About Us
Mission Statement
Rules of Conduct
 
Name:
Pswd:
Remember Me
Register
 

Latest Entries

Actions Menu

Blog Roll

Other Links

Catastrophe in the Pacific
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/10/2009 12:55:40

Have you been following the news coming out of the Pacific in recent weeks?

The vastness of the Pacific region is often difficult for Americans to grasp; the ocean itself covers nearly the entire hemisphere, and the distances are vast.

I've flown across the Pacific twice; going from Manchester (NH) to Detroit, to Nagoya, Japan, and finally Manila and back again. It's a flight of over 8,500 miles and it took well over 24 hours in both directions.


On September 29, a magnitude 8.0 earthquate triggered a tsunami that struck the Samoa archipeligo.


Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- More than 3,000 people are homeless in the Pacific Island nation of Samoa and face the risk of disease, a week after a tsunami wiped away 20 villages, the United Nations said in a statement today.

The Sept. 29 tsunami, spawned by a magnitude-8.0 earthquake, killed 137 people, injured 310 and left six still missing in the nation of 177,000, the UN said. Damage to Samoa’s roads, sewers and other infrastructure could reach $150 million, the international organization said.

The World Health Organization and UN agencies are working with the Samoan government to plan the islands’ reconstruction and ensure that it has a system in place to monitor medical needs and outbreaks of disease, according to the statement.

The UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said 9,000 children need assistance and 2,000 of those have been forced from their homes by the disaster.

On the island of Niuatoputapu, part of Tonga, the tsunami left nine dead and more than 300 homeless, the UN said. The island’s fresh water supply has been restored, and sufficient food supplies are available.


Just today, a video was released by the FBI office on American Samoa that showed the tsunami coming ashore in their parking lot.
Continue reading...

7 comments (Latest Comment: 10/11/2009 01:43:56 by clintster)

Conversation with Caricatures
Author: Random    Date: 10/09/2009 11:21:46

Conversation with Caricatures
A dialogue with a Liberal, Conservative, and myself

(Something unrelated. But I have just been informed that Obama has one the nobel peace prize.)

Episode 01: Patriotism

Myself: Welcome one and all to Conversation with Caricatures. Here we discuss the issues through lenses so distorted you’d swear this wasn’t real. As always we are joined by Liberal and Conservative. Now, let’s start with Conservative, what does Patriotism mean to you?
Continue reading...

51 comments (Latest Comment: 10/10/2009 01:25:14 by TriSec)

They Know Not What They Do (obviously)
Author: clintster    Date: 10/08/2009 12:10:15

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, it seemed that there were a couple of things you could rely on: conservatives would always support the US no matter what, and religious conservatives would always refer to the King James Version of the Bible as the "authentic" version of that book. The Moral Majority was pretty much founded on these two principles. And they succeeded in intimidating lawmakers, packing school boards and generally making people long for the good old days of Roger Williams and William Penn.

Recently, however, the religious and patriotic Right have seen their respective stars diminish as liberals and moderates have attempted to take back the moral and patriotic high ground. In the aftermath of the 2008 election, it even appears to have made conservatives go a little... what's the word I'm looking for? Ohhhhh yes: crazy! Witness the following examples and see for yourself

Continue reading...

46 comments (Latest Comment: 10/09/2009 02:08:24 by Random)

More then Zombieland
Author: wickedpam    Date: 10/07/2009 12:39:21

It’s October, the time when the air turns crisp, the leaves change color and the dead walk the night and day. I love this time of year. I’ve loved scary movies, books and TV shows since….jeez….I think I saw the Creature Double Feature on the UHF station when we lived in the Philly suburbs. Those horror movies are a far cry from the blood porn most movies of this genre are today. Vampires worked themselves into the culture and become sexy instead of scary…well maybe that hasn’t changed to some extent (and I’m not counting Nostforatu). The un-killable serial killers like Jason, Freddie and Mike Myers all have pasts that we should be sympathetic too. And monsters have become computer generated and too big to take seriously, i.e. Cloverfield (which is a great movie but I’m not that scared of giant praying mantis from outer space).

There is one thing in horror movies, however, that has always made my skin crawl since I first saw it when MTV did its week of scary movies for Halloween back in the ‘80’s, that’s The Night of the Living Dead. I’m talking Zombies!!!!!!
Continue reading...

32 comments (Latest Comment: 10/08/2009 12:34:20 by wickedpam)

Ask A Vet
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/06/2009 11:25:52

Good Morning.

Today is our 2,393rd day in Iraq.

We'll start this morning as we always do, with the latest casualty figures from Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03): 4347
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 4208
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 3884
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3488
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 119

Other Coalition Troops - Iraq: 325
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 856
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 573
Contractor Employee Deaths - Iraq: 1,395
Journalists - Iraq: 335
Academics Killed - Iraq: 431

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:
$ 917, 303, 150, 000 . 00



You may have missed it during the past week while the Republicans were busy howling over Mr. Obama's trip to the Olympic Committee for Chicago's failed bid to host the 2016 games....but he's spent an awful lot of time recently reviewing Afghanistan. We always count the days we've been in Iraq....but lest we forget, we've been in Afghanistan longer.

Continue reading...

23 comments (Latest Comment: 10/07/2009 02:47:18 by trojanrabbit)

The Golden Bootstraps
Author: Raine    Date: 10/05/2009 13:11:39

I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" yesterday morning. Although I knew what I was going to see, and knew many of the items of interest in the move before going in, I came away shaken and as the day went on I became distressed. The corporate powers are so great in this country I wonder if We the people... is going to disappear forever.
Continue reading...

19 comments (Latest Comment: 10/05/2009 20:48:23 by livingonli)

News Insanity
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 10/04/2009 14:26:33

The Neo-clowns are pranking us all - once again - with their antics that are crazier than Velveeta's Great Aunt Lolla that used to wander the halls of the old folks home selling slightly used crackers; a strange metaphor for her dementia.

Recently, we were graced with the news that Sarah Palin is writing a book! Well, she's too busy doing, um, something, to actually write it herself. But the book is on its way with the help of woman by the name of Lynn Vincent. Ms Vincent is a delightful woman whose previous work includes a tome called Donkey Cons an investigative book about the democratic mafia party.

She also ghost wrote the memoir of Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former head of the Army's Special Forces Command, who literally believes that his job in the U.S. military was to defeat Satan for the Christian nation of America. A man who once stood at the pulpit of a church in 2002 (First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla.) and, after showing slides of battles from Somalia told the congregation "Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy. It is the principalities of darkness. It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."
Continue reading...

5 comments (Latest Comment: 10/05/2009 03:27:18 by livingonli)

The perils of being a frozen head
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/03/2009 11:26:28

Good Morning!

October...and the end of the Outdoor Discovery School season at ol' LL Bean. Today's my last shift for the school, but the weather is going to be suck-o-licious, so I don't know if anything is going to be happening at the store today.

Fall is starting in earnest around these parts. Some leaves are starting to turn...it's opening weekend for the Topsfield Fair, and as it starts to get colder and darker, I often ponder the life cycle of this earth and its inhabitants....namely us.

Now sure, we'd all like to live forever, but that's just not a realistic option for most of us. I'm sure we're all young and mostly healthy....but have you given any thought at all to your final resting place? I know I'd like to be cremated, and perhaps have the ashes scattered around Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia, but I suppose I have time to worry about that.

Or you could go the Gene Roddenberry route, and have your ashes vacuum-dessicated and pressed into a tiny capsule and shot into space. Cool and uber-geeky, but damn expensive.

Ah, I know. How about making like Walt Disney and having your body frozen, in the hopes that some future science can cure whatever killed you and bring you back to life? No wait...that's an urban legend...

Continue reading...

23 comments (Latest Comment: 10/04/2009 04:30:36 by livingonli)

Treason
Author: BobR    Date: 10/02/2009 12:43:27


Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. - The American Heritage Dictionary

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. - Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution


Words are like living things. They come into vogue, get bandied about, become part of the zeitgeist, lose their power due to overuse, and then fade away again, rarely mentioned, like an urn of ashes on the fireplace mantle. It seems the word treason is like that.
Continue reading...

67 comments (Latest Comment: 10/02/2009 21:55:56 by IzzyBitz)

This is what it's come to.
Author: Raine    Date: 10/01/2009 12:53:39

The White House has actually called the Fox News Network liars.

In a blog post titled Turning a Point of Pride into a Moment of Shame, author Jesse Lee called them out on the various lies they are telling about the White house and the bid various people are making to bring the Olympics to America -- specifically, Chicago. (expect Faux outrage from Faux news)
Continue reading...

62 comments (Latest Comment: 10/02/2009 04:57:15 by BobR)

<<  500  501  502  503  504  505  >>
Order by most recent comment   Complete Blog Entry List

Rev 3.7; Copyright � 2007-2017 by BobberBlogs�