door open with a close hanger. The first blonde said, "You need to try harder. It’s starting to rain and the top is down!"
========
The teacher asked Mary, "If you had seven cookies and David asked you for three, how many cookies would you have left?" Mary immediately answered, "Seven!" The teacher was puzzled and asked "Why seven?" "You really think I would give David any of my cookies?"
========
Some people ask the secret of our long marriage, we take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.
========
One day, when a golfer was playing golf, some tourists pointed and said 'Tiger Woods!! Tiger Woods!!' The golfer was happy for a split second before a tiger came out of the woods and ate him up.
========
The nurse said to the doctor, "There's an invisible man in the waiting room." The doctor replied, "Tell him I can't see him now."
========
The 16th tee featured a fairway that ran along a road. The first golfer in a foursome teed off and hooked the ball. It soared over the fence and bounced onto the street, where it hit the tire of a moving bus and ricocheted back onto the fairway. As they all stood in amazement, one of the golfer's friends asked, "How did you do that?" The golfer shrugged. "You have to know the bus schedule."
========
A penguin walks into a bar, goes to the counter, and asks the bartender, "Have you seen my brother?" The bartender says, "I don't know. What does he look like?"
========
Did you hear about the weekly poker game with Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Leif Eriksson and Francisco Pizarro? They can never seem to beat the Straights of Magellan.
========
What's the last thing you usually hear before a redneck dies? "Hey, y'all ... Watch this!"
=======
A young man called directory assistance. "Hello, operator, I would like the telephone number for Mary Jones in Phoenix, Arizona." "There are multiple listings for Mary Jones in Phoenix," the operator replied. "Do you have a street name?" The young man hesitated, and then said, "Well, most people call me Ice Man."
========
How many Deadheads does it take to change a light bulb? 12,001. That's one to change it, 2,000 to record the event and take pictures, and 10,000 to follow it around until it burns out.
========
After a long career of being blasted into a net, the human cannonball was tired. He told the circus owner he was going to retire. "But you can't!" protested the boss. "Where am I going to find another man of your caliber?"
=======
My wife was in labor with our first child. Things were going pretty well when suddenly she began to shout, "Shouldn't, couldn't, wouldn't, didn't, can't!" "Doctor, what's wrong with my wife?" "Nothing. She's just having contractions."
=======
A neutron walks into a bar; he asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?" The bartender looks at him, and say "For you, no charge."
=======
Answers to questions provided by kids * Q: What is one horsepower? A: One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second. * You can listen to thunder after lightening and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind. * When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions. * When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting. * Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime. * A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go. * Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils, others preferred to be oil. * Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there. * We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on. * I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. * Rain is saved up in cloud banks. * Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill the strongest man. * It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live other places.
========
There was this woman who had an artist paint a portrait of her covered with the most amazingly beautiful and expensive jewels. Her explanation - "If I die and my husband re-marries, I want his next wife to go crazy looking for the jewels."
========
They used this next joke in the old movie Capricorn One:
A bachelor who lived at home with his mother and pet cat went on a trip to Europe. Before he left he told his best friend to inform him of any emergencies. A few days after his departure, his cat climbed up on the roof, fell off and was killed. His friend immediately wired him with the message: "Your cat died!" In a few hours he was back home, having cut short his trip in grief and anger at his friend, whom he told "Why didn't you break the news to me gradually? You know how close I was to my cat! You could have sent a message 'Your cat climbed up on the roof today', and the next day you could've written, 'Your cat fell off the roof' and let me down slowly that he died." After a quick memorial service, the bachelor left again to continue his trip. A few days later he returned to his hotel and there was a message waiting for him from his friend. It read, "Your mother climbed up on the roof today."
=========

Happy Hump Evening!!

The Worst Appetizers In America

2008-10-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

Before we do the Hump Day Humor post, I thought I would post this next story, for those of you who actually go out on wednesday evenings to enjoy the hump day!! So enjoy the story and then go out and "bust a gut" at your favorite eatery and watering hole tonight :)

The story at Yahoo News-Health is as follows:
A funny thing has happened to America’s restaurant appetizers: They’ve started growing bigger than the meals they prepare us for. It’s now common to wolf down 500 or 600 greasy calories before we even start on our entrees. One might wonder where all the calories end up.
The answer is: our collective belly-fat supplies. The obesity rate stayed constant in only 13 states last year, while the other 37 states saw an increase. This big fat growth — which stretches over 75 percent of America — is due in no small part to our propensity to eat full meals before we eat full meals. (It’s not uncommon anymore to take in two days’ worth of calories in one meal at one of our favorite restaurants.)

To help you wrap your arms around the problem, we’ve gathered the most gluttonous pre-meal binges in America. If this list doesn’t make you hungry, then you’re already ahead of most of us.
CHILI’STexas Cheese Fries w/ Jalapeno-Ranch Dressing2,070 calories160 g fat (73 g saturated)3,730 mg sodiumFat Equivalent: Like eating 16 Taco Bell Crunchy Tacos!
link to full story

Ordinary Joes Have Mixed Feelings On Wealth In America

2008-10-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

The last days of the Presidential campaign have brought to the fore, one of the most important aspects of what is important to people in this country. Namely, as evidenced by the story below, as well as others, that a great number of people think that our nation is divided between rich and poor, with virtually no middle class anymore.

McCain touts Obama's socialist agenda, even as he promotes a $300 billion bailout of homeowners by the government, making it hard to tell the Republican Socialists from the Democrat Socialists. It all comes down to who benefits from the government to decide which "socialist" party you want to in the White House this November. If you are for corporate bailout socialism, then you are a McCainiac, and if you are for helping people in poverty up through the "middle" class, you would be an Obamanite! It is a little more complex than that, but not too much more.

Anyway I found this interesting story at Yahoo News concerning our changing attitudes toward wealth in America:
NEW YORK – The war of words waged by John McCain and Barack Obama for the votes of plumbers and other average Joes is a reminder of the nation's long-standing doubts about concentrated wealth — and its qualms about doing something about it.

Americans have voiced concerns about putting too much wealth in to too few hands since the country was founded, but the public's views also come with contradictions. Now it's clearer than ever — thanks to Obama's much scrutinized talk about taxes with a certain Ohio voter and McCain's dogged criticism — that these mixed feelings about income inequality are a long way from being resolved.

"I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama told the man — maybe you've heard of him — Joe the Plumber. The remark may have sounded pretty innocuous. But McCain has lambasted his rival's words as sounding "a lot like socialism," and turned the criticism into a central theme of his campaign's final round. Obama's remarks, McCain says, are emblematic of a tax plan to confiscate wealth and give it to the poor that would make the IRS "into a giant welfare agency."

The comments of both presidential candidates touch nerves in American politics — longtime concern about too much concentration of wealth, but also about the role of government and the individual. More than two centuries after Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and other early leaders warned about the hazards of too much in the hands of too few, Americans have developed complex views on the intertwining issues. A substantial majority of Americans say the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes, opinion polls show. A growing number say the U.S. is becoming a nation of haves and have-nots.
link to full story

Just A WEEK Until............

2008-10-24T17:37:00.000-05:00

Florida Man Lives With The Hanging Chads Of 2000 Election

2008-10-24T13:32:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a long week! The stock market is tanking, as is oil~Hooray, and gold, as the world is melting down, on self-fulfilling prophesies of DOOM!!
I have been having a rough week as well, as I purchased the game Bejeweled for the PC, and have found it to be addictive, so I haven't been paying much attention to the news until today!!
I am just reading through some of the headlines, and watched a bit of Fox News as I was getting ready for work, and realized that McCain must be melting down as well, as the anchors on Fox are barely able to stay in their seats, as they rant about Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and other non-issues, in their typical "Fair and Balanced" ;) approach to the Presidential race.
Talk about being in the tank for McCain! My "Poor" Beautiful Megan Kelly, goes hysterically psycho on EVERY pro-Obama guest she has had on in the last few days! It is getting so bad, that I am waiting for her beautiful little head to start spinning around, and vomiting pea soup, as she is definitely "possessed" by McCain's Insanity!! Hell, even my favorite guy, Bill O'Reilly, is getting his talking points directly from McCain Headquarters~~as Bill's show has become the ALL SPIN ZONE FOR MCCAIN as of late!!

Anyway, I found an interesting little odd story at Yahoo News on the fringe of "political" stories, about a guy that purchased many of the old voting machines from Florida, after the fiasco of the 2000 elections and the infamous "hanging" chads recounts:
From ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It's been eight years since the re-count of the 2000 Florida election, but Jim Dobyns is still living with chads. One waited for him when he went to clean the top of the microwave. He found another by the coffee table. And when he was petting his cat recently he plucked one of the manila-colored flakes from its fur.
Three years ago, Dobyns bought 1,200 Votomatic III voting machines, ones used by Palm Beach County during that infamous election.
When the outcome of the presidential election hung on Florida's electoral votes, it was Palm Beach's ballots and their hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads that became the subject of scrutiny. Ultimately, Florida junked the machines statewide in favor of new technology.
Dobyns, though, can't get rid of the chads, which have leaked out of the machines and permanently into his life.
"I'll never get them out of the van," Dobyns said. "And I don't want to get them out of the van because I see it and I think: 'That's cool.'"

Dobyns, a Republican political consultant, isn't the only one who thinks the machines are cool. He has began selling the collapsable, briefcase-sized Votomatics on eBay or through his Web site for up to $75, plus shipping.

Recently, he leased 26 as props to the HBO movie "Recount," which was about President Bush's White House-clinching 537-vote victory in Florida over Al Gore. But his list of customers has also grown to include a congressional staffer, an executive with the New York City bar association, a few presidential libraries and a number of high school history teachers.

"I always like to say however you vote it always comes out Bush, and then the heated debate starts from there," said Joe Raschke, a Republican and friend of Dobyns' who lives in Chicago and who was given one of the machines as a wedding gift.

Most of the machines, however, have gone to Democrats, Dobyns says, who are still angry about the 2000 election and entranced by the machines. His wife, Pam, explains it this way: the voting machines became the election's villain; buying a machine is a way to control something Democrats couldn't. Owners say they like having a piece of history and that the pieces are a conversation starter, no matter what party someone belongs to. Chris Chiari, 34, a Florida business consultant and Democrat, bought two of the machines last summer — one for an auction and the other to set up in his den. "I can punch any hole I want. I own it," said Chiari, who voted by absentee ballot in Palm Beach County in 2000.

link to full story

Hump Day Humor Wednesday October 22nd 2008: Football Is Rough Edition

2008-10-22T16:17:00.000-05:00

I am still having trouble dealing with the Dallas Cowboys loss to the Rams last weekend, and so here are some football insult jokes, and just some plain old "clean" football jokes. We shall start with the insult jokes and work into the "clean" ones:

Simply insert your most-hated NFL team into the content of each football joke where indicated!
1. A Voice in the Darkness
The Seven Dwarfs were marching through the forest one day they fell in a deep, dark ravine. Snow White, who was following along, peered over the edge of the steep chasm and called out to the fallen dwarfs. From the depths of the dark hole a voice returned, "The (insert team) are Super Bowl contenders."
Snow White thought to herself, "Thank God... at least Dopey's survived!"

2. It's a Wonder
Why do (insert team) players keep their Wonderlic results on their dash boards?
So they can park in the handicap spaces.
3. Kissin' Cousins
What do you get when you put the girlfriends of a dozen (insert team) fans in one room?
A full set of teeth!
4. Grounded
Why did the (insert team) players miss their flight for the big game?
They were stuck on a broken escalator!
5. Hit and Run
If you see a (insert team) fan on a bike, why should you not swerve to hit him?
It could be your bike
6. A Day at the Beach
What do you get if you see a (insert team) fan buried up to his neck in sand?
More sand!
7. No Way Out
You're trapped in a room with an angry grizzly bear, a hungry Lion, and a fan of(insert team). You have a gun with two bullets. What should you do?
Shoot the (insert team) fan… twice.
8. On the Bright Side
What do you call a (insert team) fan with half a brain?
Gifted!
9. Playing Possum
Why are the (insert team) like a possum?
Because they play dead at home and get killed on the road.
10. Licking the Problem
What did the average (insert team) player get on his Wonderlic test?
Drool!
-------------------------
Not to the "clean" ones yet:
A footbal coach was asked his secret of evaluating his new recruits. "Well," he said, "I take 'em out in the woods and make 'em run. The ones that run round the trees, I make into running backs.. The ones that run straight into the trees, I turn into linemen."
-----------------------
Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings. -- George Will.
----------------------
After spending all day watching football, Jimmy fell asleep in front of the TV and spent the whole night in the chair. In the morning, his wife woke him up. "Get up dear," she said, "it's 20 to 7" He awoke with a start and said, "In who's favor?"
----------------------

Q: What is the difference between a sofa and a man watching Monday Night
A: Football? The sofa doesn't keep asking for beer.
---------------------
What do you get when you cross a defensive lineman with a prostitute?
A quarter-ton pickup.
--------------------
A guy took his girlfriend to her first football game
. Afterward he asked her how she like the game.

'I liked it, but I couldn't understand why they were killing each other for 25 cents,' she said.

'What do you mean?' he asked.

'Well, everyone kept yelling, 'Get the quarter back!'
-------------------
A Dallas Cowboys (enter your favorite team)fan was enjoying himself at the game in a packed Mile High Stadium, until he noticed an empty seat down in front. He went down and asked the guy next to it if he knew whose seat it was.

The guy said, "Yes, that's my wife's seat. We have never missed a game since the Roger Staubach (enter your favorite player) days, but now my wife is dead."

The fan offered his sympathy and said it was really too bad that he couldn't find some relative to give the ticket to and enjoy the game together.

"Oh no." the guy said. "They're all at the funeral."
------------------
During the Super Bowl, there was another football game of note between the big animals and the little animals. The big animals were crushing little animals and at half time, the coach made a passionate speech to rally the little animals.

At the start of the second half the big animals had the ball. The first play, the elephant got stopped for no gain. The second play, the rhino was stopped for no gain. On third down, the hippo was thrown for a 5 yard loss.

The defense huddled around the coach and he asked excitedly, "Who stopped the elephant?"

"I did" said the centipede.

"Who stopped the rhino?"

"Uh, that was me too" said the centipede.

"And how about the hippo? Who hit him for a 5 yard loss?"

"Well, that was me as well," said the centipede.

"SO WHERE WERE YOU THE FIRST HALF?" demanded the coach.

"Well" said the centipede, "I was having my ankles taped."
-------------------
At a large college there was a football player that was extremely stupid. He sat beside a boy in class that was really smart and the teacher knew that he was cheating, but he just couldn't catch him.

One day she was grading a test and she noticed that the smart boy had written "I don't know the answer" on number 10.

So she looked at the jock's paper and smiled. He had finally given himself away. His answer looked like this:

10. me neither
-------------------
OJ Simpson is being held by police for his alleged involvement in a hotel room armed robbery to take back his memorabilia. Can you believe he's had enough time to write a new book?
It's titled "If I Did This 2"!
------------------
Did you hear about Michael Vick's new shoe endorsement deal?
He now endorses "Hush Puppies"!
-----------------
The NFL announced today that for financial reasons, they had to eliminate one team from the league.
So they've decided to combine the Green Bay Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and form one team, causing many layoffs but saving millions of dollars in costs.
They will be known as the TAMPACKS. Unfortunately, they're only good for one period and have no second string!
-----------------
After a 2 year study, the National Science Foundation announced the following results on America's recreational preferences:
1. The sport of choice for unemployed or incarcerated people is: basketball.
2. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is: bowling.
3. The sport of choice for blue-collar workers is: football.
4. The sport of choice for supervisors is: baseball.
5. The sport of choice for middle management is: tennis.
6. The sport of choice for corporate officers is: golf.
Conclusion: The higher you rise in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become.
-----------------
Albert Einstein arrives at a party and introduces himself to the first person he sees and asks, "What is your IQ?"
The man answers "241."
"That is wonderful!," says Albert. "We will talk about the Grand Unification Theory and the mysteries of the Universe. We will have much to discuss!" Next Albert introduces himself to a woman and asks, "What is your IQ?"
The lady answers, "144."
"That is great!," responds Albert. "We can discuss politics and current affairs. We will have much to discuss!"
Albert goes to another person and asks, "What is your IQ?"
The man answers, "51."
Albert responds, "How 'bout them Cowboys?"
----------------
We better have some clean jokes before there are any more jokes, picking on my Cowboys!!
Q: Why is the Oakland football team like a possum?
A: Because they play dead at home and get killed on the road.
-------
Q: What do Billy Graham and the Buffalo football team have in common?
A: They can both make a stadium of 50,000 people say "Oh, Jesus."
--------
Q: What's the difference between the Green Bay Packers and Cheerios?
A: Cheerios belongs in a bowl.
--------
Q: What has eight arms and an I.Q. of 60?
A: Four guys watching a football game.
--------
The Definition of an optimist: A Buffalo Bills fan waiting at Buffalo Niagara International Airport for the Bills to return from winning the Super Bowl.
---------
The L.A. Rams have a new line of cologne. It's a little different though; you wear it and the other guy scores.
---------
Q: Why does John Elway eat his cereal from a plate?
A: Because he's lost all three of his bowls.
---------
After spending all day watching football, Jimmy fell asleep in front of the TV and spent the whole night in the chair. In the morning, his wife woke him up. "Get up dear," she said, "it's 20 to 7" He awoke with a start and said, "In who's favor?
----------
Why can't John Elway use the phone anymore?
Because he can't find the receiver.

Have A Happy Hump Day (afternoon & evening) and if you have any good, bad, or ugly football jokes, please leave them in comments, or send them to me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, and we shall put them in the next football edition!! ;)

Go Cowboys!!!!!!
'

U.S. Pilot Was Ordered To Shoot Down UFO During Cold War

2008-10-20T18:09:00.001-05:00

It has been difficult to even begin to think of anything to write about yesterday, or today, as I am still reeling from the defeat of my Dallas Cowboys, by the "Rams"!?!
It is unfathomable that we are playing so bad, though the intervention by our "stupid" owner, Jerry Jones, on a daily basis, is surely not helping the situation. He should take a long flight with fellow "moronic" sports owners, Al Davis of the Raiders, and Steinbrenner of the Yankees, and never return, which would aid their respective teams, immensely in recovering their greatness, just by virtue of their absence!!

Anyway, I finally found an interesting story at the odd news section of Yahoo News, concerning two U.S. pilots, who were ordered to shoot down a UFO during the Cold War:
Two U.S. fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to secret files made public on Monday.

One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier." The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said it spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 7,600 mph (12,000 kph).

After the alert, a shadowy figure told Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.
link to full story

YouTube Links To: McCain And Obama Were Hilarious At Alfred E Smith Dinner Videos

2008-10-17T18:45:00.000-05:00

I have been looking for links to the YouTube videos of last nights hilarious roast of Senators McCain and Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner, in New York City, and finally found them.

Thanks to callem in comments left on my earlier post on this event, who left a link to the full transcript of the event, should you wish to read it, rather than watch it.

McCains Video Link

Obamas Video Link

Thank You and Have A Great Friday Evening!!

McCain And Obama Were Hilarious At Alfred E Smith Dinner

2008-10-17T14:48:00.000-05:00

Did you get the opportunity to watch Senators John McCain, and Barack Obama, at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner, in New York last evening? If you did not, you absolutely must go to YouTube, and watch the clips that are posted there, and if they rerun it on any channel, you really must watch it, in its' entirety, if you want to see a very, very funny side of these two Presidential contenders. Truly if the tone of this whole campaign had the markings of what they demonstrated last night, this would have been one of the most uplifting, and light-hearted campaigns in history, as opposed to the viciousness that has plagued the campaigns as of late.
Anyway, I have looked all over the news for a "good" accounting of what they said last night, and the best that I could find so far, was this story at Yahoo News, by Politico. Here is the lead in, and please follow the link to the whole story, where some clips can be seen, but don't forget to hit YouTube for the best videos of the event!!
When the going gets tough, the tough go to dinners.
Fancy dinners. White tie and tailcoat dinners like the Al Smith dinner in New York.
You may have missed the fact that the times are hilarious, but John McCain and Barack Obama were called upon to be hilarious Thursday night because that is what the Al Smith dinner demands. The dinner is sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York and raises millions of dollars for underprivileged children. It is a political rite of passage where the politicians are required to be funny. As if politics isn’t funny enough without trying.

It is the last time the two men are scheduled to be on stage together. McCain spoke first and was the John McCain of old, which is to say relaxed, droll and charming. “This is as good a place as any to make a major announcement,” he said. “It’s true that this morning I’ve dismissed my entire team of advisers. All their positions will be held by a man named Joe the Plumber.”

link to full story

Who Won The Debate And Your Vote?

2008-10-16T13:04:00.001-05:00

Good Morning!! Did everyone stay up to watch the third and last Presidential debate, between Senator's John McCain, and Barack Obama? It was not as exciting as I thought it would be, and mostly was made up of previous talking points, with only a few actual personal attacks. I found the whole "Joe the Plumber" references pretty disengenuous by McCain, as he has as little in common with "Joe" as I do with Donald Trump, other than both being men and Americans, McCain really does not "feel" our pain. I thought McCain looked constipated, angry, and perplexed during his "deer in the headlights" moments, however Obama was no slacker in sliding past the real questions, and I feel he missed huge opportunities to reassure undecided voters, who still have qualms voting for a man who sits on boards with former terrorists.
I know Obama has denounced what Ayers did 40 years ago, but that doesn't mean, you sit on boards, even Republican boards with a man who wishes he could have bombed more people. Truthfully, I will qualify that comment by saying that I did grow up during the Weather Underground bombings, and I did not realize that Mr. Ayers was NEVER convicted for his crimes due to a technicality, so I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he did not associate this man with acts that were carried out when Obama was 8 years old. However, he could have laid this non-issue to rest once and for all, and said that in hindsight he would have checked more thoroughly on who was on the board, and would not have sat on it with Ayers! The American people will excuse poor judgement and mistakes, but they will not excuse arrogance in not admitting that you were wrong. If he admitted that he was wrong and made his mia culpas, the American people would already have forgiven him , and he could have already been rejuvinated, and locked this race up once and for all. But being stubborn in your refusal to admit errors in judgement will not fly, just ask Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, etc., and leaves an avenue for McCain and his cohort to try and drive a wedge between Obama and the undecided's.
Therefore, I think Obama won the debate, because he did not lose it, and McCain lost the debate, because he did not win it outright. He may have fired up his base, but lost the debate, because he did not give undecided voters any reason to think he was anything, but an angry, old man, who was going to "stay the course" even though we are headed for a collision course with reality.
It now comes down to voting for the lesser of two evils~~And May God Help Us Choose Wisely!!

This story of Who won the debate? is at Yahoo News Buzz:
The experts said this was John McCain's last best chance to turn the tide. The election has been going Barack Obama's way, and his republican rival needed a big win in the third and final debate. Did Sen. McCain get it? The polls say one thing, but do the pundits agree?

The Polls
According to a national poll that CNN conducted after the debate, 58% of people felt Barack Obama won the debate, while 31% felt that John McCain performed better. The poll also indicates that the majority of people polled felt Obama would do a better job on the economy, health care, and taxes. Additionally, those polled felt Obama was more likable and the stronger leader.

While CNN's poll suggests an Obama landslide, the folks at Politico have different results. According to an "exclusive survey" of undecided voters, 49% of folks felt Sen. Obama won, while 46% believed Sen. McCain could claim victory. Politico notes that the 3-point difference is within the poll's margin of error.
link to full story

Hump Day Humor Wednesday October 15th 2008 No WALNUT or PECAN Edition

2008-10-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Well here we are on another Hump Day! The weather at the Coral Ridge Mall is a bit dreary outside, as it is a rainy, overcast, 53 degree afternoon. Therefore, a perfect day to come out shopping, as you will not have to compete with large crowds, and if you're not napping, you should be shopping, and doing your part to stimulate the economy!!

Last week I never did get to doing a post of jokes for Hump Day, we I went on my "humorous" WALNUT, and PECAN posts, and while a few people got the humor, many others did not, so I figure I better play it safe this Hump Day, and stick with definable jokes!! Have A Great Hump Day!! I hope you enjoy the jokes, and please remember to tune in for the last of the Presidential Debates this evening, because if sparks are going to fly, it will have to happen tonight!!

Here We Go:

These were some late night quips from the 18th of September that we didn't get to use then:
"The federal government... announced a plan to spend, like, a trillion of taxpayer dollars to buy out bad mortgages and debt. Wall Street was surprisingly enthusiastic about the plan to save their (butts) with other peoples' money. It was either that, or Sarah Palin's idea to sell it all on eBay." --Bill Maher

"Financial experts are saying we are entering a new chapter in the American economy. I believe it's Chapter 11." --Jay Leno

"The group MoveOn.org has called on John McCain to release all of his medical records. In response, McCain told them, 'Why don't you just come down to the warehouse and look around for yourself? Bring a forklift, it'll take time.'" --Conan O'Brien

"So now our attention turns to which candidate can best guide us out of this mess. But even more important than that is deciding which candidate we'd most like to eat nachos with. According to a new survey from the Associated Press today, more Americans would rather watch football game with Barack Obama than with John McCain, by a margin of 50 to 47%. Mostly because McCain has to get up every ten minutes to go to the bathroom." --Jimmy Kimmel

"Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lawrence Ellison topped the Forbes list of the top ten richest people in the U.S., having a combined wealth, as of Friday, of nearly $8,000" --Seth Meyers

"Hey, guess what? Turns out the free market? Not so free. Wall Street was hit hard Monday when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America, and insurance giant AIG neared a collapse of its own. Basically, if your commercials air during golf tournaments, you're done." --Amy Poehler

"The other financial genius, John McCain, said the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and then yesterday he wanted to fire the head of the SEC -- except you can't as president fire the SEC chairman, it's a non-governmental job. Sarah Palin said today one more gaffe from McCain, and she's going to drop him from the ticket." --Bill Maher

"To give you an idea how bad the American economy is, Mexico is now calling for a fence along the border. Stay on your side!" --Jay Leno

"Barack Obama, you know has a lot of supporters here in America, but he's very popular internationally. It's quite interesting. This is a true story. It was in the paper. Barack Obama is so popular in the African town where his father was born, they've named a beer after him. That's true. Yeah. So next time you're in Africa, sit back, relax, and enjoy a tall, cold Barackelob Light. Good enough. Clearly not as popular a beer as it used to be." --Conan O'Brien

"Yesterday, the federal government announced a massive plan to bail out a number of banking institutions. One expert said it might cost Americans more than a trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, ten Bill Gates and 35 Oprahs still don't add up to a trillion dollars." --Jimmy Kimmel

"A top McCain policy adviser claimed this week that McCain's work in the Senate helped create the BlackBerry, saying, 'You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.' He then handed the BlackBerry to McCain, who attempted to withdraw $20 from it." --Amy Poehler
--------------------------------
Two political candidates were having a hot debate.

Finally, one of them jumped up and yelled at the other, "What about the powerful interest that controls you?"

And the other guy screamed back, "You leave my wife out of this!"

-------------------------------
During the historic first manned mission to Mars, two Astronauts were charting the Martian surface.

"Look at that," said one to the other, "how beautiful this alien landscape is, untouched by man."

At that point, he was cut off, as he found his radio communications knocked out by unknown interference. They followed the source of the interference until they reached the rim of a crater. "Do you see what the source of that noise is?" asked the first astronaut.

"I don't know," said the second, "but it might be coming from that Starbucks behind you."
------------------------------
A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, "Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face."

"Yes," the class said.

"Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't run into my feet?"

A little fellow shouted, "Cause your feet ain't empty."
-----------------------------
A Scots pessimist is a man who feels badly when he feels good for fear he'll feel worse when he feels better
----------------------------
Two guys are talking about their boss's upcoming wedding.

One says, "It's ridiculous, he's rich, but he's 93 years old, and she's just 26! What kind of a wedding is that?"

The other says, "Well, we have a name for it in my family."

"What do you call it?"

"We call it a football wedding."

The first asks, "What's a football wedding?"

The other says, "She's waiting for him to kick off!"
-------------------------
On a visit to Boston, I noticed a parking meter with a paper sack over it upon which was written: "Broken."

A skeptical parking officer removed the bag, inserted a quarter in the meter and turned the dial. It worked perfectly. As the officer began to write a parking ticket, the car's owner rushed out of a nearby building.

"What are you doing?" he yelled after a quick glance at the meter, "There's plenty of time left!"
--------------------------
The Pope dies and goes to heaven. When he gets there, Saint Peter shows him to his new quarters which turn out to be a tiny one bedroom apartment.

The Pope is horrified and wants to know why he doesn't have the penthouse apartment, which is huge.

Saint Peter informs him that the resident of the penthouse is a lawyer.

"A lawyer," says the Pope. "But I'm the Pope, surely I'm more important."

"With respect Sir," says Saint Peter, "We have lots of Pope's up here, but we only have ONE lawyer
------------------------------
One day a man went to an auction. While there, he bid on a parrot. He really wanted this bird, so he got caught up in the bidding. He kept on bidding, but kept getting outbid, so he bid higher and higher and higher.

Finally, after he bid way more than he intended, he won the bid - the parrot was his at last!

As he was paying for the parrot, he said to the Auctioneer, "I sure hope this parrot can talk. I would hate to have paid this much for it, only to find out that he can't talk!"

"Don't worry." said the Auctioneer, "He can talk. Who do you think kept bidding against you?"
-----------------------------
As A College Student, You Should Start Worrying When...

You consider McDonalds 'real food'.

4.00AM is still early on weekends.

You'd rather clean than study.

Two miles is not too far to walk for a party.

Re-arranging your room is your favorite pastime.

You schedule classes around sleep and TV soaps.

There is less then $4.50 in your bank account at any given time.

The Visa cards are full and the overdraft is up to its limit.

Computer solitaire is more than a game, its a way of life.

You get excited when you find change that someone carelessly left in the drinks machine.
-----------------------------
Bernie was unfortunate enough to be hit by a truck and ended up in the hospital. His best friend Morris came to visit him.

Bernie struggles to tell Morris, "My wife Sadie visits me three times a day. She's so good to me. Every day, she reads to me at the bedside."

"What does she read?" asks Morris.

"My life insurance policy."
-------------------------------
A Police Officer Pulls over a speeder and walks up to the driver.

The driver says "I'm late for work Officer, I'm sorry I was speeding"

The cop says, "Late for work are you ... well, I'll write you a late note."

--------------------------------
A young boy answers the phone.

A man says, "Hello is your dad around?"

The boy whispers, "Yes."

The man then asks if he can talk to him.

"He's busy at the moment," the boy whispers.

"Then is your mom there?"

"Yes" the boy whispers.

"Can I talk to her?"

"No, she's busy," the boy whispers.

"Is there anyone else there?"

"Yes" whispered the boy.

"Who?" the man asked.

"A policeman," came the whispered reply.

"Well, can I talk to him?"

"He's busy too," the boy whispered.

"Is there anyone else there then?"

"Yes" whispered the boy.

"Who then?" the man asked.

"A fireman," the boy whispered.

"Can I talk to him?"

"No," the boy whispered, "he's busy."

Annoyed, the man asked what they were all doing.

"Looking for me." the boy whispered.

------------------------------
A member of the Country Club asked the lifeguard how he might go about teaching a young lady to swim.

"It takes considerable time and technique." replied the guard. "First you must take her into the water, then place one arm about her waist, hold her tightly, then take her right arm and raise it very slowly..."

"This is certainly most helpful." said the member. "I know that my kid sister will appreciate it."

"Your sister?" said the lifeguard. "In that case, just push her into the deep end of the pool. She'll learn in a hurry."
--------------------------------
A client called to report an accident and ask if her insurance rates would go up.

"Our underwriting department determines that", I said. Then I asked for her license number. Verifying her information, I asked, "NMF? Is that N as in Nancy, M as in Mary, and F as in Frank?"

"Well... yes," she said. "But could you please tell your underwriters that it's also N as in Not, M as in My, and F as in fault?"
---------------------------------
A man went on a ski trip, and was knocked unconscious by the chair lift. He called his insurance company from the hospital, but it refused to cover his injury.

"Why is the injury not covered?" he asked.

"You got hit in the head by a chair lift," the insurance rep said. "That makes you an idiot, and we consider that a pre- existing condition."
-----------------------------------
Becky prepared a pasta dish for a dinner party she was giving. In her haste, however, she forgot to refrigerate the spaghetti sauce, and it sat on the counter all day. She was worried about spoilage, but it was too late to cook up another batch.

She called the local Poison Control Center and voiced her concern. They advised Becky to boil the sauce again.

That night, the phone rang during dinner, and one of the guests volunteered to answer it. Becky's face dropped as the guest called out, "It's the Poison Control Center. They want to know how the spaghetti sauce turned out."
-----------------------------------
* Lerman's Law of Technology: Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money. Corollary: You are never given enough time or money.

* Murphy's First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five.

* Law of the Search: The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it. Corollary: It will not be in the last place you expect to find it.

* Kauffman's Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed.
------------------------------------
The teenager lost a contact lens while playing basketball in his driveway. After a fruitless search, he told his mother the lens was nowhere to be found.

Undaunted, she went outside and in a few minutes, returned with the lens in her hand.

"How did you manage to find it, Mom?" the teenager asked.

"We weren't looking for the same thing," she replied.

"You were looking for a small piece of plastic. I was looking for $150."
------------------------------------
I was eavesdropping on two women sitting behind me on the bus when they started talking about a trip to Switzerland. The first passenger asked the second whether she had enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

"Not really," came the reply. "I couldn't see much because of all the mountains in the way."
----------------------------------
A young woman really thought she'd been very patient, through a long period of dating with no talk of marriage.

One night her steady boyfriend took her out to a Chinese restaurant. As he looked over the menu, he casually asked her, "So... how do you want your rice? plain or fried?"

Without missing a beat, she looked over her menu at him and replied.... "Thrown."
-----------------------------------
The children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic elementary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples. The nun made a note, and posted on the apple tray:

"Take only ONE. God is watching."

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip cookies.

A child had written a note, "Take all you want. God is watching the apples.
----------------------------------
The personnel office received an email requesting a listing of the department staff broken down by age and sex. The personnel office sent this reply...

"Attached is a list of our staff. We currently have no one broken down by age or sex. However, we have a few alcoholics."
----------------------------------
At his 103rd birthday party, my grandfather was asked if he planned to be around for his 104th.

"I certainly do," he replied. "Statistics show that very few people die between the ages of 103 and 104."
--------------------------------
As the coals from our barbecue burned down, our hosts passed out marshmallows and long roasting forks.

Just then, two fire trucks roared by, sirens blaring, lights flashing. They stopped at a house right down the block.

All twelve of us raced out of the back yard, down the street, where we found the owners of the blazing house standing by helplessly.

They glared at us with looks of disgust.

Suddenly, we realized why.........we were all still holding our roasting forks with marshmallows on them...
--------------------------------
The blonde reported for her university final examination that consists of "yes/no" type questions. She takes her seat in the examination hall, stares at the question paper for five minutes, and then in a fit of inspiration takes her purse out, removes a coin and starts tossing the coin and marking the answer sheet "Yes" for Heads and "No" for Tails. Within half an hour she is all done, whereas the rest of the class is sweating it out During the last few minutes, she is seen desperately throwing the coin, muttering and sweating. The moderator, alarmed, approaches her and asks what is going on.

"I finished the exam in half an hour, but I'm rechecking my answers."
------------------------------
Eight and a half months very pregnant with twins, I was used to getting nervous glances from strangers. But I never realized how imposing I was until my husband and I went out to dinner at a new restaurant.

The hostess sat us at our table, took one long look at my stomach and asked, "Would you like me to get you a high chair just in case?"
-----------------------------
Delivering a speech at a banquet on the night of his arrival in a large city, a visiting minister told several anecdotes he expected to repeat at meetings the next day.

Because he wanted to use the jokes again, he requested the reporters to omit them from any accounts they might turn in to their newspapers.

A cub reporter, in commenting on the speech, ended his piece with the following: "The minister told a number of stories that cannot be published."
-------------------------------
There was a lawyer and he was just waking up from anesthesia after surgery, and his wife was sitting by his side.

His eyes fluttered open and he said, "You're beautiful!" and then he fell asleep again.

His wife had never heard him say that so she stayed by his side. A couple minutes later his eyes fluttered open and he said "You're cute!"

Well, the wife was dissapointed because instead of "beautiful" it was "cute."

She said "What happened to 'beautiful'?"

His reply was "The drugs are wearing off!"
--------------------------------
A Sunday School teacher decided to have his second grade class learn Psalm 23, one of the most quoted texts from the Holy Bible.

She gave the kids a month to memorize the whole chapter. One of the boys was really excited about it, but he simply couldn't memorize the Psalm. Although he practiced hard, he could hardly get past the first few lines.

So the day came for the children to recite Psalm 23 before the school board and that boy was nervous.

When his turn came, he stepped up to the microphone and proudly said, "The Lord is my Shepherd and that's all I need to know!"
------------------------------
Sign seen in repair shop (directed at customers):

Hourly rate: $10.50

Hourly rate if you sit and watch: $12.50

Hourly rate if you sit, watch, and comment: $15.50

Hourly rate if you sit, watch, comment, and "help": $20.00
------------------------------
Watch out for these viruses. They could be very destructive to your computer:

Ellen Degeneres Virus - Your IBM suddenly claims it's a MAC

Titanic Virus - Makes your whole computer go down

Disney Virus - Everything in the computer goes Goofy

Prozac Virus - Screws up your RAM but your processor doesn't care

Woody Allen Virus - Bypasses the motherboard and turns on a daughter card

Paris Hilton Virus - Has no real function, but makes a pretty desktop

Oprah Winfrey Virus - Your 200GB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80GB, and then slowly expands to 300GB

AT&T Virus - Every 3 minutes it tells you what a great service you are getting

MCI Virus - Every 3 minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T Virus

Viagra Virus - Expands your hard drive while putting too much pressure on your zip
---------------------------------
A lawyer died and was delivered into the devil's hands. "You will be spending eternity here, but I'll let you pick your own room from three I'll show you," the devil said.

In the first room were thousands of people standing on their heads on a brick floor. "I don't like that," said the man. "Show me the second."

In the second room were thousands of people standing on their heads on a wood floor. "Well, that's better than brick," the man said, "but show me the third."

In the third, thousands of people were standing ankle-deep in a room full of maggot infested garbage, all drinking coffee.

"I'll choose this room," he said.

Into the room he went and the door slammed behind him.

Immediately, the voice of a minor demon rang out, "OK, coffee break is over, back on your heads."
-------------------------------
Three Catholic girls were graduating from a Catholic high school. Sister Marie wanted to ask each girl what career they want to persue.

The first girl said, "I want to help needy children in Africa."

The sister said, "Very good then."

The second girl said, "I want to help the elderly."

The sister replied, "Good job to you."

The third girl said, "I don't have much money so I have no choice to become a prostitute."

Sister Marie fainted on the floor.

The girl said, "I am sorry that I must be a prostitute but I really need the money."

The sister woke and said, "A prostitute, oh thank God. I thought you said Protestant!"
-----------------------------
A shoplifter was caught red-handed trying to steal a watch from an exclusive jewelry store. "Listen," said the shoplifter, "I know you don't want any trouble either. What do you say I just buy the watch, and we forget about this?"

The manager agreed and wrote up the sales slip. The crook looked at the slip and said, "This is a little more than I intended to spend. Can you show me something less expensive?"
----------------------------
When a person assists a criminal in breaking the law BEFORE the criminal gets arrested, we call him an accomplice.

When a person assists a criminal in breaking the law AFTER the criminal has been arrested, we call him a defense attorney.
--------------------------
Two sisters, one blonde and one brunette, inherit the family ranch. Unfortunately, after just a few years, they are in financial trouble.

In order to keep the bank from repossessing the ranch, they need to purchase a bull so that they can breed their own stock.

The brunette balances their checkbook, then takes their last $600 dollars out west to another ranch where a man has a prize bull for sale. Upon leaving, she tells her sister, "When I get there, if I decide to buy the bull, I'll contact you to drive out after me and haul it home."

The brunette arrives at the man's ranch, inspects the bull, and decides she does want to buy it. The man tells her that he can sell it for $599, no less.

After paying him, she drives to the nearest town to send her sister a telegram to tell her the news. She walks into the telegraph office, and says, "I want to send a telegram to my sister telling her that I've bought a bull for our ranch. I need her to hitch the trailer to our pick-up truck and drive out here so we can haul it home."

The telegraph operator explains that he'll be glad to help her, then adds, "It's just 99 cents a word." Well, with only $1 left after paying for the bull, the brunette realizes that she'll only be able to send her sister one word.

After thinking for a few minutes, she nods, and says, "I want you to send her the word, 'comfortable.'"

The telegraph operator shakes his head. "How is she ever going to know that you want her to hitch the trailer to your pick-up truck and drive out here to haul that bull back to your ranch if you send her the word, 'comfortable?'"

The brunette explains, "My sister's blonde. She'll read it slow."
------------------------------
A Catholic Priest and a Rabbi were chatting one day when the conversation turned to a discussion of job descriptions and promotion.

"What do you have to look forward to in way of a promotion in your job?" asked the Rabbi.

"Well, I'm next in line for the Monsignor's job." replied the Priest.

"Yes, and then what?" asked the Rabbi.

"Well, next I can become Arch-Bishop." said the Priest.

"Yes, and then?" asked the Rabbi.

"If I work real hard and do a good job as Arch-Bishop, it's possible for me to become a full Bishop." said the Priest.

"O.K., then what?" asked the Rabbi.

The Priest, begining to get a bit exasperated replied, "With some luck and real hard work, maybe I can become a Cardinal."

"And then?" asked the Rabbi.

The Priest is really starting to get mad now and replies, "With lots and lots of luck and some real difficult work and if I'm in the right places at the right times and play my political games just right, maybe, just maybe, I can get elected Pope."

"Yes, and then what?" asked the Rabbi.

"Good grief!" shouted the Priest. "What do you expect me to become, GOD?"

"Well," said the Rabbi, "One of our boys made it!"
-------------------------------
I think my wife is selling drugs! Yesterday I was running a little bit late for work and the phone rang. I answered it. Before I could say anything a male voice on the line said, Hey honey is that dope gone yet?
------------------------------
1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.

6. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.

7. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

8. Newborn babies can choke on bread.

9. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

10. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling
------------------------------
A businessman on his deathbed called his friend and said, "Bill, I want you to promise me that when I die you will have my remains cremated."

"And what," his friend asked, "do you want me to do with your ashes?"

The businessman said, "Just put them in an envelope and mail them to the Internal Revenue Service and write on the envelope, 'Now you have everything.'"
--------------------------------
College Exam Plea
O Lord, hear my anxious plea
Calculus is killing me
I know not of 'dx' or 'dy'
And probably won't until the day I die.

Please, Lord, help me in this hour
As I take my case to the highest power.
I care not for fame or loot
Just help me find one square root.

And Lord, please let me see
One passing mark in organic chemistry.
Oh such a thing I constantly dread
I'd just as soon join the Marines instead.

Lord, please give me a sign
That you've been listening all the time.
Please lead me out of this constant coma
And give me a shot at my diploma.
---------------------------------
A blonde walks into a bar and orders 18 beers.

“Why so many?” asked the bartender.

“Can’t you read the sign?” replied the blonde, “It says ‘no one served under 18.’”
----------------------------------

;)
Have a Great Hump Day, and as usual if you have a joke to share, please leave it in the comments, or email it to me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, and I shall use it with attribution to you, in one of our upcoming humor posts!!

Take Care :)

The Historic KC-135 Stratotanker Still Flying

2008-10-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like the wheeny-whiney Wall Streeters are starting a come back after the government, took them by the hand, fed them some pablum, burped them, and then cuddled them this morning, with reassurances, as they announced an upcoming meeting for the "babies", so they will know how everything will happen with the bailout plan.

Anyway, after being disgusted by these pathetic whiners, I was wandering around the news, and found this fascinating story at Yahoo News about a 50 year old aircraft that we can be proud of, and which is still vitally important to America:

More than 50 years after its first flight, the KC-135 tanker is the workhorse of the U.S. Air Force, a flying gas station that loiters over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan every day. And it will keep flying for at least 30 more years — there isn't even a contract for a replacement.

The plane entered service in 1957, when President Eisenhower was just starting his second term. With the Cold War heating up, armed B-52 bombers idled on runways, ready at a moment's notice to fly over the North Pole to strike the Soviet Union. But the B-52, an eight-engine gas guzzler, couldn't carry enough fuel for a round-trip mission.

Enter the KC-135 Stratotanker, a jet-age filling station in the sky. The B-52 is still flying missions — and so is the Stratotanker, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It refuels bombers, fighters, cargo planes — even other tankers.
link to full story

PECAN (People Everywhere Can Accomplish Nothing) First Meeting And Minutes Of Accomplishments

2008-10-11T13:35:00.001-05:00

PECAN
People Everywhere Can Accomplish Nothing
1451 Coral Ridge Avenue
Coralville, Iowa 52241
319-625-6011
Propaganda Minister: Daniel Kepler

October 11th, 2008

First meeting of PECAN is called to order at 9:00 a.m.

and

adjourned at 9:30 a.m.!!

PECAN took a lot longer to do nothing!! ;)
;)
Daniel Kepler

WALNUT (Worldwide Alliance Leading Nowhere Until Tomorrow) First Meeting And Minutes Of Accomplishments

2008-10-11T12:58:00.000-05:00

WALNUT
Worldwide Alliance Leading Nowhere Until Tomorrow
1451 Coral Ridge Avenue
Coralville, Iowa 52241
319-625-6011
Propaganda Minister: Daniel Kepler

October 11th, 2008

WALNUT's first meeting and minutes 8:00a.m.

and

adjourned at 8:00a.m.

;)

Take Care!!

Daniel Kepler

PECAN (People Everywhere Can Accomplish Nothing) In Alliance With WALNUT

2008-10-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

People
Everywhere
Can
Accomplish
Nothing

In keeping with the goals of our weak sister alliance with WALNUT, I have created PECAN (People Everywhere Can Accomplish Nothing), for those problems that are even too small for WALNUT to handle, thereby guaranteeing that no measureable progress can be made on any issue, no matter its' importance, or scope!!
As the great humorist Mark Twain put it "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Therefore, we shall take the WALNUT ideas, and goals, of doing nothing, and shall try and expand their areas of non-interest!!
Membership in WALNUT, offers an adjunct membership in PECAN, so nothing further needs to be done on your end!!
How easy was that!!
So as I procrastinate anyway I can, to not do anything with WALNUT, or PECAN, you may see other non-groups on these pages, to assist in acquiring funds from the Do-Nothing "Correctly" Government, who we are in competition with, for accomplishing the least amount of things in the quickest way possible, or whenever we get around to it!!
A couple of words of wisdom to leave with you:
The two rules of procrastination: 1) Do it today. 2) Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. ~Author Unknown
Someday is not a day of the week. ~Author Unknown
The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up. ~Author Unknown
If it weren't for the last minute, I wouldn't get anything done. ~Author Unknown
Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown
"I have procrastinated enough today, I shall finish the rest tomorrow!!"~Daniel Kepler 10/10/2008
Thank You!!
Propaganda Minister: Daniel Kepler
danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, or visit me at KeplerView.com,KeplerView at all sites I post on, MySpace,Iowa City Press-Citizen,soulcast,blog,blogger,msn live,vox,facebook,newsvine!! Take Care!!

WALNUT AND HOW I CREATED IT WITH AN UPDATE ON SUCCESS OF IT SO FAR!!

2008-10-10T11:29:00.001-05:00

Good Afternoon! This morning when I arrived at the SmartArt Kiosk, I stopped by Chick-fil-A, to say good morning to everyone working in front, as is my routine. I usually walk up the food court as I know everyone working, and I get ice at Panda Express, from my friend Sandra the Assistant Manager, or Dillon the Manager, where I was the Manager before this job, and I put out their trays, and attach the food signs, so they do not have to walk all the way around to do it, and like I said, they are my friends as is everyone that I talk to at the Mall. I greet my former chef Sun, a great guy, and his wife Wendy, as they now run Sarku, and then usually end up at Villa Pizza, where Steve is the Manager, and talk for a few minutes with him, or with whoever is working, before heading back, and cleaning the art prints and getting everything ready to open at 10 a.m.
Anyway, this morning as I was heading back to the Kiosk, my friend Brenda, who works at Chick-fil-A, was talking about all of the news concerning the community group ACORN, and wanted me to do something akin to that name, as a "joke", and gave me two choices to use Pecan and Walnut. So I went back to work and started cleaning, and thinking of amusing acronyms, and this is what I came up with.
Worldwide
Alliance
Leading
Nowhere
Until
Tomorrow
"Where solving the worlds problems is as easy, as putting them off for another day"
"Procrastination IS Power!"
I showed it to Melody at Chick-fil-A, who laughed and took it back to Brenda, and she laughed, and Bob the owner chuckled, Laura wanted a copy of this, and Brenda has shown it to few select customers/friends, who have also been amused. I also showed Sandy at the information booth of the Coralville Vistors Bureau, and she smiled as well. My friend Melissa (Missy not Missiles on MySpace) from Starbucks came by and she laughed and voluntarily joined the (non) group.So perhaps I have come up with a completely useless organization, which can make people feel better about not doing anything to solve the worlds problems.
We are thinking of having a meeting, but maybe not, and if we do, whether you attend or not, it won't matter, as nothing will be accomplished anyway. You do not have to do anything to become a member, as you are automatically members, just by being alive, and if you choose to not be a member, we will not acknowledge it anyway, thus keeping our membership rolls high, and hopefully we can receive government money, to accomplish our stated goals, which should be easy, as doing nothing will accomplish what this organization was set up to do.
I know some of you may be skeptical, as we already have so many "government" agencies spending billions and accomplishing nothing, so you may think that is a duplication of wasted efforts. However, because we are not connected to the government, except through the grants they give, we would be much more efficient at do nothing, as has been proven by the recent financial crisis on Wall Street by private companies!!
So we Succeed by doing Nothing!!
Thanks for not doing anything!
I would also like to Thank you for being members of this non-aligned alliance, and should you try and solve the worlds problems, "Remember to think about it thoroughly, and then decide, to decide, whether you really want to help~~TOMORROW"!!
All rules, bylaws, etc., will be thought up on the spur of the moment, and will be used to Procrastinate our way out of the problems we encounter!!
If you have any problems you would like us to not address, please feel free to comment, or write me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, and we shall advise you to not worry about it. Truly there is no problem too small or too big, that we cannot ignore, and let someone else solve!!
Have a Great Thursday (or maybe Friday would be a better day to have a Great Day)!!
Please check out my blog on myspace, KeplerView.com,soulcast,live,blog,blogger,facebook,vox,newsvine,etc.
Please Pass It On And Be Part Of The Largest Non-Movement In History!!;)
I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUCE THAT WE ARE BEGINNING TO RECEIVE EMAILS FROM PEOPLE JOINING WALNUT~~EVEN THOUGH THEY DID NOT HAVE TO AFFIRM IN ANYWAY TO BE CONSIDERED MEMBERS!! THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT AND HAVE A GREAT FRIDAY OR WHATEVER DAY YOU CHOOSE TO BE GREAT!!!!
MY FRIENDS, ALSO, THAT ONE, IS NOT SEEING RUSSIA FROM
HAWAII!!:)

WALNUT (Worldwide Alliance Leading Nowhere Until Tomorrow) There Is No Problem That We Cannot Trivialize

2008-10-09T14:24:00.000-05:00

Good Afternoon! This morning when I arrived at the SmartArt Kiosk, I stopped by Chick-fil-A, to say good morning to everyone working in front, as is my routine. I usually walk up the food court as I know everyone working, and I get ice at Panda Express, from my friend Sandra the Assistant Manager, or Dillon the Manager, where I was the Manager before this job, and I put out their trays, and attach the food signs, so they do not have to walk all the way around to do it, and like I said, they are my friends as is everyone that I talk to at the Mall. I greet my former chef Sun, a great guy, and his wife Wendy, as they now run Sarku, and then usually end up at Villa Pizza, where Steve is the Manager, and talk for a few minutes with him, or with whoever is working, before heading back, and cleaning the art prints and getting everything ready to open at 10 a.m.

Anyway, this morning as I was heading back to the Kiosk, my friend Brenda, who works at Chick-fil-A, was talking about all of the news concerning the community group ACORN, and wanted me to do something akin to that name, as a "joke", and gave me two choices to use Pecan and Walnut. So I went back to work and started cleaning, and thinking of amusing acronyms, and this is what I came up with.

Worldwide
Alliance
Leading
Nowhere
Until
Tomorrow
"Where solving the worlds problems is as easy, as putting them off for another day"

"Procrastination IS Power!"

I showed it to Melody at Chick-fil-A, who laughed and took it back to Brenda, and she laughed, and Bob the owner chuckled, Laura wanted a copy of this, and Brenda has shown it to few select customers/friends, who have also been amused. I also showed Sandy at the information booth of the Coralville Vistors Bureau, and she smiled as well. My friend Melissa (Missy not Missiles on MySpace) from Starbucks came by and she laughed and voluntarily joined the (non) group.So perhaps I have come up with a completely useless organization, which can make people feel better about not doing anything to solve the worlds problems.

We are thinking of having a meeting, but maybe not, and if we do, whether you attend or not, it won't matter, as nothing will be accomplished anyway. You do not have to do anything to become a member, as you are automatically members, just by being alive, and if you choose to not be a member, we will not acknowledge it anyway, thus keeping our membership rolls high, and hopefully we can receive government money, to accomplish our stated goals, which should be easy, as doing nothing will accomplish what this organization was set up to do.
I know some of you may be skeptical, as we already have so many "government" agencies spending billions and accomplishing nothing, so you may think that is a duplication of wasted efforts. However, because we are not connected to the government, except through the grants they give, we would be much more efficient at do nothing, as has been proven by the recent financial crisis on Wall Street by private companies!!

So we Succeed by doing Nothing!!

Thanks for not doing anything!

I would also like to Thank you for being members of this non-aligned alliance, and should you try and solve the worlds problems, "Remember to think about it thoroughly, and then decide, to decide, whether you really want to help~~TOMORROW"!!

All rules, bylaws, etc., will be thought up on the spur of the moment, and will be used to Procrastinate our way out of the problems we encounter!!

If you have any problems you would like us to not address, please feel free to comment, or write me at danielcarvelkepler@yahoo.com, and we shall advise you to not worry about it. Truly there is no problem too small or too big, that we cannot ignore, and let someone else solve!!

Have a Great Thursday (or maybe Friday would be a better day to have a Great Day)!!

Hump Day Humor Post Debate Edition Postponed

2008-10-08T20:43:00.000-05:00

My Hump Day Humor October 8th Day After Debate Edition will be delayed until at least Thursday as I try and figure out what is going wrong with this computer. I was nearly finished writing the post, when the computer froze and I lost everything, "even" saved information!!

To tide you over here is a look at 10 things you didn't know about Presidential debates and hundreds of other humorous videos, and articles about politics at Comedy.com. Here is a sample:
1. The Lincoln-Douglas debates weren’t Presidential debates. You probably thought they were. They were running for Senate. And they weren’t debating for citizens. Citizens didn’t vote for the Senate, state legislatures did. Stuff was crazy in the 1800s.
2. All of their seven debates were about slavery. That used to be a big thing. Stenographers came to their debates. Newspapers that supported Douglas and slavery corrected grammatical errors made by the stenographers, while leaving Lincoln’s speeches in their rough form. He looked like a YouTube commenter. Lincoln edited them himself for a book after he was elected. The book was popular enough to get him nominated for President.
3. Both candidates spoke for about 90 minutes. Whoever went second did 90 in a row. That was back when candidates knew about stuff

Have a Nice Evening and hopefully I shall have it figured out by tomorrow!! ;)

link to comedy.com

Part III Of The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi

2008-10-06T15:42:00.000-05:00

Part II Of The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi

2008-10-06T15:21:00.001-05:00

Good Monday afternoon! I hope you are not in a panic as the Dow takes another dive today. Obviously, the bailout bill wasn't "big" enough for these whiners, and they'll keep "tanking" until they "extort" more billions from us!!
Anyway, I found a fascinating exchange between two authors about 9/11 at AlterNet, and because their is lingering controversy, I thought many of you readers would enjoy reading what they have to say. It was a huge article, and therefore it will be broken down into 3 parts, so you won't feel like you are reading the telephone directory cover to cover, at one sitting.

The authors are Matt Taibbi, who is a writer for Rolling Stone. He is the author of The Great Derangement (Spiegel and Grau, 2008), and
David Ray Griffin, who is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University (California). His 34 books include seven about 9/11, the most recent of which is The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposure" (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).

This is Part II of the "The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi"
[The following is Matt Taibbi's five follow-up questions to Griffin's responses, which follow in order of the questions).]
August 7, 2008 -- Professor:
As you've noticed, I struggled for quite some time with the question of how to answer your responses. Mainly this was because I was unsure of whether to treat this exercise like a comedy (because it's certainly hard to take seriously any "debate" with a person who believes that Rudy Giuliani would conspire to blow up the densest slice of taxpaying real estate in the world, the New York City financial district, in order to save his city the cost of an asbestos cleanup) or whether to aim higher and treat it like a serious political argument. I tried it both ways and neither way seemed to fit. Treating this like an absurdist comedy, I realized, I'm making it hard for readers to see how monstrous and offensive your arguments are -- but then again, when I take you seriously, spending paragraph after crazed paragraph grandstanding against you and your book, suddenly I'm the one who looks ridiculous.
Then it hit me, and probably far too late: the correct play here is to ignore you and your arguments entirely. There are many things about your work that are outrageous and offensive, but the very worst thing about you and other 9/11 conspiracists -- and, I guess, lately anyway, me -- is that you're/we're a distraction from the real problem.
After all, the thing that was always the most unrealistic aspect of 9/11 Truther theory was this notion that anyone in power in this country would need to pull off a stunt like this in order to further its nebulous imperialist agenda. For the only conceivable motive for planning and executing a caper on this level would be to try to sway public opinion -- but public opinion has, for decades, already been more or less whatever the powers that be have wanted it to be.
Most often, in fact, public opinion was simply not wanted at all: what was most desirable was that public attention be elsewhere when industries were deregulated, bailouts distributed, OPIC loans handed out, contracts funneled to insiders. In March, for instance, the federal government quietly agreed to subsidize JP Morgan's acquisition of troubled Bear Stearns, shelling out $29 billion in taxpayer money to prop up a hornet's nest of bad mortgage-backed securities and other investments. Forget about a public outcry over this move to bail out the irresponsible wealthy using yours and my tax money -- the public didn't even know about this deal. And even if it had known about it, it wouldn't have understood it. And even if it had understood it -- extremely unlikely -- it wouldn't have been organized enough to do anything about it. And even if it had been organized enough to do anything about it, and this is really once chance in a million, our government could have just ignored them anyway, the same way it did when it pressed ahead with its insane invasion of Iraq even as 400,000 people marched on Washington. But there weren't four people marching against the Bear Stearns deal.
This same public -- the same public that stood meekly by when its manufacturing economy was exported overseas, that cheered when our government pledged to "get tough" with China by demanding that it allow us to weaken our currency vis a vis the Yuan, that twiddled its thumbs when Wall Street played Keno with the nation's homeowner savings, that has consistently voted overwhelmingly to deprive itself of its right to litigate against powerful companies -- this is the public you think George Bush and Dick Cheney needed to blow up downtown Manhattan for, in order to get them on board with a war against Iraq, the Patriot Act, and whatever else.
The recent financial crisis shows most graphically that the financial powers that run this country have had a completely free hand to do as they pleased for decades, and certainly long before 9/11. These same people are about to bend the public over again, as whoever wins the next election will be called upon to fork over a series of gigantic bailouts to rescue the speculators who ran amok for the last dozen years or so. It's business as usual. And yet, you actually think that the same public that didn't even notice when so much of its money was pissed into the wind by Wall Street -- you think they scared the Department of Defense so much with their jealous stewarding of public treasure that the DOD actually blew up the records office of its own building to hide "evidence" of embezzlement and fraud. Like the public had EVER given a shit (at least, given a shit enough to do something about it!) about defense department waste before! Like there was anyone to hide that evidence from!
All of this 9/11 Truther stuff, it's a silly distraction. A country whose economy is about to go down the shitter, to the brink of depression, thanks to three-plus decades of routinely-ignored Wall Street deregulation just can't afford to be wasting its time arguing about thermite reactions and "morphing technology." Captivated by the comic possibilities of Truther literature, I realized this too late. As you'll see below, I even spent a lot of time pulling what's left of my hair out over your answers to questions that even I admit now go beyond inane. I admit in advance to looking silly for doing so, and hereby make a promise to God that I won't do it again, at least not as long as we have other things to worry about. All the same, some of the stuff you came up with, Professor sheesh! And I thought I was loony! To wit:
1. Your response to the general criticism that 9/11 Truther rhetoric never attempts to make a case for what, specifically, it thinks actually took place on 9/11 is to reduce the argument to a parable -- you compare the issue to a court case. And in order to make your argument that what I was asking is illogical, you essentially cast yourself and the Truth movement in the role of a beleaguered defense attorney. And what a case you have!
In the hilarious story you invent, my best friend (seemingly) cheats at a contest to beat me for a large prize, and is brutally killed by an arrow the next day. Cue dramatic music: Dunh dunh dunh! The cops have a recording of me threatening my friend, a video of me entering a building carrying a case large enough to hold a crossbow, and a water bottle found on the roof (whence the crossbow bolt was fired!) with my fingerprints on it.
But alas, I'm not guilty! The bottle was planted, and the video and audio evidence was faked using "morphing" technology! Morphing technology? Absurd, an ordinary person would say. But fortunately for me, my attorney -- a sharp fellow whose instincts are remarkably like those of a California professor named David Ray Griffin -- is able to introduce as evidence the internet link to an authoritative article on the efficacy of said morphing technology, published in no less prestigious a publication than The Washington Post.
As for motive, it appears the government has cleverly waited for the opportune circumstance of my friend cheating to beat me out of a large cash contest to frame me, a dangerous dissident with a history of writing critically about the White House, for his murder.
Humorous aside: Even in this fictional example, the logic is hilarious: the government is willing to wantonly murder my innocent friend, but not me, the actual "threat" to the state; their method of dealing with me is instead to cook up an elaborate scheme to frame me, a scheme that would depend upon them knowing in advance that my best friend would cheat to win a contest, and would rely upon the use of dozens of confederates to plant phony evidence crafted by super-advanced technology. When, of course, they could have just skipped all that complex stuff, and hit me in the head with a brick in an alley. Strongly reminiscent of Dr. Evil of Austin Powers fame waving off of his son Seth Green's suggestion that he just shoot Austin Powers in the head ("I'll get my gun right now!"), opting instead for the "sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads" method of pointlessly-elaborate execution.
Anyway, despite all this evidence of innocence, the judge -- a grumpy sort tending toward the unfair who seems to resemble me in this story -- insists that the defendant can only be cleared if the attorney offers a clear and plausible alternative theory of the crime.
Which sucks, because the attorney has another bombshell: a lab has found that the arrow that killed the friend could not possibly have originated from the purported scene of the murder.
(Again, why would the bolt -- that's what you call the thing fired from a crossbow, by the way -- not match the location? If this is a frame-up from the beginning, why wouldn't the framers make sure to make the purported kill-spot and the bolt matched? I realize this is a fictional story, but even these inconsistencies are hilarious).
But the judge, a real jerk, refuses to dismiss the charges still, again grumpily insisting on proof of the alternative theory of the crime. In a wonderfully witty twist, he even quotes me, Matt Taibbi, in justifying his decision! The irony is overwhelming! It hits you like a dozen freight trains! Game over -- jeu, Griffin!
Two things about this example of yours:
Firstly: the reason it's so funny that you chose this particular example -- the handcuffing of a fictional defense attorney -- is because what defense attorneys do, and what you're doing, is exactly the opposite of investigation, the opposite of a sincere quest for truth. I'm not knocking the profession at all; I believe in the system and greatly esteem defense lawyers who do their jobs well.
But defense attorneys have absolutely no responsibility to get at the truth of any court case. That's not what they do. Their job is to annihilate the prosecutor's arguments piece by piece. It doesn't matter -- never matters -- if the sum of their arguments adds up to a coherent narrative. If the prosecutor's case is based upon a witness, a confession, a hair, and a deposit slip, the defender attacks each piece using whatever weapon applies: the witness is a drunk, the confession was coerced, the hair is inconclusive, the deposit slip explained by a win at Vegas blackjack tables. He crushes those four items, he wins his case.
He doesn't have to know what happened in reality. His client may even be guilty, in fact often is. In your circles, you call this "raising questions." It's a great characteristic for a defense attorney. For an investigator, someone interested in learning the truth, it sucks ass. Even many defense attorneys (and I know this because I know a few) feel shitty about using this bomb-tossing intellectual technique to make a living. But at least they're doing it within the framework of a system designed for that activity. You're doing it as a substitute for actual inquiry, which is pretty sad.
Secondly: what the fuck? What kind of lunatic comes up with this as his "illustrative example"? Your simplifying parable is more fantastic and complicated than the actual story! At first I thought you were kidding, then I had to go back and read it to believe it -- astounding! It should tell the readers of this debate quite a bit that this is your idea of a good way to start an argument: "Say for example that your best friend is killed in broad daylight with a crossbow, and the government frames you for the crime using advanced morphing technology"
Uh, okay. I can say it, sure. It's stupid, but I can say it. Does the story end with my wife in bed with a cow in a spacesuit? I mean really. I don't mean to take a gratuitous swipe here, but your fictional example says a lot about how your mind works.
Lastly, with regard to the actual question -- why would Bush sit there like a dunce if he knew the attacks were coming -- your answer is another doozy. Apparently, George Bush is incompetent! Oh, he's competent enough, one guesses, to pull off the greatest and vastest criminal conspiracy in the history of the human race not only without getting caught, but without any of his presumably countless accomplices faltering or leaking the truth -- but his competence level apparently doesn't extend to not looking like a paralyzed dipshit for nine whole minutes at the actual moment of crisis. I'm shocked that even you can take an answer like this seriously.
Incidentally, "The people who support the official story are conspiracy theorists too!" has got to be the most tired and boring movement truism since "It's a child, not a choice." Always amazed to see Truthers still cheering its cleverness after hearing it for the 500th or 600th time. But feel free to keep using it, I guess.
Griffin responds August 24, 2008: I was surprised by the length and nature of your response. When the interview was being set up, I was told by AlterNet editor Jan Frel that, after I gave my answers to the questions, "Taibbi has indicated he might ask you a few followup questions." That did not lead me to expect, some months later, an almost 6,000-word essay. I have, in any case, replied to your new comments as briefly as possible. But because it takes longer to answer charges than to make them, my reply, unfortunately, is even longer. In your introductory comments, after calling my arguments "monstrous and offensive," you say: "the correct play here is to ignore you and your arguments entirely." But you do not ignore all of them, only some of them. How do you expect readers to avoid the suspicion that you simply ignored the ones that you knew you could not answer? In any case, the main reason you give for saying you should ignore my arguments is that my position, according to which 9/11 was an inside job, is "a distraction from the real problem."
Because you are here simply repeating a charge made by Alexander Cockburn, I will refer you to my response to him, in which I pointed out that "The Truly Distracting 9/11 Conspiracy Theory" is the government's account of 9/11, which has been used to justify the so-called war on terror, because it has distracted us from the overarching problem of our time: the threat that global climate change may bring civilization to an end. (Hopefully you do not, like Cockburn, accept the oil companies' claim that fossil fuels are causing any such threat.) Another problem with your claim that my position is a distraction is that, in making it, you seem to be presupposing, circularly, that the inside-job position is false. I say this because I suspect that if you believed this position to be true, you would consider it anything but a distraction from our real problems.
The official account of 9/11 has been used to justify a new doctrine of preemption, according to which we can attack a country without any evidence that it is ready to attack us; to launch pre-planned wars against Afghanistan and Iraq that have killed millions of people and cost hundreds of billions of dollars; to ram the (already-written) PATRIOT Act through Congress; and to justify torture, extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, spying on US citizens, an imperial presidency, and other practices that violate our Constitution. If the official account of 9/11 is false, the effort to expose this fact, in order to put an end to the policies that have been justified by this account, cannot reasonably be called a distraction from real problems. It is instead an attempt to strike at the root of most of our new problems. Your characterization of the 9/11 truth movement as a distraction, based on your assumption that the official account is not false, simply begs the question.
Insofar as you do argue against the inside-job view, you rest your case primarily on a priori arguments. The main one in your new essay is that "[no one] in power in this country would need to pull off a stunt like this in order to further its . . . imperialist agenda." No one would need to "to sway public opinion," you say, because "public opinion has, for decades, already been more or less whatever the powers that be have wanted it to be." Indeed it has been, but this is precisely because the powers that be have used various methods, including propaganda, lies, and false-flag operations, to sway public opinion. Given your view, according to which "the powers that be" have for many decades been doing what they want without worrying about public opinion, I wonder about your explanation for the fact that in 1962 the joint chiefs of staff came up with Operation Northwoods, which consisted of various "pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba," some of which would have involved killing Americans and then blaming Cubans. One of these was a "Remember the Maine" incident: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba."
Likewise, how do you explain the fact that when the powers that be wanted to attack North Vietnam, they engineered the Tonkin Gulf hoax? Why didn't they just tell the American people, "Look, we want to control Vietnam, so we are going to attack North Vietnam, even though this will likely cost over 50,000 American lives"? And if the Bush-Cheney administration in particular just does what it wants without bothering to marshal public opinion, why did it, before it attacked Iraq, fabricate lies about weapons of mass destruction and ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda? And why did it work to convince the public that Iraq was behind the anthrax scare when it knew otherwise? Given the fact that your a priori argument for why the government would not have orchestrated 9/11 has no historical support, your excuse for ignoring the empirical evidence for the inside-job view collapses. Having shown this, I turn now to your retorts to my responses.
Answer to follow-up question 1. I was surprised that you spent so much time arguing that my made-up story is "fantastic." Is it not obvious that it was intended to be? It's sole purpose was to demonstrate the absurdity of your claim that, to disprove a criminal charge, it would insufficient to prove that one could not have committed the crime; one would also have to provide a "concrete theory of what happened, who ordered what and when they ordered it, and why." And, given your characterization of the judge as a "real jerk" -- because, after being given scientific proof that you could not have committed the crime, he "refuses to dismiss the charges still, again grumpily insisting on proof of the alternative theory of the crime" -- I take it that you have conceded the point. However, rather than simply conceding, you use the story's reference to attorneys to go on the attack. Pointing out that defense attorneys are typically less concerned to discover the truth than simply "to annihilate the prosecutor's arguments piece by piece," you accuse me of taking the same approach -- of engaging in "the opposite of investigation, the opposite of a sincere quest for truth."
But you provide no evidence to support this charge, even though I had published six books about 9/11 from which you surely, if your charge were true, could have found many illustrations. You ignore, moreover, the fact that this is precisely the charge that I have leveled, at great length and with multiple examples, against the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), which put out the official report on the destruction of the Twin Towers. I believe that most people who read Chapters 2 and 3 of my Debunking 9/11 Debunking, in which I make and document this charge, will agree that the charge you have made applies to these bodies, not to me. Another problem with your charge -- that I am engaged in "the opposite of a sincere quest for truth" -- is that it implies that you are engaged in such a quest, rather than simply trying to annihilate the claims of the 9/11 truth community.
I find it difficult, however, to reconcile this self-evaluation with your practice. You evidently accept the government's account as stating, at least roughly, what really happened on 9/11. And you presumably agree that a theory is unacceptable if it is contradicted by some of the relevant facts. And yet you seem untroubled by all the facts I have pointed out that do contradict the government's account of 9/11. Indeed, you seem to take pride in ignoring such facts. As I pointed out in my answer to the first of your original questions, you have cheerfully agreed that you are "ignoring the mountains of scientific evidence proving that the Towers could not have collapsed as a result of the plane crashes alone," saying that even if such proffered evidence were sound, it would prove nothing.
In your new essay, you say that America "can't afford to be wasting its time arguing about thermite reactions and 'morphing technology.'" But if there is scientific evidence that "the Towers could not have collapsed as a result of the plane crashes [and ensuing fires] alone," and that they were instead brought down by explosives, then the government's story, supported by the 9/11 Commission and NIST, is false. If dust from Ground Zero shows signs of thermite reactions (which physicist Steven Jones has shown to be the case ), this provides additional physical evidence -- on top of the evidence that steel melted and all the testimonial evidence of explosions going off in the buildings -- that explosives were used. And if the reported cell phone calls were faked by means of voice morphing, this means that there is no evidence of Arab-Muslim hijackers on the planes. I am puzzled how you can reconcile your contempt for all such evidence with your claim to being engaged in a "sincere quest for truth." While you continue to complain that I am "telephone-averse" (although I explained that I correspond frequently with experts by email, which is superior to telephone conversations by virtue of providing written statements), you seem to be evidence-averse.
In any case, turning next to what you call "the actual question," you summarize it as: "why would Bush sit there like a dunce if he knew the attacks were coming?" But this was not "the actual question" you had raised. It was, instead: "[If the Secret Service] knew about this whole thing in advance, why didn't they plan to make Bush look a little less like a paralyzed yutz." This is very different from saying that Bush himself knew, which we have no basis for saying.
What we can safely infer, given the failure of the Secret Service to whisk Bush from the school, is that at least the lead Secret Service agent -- who overruled a subordinate, who had planned to whisk Bush away -- knew who was responsible for the attacks and thereby knew that hijackers were not going to crash a plane into the school. Next, having changed the question to why, if Bush himself knew about the attacks in advance, he simply sat there, you say that my answer, apparently, is that Bush is incompetent. You then seek to show my position to be self-contradictory by saying, as if my position implied this: "Oh, he's competent enough, one guesses, to pull off the greatest and vastest criminal conspiracy in the history of the human race without getting caught." But neither I nor anyone else in the 9/11 truth community, to my knowledge, has suggested that Bush planned the 9/11 attacks. Dick Cheney, who was formerly the secretary of defense, yes, but not Bush himself. Instead of changing the question so that you could attack a straw-man position, I wish you had responded to my suggestion that "you should be concerned about why, if the attacks were a surprise, the Secret Service left Bush at the school." But perhaps you are content with what seems to be your answer to all such problems: They just screwed up.
And yet, although this screw-up could have cost the president his life -- because if the planes had really been under the control of al-Qaeda pilots, one of them might have been bearing down on the school at the very moment the Secret Service should have been whisking Bush away -- no one, evidently, was fired. I would think this might give you pause. In any case, before moving on to the next question, you say, in response to my comment that people who support the official story are also conspiracy theorists, that this is a "tired and boring movement truism," which you have heard 500 times. I made the comment, however, because you were using the term as if it applied only to people who affirm the alternative conspiracy theory. You said, for example: "9/11 conspiracy is so shamefully stupid."
I would agree with that judgment, of course, if you meant the original 9/11 conspiracy theory. But you clearly meant only the alternative theory, according to which 9/11 was an inside job. So I could only assume that you had never heard anyone point out that the official theory is itself a conspiracy theory. The failure to acknowledge this point is virtually universal among critics of the alternative conspiracy theory. For example, New York Times journalist Jim Dwyer wrote an article entitled "2 U.S. Reports Seek to Counter Conspiracy Theories About 9/11." Although a more accurate title would have been, "2 U.S. Reports Say Government's Conspiracy Theory Is Better than Alternative Conspiracy Theories," you would look in vain for a story in the Times, or any other mainstream publication, with such a title. Likewise, a Popular Mechanics book defending the government's conspiracy theory is subtitled: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. Why is this one-sided use of the term so prevalent? Paul Krugman recently wrote:
"[M]any of the people who throw around terms like 'loopy conspiracy theories' are lazy bullies who [as one observer put it] want to 'confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree.' Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy."
We in the 9/11 truth community will cease pointing out that the official theory is a conspiracy theory when defenders of the official story begin treating this fact like what you rightly say it is, a truism, rather than continuing to use "conspiracy theory" in a one-sided way to exploit the negative connotations the term has accrued -- as you yourself continue to do.
2. Matt Taibbi I figured this would be your answer -- that the high-level people in both agencies could have been in on it, while the lower-level people were not. On the surface, I suppose that makes sense. Except that the complicity of scores of lower-level government employees from agencies throughout the federal apparatus would have been necessary to cover up the crime. Who was cleaning up the "non-plane" plane parts at the Pentagon? I'm assuming it wasn't Richard Myers. Who cleaned up the "phony" crash site in Pennsylvania, hid the bomb "evidence" in the rubble at the Trade Center? I'm assuming it wasn't Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani. But whatever, I'm not going to dwell on this one. Your subsequent answers were much more interesting.
David Ray Griffin responds: Yes, many more people were certainly complicit in the cover-up than in the operation itself, as in most such operations.
3. Matt Taibbi: Again, your answer here to the question of why a plotter would go blabbing his secrets on TV is basically well, er, maybe he wasn't that smart. Which is basically no answer at all. Make no mistake about it -- if Rudy Giuliani knew ahead of time that hundreds of New York firefighters were about to be murdered via bombs planted in the World Trade Center, there is no fucking way in hell he is going to start blabbing on television about the buildings coming down.
Nobody is that stupid -- and especially not a man who, whatever you might think of him as a politician or as a person, has been one of the most accomplished criminal prosecutors of his time.
But an even larger point here isn't that you believe that Rudy Giuliani is that stupid; it's that you believe he is that evil. No one in the press, and I mean no one, has been harsher critic of Rudy Giuliani than me (well, okay, Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice has. But no one else). I believe Rudy to be almost limitlessly greedy and power-hungry, a man who will say and do almost anything to get elected. But here's the thing. Regardless of what I think of his politics, I also believe that Rudy Giuliani believes that he is a patriotic, decent, law-abiding citizen.
And he's able to believe that because he does, in fact, have a record of sorts. Rudy has put away dangerous mobsters, broken extortion rings, uncovered government corruption, and wiped out an insider-trading network, taking on the likes of the Gambinos and the Boesky-Milken axis. I don't like what he's become, sure, and he certainly hasn't been shy about grandstanding over his achievements -- but he does have real, civically-valuable achievements. Bigger achievements than you or I have on our records, by far, as embarrassing as that is to admit.
And this is what makes it so crazy that you're so willing to believe that Rudy Giuliani was complicit in the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including team after team of New York city firemen. You don't have any evidence at all; you're just a telephone-averse academic in the California suburbs indicting people left and right on the basis of what? Of nothing at all. One ambiguous statement in the media. Even worse, when pressed, you come up with a real whopper -- that Rudy okayed the wanton murder of thousands of Americans in order save the money his city would have had to pay out for asbestos removal!
Are you fucking kidding me? I'd harp on the fact that this doesn't even make sense (he murders New Yorkers in order to save them money? Not his personal money, but their -- our -- public money?), except that the obscenity of this accusation so totally outweighs its lack of sense.
And also, by the way, you might have picked up the telephone here, too. It took me five minutes to blow up that particular assertion, just by calling the New York City comptroller's office and asking the very obvious question of how much the city stood to gain financially by having its entire downtown district covered in toxic dust and incurring millions of dollars in overtime for its emergency personnel for the better part of three months.
According to that office, they spent $365 million extra in overtime costs in FY 2002 alone. They estimated the total cleanup costs -- from the initial year or so of cleanup -- at about $659 million. "We lost about $2 billion in taxes in 2002 and about $928 billion in 2003 alone," a spokesman for the comptroller's office told me when I called. When I mentioned that someone had a theory that the WTC was blown up to get New York out of an asbestos cleanup, the guy laughed. "Yeah, that makes sense," he says. "This way we had to clean it up anyway. Except it was spread all the way up to Canal Street now, on mountains of rubble and dead bodies."
If Rudy Giuliani green-lighted the 9/11 attacks in order to save the city money, he sure picked a bizarre strategy -- gutting his tax base, straining his services appropriations to the breaking point, and physically destroying some of his city's most valuable infrastructure. Doing all that to avoid a mandated asbestos cleanup makes about as much sense as hijacking a plane full of passengers, secretly disposing of them somewhere, and then faking its crash into the Pentagon while actually launching a missile, all in order to avoid an audit of the Department of Defense. I mean really, where do you get these ideas? Are you completely insane?
As for the charge that Rudy maybe did this to launch a run for president again, this would be laughable if it weren't so disgusting. You don't appear cowed at all by the act of accusing another man of murder, be it Rudy Giuliani, Richard Myers, Ted Olson, or whomever. In the real world, i.e. in the world where we can't publish things unless they're true, we don't make such accusations unless we have very compelling evidence. Not only do we not want to get sued, we actually don't want to be wrong. Because, you know, it's a little bit monstrous to call someone a murderer without proof. This is an intellectual flaw on your part, a rhetorical flaw, but more than that it's a moral flaw. And it pervades a great deal of your work.
David Ray Griffin responds: With regard to Rudy Giuliani, you have evidently given up your claim that it was "absolutely impossible" that he had foreknowledge. But you again state that Giuliani "blabbed" on television, although I had explained that this term is misleading because he "merely said something that was recognized to imply foreknowledge by the few people who knew the relevant facts." You believe, however, that he would not even have done this. "Nobody is that stupid -- and especially not a man who has been one of the most accomplished criminal prosecutors of his time."
I would think that a moment's reflection on the names "Elliott Spitzer" and "John Edwards" might cause you to reconsider that claim. (Edwards was not a criminal prosecutor, but a plaintiff's attorney, but I assume your point was about accomplished trial lawyers in general, that they would all be too smart to do something really stupid.) In any case, your main claim is that Giuliani would not have been complicit in the murder of thousands of people because "he is [not] that evil." Your faith in him is touching. But it is no different from the faith of Germans that their leaders could not have possibly been running death camps, or the faith of Japanese that their soldiers could not be butchering hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Manchuria on the basis of a false-flag operation (the Mukden Incident). The question must be settled on the basis of evidence, not faith. On this issue, you say to me: "You don't have any evidence at all."
Since you have evidently made this statement without reading any of the evidence I have presented (in, say, Debunking 9/11 Debunking), let me summarize a few points. First, the conclusion that the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down by explosives is now beyond reasonable doubt. Besides the fact that total collapse has never been induced in steel-frame high-rise buildings from any cause other than pre-placed explosives in the process known as controlled demolition, there are at least a dozen features of the collapses that can be explained, and only explained, on the supposition that such explosives were used (such as the fact that the buildings came straight down and at virtually free-fall speed; that there were horizontal ejections over 500 feet of steel columns weighing thousands of tons; that steel was melted and even oxidized, processes that required temperatures far greater than the fires could have been; that hundreds of witnesses, including firefighters, police officers, reporters, and WTC employees, reported massive explosions going off in the Twin Towers long after all the jet fuel would have burned up; and that several people, including two city officials who were in the building, reported explosions in WTC 7 [as I discuss in my new book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited]).
This conclusion is now publicly endorsed by many hundreds of professionals in the relevant disciplines, including physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, intelligence officers, and philosophers of science (see Patriots Question 9/11). The second point is that, if explosives had not been planted in the buildings, there would have been no basis for expecting them to collapse, and yet it was known in advance that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were going to come down. That is relevant to the present point because in both cases the message that the buildings were coming down can be traced back to Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management -- as I document in both of the aforementioned books. Next, in seeking a reductio ad absurdum, you characterize me as holding that "Rudy okayed the wanton murder of thousands of Americans in order save the money his city would have had to pay out for asbestos removal!"
But this is like McCain's claim that Obama's energy program consisted of recommending that Americans inflate their tires. Obama made this recommendation when, after he had laid out what an Obama administration would do, a member of the audience asked what ordinary citizens could do. Likewise, I made the point about asbestos after you said that any reason Giuliani might have had for participating in the conspiracy would have been "some completely insane reason." I see now that, in order to avoid being McCained, I should have made a more complete statement of his possible motives. First, as I already mentioned, he could have expected that, by being ready to appear to act heroically that day, he could exploit this image to become president -- a strategy that almost worked, as he was leading in the polls when the contest for the Republican nomination began. Second, he as a Republican and a patriot likely supported the Bush-Cheney drive to use 9/11 as a pretext to gain control of the lion's share of the world's oil reserves in Central Asia and the Middle East.
Like you, I believe Giuliani sees himself as a patriot and, given our competitive world order, patriots often regard it as their duty to work for the good of their own countries, even when this means sacrificing thousands of their own citizens and also devastating other countries. The Italian statesman Camillo Cavour once said: "If we did for ourselves what we do for our country, what scoundrels we would be." Third, the dramatic footage of the Twin Towers being hit by "hijacked airliners," then exploding at the top, with dust clouds that reminded people of a nuclear explosion, then suffering total collapse, killing thousands of people, was an essential part of the psy-war directed at the American people that day, getting them ready to give carte blanche to a war on Islamic nations packaged as a "war on terror." You claim that the first of these possible motives -- that Giuliani's perceived heroism on 9/11 might help him become president -- is "laughable."
What is really laughable, however, is your statement, "In the real world, we can't publish things unless they're true." That is so obviously false that I will not bother to elaborate. I do agree, however, with your statement that "we don't [i.e., we shouldn't] make such accusations unless we have very compelling evidence." But I do believe that the 9/11 truth community has compiled and published compelling evidence that 9/11 was an inside job and that Giuliani was one of the insiders. You have certainly done nothing to undermine this belief. I would challenge you, in fact, to provide anything close to comparable evidence for the government's conspiracy theory. Popular Mechanics tried this and, as I showed in Chapter 4 of Debunking 9/11 Debunking, failed miserably. It would be interesting to see if you could do better. But thus far you have acted like the defense attorneys you describe, simply trying to annihilate the 9/11 truth community's arguments while ignoring all the problems in the government's theory.
4. Matt Taibbi: Okay, again, this is defense-lawyer thinking at its best. In a murder case usually two eyewitnesses make for a slam-dunk, but you're dismissive of 152 witnesses for a variety of hilarious reasons. A side note: the supposition that an eyewitness is not to be trusted because he works for the mainstream media I find especially funny -- as if a TV reporter, or for instance someone like me, who saw a missile hitting the Pentagon would keep such a sensational fact secret to protect the conspiracy! This from a person ready to toss out every single account of a cell phone call from a hijacked plane on the basis of a Washington Post story about "morphing technology." In fact, exactly how much of your theories would even be left, if you took out the information you got from "mainstream news reports"? And yet mainstream news reporters can't be counted on to tell the truth about seeing an airplane fly into the Pentagon. Hilarious!
Moreover, your only counter-supposition to the hijacked-airplane story is that, well, who knows, maybe it was a remote-controlled plane that hit the Pentagon. But of course! Again the same pattern: extraordinary diligence in attacking links in the "official story" chain, similarly extraordinary indifference to the issue of what actually happened, what actually happened being irrelevant to your enterprise.
I specifically asked you to tell me what your theory was, if it wasn't Hani Hanjour piloting a plane into the Pentagon, and you specifically avoided answering the question, instead retreating once again to the same old long-winded conspiratorial oatmeal about how bad a pilot he was, how he couldn't have pulled it off, yada yada yada.
But here's the thing: if it was not Hani Hanjour flying that plane, it follows that something truly fantastic happened, a confluence of several absurdly unlikely sets of circumstances.
Now, maybe this is just me, but there is nothing at all unbelievable about a radical Sunni terrorist committing an act of suicidal terrorism with American citizens as the target.
But I need to see some actual evidence before I'll buy the U.S. Air Force a) shooting a missile or a remote-controlled drone into the Pentagon, intentionally refusing to warn other military personnel, while also b) somehow effecting the magical disappearance/execution of a whole planeload of genuinely missing civilian jet passengers and c) coaxing all the on-the-ground personnel in the Pentagon, who've just suffered a deadly attack at the conspirators' hands, to go along with the cover-up of the missile/drone wreckage, and d) cleverly arranging false witness testimony from (at minimum) 152 willing confederates, or however many non "mainstream media members" you're willing to admit. Among other silly things.
You're talking about an unbelievably complicated narrative laced up and down with spy-novel sensationalisms that would have made Ian Fleming blush: secret kidnappings of jet passengers, super-advanced remote-controlled aircraft, branches of the military attacking each other in secret, a media deception of unprecedented scope, "morphing technology" effecting astonishingly effective fake phone calls and for what, exactly? This part makes the least sense of all.
We know why al-Qaeda would want to attack the Pentagon. But why your conspirators would want to fake a plane hijacking/crash and then shoot a missile or a drone into the Pentagon -- unless they're just murderous lunatics acting in unprecedentedly harmonious psychotic concert, not folie a deux even but folie a deux cent -- this is beyond the ability of even a person such as yourself to come up with even a distantly plausible explanation.
The best thing you can come up with is this idiotic remote-controlled jet theory, and the most generous thing one can say about that is that it takes perhaps five or ten seconds longer than some of your other ideas to inspire uncontrollable laughter -- specifically, until one gets to the part where one imagines a planeload of passengers, copies of The Wall Street Journal in hand, cheerfully stepping aboard a plane with no flight personnel and smiling all the way through the vessel's eerie Dracula-ship takeoff to oblivion.
I don't know, it's just me -- but if I had doubts about it having been a plane that hit the Pentagon, I'd be re-interviewing those witnesses that said they saw one. That you haven't done this tells me an awful lot about your motives. Do you just not want to hear it, or are you more comfortable with internet links, who don't talk back?
David Ray Griffin responds: With regard to the number of witnesses who reported seeing an airliner strike the Pentagon, I am glad you reduced your claim down from "thousands" to merely 152. But that is still much too high. The list to which I referred, which was compiled by Eric Bart, contains 152 people who were regarded as "witnesses" in some sense or another to what happened at the Pentagon. But in a statement that you simply ignored, I pointed out that "only some of them claim to have seen an airliner hit the Pentagon." Some of the other people gave quite different reports, with six of them speaking of a small or mid-sized aircraft, perhaps a commuter jet or even a missile.
Still others believed that the damage had been caused by one or more bombs. Only 66 of the 152 claimed to have seen an airliner headed toward the Pentagon, and only 31 of those claimed to have observed this airliner actually strike the Pentagon. An examination of those 31, moreover, raises doubts about their authenticity. In pointing to the causes for such doubts, I quoted Jerry Russell's summary statement that 24 of these "worked for either the Federal Government or the mainstream media," which led you to say that eyewitnesses should not be mistrusted simply because they work for the mainstream media. That is true, because there are other criteria that must be used when deciding whether to accept testimony of such people.
One such criterion involves a principle commonly used by historians in evaluating conflicting testimonies of people who belong to some movement or institution. Let's say that two strong supporters of John McCain's bid for the presidency give different accounts of some event in his life. One account makes him seem noble and heroic, the other account reflects poorly on him. All other things being equal, we would give more credence to the critical account, because such an account from a McCain supporter would be surprising, suggesting that party spirit has been trumped by honesty. Another commonly used criterion is that we should be suspicious of testimony of a member of some organization when that testimony supports that organization's official position but is contradicted by physical evidence.
Applying these principles to the testimony of reporters for the corporate press, which has been completely supportive of the official account of 9/11, we would be suspicious of statements that support this account whenever such statements conflict with testimony from other mainstream reporters and/or the relevant physical evidence. An example of conflict with physical evidence is provided by the testimony of Steve Anderson of USA Today, who said that he watched as a plane "banked slightly to the left, drug its wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon." Given the fact that photographs of the Pentagon lawn immediately after that attack showed so sign of the enormous scar that would have been caused by a wing dragging along the ground, Anderson's testimony must be considered untrustworthy. For conflict between various reporters within the mainstream media, we can take the seven reporters in Eric Bart's list who claimed to have seen an airliner hit the Pentagon. I should not, incidentally, have simply used Russell's summary statement, which refers to them as working for the "mainstream media."
I should have been more specific, to wit: five of these seven worked for Gannett (primarily USA Today), and another for the Armed Forces Information Service. In any case, what these reporters said is at odds with what other reporters have said. For example, CNN's Jamie McIntyre, having inspected the area near the strike zone shortly after the attack, said that all he saw were "very small pieces of the plane , small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around." The conflict becomes even stronger when we combine McIntyre's observation, which dealt with the area outside the building, with that of ABC's John McWethy, whom I quoted before about what he observed inside the building, namely: "I got in very close, got a look early on at the bad stuff. I could not, however, see any plane wreckage."
If an airliner really hit the Pentagon, why did these reporters find no evidence of a crashed airliner either inside or outside? As you can see, it is not simply a matter of accepting or rejecting testimony from the mainstream press. One has to choose which testimonies to accept. According to the criterion discussed above, testimonies that are in tension with the story endorsed by the corporate press have greater credibility (all other things being equal) than those that support this story. The same principle can be applied with regard to Pentagon personnel. They provided nine of the most graphic accounts of an airliner hitting the Pentagon. But other Pentagon personnel gave testimonies suggesting that nothing of that nature occurred. Having quoted Army officer April Gallop before, I will here quote some other witnesses. Dean Eckmann, who flew an Air Force F-16 over the Pentagon after it was damaged, said he suspected that the damage had been caused by "a big fuel tanker truck because of the amount of smoke and flames coming up and . . . there was no airplane wreckage off to the side." Sgt. Reginald Powell said: "I was . . . impressed with how the building stood up, after they told me the size of the plane. And then I was in awe that I saw no plane, nothing left from the plane.
It was like it disintegrated as it went into the building." Karen Kwiatkowski, an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, spoke of "a dearth of visible debris on the lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact." Registered Nurse Eileen Murphy said: "I expected to see the airplane, so I guess my initial impression was, 'Where's the plane? How come there's not a plane? I would have thought we would have seen something like part of, or half of the plane, or the lower part, or the back of the plane. So it was just a real surprise that the plane wasn't there." Research analyst Will Jarvis, having hoped to see the plane, said: "There was just nothing left. It was incinerated. We couldn't see a tail or a wing or anything." When you add these testimonies to those of fire captains Dennis Gilroy and John Durrer, which I quoted before, you can see that the testimony that an airliner hit the building is in strong tension with testimony from many people who were at the Pentagon. And, again, the set of testimonies that goes against the Pentagon's official story must be accorded greater credibility.
In explaining grounds for doubting the testimonies that an airliner hit the Pentagon, I also quoted Russell's point that many of these testimonies contain "substantial errors or contradictions." Since that summary statement did not impress you, I will give some examples. In addition to USA Today's Steve Anderson, quoted earlier, three other people claiming to have seen a plane hitting the Pentagon said that it hit the ground first. Mary Ann Owens, who like Anderson worked for Gannett, said "the left wing dipped and scraped the helicopter area." David Marra reportedly said that after the wing touched the helicopter pad, the plane "cartwheeled" into the Pentagon. Self-described pilot Tim Timmerman, who told CNN that the Pentagon was hit by an American Airlines Boeing 757, "no question," said that "it hit right in front of the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting the ground."
All of these testimonies, besides being disproved by the available photographic evidence, are contrary to the official story. Other sets of testimonies are discredited by being mutually contradictory. For example, two people said they could see in the windows of the plane, whereas others said the plane was dark, perhaps because the blinds were pulled down. Also, Major Lincoln Leibner, saying that the plane "completely entered the building," added: "The plane went into the building like a toy into a birthday cake." USA Today reporter Narayanan Vin, by contrast, said: "The hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon at a ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held up like a champ. It barely budged."
As such problems in many of the testimonies show, the question of what damaged the Pentagon cannot be responsibly settled by cherry-picking a few testimonies. We must weigh the testimony that supports the official story against that which does not. We must also evaluate this testimony in relation to physical facts, including these: (a) photographs showing the absence of a plane and the absence of the kind of damage that would be expected from a Boeing 757 going several hundred miles per hour; (b) the failure of the alleged crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon to create a seismic signal strong enough to register on any nearby seismograph; and (c) the failure of Pentagon officials to produce any of the physical evidence that, if Flight 77 had hit the Pentagon, would have proved this: the flight data recorder; any of the other airplane parts with unique serial numbers; and the 85 videos, admittedly possessed by the Department of Justice, from cameras trained on the Pentagon. In sum: Weighed against contrary testimony and the relevant physical evidence, the evidence provided for the airliner theory by alleged eyewitness testimonies is very weak, especially given the problems inherent in the testimonies and the affiliations of many of the witnesses.
I turn now to another of your lines of attack, in which you say that I am "ready to toss out every single account of a cell phone call from a hijacked plane on the basis of a Washington Post story about "morphing technology." However, if you would read my accounts, you would see that this is no more accurate than McCain's reduction of Obama's energy program to his recommendation to inflate our tires. Other elements in my argument are: (1) Cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners were technologically impossible in 2001, yet many people received calls that they believed to be from cell phones, either because they were told this or because they recognized their spouse's cell phone number on their Caller ID. (2) After the impossibility of such cell phones calls became widely known, the FBI simply changed the story, saying that all those reported cell phone calls -- except two that occurred when Flight 93 was down to 5,000 feet -- were really made from passenger-seat phones. (3) In some cases, the FBI's new story involved rejecting the statements made in FBI documents, such as affidavits, from 9/11 itself. (4) Some of the calls contained internal evidence of not being authentic. The possibility of voice morphing is not the reason for rejecting the calls; it is a way to explain the reported calls, given the fact that high-altitude cell phone calls could not have been made -- a fact with which the FBI evidently came to agree.
In still another line of attack, you say: "[Y]our only counter-supposition to the hijacked-airplane story is that, well, who knows, maybe it was a remote-controlled plane that hit the Pentagon." But my reference to the possibility of remote control was made after I had spent some paragraphs explaining why I did not think that the Pentagon had been hit by an airliner of any sort, whether remote-controlled or not, adding that I had laid out such evidence more fully in Debunking 9/11 Debunking. In concluding this line of thought, which was directed against your claim to know that someone had piloted a plane into the Pentagon, I added: "Even if an airliner had hit the Pentagon, moreover, it might have been controlled remotely." For you to say that this is my "only counter-supposition to the hijacked-airplane story" is no different from McCain's saying that Obama's only solution to the energy problem is to encourage people to inflate their tires. Continuing to caricature what you call my "idiotic remote-controlled jet theory," you say you were sent into uncontrollable laughter by my scenario, which involves a "planeload of passengers, copies of The Wall Street Journal in hand, cheerfully stepping aboard a plane with no flight personnel and smiling all the way through the vessel's eerie Dracula-ship takeoff to oblivion."
That would indeed be a hilarious suggestion if anyone had made it. Those who believe that the planes were remotely controlled, however, have suggested either a switch, as proposed in Operation Northwoods, in which the plane containing crew and passengers was to be replaced with a remotely controlled drone, or else a technological override, in which the power to steer the airliner was taken out of the pilot's hands. With regard to Hani Hanjour, you continue to insist that, if I think he didn't pilot Flight 77 into the Pentagon, I must tell you what really happened. But you had seemingly accepted my point that, to disprove the government's theory, I need not provide a full-fledged alternative theory: It's sufficient to show that the government's theory cannot be true, and clearly Hani Hanjour could not have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon. You say that "there is nothing at all unbelievable about a radical Sunni terrorist committing an act of suicidal terrorism with American citizens as the target." But that is to divert attention from the issue at hand, which is that there is something very unbelievable about a man who could not safely fly a tiny single-engine plane piloting a Boeing 757 into the Pentagon, especially given the trajectory it reportedly took in order to strike Wedge 1 at ground level.
You complain that I retreat into "long-winded conspiratorial oatmeal about how bad a pilot he was, how he couldn't have pulled it off, yada yada yada." Why call this "conspiratorial oatmeal," as if it were something the 9/11 truth community made up? It was your trusted mainstream press that pointed out Hanjour's incompetence, with the New York Times, in an article called "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence," quoting one of his instructors as saying that Hanjour "could not fly at all." And the report that shortly before 9/11, a flight instructor "declined a second request [from Hanjour for a lesson] because of what he considered Hanjour's poor piloting skills," was made by the 9/11 Commission. Why don't you, instead of continuing to use the term "conspiracy" in a one-sided way, complain about the government's "conspiratorial oatmeal" about Hanjour's flying a giant airliner like an ace? I am truly puzzled about your attitude towards impossibilities. Just as you dismiss scientific evidence that the official story of the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings is physically impossible, you dismiss evidence that the official story about Flight 77 being flown into the Pentagon by Hani Hanjour was impossible. You seem to be an extreme fideist when it comes to official story about the 9/11, saying, in effect: "So what if it's impossible? I believe it anyway."
5. Matt Taibbi: I was greatly saddened when I read this answer, because it forced me to rewrite the entire first chapter of my next book, The 10 Most Retarded Things I Have Read This Year. The notion that Pentagon officials blew up a section of their building, and then crashed something (a missile, a drone, whatever) into that same section of the Pentagon in order to hide evidence of financial malfeasance, and kill the relevant auditors, is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it almost belies comment.
In exactly what form do you think this "evidence" was kept? Do you think it was hammered into granite slabs and mounted, hieroglyph-style, on the building's walls? Why else would it be necessary to blow the area up? It should be noted that even U.S. Senators have for decades failed in their attempts to extract meaningful financial data from the Department of Defense, which has failed to comply with the Chief Financial Officer's Act since at least 1990 and is, in the words of former Senate aide and defense budget analyst Winslow Wheeler, "unauditable."
Despite its appalling accounting practices the DOD has never come close to changing its ways, mainly because there is absolutely nothing like political momentum in congress for starting an investigation into its spending habits. In fact, in the years after Rumsfeld's "shocking" announcement, a succession of both Republican and Democratic congresses were so horrified by the bad accounting that they increased defense spending every year by an average of $50 billion dollars a year!
The closest thing to a "threat" to the DOD's spending habits that it has experienced in recent years was a call by Dennis Kucinich for an investigation into the unaccounted-for defense funds. A call that was, like almost everything else Dennis Kucinich has asked for, completely ignored. You really think John Murtha's Democrats are going to start demanding an investigation into Pentagon spending? Or Ted Stevens's Republicans? There will never, ever be a serious movement to pry those books open -- and there certainly wasn't even a hint of one on the horizon back in 2001. You might have noticed that Democrats have since taken over both houses of congress, and there hasn't been so much as a whiff of interest in investigating defense spending. So exactly whom were they hiding the evidence from? Exactly whose easy access to Pentagon records did they fear? Yours? Or did your thinking not even go that far?
So the notion that Don Rumsfeld would a) announce a major accounting problem and then b) blow up a section of his own building the next day, murdering over a hundred people, in order to save the bureaucratically impregnable Department of Defense from the investigative ravages of Dennis Kucinich, or someone like him -- that is high, high comedy. I defy you to call any budget analyst in Washington, lay that theory on him, and not have your ears laughed off on the telephone. Oh, I forgot, you don't make phone calls.
Beyond that, even I mean, come on! Even if you wanted to kill someone possessing dangerous information, even if you wanted to hide evidence, do you honestly think the best way to accomplish this would be to fake an elaborate terrorist attack that would focus the eyes of the entire world on the "attack site," aiming a missile or a drone or, let's say, a passenger jet liner, at the office in question? Subtle! Now there's a plan with a very high probability of success! "I know -- we'll herd a bunch of innocent civilian passengers onto a remote-controlled plane, a flight which we've cleverly appropriated from American airlines, and crash it into the very spot in the Pentagon where we'll be exploding bombs at the moment of impact! And everyone will buy it because, as it happens, we'll also be conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center and blame it on Saudi religious radicals in order to advance an imperialist agenda that involves invading the secular dictatorship of Iraq in response!"
It's all so simple! Why didn't I think of that?
Don't you ever wonder about the curious coincidence of criminal interests extant in your muddled thinking? Department of Defense embezzlers just happening to develop a sudden need to commit mass murder to cover up financial malfeasance at the very moment when Rudy Giuliani decides he's on board with leveling the World Trade Center, in order to save New York from having to pay for an expensive asbestos cleanup -- right at the time Dick Cheney and George Bush happened to be plotting to seize Iraq's oil reserves using a violent "false flag" attack involving the murder to untold thousands of Americans? How fortunate that these criminally needy bodies found each other at just the same moment. And I thought Strangers on a Train was unrealistic.
Come on, you can't possibly believe this bullshit! Even the phrasing of your answer -- "that does not mean that a plausible theory cannot be provided" -- betrays the near-total absence of interest on your part in getting your theories to make any kind of sense. The "theory" you provide isn't even your own, just something you scared up while digging through the steadily-expanding mega-landfill of Truther lore -- and recently, it seems to me, perhaps even in response to my questions. This is the very definition of half-assed thinking, half-assed research.

Part III Will Be Posted Shortly!!

Part I Of The Ultimate 9/11 'Truth' Showdown: David Ray Griffin vs. Matt Taibbi

2008-10-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

Good Monday afternoon! I hope you are not in a panic as the Dow takes another dive today. Obviously, the bailout bill wasn't "big" enough for these whiners, and they'll keep "tanking" until they "extort" more billions from us!!
Anyway, I found a fascinating exchange between two authors about 9/11 at AlterNet, and because their is lingering controversy, I thought many of you readers would enjoy reading what they have to say. It was a huge article, and therefore it will be broken down into 3 parts, so you won't feel like you are reading the telephone directory cover to cover, at one sitting.

The authors are Matt Taibbi, who is a writer for Rolling Stone. He is the author of The Great Derangement (Spiegel and Grau, 2008), and
David Ray Griffin, who is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University (California). His 34 books include seven about 9/11, the most recent of which is The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposure" (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008).

A poll of 17 countries that came out September of this year revealed that majorities in only nine of them "believe that al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States." A Zogby oll from 2006, found that in America, 42% of respondents believed the US government and 9/11 Commission "covered up" the events of 9/11. It's safe to say that at least tens of millions of Americans don't believe anything close to the official account offered by the 9/11 Commission, and that much of the outside world remains skeptical.
Over the years, Alternet has run dozens of stories, mostly critical, of the 9/11 Movement. Matt Tiabbi has taken on the 9/11 Truth Movement head on in a series of articles, and most recently in his new book, The Great Derangement
In April, I asked Taibbi if he would be interested in interviewing David Ray Griffin, a leading member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University and author of seven of the books on 9/11, about his recent book, 9/11 Contradictions. After months of back and forths between them and some editorial delays, I'm pleased to share their written exchange -- all 24,000 words of it. What we have here are the preeminent writers on both sides of the 9/11 Truth argument; a one-of-a-kind debate. Because the questions and responses are quite long, I've woven them together in order. Enjoy. -- Jan Frel, AlterNet Senior Editor.

1. Matt Taibbi (May 16, 2008): In your first chapter, you seem to imply -- well, you not only imply, you come out and say it -- that you think the real reason George W. Bush didn't hurry to finish his reading of My Pet Goat might have been that "the Secret Service had no real fear of an attack." In other words, they knew the plan in advance, and the plan didn't involve an attempt on Bush's life, hence "no real fear." My question is this: if they knew about this whole thing in advance, why didn't they plan to make Bush look a little less like a paralyzed yutz at the moment of truth? If the purpose of the entire exercise was propaganda, wasn't it counterproductive to have the intrepid leader sitting there frozen with panicked indecision, a kid's book about goats in his hands, at the critical moment of his presidency? What possible benefit could that have served the conspirators?
David Ray Griffin responds (June 12, 2008): Matt, I appreciate this opportunity provided by you and AlterNet to respond to questions about my writings on 9/11, especially my most recent book, 9/11 Contradictions, which is addressed specifically to journalists (as well as Congress).
Before responding to your first question, however, I need to address a theme that is implicit throughout your questions. I refer to your claim, which you have spelled out in previous writings, that those who believe 9/11 was an inside job must, to make this claim credible, present a complete theory as to how this operation was carried out.
You made this claim in the article in which you referred to "9/11 conspiracy theorists" as "idiots." They must be idiots, you said, because "9/11 conspiracy is so shamefully stupid." Saying that you could not give all your reasons for this claim, you wrote: "I'll have to be content with just one point: 9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime." By "an affirmative theory," you meant a "concrete theory of what happened, who ordered what and when they ordered it, and why." In the absence of such a theory, you went on to claim, "all the rest," including the "alleged scientific impossibilities," is "bosh and bunkum."
Recognizing that members of the 9/11 truth movement will argue that you are "ignoring the mountains of scientific evidence proving that the Towers could not have collapsed as a result of the plane crashes alone," you replied: "[Y]ou're right. I am ignoring it. You idiots. Even if it were not the rank steaming bullshit my few scientist friends assure me that it is, none of that stuff would prove anything."
Your argument here has two problems (aside from your self-contradictory statement that scientifically disproving the official account of how the Towers fell would prove nothing). First, like most people who defend the official account of 9/11, you use the term "conspiracy theorist" in a one-sided way, applying it only to people who reject the official account of 9/11. But that account is itself a conspiracy theory -- indeed, the original 9/11 conspiracy theory.
A conspiracy is simply an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime. One holds a conspiracy theory about some event (such as a bank robbery or a corporation defrauding its stockholders) if one believes that it resulted from such an agreement. A conspiracy theorist is simply someone who accepts such a theory.
According to the Bush-Cheney administration, the 9/11 attacks resulted from a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and various members of al-Qaeda, including the 19 men accused of hijacking the airliners. This official account is, therefore, a conspiracy theory. (This is not a new point: I made it in my first book on 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor. I even made it in the title of my 2007 book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. ) Accordingly, insofar as you accept this official account, you are a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. And yet you evidently do not consider yourself an idiot. Rather, you save that description, along with the term "conspiracy theorist," for those who reject the official conspiracy theory.
Looking aside from your selective name-calling, your one-sided use of the term would not be so bad except that it leads you to be one-sided in the demands you make: While demanding that rejecters of the official theory must provide an account of what happened that is both self-consistent and based on hard evidence, you do not seem concerned whether the official theory exemplifies those virtues. (I will illustrate this point in my responses to some of your other questions.)
In addition to this one-sidedness, there is a second problem with your claim that anyone challenging a theory must have a complete alternative theory: It is false. There are several ways to challenge a theory. You can cast doubt on it by showing that its alleged evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. You can show that a theory is probably false by pointing to evidence that apparently contradicts it. You can positively disprove a theory by providing evidence showing that it cannot possibly be true. The 9/11 truth movement has done all three with regard to the official account.
To make clearer why your claim is unreasonable, I'll use a method that you like to employ: I'll make up a story.
You and your best friend entered a contest and, on the basis of something you considered unfair, he won the rather sizable cash prize. A week later, he is found dead, killed by an arrow. Although you are heartbroken, you are arrested and charged with his murder.
The police claim that, being angry because you felt he had cheated you out of money and glory, you used a crossbow to shoot him from the roof of a nearby building. You hire an attorney to defend you, even though you are confident that, since the charge is false, the police could not possibly have any evidence against you.
At the trial, however, the prosecutor plays a recording on which your voice is heard threatening to kill your friend. He plays a video clip showing you going into the building carrying a case big enough to hold a disassembled crossbow. He presents a water bottle with your finger prints on it that was found on the roof.
In defending you, your attorney, having pointed out that the water bottle could have been planted, then argues that, since you did not make that call and never went into that building, the police must have fabricated evidence by using digital (voice and video) morphing technology. When the prosecutor rolls his eyes, your attorney cites William Arkin's 1999 Washington Post article, "When Seeing and Hearing Isn't Believing," which points out that voice morphing, like photo and video manipulation, is now good enough to fool anyone. With regard to why the police would have tried to frame you, your attorney suggests that the FBI may have asked the local police to put you away because of critical things you had written about the White House.

The prosecutor, smiling knowingly to the judge, says: "Oh my, a conspiracy theory." He then adds that, even if your attorney's speculations were true, which he doubted, it wouldn't matter: Your attorney could prove your innocence only by providing a complete and plausible account of the alleged conspiracy: Who ordered the frame-up and when, who carried it out, and how and where they did this. Your attorney replies that this is preposterous: You would not possibly have the resources and connections to do this.
In any case, your attorney says, he has scientific proof that the police's theory is false: A forensic lab has shown that the arrow that killed your friend could not possibly have flown the distance from the building's roof to the location where your friend was killed. He then asks the judged to dismiss all charges.
The judge, however, says that he's inclined to agree with the prosecution, especially if you are charging the government with engaging in a conspiracy: You need to provide a complete account of this alleged conspiracy. Not only that, the judge says, wickedly quoting a passage from one of your own writings: "In the real world you have to have positive proof of involvement to have a believable conspiracy theory." You must, he says, provide positive proof that the FBI and police conspired to frame you.
Your attorney protests, saying that, in spite of the fact that his client had articulated this requirement, it is absurd. The defense has done all it needs to do. Besides showing how all the evidence against the defendant could have been manufactured, it has shown that the government's theory is scientifically impossible.
The prosecutor objects, saying that the impossibility is merely alleged: He has some scientist friends who believe that the arrow could easily have traveled the distance in question.
The judge convicts you of murder.
Having shown you, I hope, that your demand for a complete theory, with positive proof, is unreasonable, I turn to your first question: "[If the Secret Service] knew about this whole thing in advance, why didn't they plan to make Bush look a little less like a paralyzed yutz at the moment of truth?" That's a good question, one that I myself asked near the end of The New Pearl Harbor, in a section entitled "Possible Problems for a Complicity Theory." Perhaps anticipating that you would come along, I pointed out that critics of the revisionist theory of 9/11 may well make the following claim:
[T]hese revisionists must do more than show that the official account is implausible. They must also present an alternative account of what happened that incorporates all the relevant facts now available in a plausible way. Furthermore, these counter-critics could continue, insofar as an alternative account is already contained, at least implicitly, in the writings of the revisionists, it could be subjected to a great number of rhetorical questions, to which easy answers do not appear to be at hand.
I then offered a series of such rhetorical questions, one of which was: Why would the president , after officially knowing that a modern-day Pearl Harbor was unfolding, continue to do "the reading thing"? And why would the president remain in his publicly known location, thereby appearing to demonstrate that he and his staff knew that no suicide missions were coming their way? Would not the conspirators have orchestrated a scene that made the Secret Service appear genuinely concerned and the president genuinely presidential?
I then pointed out that this and the other questions suggest that to accept the complicity theory would be to attribute a degree of incompetence to the conspirators that is beyond belief. But the truth may be that they really were terribly incompetent. With regard to the occupation of Iraq, the incompetence of the Bush administration's plans -- for everything except winning the initial military victory and securing the oil fields and ministries--has been becoming increasingly obvious. [This was written in late 2003.] Perhaps their formulation of the plan for 9/11, with its cover story, involved comparable incompetence. Perhaps this fact is not yet widely recognized only because the news media have failed to inform the American public about the many tensions between the official account and the relevant facts.
Moreover, I argued, whatever difficulty these rhetorical questions pose for a complicity theory, the problems in the official theory are far greater. After illustrating this point, I concluded:
Seen in this light, the fact that a complicity theory may not at this time be able to answer all the questions it might evoke is a relatively trivial problem . Furthermore, the fact that the revisionists cannot yet answer all questions would be important only if they were claiming to have presented a fully conclusive case. But they are not.
In my later writings, I emphasized this point -- that I am not attempting to provide a complete theory, partly because to do so would require groundless speculation, partly because there is no need. I did, however, state what I found the evidence to show on various matters, such as the fact that the World Trade Center buildings could have come down only through the use of explosives. I also clearly stated, after the first book, that I believed that 9/11 was an inside job, that the Air Force had been ordered to stand down, and that Dick Cheney was at the center of this operation. But this is very different from trying to offer a complete theory.
In the preface of the book about which you are asking questions, moreover, I pointed out that it contains not theory but simply an exposition of 25 contradictions within the official story.
One of these contradictions involves the story about Bush at the school. On the first anniversary of 9/11, the White House started telling a new story about what happened, saying that right after Andy Card told the president that a second WTC building had been hit, meaning that America was under attack, the president waited only a couple of seconds before getting up and leaving the room. The White House even got the teacher who was in the classroom to write two stories that repeated this lie.
Obviously the White House had come to believe that Bush's having remained in the classroom was a liability, not a benefit. (Some reporters had asked why the Secret Service had not hustled Bush away, thereby implicitly suggesting that perhaps the attacks were no surprise.)
Why the Secret Service had allowed Bush to stay, I wouldn't know. Perhaps it was thought essential that Bush make his scheduled address to the nation at 9:30. Or perhaps the planners were simply not very bright.
After the video surfaced on the Internet in 2003, in any case, the White House confirmed, when asked by a Wall Street Journal reporter, that Bush had in fact stayed for several minutes, explaining that his "instinct was not to frighten the children by rushing out of the room." The reporter evidently did not ask the White House why it had tried to get away with a lie.
The 9/11 Commission did not report that the White House had put out a false account in 2002. It did, however, ask the Secret Service why it permitted Bush to remain in the classroom. The Secret Service replied that "they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door." The Commission evidently accepted that as a satisfactory answer.
In sum, I too would like to know why the planners did such a stupid thing. But I would think, Matt, that you should be concerned about why, if the attacks were a surprise, the Secret Service left Bush at the school, why the White House tried to change the story a year later (giving us two mutually inconsistent reports), and then why the press has not forced the White House to explain either of these events.
2. Matt Taibbi: If I'm following the implications of your early-chapter questions correctly, the Secret Service perhaps knew about the attack in advance (this is the implication of your chapter 1 question), while the Air Force needed to be explicitly ordered to stand down on the day of the attack (chapters 3 and 5). However, in later chapters (chapter 21, to be exact) you also mention the fact that the Secret Service was "very concerned, pointing up at the jet in the sky" when the mysterious "white jet" was flying over Washington -- the "white jet," incidentally, being an Air Force jet.
So according to your early chapters, the Secret Service knew that Bush wasn't going to be attacked, but the Air Force needed to be ordered to stand down; in the later chapter, the apparently-in-on-it Air Force sent a mysterious white jet up in the air over Washington for some unknown reason, while Secret Service agents, in the dark about the jet's purpose, point up at it with concern. Do you actually have a theory about which services may or may not have been in on this job, or do these kinds of inconsistencies just not bother you?
David Ray Griffin Responds: I'm pleased to see that you believe that a conspiracy theory, like any theory whatsoever, is not credible if it contains inconsistencies. I would think, therefore, that the 25 inconsistencies I have pointed out in the official conspiracy theory would lead you to consider it unworthy of credence. I have, however, seen no sign that you are troubled by these inconsistencies.
In any case, with regard to the apparent inconsistency you've pointed out in my own position, it is merely apparent. You elsewhere point out that it is a mistake to think of America's ruling class as monolithic. The same is true of the Air Force and the Secret Service. Only the top members of those organizations would have known about the plans for the attacks.
This difference was illustrated at the Sarasota school. As I reported, when the Secret Service agent who carried the president's phone saw the second WTC strike on television, he said to the sheriff: "We're out of here. Can you get everybody ready." But he was obviously overruled by the lead Secret Service agent, because the presidential party did not leave for another 30 minutes. The Secret Service agents at the White House disturbed by the white jet would have been equally in the dark.
The same division would have been true in the Air Force. Although General Richard Myers and some other top officers knew what was going on, the lower officers in charge of the interceptor pilots had to be ordered to stand down. So there is no inconsistency.
3. Matt Taibbi: If you were running this kind of conspiracy, why in God's name would you let the Mayor of New York -- a man who couldn't even keep his extramarital affairs a secret from the tabloids, a man whose own children bad-mouth him to the media every chance they get -- in on the secret? More to the point, if Rudy Giuliani did indeed, for some completely insane reason, have a part in this conspiracy, and in the absolutely impossible and implausible event that what you're implying took place and he did have foreknowledge of the towers coming down, on what planet would it make any kind of sense for this key conspirator to go blabbing his big criminal secret to Peter Jennings on television on the day of the big wedding? Can you explain why in the world he would ever do that?
There are two possibilities here: one is that Giuliani either misspoke or innocently communicated someone's fanciful guess about the towers coming down, and the other is that he inadvertently confessed to being part of the largest premeditated murder conspiracy in the history of the free world on live television. Why is the latter possibility more likely?
David Ray Griffin responds: You are referring to the fact that on 9/11, Rudy Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News: "[W]e set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street , and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building."
Why did Giuliani say this on national television? I don't know, but it might have something to do with the fact that he's not generally considered the brightest, most discreet, person in the world.
In any case, I was surprised by your statement that it was "absolutely impossible that . . . he did have foreknowledge of the towers coming down." Philosophers generally talk about three kinds of impossibilities: logical impossibilities (such as making a round square), metaphysical impossibilities (such as traveling back to the past [where you might kill your grandfather before he had children]), and physical impossibilities (which are ruled out by the laws of physics in our particular universe, such as the law of the conservation of momentum). None of those kinds of impossibility apply here. Giuliani could have known the Twin Towers were going to come down if he knew that explosives had been set and were about to be detonated. Nothing "absolutely impossible" about that.
You argue that it is highly unlikely that Giuliani "inadvertently confessed." However, a confession would be a statement that most people would immediately recognize as such. Giuliani's statement that he was told the WTC was going to come down has been seen to imply foreknowledge only by those few individuals who know two things: that there would have been no reason to expect the buildings to come down unless they were known to be rigged with explosives, and that it was Giuliani's own people (in the Office of Emergency Management) who said the buildings were going to come down. So yes, he was careless, but he hardly "blabbed." He merely said something that was recognized to imply foreknowledge by the few people who knew the relevant facts.
That clarified, let's look at what you call the other possibility, although your statement actually articulates two possibilities: "that Giuliani either misspoke or innocently communicated someone's fanciful guess about the towers coming down." To begin with the first one: What would it mean to say that he "misspoke"? That would be no more plausible than Hillary Clinton's claim that she merely "misspoke" when she claimed she had come under sniper fire in Bosnia.
What about the other possibility -- that Giuliani simply repeated someone's "fanciful guess"? High-rise steel-frame buildings had never before come down on this planet because of any combination of external damage and fire. Such collapses had occurred for only one reason: their steel columns had been sliced with explosives. Surely someone's prediction that the WTC was going to collapse, made just a few minutes before the South Tower did and about 30 minutes before the North Tower did, could not plausibly be regarded as simply a "fanciful guess."
That Giuliani was aware that he should not have said that was made clear by the fact that, when confronted about his statement by a 9/11 activist group in 2007, he tried to deny it, saying: "I didn't know the towers were going to collapse." After a member of the group quoted exactly what he had told Jennings, Giuliani claimed that he had meant that "over a long period of time," meaning from 7 to 10 hours, the towers could collapse, "the way other buildings collapsed." However, no steel-frame high-rise buildings had ever collapsed after burning for 10, or even 18, hours. Moreover, Giuliani's statement to Jennings -- "we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building" -- was clearly referring to an imminent collapse, not one that might occur 7 or 10 hours later.
So yes, I believe that the most likely possibility is that Giuliani inadvertently revealed, to those people familiar with the relevant facts, that he and his people knew that the Towers were going to come down. This conclusion becomes even more evident when one is aware of the massive evidence, which I discussed in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, that the Twin Towers (along with WTC 7) did indeed come down because they were brought down with explosives.
One final point: You suggest that, if Giuliani did have a part in the conspiracy, it would have been for "some completely insane reason." But there may have been some perfectly rational (if evil) reasons. New York City avoided having to pay billions of dollars to have the asbestos removed from the buildings. Also, Giuliani may have believed that, by appearing to act heroically on 9/11, becoming "America's mayor," he might also be able to become America's president. And if this was a motive, it almost worked: He was regarded as the front-runner when the race for the Republican race began.
4. Matt Taibbi: What is more likely -- that an up-till-then poor pilot like Hani Hanjour got lucky and pulled off a highly-skilled maneuver, or that the plane was actually piloted by some other suicidal terrorist ordered by some secret bund of Pentagon conspirators to give up his life in order to attack his own? Or maybe you like the third option -- that thousands of witnesses who saw a plane hit the Pentagon were wrong, that the people who died on flight 77 didn't actually die then and there but at some other place and time, and it was actually a missile that hit the Pentagon?
Exactly what do you believe is the significance of Hani Hanjour's record of poor piloting? Do you believe someone else was flying the plane? Do you believe it wasn't a plane at all? Why don't you just come out and say what you think? Because we know this much: somebody piloted a jet liner into the Pentagon, and that somebody did a pretty good job of it. What does it matter if the ostensible pilot had a poor flying record? Who cares? Because unless you've got hard evidence that something else happened that day, that it wasn't Muslim hijackers but some other fanatical suicidal terrorist (for whoever it was was a fanatical suicidal terrorist) the detail is irrelevant. But you don't even have a theory about that day. Or do you? (Note: I fully expect you to respond by saying, "It's not our job to reveal what happened, it's only our job to raise questions." Which is a very convenient way of saying one of two things: either your evidence doesn't add up to any kind of coherent story, or you don't have the nerve to say in public what you really think the evidence suggests. Please, please disappoint me!).
David Ray Griffin responds: To begin with your final statement: I am puzzled why you would suggest that I, having written six books that suggest -- some of them very clearly -- that leading members of the Bush administration, including top Pentagon officials, orchestrated the 9/11 attacks for primarily imperialistic motives, might not "have the nerve to say in public" what I think.
Let me, in any case, examine the three possibilities you offer as to what happened at the Pentagon. Having read my chapter on Hanjour, you are presumably aware that aviation sources, immediately after 9/11 -- before Hanjour had been identified as the pilot -- said that "the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver," and that another story said, "Investigators are particularly impressed with the pilot who , just before [slamming into the Pentagon], performed a tightly banked 270-degree turn at low altitude with almost military precision." You are also presumably aware that Hanjour was said to have been a terrible pilot by several instructors, one of whom said, "he could not fly at all," and that another instructor, in the summer of 2001, refused to go up with Hanjour a second time.
And yet you believe that one of the likely possibilities is that "Hani Hanjour got lucky and pulled off a highly-skilled maneuver." Let's see what some men with more expertise say. Former Navy and Pan-American Airlines pilot Ted Muga said: "I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature." Former fighter and airline pilot Russ Wittenberg called it "totally impossible." Former 757 pilot Ralph Omholt said: "The idea that an unskilled pilot could have flown this trajectory is simply too ridiculous to consider."
The other possibility you endorse is that "some other [Muslim] suicidal terrorist" flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon. The government has told us that there were five members of al-Qaeda on the plane. If Hanjour was not the pilot, it had to be one of the other four. Do you have a theory as to which one was up to the task? Muga, Wittenberg, and Omholt all doubt that anyone, including themselves, could have flown the reported trajectory in a 757. They are certain that no amateur could have done it, and any of the other men would have been amateurs with regard to 757s or any other "big birds" (as pilots call them).
What of the other possibility you offer -- "that thousands of witnesses who saw a plane hit the Pentagon were wrong." I wonder where you got that number. Even Popular Mechanics, which I had always considered the gold standard for reckless statements in support of the official theory, claims only that "hundreds of witnesses saw a Boeing 757 hit the building." The most extensive list of alleged witnesses of which I am aware contains only 152 people, and only some of them claim to have seen an airliner hit the Pentagon. A study of these, moreover, found that only 31 of them provided "explicit, realistic and detailed claims," that 24 of these 31 alleged witnesses "worked for either the Federal Government or the mainstream media," and that 21 of these testimonies contained "substantial errors or contradictions." Witness testimony, therefore, cannot establish the claim that Flight 77 or any airliner struck the Pentagon.
This is especially the case when we add the testimony of witnesses from inside the Pentagon. Captain Dennis Gilroy, the acting commander of the Fort Myer fire department, "wondered why he saw no aircraft parts." Captain John Durrer thought, "Well where's the airplane, you know, where's the parts to it? You would think there'd be something." Army officer April Gallop, who escaped from the building after being injured, said: "I don't recall at any time seeing any plane debris. I walked through that place to try to get out before everything collapsed on us . [S]urely we should have seen something?" ABC's John McWethy reported: "I got in very close . I could not, however, see any plane wreckage."
You say: "[W]e know this much: somebody piloted a jet liner into the Pentagon." I'm puzzled as to how you think you know this. The word "knowledge" means "justified true belief," so you cannot know something unless (1) it is true and (2) your belief that it is true is based on sufficient evidence. You ask what "hard evidence" I have for the view that the official story is not true. I provided a lot of this in Chapter 3 of Debunking 9/11 Debunking. Assuming that you place the same demands on the official conspiracy theory as you do on the alternative theory, what hard evidence is there for the claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon?
The authorities could have provided such evidence by showing reporters the various airplane parts that have unique serial numbers, including the flight data recorder, but they did not. They could have shown some of the 85 videos from cameras trained on the Pentagon, which the Justice Department admits having, but they have refused. One of the pieces of evidence offered by Rumsfeld in the first week was that the nose of Flight 77 was sticking out of the hole made in the Pentagon's C ring. But this claim, being ridiculous (the fragile nose could not have survived the impact with the reinforced outer wall), has been quietly dropped. In light of all this, plus the reported absence of airliner debris, I'm puzzled as to what hard evidence you believe exists. If you cite the DNA evidence, the truth is that we have no evidence that the bodies of the passengers actually came from the Pentagon (as I explain in Debunking 9/11 Debunking). Even if an airliner had hit the Pentagon, moreover, it might have been controlled remotely. So you do not know that someone piloted a plane into the Pentagon.
As to what really happened, I do not know. I am quite certain, however, that the official story, according to which Hani Hanjour (or some other al-Qaeda hijacker) piloted Flight 77 into the Pentagon, is false. There is no credible evidence to support it and a lot of evidence against it. One part of this evidence is the fact that Wedge 1 would have been, for several reasons, the least likely spot for Muslim terrorists to have struck. Another part of this evidence is the fact that the primary targeted area was the first floor of the Pentagon (92 of the 125 victims were on that floor ), which would have been impossible for a 757 to have hit -- especially without even scraping the Pentagon lawn (photographs showed that it was undamaged). I do not, therefore, merely "raise questions." I state that the official story is a lie.
5. Matt Taibbi: In chapter 21, you write about the "white jet," which you say may have been circling Washington when flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. "The claim that Pentagon officials were unaware of the approaching aircraft, which spiraled downward for three minutes before crashing," you write, "becomes implausible, making even more insistent the question of why the Pentagon was not evacuated."
Now, if I follow you correctly, your implication here is that officials in the Pentagon launched a jet into the airspace over Washington prior to the crash, and therefore knew that flight 77 was going to hit the Pentagon, and yet intentionally refused to evacuate their own personnel from the Pentagon building, ultimately incurring the deaths of over 100 of their own people. Do you have a theory about why they would engage in this seemingly pointless murderous/suicidal behavior? Or do you just implicitly believe that our government is capable of any and all nefarious behavior, not matter how insensible?
Because think about it: if the Pentagon was in on this job, why did they wait until the very last second to send that "white jet" into the air? Really, why would you wait until the last second, unless the whole situation was an unforeseen emergency, a surprise? And if they were really reacting to a surprise development, are you really ready to demand that congress investigate their failure to evacuate the world's largest office building within three crazed minutes? Remember, we have the luxury of knowing that the place ultimately crashed into the Pentagon. But that couldn't have been at all clear to those on the ground until the very last moments. So exactly what is there to be indignant about here? Are you upset that they failed to save the lives of those people who died at the Pentagon? Or are you implying that you believe they knew the ultimate destination of the attack all along and failed to act on purpose? Which is it? There is a very wide gap between those two propositions, but you leave your readers the option of choosing either. Why?
David Ray Griffin Responds: To fill in a few details for readers unfamiliar with the issue: The "white jet" in question was an E-4B, the Air Force's most sophisticated command and communications aircraft (often called a "flying Pentagon"). I did not say merely that "it may have been circling Washington" when the Pentagon was attacked; I presented evidence that this was indeed the case. The failure to evacuate cost 125 lives. The fact that the recent revelation of the E-4B's presence is embarrassing to the Pentagon is shown by the fact that, incredibly, its officials have denied that the plane over the White House was a military plane, even though there can be no doubt about this.
In your wording of the question, you say that the implication of my position is that the presence of this white jet meant that Pentagon officials "knew that flight 77 was going to hit the Pentagon." As my response to your third question shows, I do not believe that. My point is instead that, if the official story were true, they would have known this -- or at least that some airliner was approaching.
You say that an attack by the Pentagon on itself would have been "seemingly pointless murderous/suicidal behavior." In the first place, it certainly was not suicidal on the part of Rumsfeld and the top brass: Wedge 1, which was struck, was about as far as possible from their offices as possible (which is one of the reasons it would have been an unlikely target for Muslim terrorists angry about US foreign policy). None of the casualties, moreover, were connected to the US Air Force; all the victims were either in, or worked for, the Army or the Navy. Air Force officials did not kill any of "their own personnel."
Although the attack certainly was "murderous," I doubt very strongly that it was "pointless." I myself don't offer theories about what the point was, but this does not mean that a plausible theory cannot be provided. One suggested answer puts together two facts: first, the day before 9/11, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld stated at a press conference that the Pentagon was missing $2.3 trillion dollars; second, one of the most damaged areas was the Army's financial management/audit area. This combination of facts has led one 9/11 researcher, citing evidence that the "attack" began with explosives going off inside that area, to ask: "Were the auditors who could 'follow the money,' and the computers whose data could help them do it, intentionally targeted?"
You also ask: "if the Pentagon was in on this job, why did they wait until the very last second to send that 'white jet' into the air?" We don't know when the plane went up (we know only the time of the first reported sighting). The Pentagon clearly won't tell us, since it won't even acknowledge that the plane belonged to it. So we have no way of inferring that the military officials were reacting to a surprise event.
In any case, yes, even if Pentagon officials had had only three minutes notice, I would want Congress to ask why the evacuation alarms were not set off. There is no evidence that these were "three crazed minutes," and evacuations had been regularly rehearsed. What you call the "world's largest office building," moreover, had only five stories, so it would have been nothing like trying to evacuate the 110-story Twin Towers. In three minutes, therefore, a good percentage of the Pentagon employees could have gotten out of the building -- surely all 92 of those people who were killed on the first floor.
Accordingly, whether the victims were deliberately targeted by Rumsfeld and other Pentagon (especially Air Force) officials, or they were merely allowed to die because of a failure to set off the alarms, we should be outraged (not merely "indignant").
6. Matt Taibbi: Do you really think that people like Ted Olsen and Lisa Beamer are lying about receiving phone calls from their spouses in those last moments? Do you think someone would lose their spouse in a terrorist attack, and then moments later clear-headedly act a part in some devious conspiracy for the benefit of the press and the public? What exactly are you implying here? I mean, Jesus Christ -- they guy's wife died! Why would he lie about getting that call? Did someone call him and say, "Hey, Ted -- tough break about your wife. Can you do us a favor and pretend you got a call from her, pinning the attack on hijackers with box cutters?" Exactly how do you think that worked? Can you speculate, please, on what the instructions to Olsen with regard to his phony phone call might have sounded like?
David Ray Griffin responds: I don't want to be unkind, Matt, but these two questions make me wonder how well informed you are about 9/11. The name of the US Solicitor General was Ted Olson (not Olsen). More important, Lisa Beamer never claimed to receive a call from her husband, Todd Beamer. According to the official account, he called another woman named Lisa -- an Airfone employee named Lisa Jefferson -- and talked to her for the final 13 minutes of his life. He allegedly did this rather than accepting her offer to put him through to his wife, even though he reportedly assumed he was going to die. If you had asked whether I believe that this call occurred, I would have said no. Jefferson's report of this call was very important, however, because it was the source of Bush's "Let's Roll" slogan for the so-called war on terror.
With regard to Ted Olson, your argument is based on the assumption that his wife, Barbara Olson, really died, and that he truly loved her. Both of those things may well be true. But I certainly do not know that they are, and I suspect that you do not, either.
What we do know is that, although Ted claimed that he received two calls from his wife (during which she told him that Flight 77 had been hijacked by men with knives and box-cutters), the FBI has said otherwise. In a report on phone calls from the four airliners presented in 2006 at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called 20th hijacker), the FBI indicated that no such calls from Barbara Olson occurred. It did say that she attempted a call to the Justice Department. But the call, it said, was "unconnected" so that it lasted "0 seconds." This was the main point of Chapter 8 ("Did Ted Olson Receive Phone Calls from His Wife?") of 9/11 Contradictions, the book under discussion here.
In any case, if you accept the FBI's report, then there are two options: Either Ted Olson lied or else he, like many other people that day, was fooled by fake calls based on voice morphing technology. Either way, the belief that Barbara Olson called her husband from Flight 77 was based on deception. (This point, incidentally, is relevant to the question of whether Flight 77 could have struck the Pentagon, because this alleged call was the only evidence that it was still aloft after it disappeared from the FAA radar shortly before 9:00 AM.)
You may, incidentally, doubt the feasibility of voice morphing, in spite of my earlier reference to William Arkin's 1999 article (in which he reported that he heard the voices of Colin Powell and another general perfectly rendered). So let's look at the alleged cell phone calls from United Flight 93. According to news reports at the time, of the 37 reported phone calls from this plane, over a dozen were made on cell phones. A leading British paper, for example, said: "The phone calls began, 23 from airphones, others by mobile." Four of those mobile or cell phone calls were reportedly made by Tom Burnett to his wife, Deena Burnett. She knew he had called from his cell phone -- she reported to journalists, in a book, and on national TV -- because her Caller ID showed his cell phone number.
When the FBI presented its phone report to the Moussaoui trial, however, it said that of the 37 calls made from this flight, only two of them -- both of which occurred at 9:58, after the plane had descended to 5,000 feet -- were made from cell phones. (Members of the 9/11 truth movement had argued that successful cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners would have been impossible in 2001 [prior to the invention and installation of pico-cell technology].) All of Tom Burnett's calls were said to have been made on passenger-seat phones. Assuming that you accept the FBI's report, Matt, do you have a theory as to why Deena Burnett reported recognizing the number from her husband's cell phone? Believing that we surely cannot accuse her of either lying or misremembering, I myself have suggested a theory -- that the calls were faked by means of a device, at least one of which can be purchased on the Internet, that allows callers to fake other people's phone numbers as well as their voices.
If Deena Burnett was tricked, then it's possible that Ted Olson was, too. My own hunch, however, is that he simply invented the story. For one thing, he was very much an insider in the Bush-Cheney administration, being the attorney who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the Florida recount in 2000 should be stopped (thereby making Bush president) and that Cheney did not have to reveal the participants at his secret energy-policy meeting in 2001. Also, if the calls really came to the Department of Justice, Olson could have provided evidence of this fact when the veracity of his story was challenged, but he never did.
7. Matt Taibbi: In chapter 19, you quote the Commission about Hanjour's piloting: The instructor thought Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation. To which you comment: "How could this instructor have had such a radically different view of Hanjour's abilities than all the others, right up through August of 2001?"
You do realize that the Commission's statement is not implying that the instructor was making a qualitative assessment of Hanjour's piloting skills, don't you? He was merely saying that Hanjour's ability to use a certain device implied a certain kind of experience/training. Similarly, the notion that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described Hanjour as the "most experienced" pilot is also not a qualitative assessment of Hanjour's abilities. Todd Collins is "more experienced" than Ben Roethlisberger, too. Objectively speaking, even without taking into consideration Hanjour's skill level, he was the "most experienced." Do you really not grasp this distinction?
David Ray Griffin responds: Given the fact that early reports described the aircraft that hit the Pentagon as having been flown with "military precision," the claim that one (apparently unidentifiable) instructor believed that Hanjour may have been trained by a military pilot was not insignificant. Also, my statement was based not simply on the sentence from The 9/11 Commission Report that you quoted but also the previous one, which claimed that Hanjour had "successfully conducted a challenging certification flight supervised by [this] instructor." With regard to whether "more experienced" implies a qualitative assessment, one of the main factors in judging whether pilots are qualified to take tests for various certificates and ratings is the number of hours they have logged in the air.
I am puzzled, moreover, by your assertion that, "[o]bjectively speaking, [Hanjour] was the 'most experienced.'" I am aware of no objective basis for that assertion. Furthermore, investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker interviewed Amanda Keller, a woman with whom Mohamed Atta (i.e., the man going by that name) had lived for a few months while he was attending flight school in Venice, Florida. She reported that Atta was already an experienced pilot when he entered the country and that he was allowed to fly other students, as if he were an instructor. Of all the alleged pilots, furthermore, Hanjour seemed to be the only one who failed to complete a single course of training.
I wonder, finally, why you included this point. If you had successfully argued that even the two apparently favorable statements about Hanjour in The 9/11 Commission Report do not really suggest that he might have been a fairly decent pilot after all, how would this help your defense of the official account?
8. Matt Taibbi: In chapter 10, you write about the apparent discrepancy between the military's position that its jets were 71 miles way from Manhattan at the time of the flight 175 crash, and the time those jets should have been there. "For example," you write:
the F-15s were reportedly airborne at 8:52 and one of the pilots, Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Duffy, was quoted as saying that he 'was in full-blower all the way.' That would probably mean that the fighters were going about 1300 mph and hence about 22 miles a minute. At that speed, they would have covered the 180 miles from Otis to Manhattan in ten minutes (allowing two minutes to get up to speed and to slow down). Rather than being 71 miles away at 9:03 a.m., therefore, they should have already been there for a minute.
Now, what's more likely -- that a suburban Californian professor of Theology has his scrawled-on-a-napkin fighter-jet timeline math wrong, or that some dark conspiracy of White House confederates issued an unprecedented stand-down order in the missing minutes, an order that, despite being a de facto admission of responsibility for the greatest crime against American citizens ever committed by an American government, would subsequently be faithfully kept secret by all the ordinary rank-and-file military personnel who, up till that moment, had been kept in the dark? Can you explain to me why the latter scenario is more likely?
David Ray Griffin responds: Mathematics is the same for people of every occupation in every part of the world. The calculations are either right or wrong, no matter who does them. So rather than suggesting that my calculation might be wrong, why don't you pull out a napkin and see if you get a different result?
I based my calculation, incidentally, on a conservative estimate of the speed of the fighters. As I pointed out in a note: "Although the F-15 can fly at 1800 mph, this is only at very high altitudes, where the air is thin. For my calculation, I assumed that the fighters would have been traveling about half way between sea level, at which they can fly 915 mph, and 36,000 feet, at which they can fly 1650 mph." In the meantime, however, I have talked to pilots who say that the F-15s would have more likely gone up "to altitude." If they went full speed at 36,000 feet, they would have been going 1650 mph, hence 29 miles per minute, allowing them to cover the 180 miles in slightly over 6 minutes. Even if we generously allow a total of 5 minutes for ascent and descent, they would have arrived in Manhattan with at least two minutes to spare.
If your napkin gives the same result, I wonder if you have a theory as to why, according to the military, the F-15s were still 71 miles away. Your question, incidentally, is dealing with a position that the military defended only from September 2001 until the 9/11 Commission put out its report in July 2004. As I explained in the next section of Chapter 10, the Commission's new story claimed that the FAA, instead of notifying the military about Flight 175's difficulties at 8:43, failed to notify it until the airliner was hitting the South Tower at 9:03. This new story absolves the military of all possible blame for its failure to intercept Flight 175. Why did the 9/11 Commission change the story? I believe it did so precisely because it saw that the 9/11 truth movement had the math right -- that if the military had been notified about Flight 175's hijacking at 8:43, the F-15s could have easily intercepted it. (The Commission explicitly admitted this with regard to Flight 77, as I point out below.)
I am pleased, in any case, that you agree that if 9/11 was an inside job, it was "the greatest crime against American citizens ever committed by an American government." Given this view, I am puzzled why you seem less interested in the enormous body of evidence suggesting that it was indeed an inside job than in trying to pick away at a few pieces of this evidence.
Surely you cannot believe the Bush-Cheney administration incapable of such a crime. Surely you know, for example, that an order from the White House condemned thousands of Ground Zero workers to miserable lives and early deaths. As I reported in the introduction to Debunking 9/11 Debunking, the EPA was going to issue a warning that the air was unsafe to breathe (asbestos levels of four times the safe level had already been reported). The White House, however, ordered the EPA to declare that the air did not contain "excessive levels of asbestos" and was otherwise "safe to breathe." Over 50,000 of the workers have respiratory problems, over 350 have died, 600 more have cancer, and there are predictions that the deaths will far exceed those that occurred on 9/11 itself. Likewise, more Americans have already died in the Iraq war, which was based on lies, than on 9/11. No a priori argument can be given, therefore, that the administration would have been too moral to orchestrate 9/11.
8. Matt Taibbi: In the course of this entire book, did you pick up the phone once? Or is the whole thing based upon research of internet sources? I notice, for instance, that you seem not to have called Congressional Air Charters. Even your guess about the F-15 jet flying 1300 mph appears to be something you pulled from an internet source. I'm looking at your bibliography and I don't see a single original interview. Do I have that wrong?
David Ray Griffin responds: My work from the beginning has been devoted to summarizing and synthesizing the findings of those members of the 9/11 truth movement who have done original research of various types. In The New Pearl Harbor, for example, I took pains to point out that each point I made was derived from at least one of the major sources I used.
That said, I often found it necessary in my later books to contact various individuals. This was not true while I was working on 9/11 Contradictions, since it merely documents contradictions within the official story. With regard to Congressional Air Charters, about which you asked, I saw no point in trying to contact it, because a journalist, as I reported in note 23 of the Hani Hanjour chapter, had already tried and learned nothing. However, two experienced researchers did carry out extensive (but fruitless) searches on my behalf to find the "Eddie Shalev" cited by the Commission as support for its claim that an instructor at Congressional Air Charters had supervised Hanjour's "challenging certification flight."
Some of my previous books, however, did provide occasions for contacting people. While working on The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I had a lengthy telephone interview with Laura Brown of the FAA about a memo she had sent to the 9/11 Commission, clarifying the time at which the FAA had first contacted the military on the morning of 9/11. (I refer to it, in fact, in note 19 of Chapter 10 of 9/11 Contradictions.) Although I did "pick up the phone" in that case, I generally prefer to communicate by email. If you look at the notes for Chapter 9 (dealing with Flight 11), you will see references to several email letters from Colin Scoggins, an air traffic controller at the FAA's Boston Center who was cited in The 9/11 Commission Report. I exchanged dozens of email letters with him while I was working on Chapter 1 of Debunking 9/11 Debunking. At the same time, I was also corresponding extensively with Robin Hordon, who had previously worked at that same center. I have also consulted extensively with scientists and pilots while working on the flights, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center.
I'm afraid that this was a pretty boring answer, but I didn't want to dodge your question -- although I was puzzled about the reason for it. Since I am not applying for a prize for original research, is not the only important thing the accuracy of my information, rather than the methods I employed to get it?
10. Matt Taibbi: Just out of curiosity -- when you hear hoof beats, which animal comes to your mind first? Horses or zebras? Because throughout this book, you hear hoof beats and conclude that this or that juking of the timeline a few minutes in this or that direction is evidence of something extraordinarily sinister -- a something for which, of course, no concrete evidence exists. I look at the same evidence and I see the completely predictable behavior of a bunch of incompetent politicians rewriting history in order to cover their asses for their failure to protect the country on a day of crisis. Can you give me any reason why any of the discrepancies you're describing shouldn't be laid at the feet of pure political self-interest? Why is a cover-up of garden-variety incompetence less likely than a cover-up of criminal involvement?
And please don't say that a cover-up of mere incompetence is just as worth investigating as a cover-up of criminal involvement. The entire direction of your investigatory enterprise implies something far more sinister than base-level incompetence. And if you're going to make that implication, you need something a lot hotter than minor timeline discrepancies to make it stick. If you accuse someone of murder, you need real evidence, and you don't appear to have any at all. In other words, where are your zebra stripes?
David Ray Griffin responds: You suggest that all of the timeline discrepancies I have documented are "minor." Let's look at some of them.
As I mentioned earlier, the military had originally said that the FAA notified it about Flight 175 at 8:43, which was 20 minutes before the flight would strike the South Tower. But the 9/11 Commission claimed that this notification did not happen until 9:03, when the building was being struck. This 20-minute difference cannot be described as minor: It makes all the difference with regard to whether the military could have intercepted the flight.
Turning to the discrepancy about Flight 77: NORAD had said in 2001 that the notification from the FAA had come at 9:24. The 9/11 truth movement asked why, then, was the plane not intercepted before it struck the Pentagon at 9:38. The 9/11 Commission, agreeing that the 9:24 notification time "made it appear that the military was notified in time to respond," solved this problem by claiming that the military "never received notice that American 77 was hijacked." This claim, besides contradicting what NORAD had been saying for almost three years, also contradicted the aforementioned FAA memo sent to the Commission by the FAA -- which said that the FAA had actually notified the military long before 9:24. The Commission, besides simply ignoring this memo in its final report, also contradicted statements by the FBI and the Secret Service. The discrepancy cannot possibly be called minor.
The same is true of the discrepancy about Flight 93. The 9/11 Commission claimed that the military "first received a call about United 93 at 10:07," four minutes after it had crashed. But General Larry Arnold, the head of NORAD's Continental region, had testified that the military had been aware of the flight for over 20 minutes before it crashed. He and many other officials -- including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- even said that the military was tracking Flight 93 and was in position to shoot it down. Hardly a minor discrepancy, especially given the evidence that the military did shoot the plane down.
Another discrepancy involves the time at which Cheney went down to the bunker under the White House to assume control of events. Many witnesses, including Richard Clarke and Cheney's photographer, said that it was not long after 9:00. One of these, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, testified that when he got down there at 9:20, Cheney was already there. Mineta then told the Commission about a conversation between Cheney and a young man, which occurred about 10 minutes before the Pentagon was attacked. Although Mineta did not thus interpret it, the conversation is most naturally understood as Cheney's confirmation of a stand-down order. The 9/11 Commission Report, making no mention of Mineta's testimony, claimed that Cheney did not get down to the bunker until almost 10:00. Definitely not a minor discrepancy.
Still another major discrepancy involves the time at which Cheney issued the shootdown authorization. According to the 9/11 Commission, he did so "between 10:10 and 10:15." Richard Clarke, however, reported that he received it at about 9:50 -- over 10 minutes before Flight 93 went down.
Matt, you want to claim that all of the contradictions in the official story can be regarded as cover-ups of incompetence. However, as I have emphasized in previous books, most fully in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, the contradictions are not limited to the internal ones discussed in this book. The official story is also contradicted by much evidence, both documentary and physical, which cannot be explained away by an incompetence theory.
Incompetence cannot explain, for example, why three steel-frame high-rise buildings came down at virtually free-fall speed; why virtually all of the buildings' concrete was pulverized into tiny dust particles; why clusters of steel columns, weighing thousands of tons, were ejected out horizontally some 500 feet from the towers; why hundreds of tiny bone fragments were found on the roofs of nearby buildings; why some of the buildings' steel melted, even though the fires could not have gotten within 1,000 degrees F of the requisite temperature; why steel from the buildings had been thinned because of oxidation and sulfidation (which the New York Times called "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation"; why explosions were going off in the buildings long after all the jet fuel had burned up; why Giuliani's people knew in advance that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 were going to collapse; and why 125 people were killed in a part of the Pentagon that could not have been hit by an airliner, especially one flown by an amateur.
You asked for evidence of murder by forces within our own government. That is some of it.
Let me comment in closing, however, that your concern for evidence seems one-sided. As you know (if you looked at Chapter 18), the Bush administration, after promising to provide proof that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, reneged. Tony Blair provided a document but it, he admitted, did "not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law." And recently, in spite of whatever proof you may think has been provided by videotapes allegedly showing bin Laden confessing, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the attacks for which he is wanted because, a spokesman admitted, "the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Moreover, all the evidence of hijackers on the planes can be seen to have been fabricated (like the cell phone calls) or planted (like the incriminating evidence in Atta's luggage and the passports that flew out of the planes and floated to the ground at the WTC site). Where is your concern that bin Laden and 19 Muslims have been charged with murder without any hard evidence? Given your moral concern, I would think you would be especially bothered by the fact that, on the basis of these unsubstantiated charges, hundreds of thousands -- by some counts, millions -- of people have already been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In any case, Matt, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss some issues related to "the greatest crime against American citizens ever committed by an American government." Let me suggest that you next interview physicist Steven Jones about "the alleged scientific impossibilities" in the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Please stop back later for Part II !!

O.J. Found GUILTY On All Counts!!!

2008-10-04T11:09:00.000-05:00

It is an awesome Saturday as Karma has caught up with O.J. Simpson as he is convicted of Kidnapping and Robbery. Hooray for the jurors who were able to do what a jury 13 years ago should have done. Obviously, the guilty Simpson will appeal, so it is not a done deal yet, but perhaps he will be in prison by December, as a great Christmas present to the Browns and a Happy Hannakah for the Goldmans.
O.J. Found Guilty~~~Doesn't That Have A Nice Ring To It!!!!

The Happy Story Is At Yahoo News And Reads:
Thirteen years to the day after being acquitted of killing his wife and her friend in Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbing two sports-memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel room.

The 61-year-old former football star was convicted of all 12 counts late Friday after jurors deliberated for more than 13 hours. He released a heavy sigh as the charges were read and was immediately taken into custody.

Simpson, who went from American sports idol to celebrity-in-exile after his murder acquittal, could spend the rest of his life in prison.

His attorney said he would appeal.

Many people considered the four-week trial justice delayed. Simpson was cleared in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, in one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century, but was later found liable for the deaths in a civil case.
link to oj guilty story

Was YOUR Congressman's Vote Bought For The Bailout Bill To Pass, With Roll Call List

2008-10-03T15:05:00.001-05:00

The House passed the Bailout Bill with the help of additional "traitors" who sold their votes for more pork flowing to their constituents.
Once finished this bailout bill has the look of a Christmas Tree, with all kinds of ornaments adorning it and presents galore, adding even more billions to our deficit! Hell why not, when you got the American taxpayers as co-signers you can borrow, and spend as much as you want!!
As Politico reports:
The provisions include Millions of taxpayers, thousands of businesses and groups as diverse as solar power developers and natural disaster
victims will see tax relief with the House vote Friday to approve and send to the president a $700 billion financial rescue plan.

The tax relief package attached to the rescue bill promotes renewable energy development and extends dozens of tax breaks from the critical research and development tax credit to breaks for such narrowly focused groups as motor sports racetrack owners, film producers and bicycle commuters. The renewable energy part of the package alone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, will "create and save half-a-million good-paying jobs in America immediately."

Virtually all of the tax breaks already exist. But many of them expired Jan. 1 for use in the current tax year, and the others will expire three months from now unless Congress renews them.
The largest group of beneficiaries in the tax portion of the financial rescue bill is about 20 million mainly upper-middle income taxpayers. Without congressional action, the AMT, with originally was supposed to affect only the very rich, would add some $2,000 this year to the tax bill of these people, most earning under $200,000 a year.
Thousands of businesses are waiting for renewal of the research and development tax credit, which expired at the end of last year. Without that credit, industry advocates say, high tech, biotech and aerospace companies would have trouble hiring the highly skilled workers needed to compete with foreign competitors.
The Information Technology Association of America reports an $18.5 billion drop in R&D activity since the beginning of the year, when the credit lapsed. The R&D credit extension would cost $19 billion over 10 years. The cost of the entire tax portion of the bill is close to $110 billion.

The renewable energy incentives include an eight-year extension of investment credits for solar energy, as well as breaks for wind, geothermal and other alternative sources. The solar industry says extension of the credits through 2016 would produce an extra 440,000 jobs and more than $230 billion in investments.

The measure also has $8 billion in tax breaks for disaster victims, $5 billion for higher education tuition deductions and $400 million in deductions for teachers who buy school supplies with their own money.

There are $3 billion in deductions for residents of states without income taxes that have state and local sales taxes. Extending the deduction would save Texans a projected $1.2 billion a year or an average of $520 per filer claiming the deduction, said Matt Mackowiak, spokesman for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

There are also some four dozen small provisions. Among them, with projected costs over 10 years:
_Extending an expired provision that gives Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands a rebate against excise taxes charged on imported rum. The rebate, at $13.50 per proof gallon, helps finance local infrastructure projects. The cost is $192 million.
_Establishing a new tax credit ranging from $2,500 to $7,500 for purchasers of plug-in electric-drive vehicles. Cost: $758 million.
_Extending tax credits that expired at the end of 2007 for certain domestic corporations involved in American Samoa economic development. Cost: $33 million.
_Extending a credit of up to $10,000 for the training of mine rescue team members. The credit expires at the end of this year and the one-year extension costs $4 million.
_Enacting President Bush's proposal to erase the debt of the black lung disability trust fund at a cost of $1.3 billion.
_Extending for one year a seven-year depreciation timetable that NASCAR and other motorsport racing facilities have had for some years, the same tax break that amusement parks enjoy. Without the extension, the tracks would have to depreciate the cost of their improvements over 15 years, raising their taxes by $100 million.
_Extending for five years a program that reduces import duties on some wool fabrics. The tariff relief benefits U.S. worsted wool fabric producers that use imported fibers and yarns. Cost: $148 million.
_Increasing the single-year deduction in production costs, from $15 million to $20 million, that film and TV productions may take if the costs are incurred in economically depressed areas. In an effort to keep film and TV productions in the U.S., it also allows more companies to use a domestic production deduction. Cost: $478 million.
_Allowing commercial fishermen and others hurt by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska to average out damage awards over three years rather than taking a one-year hit from the IRS. Cost: $49 million.
_Extending two programs that fund rural schools and rural communities that have been relying on declining income from logging on federal land or have low property tax bases because they are located on or next to federal lands. This is a major issue in the West. Cost: $3.3 billion.
_Exempting wooden practice arrows used by children from an excise tax of 39 cents per arrow. Oregon's two senators and two Wisconsin representatives previously introduced legislation calling for the action, saying the tax was meant for more expensive archery arrows and is untenable for makers of toy arrows that may cost only about 30 cents apiece. The bill would affect about a half-dozen manufacturers nationwide, including one in Oregon; the Oregon senators said they didn't seek its addition to the bailout, however. Cost: $2 million.
_Allowing employers to exempt from taxation what they spend on some fringe benefits for workers who commute to work by bicycle, for example reimbursing the cost of parking the bikes. Cost: $2 million.
Some House members and radio-TV commentators have called for eliminating several of the measures, including those affecting wooden arrows, Puerto Rican rum, racetracks and film producers.
"All these things are called sweeteners in order to get votes from Democrats and Republicans in the House," conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh said at the opening of his show Thursday. "To get this bailout through the Senate and House, they've added pork. Surprise, surprise."
I don't ever agree with Rushie on anything, but on this one issue he is right, and we are "Suckers" for believing the thieving traitors in both parties who supported this bailout bill, and adding all these goodies. I didn't get a goodie, did you?
Here are the votes
The 263-171 roll call Friday by which the House approved a $700 billion government bailout bill for the battered financial industry.
A "yes" vote is a vote to pass the bill.
Voting yes were 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans.
Voting no were 63 Democrats and 108 Republicans.
X denotes those not voting.
There is 1 vacancy in the 435-member House.
ALABAMA
Democrats — Cramer, Y; Davis, Y.
Republicans — Aderholt, N; Bachus, Y; Bonner, Y; Everett, Y; Rogers, Y.
ALASKA
Republicans — Young, N.
ARIZONA
Democrats — Giffords, Y; Grijalva, N; Mitchell, Y; Pastor, Y.
Republicans — Flake, N; Franks, N; Renzi, N; Shadegg, Y.
ARKANSAS
Democrats — Berry, Y; Ross, Y; Snyder, Y.
Republicans — Boozman, Y.
CALIFORNIA
Democrats — Baca, Y; Becerra, N; Berman, Y; Capps, Y; Cardoza, Y; Costa, Y; Davis, Y; Eshoo, Y; Farr, Y; Filner, N; Harman, Y; Honda, Y; Lee, Y; Lofgren, Zoe, Y; Matsui, Y; McNerney, Y; Miller, George, Y; Napolitano, N; Pelosi, Y; Richardson, Y; Roybal-Allard, N; Sanchez, Linda T., N; Sanchez, Loretta, N; Schiff, Y; Sherman, N; Solis, Y; Speier, Y; Stark, N; Tauscher, Y; Thompson, Y; Waters, Y; Watson, Y; Waxman, Y; Woolsey, Y.
Republicans — Bilbray, N; Bono Mack, Y; Calvert, Y; Campbell, Y; Doolittle, N; Dreier, Y; Gallegly, N; Herger, Y; Hunter, N; Issa, N; Lewis, Y; Lungren, Daniel E., Y; McCarthy, N; McKeon, Y; Miller, Gary, Y; Nunes, N; Radanovich, Y; Rohrabacher, N; Royce, N.
COLORADO
Democrats — DeGette, Y; Perlmutter, Y; Salazar, N; Udall, N.
Republicans — Lamborn, N; Musgrave, N; Tancredo, Y.
CONNECTICUT
Democrats — Courtney, N; DeLauro, Y; Larson, Y; Murphy, Y.
Republicans — Shays, Y.
DELAWARE
Republicans — Castle, Y.
FLORIDA
Democrats — Boyd, Y; Brown, Corrine, Y; Castor, N; Hastings, Y; Klein, Y; Mahoney, Y; Meek, Y; Wasserman Schultz, Y; Wexler, Y.
Republicans — Bilirakis, N; Brown-Waite, Ginny, N; Buchanan, Y; Crenshaw, Y; Diaz-Balart, L., N; Diaz-Balart, M., N; Feeney, N; Keller, N; Mack, N; Mica, N; Miller, N; Putnam, Y; Ros-Lehtinen, Y; Stearns, N; Weldon, Y; Young, N.
GEORGIA
Democrats — Barrow, N; Bishop, Y; Johnson, N; Lewis, Y; Marshall, Y; Scott, Y.
Republicans — Broun, N; Deal, N; Gingrey, N; Kingston, N; Linder, N; Price, N; Westmoreland, N.
HAWAII
Democrats — Abercrombie, Y; Hirono, Y.
IDAHO
Republicans — Sali, N; Simpson, Y.
ILLINOIS
Democrats — Bean, Y; Costello, N; Davis, Y; Emanuel, Y; Foster, Y; Gutierrez, Y; Hare, Y; Jackson, Y; Lipinski, N; Rush, Y; Schakowsky, Y.
Republicans — Biggert, Y; Johnson, N; Kirk, Y; LaHood, Y; Manzullo, N; Roskam, N; Shimkus, N; Weller, Y.
INDIANA
Democrats — Carson, Y; Donnelly, Y; Ellsworth, Y; Hill, N; Visclosky, N.
Republicans — Burton, N; Buyer, N; Pence, N; Souder, Y.
IOWA
Democrats — Boswell, Y; Braley, Y; Loebsack, Y. (2nd district-my district)
Republicans — King, N; Latham, N.
KANSAS
Democrats — Boyda, N; Moore, Y.
Republicans — Moran, N; Tiahrt, N.
KENTUCKY
Democrats — Chandler, N; Yarmuth, Y.
Republicans — Davis, N; Lewis, Y; Rogers, Y; Whitfield, N.
LOUISIANA
Democrats — Cazayoux, N; Jefferson, N; Melancon, Y.
Republicans — Alexander, Y; Boustany, Y; McCrery, Y; Scalise, N.
MAINE
Democrats — Allen, Y; Michaud, N.
MARYLAND
Democrats — Cummings, Y; Edwards, Y; Hoyer, Y; Ruppersberger, Y; Sarbanes, Y; Van Hollen, Y.
Republicans — Bartlett, N; Gilchrest, Y.
MASSACHUSETTS
Democrats — Capuano, Y; Delahunt, N; Frank, Y; Lynch, N; Markey, Y; McGovern, Y; Neal, Y; Olver, Y; Tierney, Y; Tsongas, Y.
MICHIGAN
Democrats — Conyers, N; Dingell, Y; Kildee, Y; Kilpatrick, Y; Levin, Y; Stupak, N.
Republicans — Camp, Y; Ehlers, Y; Hoekstra, Y; Knollenberg, Y; McCotter, N; Miller, N; Rogers, N; Upton, Y; Walberg, N.
MINNESOTA
Democrats — Ellison, Y; McCollum, Y; Oberstar, Y; Peterson, N; Walz, N.
Republicans — Bachmann, N; Kline, Y; Ramstad, Y.
MISSISSIPPI
Democrats — Childers, N; Taylor, N; Thompson, N.
Republicans — Pickering, Y.
MISSOURI
Democrats — Carnahan, Y; Clay, N; Cleaver, Y; Skelton, Y.
Republicans — Akin, N; Blunt, Y; Emerson, Y; Graves, N; Hulshof, N.
MONTANA
Republicans — Rehberg, N.
NEBRASKA
Republicans — Fortenberry, N; Smith, N; Terry, Y.
NEVADA
Democrats — Berkley, Y.
Republicans — Heller, N; Porter, Y.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Democrats — Hodes, N; Shea-Porter, N.
NEW JERSEY
Democrats — Andrews, Y; Holt, Y; Pallone, Y; Pascrell, Y; Payne, N; Rothman, N; Sires, Y.
Republicans — Ferguson, Y; Frelinghuysen, Y; Garrett, N; LoBiondo, N; Saxton, Y; Smith, N.
NEW MEXICO
Democrats — Udall, N.
Republicans — Pearce, N; Wilson, Y.
NEW YORK
Democrats — Ackerman, Y; Arcuri, Y; Bishop, Y; Clarke, Y; Crowley, Y; Engel, Y; Gillibrand, N; Hall, Y; Higgins, Y; Hinchey, N; Israel, Y; Lowey, Y; Maloney, Y; McCarthy, Y; McNulty, Y; Meeks, Y; Nadler, Y; Rangel, Y; Serrano, N; Slaughter, Y; Towns, Y; Velazquez, Y; Weiner, Y.
Republicans — Fossella, Y; King, Y; Kuhl, Y; McHugh, Y; Reynolds, Y; Walsh, Y.
NORTH CAROLINA
Democrats — Butterfield, N; Etheridge, Y; McIntyre, N; Miller, Y; Price, Y; Shuler, N; Watt, Y.
Republicans — Coble, Y; Foxx, N; Hayes, N; Jones, N; McHenry, N; Myrick, Y.
NORTH DAKOTA
Democrats — Pomeroy, Y.
OHIO
Democrats — Kaptur, N; Kucinich, N; Ryan, Y; Space, Y; Sutton, Y; Wilson, Y.
Republicans — Boehner, Y; Chabot, N; Hobson, Y; Jordan, N; LaTourette, N; Latta, N; Pryce, Y; Regula, Y; Schmidt, Y; Tiberi, Y; Turner, N.
OKLAHOMA
Democrats — Boren, Y.
Republicans — Cole, Y; Fallin, Y; Lucas, N; Sullivan, Y.
OREGON
Democrats — Blumenauer, N; DeFazio, N; Hooley, Y; Wu, Y.
Republicans — Walden, Y.
PENNSYLVANIA
Democrats — Altmire, N; Brady, Y; Carney, N; Doyle, Y; Fattah, Y; Holden, N; Kanjorski, Y; Murphy, Patrick, Y; Murtha, Y; Schwartz, Y; Sestak, Y.
Republicans — Dent, Y; English, N; Gerlach, Y; Murphy, Tim, N; Peterson, Y; Pitts, N; Platts, N; Shuster, Y.
RHODE ISLAND
Democrats — Kennedy, Y; Langevin, Y.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Democrats — Clyburn, Y; Spratt, Y.
Republicans — Barrett, Y; Brown, Y; Inglis, Y; Wilson, Y.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Democrats — Herseth Sandlin, N.
TENNESSEE
Democrats — Cohen, Y; Cooper, Y; Davis, Lincoln, N; Gordon, Y; Tanner, Y.
Republicans — Blackburn, N; Davis, David, N; Duncan, N; Wamp, Y.
TEXAS
Democrats — Cuellar, Y; Doggett, N; Edwards, Y; Gonzalez, Y; Green, Al, Y; Green, Gene, N; Hinojosa, Y; Jackson-Lee, Y; Johnson, E. B., Y; Lampson, N; Ortiz, Y; Reyes, Y; Rodriguez, N.
Republicans — Barton, N; Brady, Y; Burgess, N; Carter, N; Conaway, Y; Culberson, N; Gohmert, N; Granger, Y; Hall, N; Hensarling, N; Johnson, Sam, N; Marchant, N; McCaul, N; Neugebauer, N; Paul, N; Poe, N; Sessions, Y; Smith, Y; Thornberry, Y.
UTAH
Democrats — Matheson, N.
Republicans — Bishop, N; Cannon, Y.
VERMONT
Democrats — Welch, Y.
VIRGINIA
Democrats — Boucher, Y; Moran, Y; Scott, N.
Republicans — Cantor, Y; Davis, Tom, Y; Drake, N; Forbes, N; Goode, N; Goodlatte, N; Wittman, N; Wolf, Y.
WASHINGTON
Democrats — Baird, Y; Dicks, Y; Inslee, N; Larsen, Y; McDermott, N; Smith, Y.
Republicans — Hastings, N; McMorris Rodgers, N; Reichert, N.
WEST VIRGINIA
Democrats — Mollohan, Y; Rahall, Y.
Republicans — Capito, N.
WISCONSIN
Democrats — Baldwin, Y; Kagen, N; Kind, Y; Moore, Y; Obey, Y.
Republicans — Petri, N; Ryan, Y; Sensenbrenner, N.
WYOMING
Republicans — Cubin, Y.

This is the end of America, as we take one giant step toward European Socialism!!
Land of the "Free", not today,
it is more like Land of the "$700 Billion to $1.5 Trillion", with the vote buying addons to the bailout bill!!
This better work as advertised, or we will be way worse off, then if we had done nothing at all!!

Governor Palin And Senator Biden Win The VP Debate And A Fact Check Link

2008-10-03T12:38:00.000-05:00

Did you watch the one and only Vice-Presidential Debate last night? If you did you were treated to a very good debate. Governor Sarah Palin came with her "folksy" way that had so entranced the GOP in August, as well as many Independents, and some Democrats, until she started giving interviews that if nothing else were seen as confused, if not totally bizarre. Senator Joe Biden came with his intellect intact, with no tall tales or Bidenism's to be looped for the bemusement of Fox News viewers. So all in all I think Sarah Palin won her debate " just by showing up and not falling off the stage", and because she only had a few "wander around the block in a daze" kind of answers to a few questions.
Now this takes nothing away from Joe Biden, as he won his debate as well, as he came off as knowledgeable without be condescending, emotional when talking about being a single parent (after the loss of his wife and daughter in an auto accident) without be hysterical, and only misstating a few facts, which they both did.
This debate probably changed very few minds; if you were for John McCain/Sarah Palin before, you probably still are, if you were for Barack Obama/Joe Biden before, you probably still are, and if you were for Jenny McCarthy/Daniel Kepler before, you probably still are!! ;)
As evidenced by this story below which is at Yahoo Buzz, the majority of polls show Biden winning on points, and Palin winning on likability, even though some thought as I did that her "folksiness" was wearing a little thin by the end of the debate, and she sounded a little too ditsy, with the "you betchas", and "hecks". Anyway it was a good debate, and hopefully a little of the fiestiness of this debate will carry over to the next McCain/Obama debate on Tuesday, October 7th , 8 p.m. CDT at Belmont University's Curb Even Center, in Nashville, Tennessee, moderated by Tom Brokaw, special correspondent (and former evening news anchor) for NBC News. This debate will have a town-hall meeting format.

THE BUZZ SAYS:
After Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, many predicted her debate with Senator Joe Biden would be another "moose in the headights" train wreck. That wasn't the case. The Alaska governor held her own and had a clear command of the facts. But was she good enough to win?

Clearly, voters want to know. After the debate, searches spiked on "who won the vice-presidential debate" and "who is the VP debate winner." The Yahoo Buzz contains a slew of analysis pieces on who came out on top, but like everything else in politics, the answer depends on who you ask. CNN conducted a national poll and found that Senator Biden won, but that Gov. Palin "exceeded expectations." CNN also found that Palin topped Biden on likability, but Biden was viewed to be more qualified for the job.

Politico acknowledges that Palin escaped a "demolition derby moment," but claimed Biden was still the clear winner. "The financial meltdown has put a new premium on competence, and Palin did nothing to show she is ready to be in charge." Still, Palin's "folksy charm" was, for the most part, well received, and on occasion came with a "sharp edge." Similar analysis can be found at Time.com. Joe Klein writes that while Sarah Palin "did fine," Joe Biden "demonstrated a real knowledge of the issues." Biden, in Klein's opinion, also had the most memorable moment of the debate when he spoke about his wife's death and what it was like to be a single parent. That moment, according to Klein, "was more real than anything Palin said all night."

Still, Ms. Palin's "you betcha" phrases drew a tremendous amount of search interest. In referencing the average American, she used the phrase "Joe Sixpack." The term immediately shot up in Search ("Hockey Mom" is so last month). Palin also referred to John McCain as "the maverick" several times. For viewers, this clearly inspired memories of one of Tom Cruise's greatest hits. That's right, lookups on "top gun maverick" went supersonic. Finally, Palin's mispronunciation of the word "nuclear" drew an atomic level of searches for "nuclear vs. nucular." Remember: when in doubt, just sound it out.

As the Boxing announcer says before the big fight, "Are We Ready To Rumble"!! Oh Yeah!!:)
REMEMBER: Tuesday, October 7th , 8 p.m. CDT at Belmont University's Curb Even Center, in Nashville, Tennessee, moderated by Tom Brokaw, special correspondent (and former evening news anchor) for NBC News. This debate will have a town-hall meeting format.
link to debate fact checks

Senate Roll Call Votes On Yesterday's Bailout Bill

2008-10-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

Here is the Roll Call Vote In The Senate Yesterday, in case you need to decide whether
or not you approve of how your Senators voted, and express your anger or appreciation
for their vote.
If you are from Iowa, you will see that our Senators failed us, and voted Yes for the largest
giveaway in history, to the gamblers on Wall Street who made out like the bandits they are,
left with oodles of money, and caused the crisis we now face. Thanks for nothing, but a
huge bill for us taxpayers, Senators Harkin and Grassley! I hope you are looking for other
occupations after your current terms are up!!
The 74-25 roll call by which the Senate approved a $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street
aimed at preventing a credit crisis.
On this vote, a "yes" vote was a vote to approve the package and a "no" vote was a vote against it.
Voting "yes" were 39 Democrats, 34 Republicans and 1 independent.
Voting "no" were 9 Democrats, 15 Republicans and 1 independent.
Alabama
Sessions (R) No; Shelby (R) No.
Alaska
Murkowski (R) Yes; Stevens (R) Yes.
Arizona
Kyl (R) Yes; McCain (R) Yes.
Arkansas
Lincoln (D) Yes; Pryor (D) Yes.
California
Boxer (D) Yes; Feinstein (D) Yes.
Colorado
Allard (R) No; Salazar (D) Yes.
Connecticut
Dodd (D) Yes; Lieberman (I) Yes.
Delaware
Biden (D) Yes; Carper (D) Yes.
Florida
Martinez (R) Yes; Nelson (D) No.
Georgia
Chambliss (R) Yes; Isakson (R) Yes.
Hawaii
Akaka (D) Yes; Inouye (D) Yes.
Idaho
Craig (R) Yes; Crapo (R) No.
Illinois
Durbin (D) Yes; Obama (D) Yes.
Indiana
Bayh (D) Yes; Lugar (R) Yes.
Iowa
Grassley (R) Yes; Harkin (D) Yes.
Kansas
Brownback (R) No; Roberts (R) No.
Kentucky
Bunning (R) No; McConnell (R) Yes.
Louisiana
Landrieu (D) No; Vitter (R) No.
Maine
Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.
Maryland
Cardin (D) Yes; Mikulski (D) Yes.
Massachusetts
Kennedy (D) Not Voting; Kerry (D) Yes.
Michigan
Levin (D) Yes; Stabenow (D) No.
Minnesota
Coleman (R) Yes; Klobuchar (D) Yes.
Mississippi
Cochran (R) No; Wicker (R) No.
Missouri
Bond (R) Yes; McCaskill (D) Yes.
Montana
Baucus (D) Yes; Tester (D) No.
Nebraska
Hagel (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Nevada
Ensign (R) Yes; Reid (D) Yes.
New Hampshire
Gregg (R) Yes; Sununu (R) Yes.
New Jersey
Lautenberg (D) Yes; Menendez (D) Yes.
New Mexico
Bingaman (D) Yes; Domenici (R) Yes.
New York
Clinton (D) Yes; Schumer (D) Yes.
North Carolina
Burr (R) Yes; Dole (R) No.
North Dakota
Conrad (D) Yes; Dorgan (D) No.
Ohio
Brown (D) Yes; Voinovich (R) Yes.
Oklahoma
Coburn (R) Yes; Inhofe (R) No.
Oregon
Smith (R) Yes; Wyden (D) No.
Pennsylvania
Casey (D) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.
Rhode Island
Reed (D) Yes; Whitehouse (D) Yes.
South Carolina
DeMint (R) No; Graham (R) Yes.
South Dakota
Johnson (D) No; Thune (R) Yes.
Tennessee
Alexander (R) Yes; Corker (R) Yes.
Texas
Cornyn (R) Yes; Hutchison (R) Yes.
Utah
Bennett (R) Yes; Hatch (R) Yes.
Vermont
Leahy (D) Yes; Sanders (I) No.
Virginia
Warner (R) Yes; Webb (D) Yes.
Washington
Cantwell (D) No; Murray (D) Yes.
West Virginia
Byrd (D) Yes; Rockefeller (D) Yes.
Wisconsin
Feingold (D) No; Kohl (D) Yes.
Wyoming
Barrasso (R) No; Enzi (R) No.

It looks like the House shall fail us tomorrow, as they have thrown everything, including the
kitchen sink at your representatives (mine, Congressman Loebsack,already caved the first time
and voted yes) to get them to switch votes and pass this monstrosity!!
Friday will be a sad day for America, as Bush, and the leaders in the House and Senate, supersede
capitalism on a huge scale!! You still have time to contact your representative and kill this
bill, but time is short!! Good Luck To Us All!!

What Political Surprise Will October Bring

2008-10-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

Here we are going into October, in one of the most important elections in many years, and many are waiting for the dreaded "October" surprise to occur, which can change fates in a matter of days.
What will the nature of the surprise be? Another skeleton falling out of Obama's closet? A former POW or captor coming out with horrible details of McCain's treasonous actions while a POW? A Bidenism? A another pathetic Palin interview with verbal slippage? bin-Laden releasing another last minute tape to scare America and secure McCain's election? What do you think it will be?
Personally I thought it would be an Iranian attack on American assets which would lead to a military action, thereby bringing "terrorism" back to the fore and giving the edge to McCain, due to his supposed experience. It may still happen, but seems less likely each day.

This story on October surprises was at Yahoo News by GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer:
Heading into the final weekend of the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry was feeling good about his chances of winning the White House.

The Democratic nominee thought he had bested President Bush in their three prime-time debates. He also felt he'd convinced Americans his military and foreign affairs experience left him better equipped to end the Iraqi war. Then Osama bin Laden weighed in with the most recent "October surprise" to land with a thud on a presidential campaign. Kerry believes bin Laden cost him the presidency by issuing a videotape that criticized Bush and warned U.S. voters that "your security is in your own hands" in the election. And the Massachusetts senator thinks that's instructive for both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain during the final month of their campaign.

From Henry Kissinger's declaration that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam a month before the 1972 election, to a report just before the 2000 vote that George W. Bush had once been arrested for drunken driving, last-minute sensations have demonstrated the potential to reshape a race. "It changed the entire dynamic of the last five days," Kerry said this week of the bin Laden tape. "We saw it in the polling. There was no other intervening event. We saw the polls freeze and then we saw them drop a point, because all the security moms, it agitated people over 9/11." Kerry added, "Whenever you're close to an election, things have more impact, you don't have time to respond, you don't have time to change the dynamics backwards."

That certainly was the concern in 1980, the election year that spawned the term "October surprise." In a twist of fate, the name grew out of a fear that never was realized. Republican Ronald Reagan was challenging Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. Precisely a year before Election Day, a group of Islamic radicals had stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and seized American hostages.

President Carter worked throughout the campaign to secure their release, including launching an ill-fated rescue mission in April 1980 that killed eight U.S. servicemen. Critics say the Reagan team was so concerned that Carter would gain a boost by winning their release just before the election, that his campaign manager and others negotiated privately with the Iranians to ensure that did not happen. It didn't, and Reagan ended up beating Carter. The 52 hostages were released Jan. 20, 1981 — the day the former California governor was inaugurated as president. At least three books on the subject have the term "October surprise" in their title, although no conspiracy was ever proven. Even though the month has just begun, the specter of an October surprise has already factored into the 2008 campaign.

Obama's campaign had to bat down reports that his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was going to release a book this month. Obama distanced himself from Wright earlier this year after the preacher, among other things, suggested the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community.

McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, stopped cooperating with lawmakers investigating her firing of the state's public safety commissioner after one joked that the findings could amount to an "October surprise" for the vice presidential nominee. Sen. Hollis French, a Democrat, later apologized for the remark. Palin was to debate her Democratic rival, Sen. Joe Biden, on Thursday.

U.S. intelligence sources, meanwhile, have warned about the potential for another attack by bin Laden and al-Qaida terrorists, seen by some as a potential boost for McCain. The Arizona senator and Vietnam veteran has argued he has stronger national security credentials than his Democratic rival, a freshman senator from Illinois. The same concern was voiced last spring by Harold Ickes, then an adviser to Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In emphasizing the credentials of the New York senator and former first lady, Ickes said: "We don't know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don't need an October surprise. And (the chance of) an October surprise with Hillary is remote." From Obama's perspective, an October surprise may have begun a month early: The turmoil in U.S. financial markets that erupted in September triggered criticism of McCain's leadership and economic understanding, and polls showed Obama starting to open a lead in key battleground states.

That movement could be reversed in the two remaining presidential debates — or by a true October surprise. Kerry said any surprise deliberately engineered by one of the campaigns would be a risky endeavor. "I think the media has grown much more suspicious of it because of the recent experiences," he said, "so I suspect there'll be a lot of scrutiny and maybe even some backlash."

It is going to be a long October, as we wait for the "surprise" to come!!
Have a Great Thursday!!

Hump Day Humor October 1st So Far No Bailout Edition

2008-10-01T18:59:00.000-05:00

I don't know how long it will last, but happily as of this writing there is no bailout deal.
I don't know if you have taken the opportunity to contact your Congressman, and Senators,
to express your views on the bailout plan, either for or against, but I have. I wrote all of
them through their online forms, as well as calling their local and Washington offices, and
let them know that this concerned citizen was against the bailout plan, and even though I
voted for them in past elections, that I would vote for their opponent if they chose to
vote yes on the bailout bill. Congressman Loebsack voted for it on Monday, so whoever
his opponent is will now receive this angry citizen's vote. Perhaps there were more people
calling his office in favor of the bailout, and then I can understand why he voted the way
he did, though it will not deter me from voting as I mentioned above.

It seems that the Senate is preparing to vote on the "new" and "improved" bailout plan, so
we'll await that vote and see whether or not our Senators are going to listen to their
constituents back here. In the meantime, here is some humor to get us through this Hump
Day, and headed for the weekend!!

The River
A preacher, completing a temperance sermon, spoke with great fervor! "If I had all the beer in the world, I’d throw it all into the river."

With greater emphasis, he said, "And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d throw it all into the river."

And finally he said, "And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I’d throw it all into the river, too!"

As he took his chair, the song leader stood and announced with a smile, "For our closing hymn, let us sing number 365:"

"Shall We Gather at the River."
----------------------------
No Tantrums
As a crowded airliner is about to take off, the peace is shattered by a 5-year-old boy who picks that moment to throw a wild temper tantrum. No matter what his frustrated, embarrassed mother does to try to calm him down, the boy continues to scream furiously and kick the seats around him.

Suddenly, from the rear of the plane, an elderly man in the uniform of an Air Force General is seen slowly walking forward up the aisle. Stopping the flustered mother with an upraised hand, the white-haired, courtly, soft-spoken General leans down and, motioning toward his chest, whispers something into the boy's ear.

Instantly, the boy calms down, gently takes his mother's hand, and quietly fastens his seat belt. All the other passengers burst into spontaneous applause.

As the General slowly makes his way back to his seat, one of the cabin attendants touches his sleeve.

"Excuse me, General," she asks quietly, "but could I ask you what magic words you used on that little boy?"

The old man smiles serenely and gently confides, "I showed him my pilot's wings, service stars, and battle ribbons, and explained that they entitle me to throw one passenger out the plane door on any flight I choose."
----------------------------
Flight Attendant
On a Continental Flight with a very "senior" flight attendant crew, the pilot said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.

"On landing," the stewardess said, "Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you're going to leave anything, please make sure it's something we'd like to have."

"There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane"
----------------------------
Frivolous Lawsuit
A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against fire among other things. Within a month having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: That the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued and won. In delivering the ruling the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The Judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire, and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the rare cigars lost in the "fires."

After the lawyer cashed the check, the Insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of arson! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000 fine.
-----------------------------
Whose Birthday ?
A mother took her three-year-old daughter to church for the first time. The church lights were lowered, and then the choir came down the aisle, carrying lighted candles.

All was quiet until the little one started to sing in a loud voice, "Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you..."
-----------------------------
Don't Have Anything
A woman walks into a convenience store. She walks straight to the manager and asks, "Do you have any small note-books?"

"Sorry," says the manager. "We're all out."

The woman shrugs, and asks, "Well, do you have any mechanical pencils?"

"Nope, don't have that either," says the manager.

The woman feels her stomach rumbling and asks, "Do you have Doritos? Nachos?"

The manager shrugs, "Sorry. Don't have that."

"My God!" the woman shouts, "If you don't have anything, you should close the store!"

The manager shrugs, "Don't have the key."
----------------------------
Traditional Roles
Several years before the Gulf War, a female journalist did a story on gender roles in Kuwait. She noted that there it was customary for women to walk 10 feet behind their husbands.

After the war, she returned to Kuwait and was pleased to observe that now the men walked 10 feet behind their wives. She approached a woman at the airport and asked, "What enabled Kuwaiti women to achieve this role reversal?"

The Kuwaiti woman replied, "Land mines."
-------------------------
Third Baby
When I was six months pregnant with my third child, my three year old came into the room when I was just getting ready to get into the shower.

She said, "Mommy, you are getting fat!"

I replied, "Yes honey, remember Mommy has a baby growing in her tummy."

"I know," she replied, "but what is growing in your butt
------------------------
Living With The Wolfman
The Wolf Man comes home one day from a long day at the office. "How was work, dear?" his wife asks.

"Listen! I don't want to talk about work!" he shouts.

"Okay. Would you like to sit down and eat a nice home cooked meal?" she asks nicely.

"Listen!" he shouts again. "I'm not hungry! I don't wanna eat! All right! Is that all right with you? Can I come home from work and just do my own thing without you forcing food down my throat? Huh?"

At this moment, the wolf man started growling, and throwing things around the apartment in a mad rage.

Looking out the window, his wife sees a full moon and says to herself, "Well, I guess it's that time of the month."
--------------------------
Cockroaches
Customer: Do you have and cockroaches?

Clerk: Yes we sell them to the fisherman.

Customer: I would like 20,000 of them.

Clerk: What would you want with 20,000 cockroaches?

Customer: I’m moving tomorrow and my lease says I must leave my apartment in the condition in which I found it.
--------------------------
Slow Racehorse
The racehorse owner was annoyed with the running of his horse at the race.

He turned on the jockey.

"Flaherty, could you not have raced faster?"

"Sure I could have, but you know we are supposed to stay on the horse."
-------------------------
Similarities Between Santa Clause And Systems Adminstrator's
1. Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny.

2. When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal.

3. Santa seldom answers your mail.

4. When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he's got, he says, "Elves make it for me."

5. Santa doesn't care about your deadlines.

6. Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves.

7. Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions.

8. Santa laughs entirely too much.

9. Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME.

10. Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence.
-------------------------------
Fight Competition
The shopkeeper was dismayed when a brand new business much like his own opened up next door and erected a huge sign which read 'Best Deals'.

He was horrified when another competitor opened up on his right, and announced its arrival with an even larger sign, reading 'Lowest Prices'.

The shopkeeper was panicked, until he got an idea. He put the biggest sign of all over his own shop - it read... 'Main entrance'.
--------------------------------
Rowing Away
There was a old lady that was rowing a boat in a corn field. A man stopped and started yelling at her. A second man stopped and asked the first man why he was yelling.

The first man said: "Can't you see the lady rowing in the dry corn field?"

The second guy said: "Go out and tell her yourself!"

The first guy said: "I Would but... I can't swim!"
-------------------------------
Evil Brothers
There once were two evil brothers. They were rich and used their money to keep their evil ways from the public eye. They attended the same temple, and to everyone else, they appeared to be perfect Jews.

One day, their rabbi retired and a new one was hired. Not only could the new rabbi see right through the brothers' deceptions, but he also spoke well and true about it. Due to the rabbi's honesty and integrity, the temple's membership grew in numbers. Eventually, a fundraising campaign was started to build a much bigger temple.

All of a sudden, one of the brothers died. The remaining brother sought out the new rabbi the day before the funeral and handed him a check for the amount needed to complete the new building. He held the check for the rabbi to see.

"I have only one condition," he said. "At the funeral, you must say my brother was a mensch. You must say those exact words."

After some thought, the rabbi gave his word and took the check. He cashed it immediately. At the funeral the next day, however, the rabbi did not hold back. "He was an evil man," he said about the dead brother. "He cheated on his wife and abused his family. Never once did he commit an unselfish act." He railed on and on about the deceased.

After nearly a half hour of the evil truth, the rabbi paused and shrugged his shoulders. Finally, he said, "But compared to his brother, he was a mensch."
------------------------------
Wedding Vows
During the wedding rehearsal, the groom approached the pastor with an unusual offer.

"Look, I'll give you $100 if you'll change the wedding vows. When you get to me and the part where I'm to promise to 'love, honor and obey' and 'forsaking all others, be faithful to her forever,' I'd appreciate it if you'd just leave that part out." He passed the minister a $100 bill and walked away satisfied.

It is now the day of the wedding, and the bride and groom have moved to that part of the ceremony where the vows are exchanged. When it comes time for the groom's vows, the pastor looks the young man in the eye and says:

"Will you promise to prostrate yourself before her, obey her every command and wish, serve her breakfast in bed every morning of your life and swear eternally before God and your lovely wife that you will not ever even look at another woman, as long as you both shall live?"

The groom gulped and looked around, and said in a tiny voice, "Yes."

The groom leaned toward the pastor and hissed, "I thought we had a deal."

The pastor put the $100 bill into his hand and whispered back, "She made me a much better offer."
----------------------------
Come In
A salesman knocked on the front door of a home, and heard a faint, high pitched, "Come In".

He tried the door and it was locked, so he went around to the back door.

He knocked again and heard again the high pitched "Come In".

As he entered the kitchen a large, mean, snarling Doberman met him.

As he plastered himself against the wall he called out for help.

Again, he heard the "Come In".

He slid down the wall to the living room to see a parrot in cage.

He said, "For Pete's sake, is that all you can say is 'Come In'?"

The parrot laughed and said "Sic Him"
-----------------------------
The Price Of Heroism
A guy walks into heaven and is greeted by heaven's secretary. "Well hello Mr. Jones", the secretary politely says "We'd love to have you here, but I'm afraid you can't come in unless you did a good deed in your life, and your record doesn't show anything. Did you do anything good?"

"Well recently, I saw this man being mugged by a three huge gang-bangers. So, I stopped my car, and pulled out my tire iron. Then, I walked to their leader and hit him hard on the head. After he fell dead, I looked at the others and said,'Who wants some o' this?"

"That's very brave, and kind. What happened next?" Asked the celestial secretary.

"I'm here now, aren't I?"
--------------------------
Not So Great
Three baseball fans were having a conversation about what they would do when they die. When they finished they all agreed that the first one to die had to come back and tell the other two if they had a baseball team in heaven.

Two months later one dies in a car accident. After the other two left the funeral they went to watch a baseball game. During the game they both felt a spirit around them and finally they realized it was the one that died. So at the same time they asked if they had baseball in heaven.

The guy said "Yes yes yes they do but the bad thing is you're pitching Wednesday!"
-------------------------
New Office Supplies
A little church in the suburbs suddenly stopped buying from its regular office supply dealer. So, the dealer telephoned Deacon Brown to ask why.

"I'll tell you why," shouted Deacon Brown. "Our church ordered some pencils from you to be used in the pews for visitors to register."

"Well, interrupted the dealer, "didn't you receive them yet?"

"Oh, we received them all right," replied Deacon Brown.

"However, you sent us some golf pencils... each stamped with the words, 'Play Golf Next Sunday.'"
-------------------------
Underwater
DAD: How are your exams son?

BOY: Underwater.

DAD: Underwater? What do you mean?

BOY: They're below C level.
-------------------------
Who's In Charge
29 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

It's the 535 members of the United States Congress. The same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.
--------------------------
The Other Side
Once upon a time, there was a river. The Nile River, to be exact. On one side of the river lived the rabbit, and on the other side lived the bear.

One fine day, the bear was sitting on a stump, enjoying his breakfest of berries. Then he heard someone yelling at him. It was the rabbit.

"Hey! Hey, Teddy, get your butt over here. I've got something to show you!"

"Not now! I'm eating."

"Oh come on!" said the rabbit. "It's really important."

"No way."

"Please. It's urgent."

So the bear decided to go all the way over the wide river. It took him all day and all night to get over to the other side. He nearly drowned. And when he finally got there he was groaning and panting, and wheezing for air.

"Well, rabbit," he panted. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Hey, Teddy," the rabbit began, "look how many berries are on the other side of the river."
---------------------------
The Whole Truth
At school, a boy was told by a classmate that most adults are hiding at least one dark secret, and that this makes it very easy to blackmail them by saying, "I know the whole truth." The boy decides to go home and try it out.

He goes home and as he is greeted by his mother he says, "I know the whole truth."

His mother quickly hands him $20 and says, "Just don't tell your father."

Quite pleased, the boy waits for his father to get home from work and greets him with, "I know the whole truth."

The father promptly hands him $40 and says, "Please don't say a word to your mother."

Very pleased, the boy is on his way to school the next day, when he sees the mailman at his front door. The boy greets him by saying, "I know the whole truth."

The mailman drops the mail, opens his arms, and says, "Then come give your father a big hug."
--------------------------
Baker's Assistant
Many years ago, a baker's assistant called Richard the Pourer, whose job it was to pour the dough mixture in the making of sausage rolls, noted that he was running low on one of the necessary spices, he sent his apprentice to the store to buy more.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the shop, the young man realized that he had forgotten the name of the ingredient. All he could do was to tell the shopkeeper that it was for Richard the Pourer, for batter for wurst.
---------------------------
Okay that was "bad", so with that we shall call it a day!!
Rememer to let your representatives know how you feel on the bailout bill, whether you are for or against it, it is important that you voice your opinions to them!!
Take Care and Happy Hump Day!! ;)

House Defeats $700B Financial Markets Bailout

2008-09-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

UPDATE ON BAILOUT

The House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive into recession without it.

Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.

Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle. More than two-thirds of Republicans and 40 percent of Democrats opposed the bill.
link to the full story

Post Debate Polls Show Obama's Lead Growing

2008-09-29T12:58:00.000-05:00

I was just reading a story concerning last weeks Presidential debate at Yahoo News, and
found this analysis of poll data at Politico:

Two days after a presidential debate many commentators scored as a tie, it's beginning
to look like the public saw things differently, as several polls show a small but significant
post-debate boost for Barack Obama.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released Sunday showed 46 percent of debate-watchers believed
Obama outperformed John McCain, while.just 34 percent said McCain got the better of the
exchange. Thirty percent of debate-watchers said they had a more favorable opinion of
Obama following the debate, compared with just 14 percent who said their opinion of him
had worsened. Respondents whose opinion of McCain changed as a result of the debate were
evenly split, as 21 percent said their view of McCain had improved because of it and 21 percent
said it had worsened.

The poll surveyed 701 adults who watched Friday's debate, and all interviews were conducted
on Saturday.

Obama's numbers have ticked up nationally since the debate, the first of three scheduled this
year, along with next Thursday's vice-presidential face-off In the Sunday update to Gallup's daily
tracking poll, Obama widened his lead over McCain to 50-42 percent. Friday, in polling that
preceded the debate, Obama had a five-point, 49-44 percent advantage.
link to full story

Bailout Winners And Losers

2008-09-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like our Representatives in Washington D.C. are refusing to represent us, as the "Bailout For Wall Street Babies" is being voted on today in the House of Un-Representatives, which high expectations of passing. The Senate will make it a "done" deal on Tuesday or Wednesday, and "To Hell With The American People" Bush will sign it right after, and will guarantee himself a huge "golden" parachute once he leaves office, and can start collecting "speaking" fees from all the "monied" people he saved.

Whether you or for or against this bailout, you should let your Congressmen and Senators know, so that they can understand that this may be their last term in office if they go against our wishes. According to the polls a vast majority of the American people oppose this bailout, and elected officials should fear losing their jobs as they take this vote.

The story at Yahoo News by Tom Raum, an Associated Press writer breaks down the "winners" and "losers" in this bailout:
The proposal to bail out U.S. financial markets to the tune of up to $700 billion creates a lot of potential short-term winners, as well as some losers. Wall Street and the banking industry are perhaps the biggest winners. Scores of banks and other financial institutions faced with going under stand to gain a lifeline that should allow them to start making loans again. Under the plan that congressional aide sought to put into final form Sunday, the Treasury Department can start buying up troubled mortgage-related securities now held by these institutions.

These securities are clogging balance sheets, leaving banks without the required capital to make new loans and putting the banks dangerously close to insolvency. Banks not only have slowed lending to individuals and businesses, they have stopped making loans to each other. The rescue plan should help restore confidence to financial markets. There are other winners, too, if the bailout works as intended: anyone soon trying to borrow money -- for cars, student loans, even to open new credit card accounts.

Top executives at troubled financial institutions, on the other hand, are in the losing column because the proposal would limit their compensation and rules out "golden parachutes." Of course, these executives may take solace in knowing their jobs still exist. Investors, including the millions of people who hold stock in their 401(k) and pension plans, should benefit. Failure to reach a deal over the weekend could have sent stock markets around the world tumbling on Monday.
link to the full story

Legendary Actor Paul Newman Dies At 83

2008-09-27T10:11:00.000-05:00

Another legend of the silver screen has died as this story at Yahoo News reports

Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as the anti-hero of such films as "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money" — and as an activist, race car driver and popcorn impresario — has died. He was 83. Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.

In May, Newman had dropped plans to direct a fall production of "Of Mice and Men," citing unspecified health issues.

He got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become one of the world's most enduring and popular film stars, a legend held in awe by his peers. He was nominated for Oscars 10 times, winning one regular award and two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including "Exodus," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Verdict," "The Sting" and "Absence of Malice."

Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in "Butch Cassidy" and "The Sting."

He sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood's rare long-term marriages. "I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?" Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in "The Long Hot Summer," and Newman directed her in several films, including "Rachel, Rachel" and "The Glass Menagerie."

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. "I was always a character actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon's "enemies list," one of the actor's proudest achievements, he liked to say.

A screen legend by his mid-40s, he waited a long time for his first competitive Oscar, winning in 1987 for "The Color of Money," a reprise of the role of pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson, whom Newman portrayed in the 1961 film "The Hustler." Newman delivered a magnetic performance in "The Hustler," playing a smooth-talking, whiskey-chugging pool shark who takes on Minnesota Fats — played by Jackie Gleason — and becomes entangled with a gambler played by George C. Scott. In the sequel — directed by Scorsese — "Fast Eddie" is no longer the high-stakes hustler he once was, but rather an aging liquor salesman who takes a young pool player (Cruise) under his wing before making a comeback.

link to full story

McCain Will Use Jet To Fly To The Debate!

2008-09-26T12:42:00.000-05:00

"Here I am to Save The Day" ~~
"Mighty McCain is on his way"~~
"Oh Never Mind"!!
Hilarious!!
This has absolutely been high drama theater at its' very worst this week, as Senator McCain suspended his campaign to rush back to Washington to "Save The Day" on a Wall Street bailout scam, only to find out the American people don't want it "saved", and with less than 10 hours to go, he changed his mind, and now IS going to debate Senator Obama tonight.
I have been LMAO as I have watched this mess unfold and the way these idiots in Washington scramble to rearrange the deck chairs on the S.S. America(Titanic), after we have hit the iceberg, the lower decks flooded, and the ship is about to slide under the waves.
Admit it is too late, and let's get on with the Depression!!
A quick aside: Attention Politicians of all stripes~~we now know that this fiasco which began under De-Regulation Reagan, was continued under Bush the Elder, Clinton the Centrist, Bush the Junior-though he actually did try to reign in this situation on two occasions, but didn't push it, Barney Frank, Charles Rangle, Chris Dodd, Dennis Hastert, Harry (Reid, Pelosi, and pretty much every other Democrat, and Republican representative, who wanted their constituents to have easy credit and easy money, who are responsible. You Are ALL Responsible!!
We should clean everyone out of office who "has" experience, and turn this nation back to citizen politicians, who go to Washington, and then return to their home to their "real" jobs. As Lord Acton said "All Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely", and that is the core problem of all nations, and America is no exception, as we are learning all too well!! Hang on as We may have to break out the torches and beat our plowshares back into swords before this is over!!

Anyway the flip-flop story of the day is at Yahoo News as Senator McCain changes his mind on the debate:
Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the event until Washington had taken action to address the crisis.

With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said that afterward McCain would fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis. Obama had always planned to attend the debate and was onboard his plane preparing to take off when McCain's announcement was made.

The McCain campaign's statement said he was optimistic that there has been progress toward a bipartisan agreement. But earlier in the week, McCain said he would delay the debate "until we have taken action to address this crisis." He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations," the McCain campaign said in a statement.

It was a different position than McCain had taken Wednesday, when he announced, "I'm directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis."
link to full story