But there’s other unfinished business, which is why Chris Christie is so appealing. At dinner last summer, they talked about pension reform and getting tough with the unions, and Ailes saw in Christie a great candidate: an ordinary guy, someone you’d be comfortable talking to over your back fence. But Ailes may have seen something else. Christie’s got Fox News TV values with a ready-made reel. And of course, Obama versus Christie is a producer’s dream: black versus white, fat versus thin, professor versus prosecutor. Maybe, just maybe, Ailes could laugh all the way to the White House and the bank.
That’s some deluded stuff. How many guys between three and four hundred pounds do you consider “ordinary” back fence chatting material?
The upshoot of the long piece: Having spent the last two years employing Fox News to boost and amplify the profiles of the unelectable GOP candidates — Santorum, Huckabee (formerly), Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich et all — because it was good money and personally satisfying, Ailes has a serious case of the frets.
He used his network to promote them, boost their careers and aspirations, and make them wealthy. Now he thinks they’re crap.
So Ailes has fixed himself and Fox upon Chris Christie, who’s not significantly distinguishable from the others in terms of belligerence and animosity towards the middle class unless one factors in his sheer size.
Denys Ray Hughes, 64, who has a home in Manitowish Waters in Vilas County [Wisconsin], is wanted and on the run.
According to WITI – TV in Milwaukee, Hughes was to report to a halfway house in Milwaukee on May 25th after serving prison time, but he never showed up.
U.S. Marshals believe he could be somewhere in rural northern Wisconsin or in the south eastern part of the state, where he has family.
He also has family in Arizona.
He was sentenced to 87 months in prison for the attempted production of a biological toxin for use as a weapon, possession of an unregistered destructive device, and possession of an unregistered silencer.
From the old DD blog entry, The Jailbird’s Bookshelf, back in 2006:
The evidence list from US vs. Hughes is illuminating in that it shows the standard books discussed previously in “From the Poisoners Handbook to the Botox Shoe of Death” here.
From Hughes’ “library:” “The Weaponeer,” a Saxon pamphlet with a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol. 3“, also containing a ricin recipe, “The Poor Man’s James Bond, Vol.2,” Festering Publication’s “Silent Death,” containing yet another ricin recipe, “Deadly Brew,” “Deadly Substances,” and an assortment of what Dick Destiny blog calls really bad science books — cf., “Grandad’s Wonderful Book of Chemistry” — for idiots or young boys.
Accompanying the books in evidence were a mortar and pestle, bottles of castor seeds, castor beans in a package, castor beans in a bin, and Red Devil lye — which is another reagent dumbly recommended by survivalist literature as useful in purifying ricin. Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is a strong base. Strong bases destroy proteins, like ricin, but for decades the literature of the domestic terrorist has cited it in their ricin recipes and it has become a marker of intent in federal cases where the US is going for a conviction on making or attempting to make a biological or chemical weapon.
Another incriminating marker is dimethyl sulfoxide, also attributed in the Hughes case. Ricin is not a contact poison but because the domestic terrorist-in-training takes seriously material like Hutchkinson’s “The Poisoner’s Handbook,” which insists it would be handy to combine dimethyl sulfoxide with ricin in plans to poison the Pope or a government employee through the skin, it has been adopted as key part of their chemical armory.
The federal case against Hughes appeared to be an easy one, based simply on showing the jury the man’s books, chemicals, equipment for bomb-making — and one pipe bomb.
For example, it cannot help a defendant to have the jury shown any of Saxon’s books. They tend to include drawings, like Dick Destiny blog’s similar rendition (to the left), on how to attack someone with poison or explosives …
A copy of the original complaint against Hughes from last year describes ATF/FBI flypaper –gunpowder, fuses, road flares, instructions on how to build a bunker, an assortment of guns, silencers and pipe-bomb-building materials.
For a chortle, watch it on YouTube for a moment. Look at the title, put up by the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy which believes so highly in him. So highly, they couldn’t spell his name right, delivering instead the Freudian-slip, “Newt Gingrinch.”
Sadly, his campaign staff finally realized what everyone else knows instinctively. Gingrich is too much a laughingstock.
Here’s a snapshot of the Sarah’s Little Helpers phenom, a small number of GOP/Tea Party/Palin fanboys or girls who seemingly rushed to Wikipedia for the purpose of editing the entry for Paul Revere in support of her — or at least to sow confusion.
And, of course, the editing count also includes Wikipedia troops changing it back while beating off the assault.
Note that statistically no one was really interested in Paul Revere’s bio page. Then — magically — a radical jump in revision for June just in line with Sarah Palin’s display of unrepentant and bellicose stupidity.
Palin’s Loyalists, locked in hand to hand combat at Wikipedia.
I published this joke and the silly mugl shot that made him look old and beamish so many times it’s remotely possible it got around to him.
Now Ted shaves once again. Or it just could be he’d rather look more like he used to for the fans on his summer tour of rib shacks, casinos and ag fairs.
Sadly, once again a copy editor had to be cruelly humiliated:
The lede in to Ted’s essay:
Good friend and Texas Gov. Rick Perry should remember that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now is that time, Rick. Run for president.
Ted is not pleased with the overall quality of GOP presidential material.
Interestingly, while other famous right wingers have lobbied vigorously for Chris Christie to jump into the fray, Nugent has been silent on the matter.
I know why. Ted was never going to get into the Christie mania.
Christie does have the same temperament and outlook as Ted Nugent.
But, and it’s one big but —[cough], a Ted thing is to hector Americans for being too zaftig.
Ted isn’t into those who find it quite the hardship to push themselves away from the dinner table.
Speaking of wild pigs, Nugent again got some bad press in Michigan this week.
The Kalamazoo newspaper published on article mentioning Nugent’s lobbying to have a law that will declare exotic swine illegal invasives in Michigan overturned.
The law has been enacted to curb disease and destruction to the environment caused by the animals when they escape their pens.
The report also cited an opposing view from Jack Mayer, a national swine expert, who said the ban is needed because swine easily escape enclosure and are able to survive and reproduce in Michigan.
“Every one of the states that has one of these commercial fenced shooting operations is leaking hogs,” said Mayer, according to the MIRS report. “You can’t fence wild pigs, I’m sorry.”
In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.
The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.
A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.
“You can frame or phrase it in a different way — the aim [is] to create the impression, through ambiguity, that the U.S. will resort to unreasonably scary escalation if someone who actually controls the levers decides in favor of it … “The U.S. always reserves the right to overdo things. That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,” Smith said. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.”
So could Smith think of any possible cyberattack that would warrant military response? Blacking out the entire Eastern Seaboard? Opening the floodgates on the Hoover Dam?
“I’m not really in the business of making predictions, particularly here. Too many variables, and the intelligence on such matters is always fuzzy,” Smith replied. “I’m going with a conservative ‘no.'”
We’re not going to be seeing the opening of the floodgates of the Hoover Dam in our lifetimes. Or the former.
DD grew up in Pennsy. Gettysburg has always been lame. It was a de facto class trip way too many times at Pine Grove Area School District.
Gettysburg was the high water mark of the South in the Civil War.
And Robert E. Lee wound up — using an inexact forward-looking reference — like Paulus at Stalingrad.
It was an uninteresting famous battle. Because it’s the only Civil War battle most Americans know it has taken on mythic proportion.
Meade, one of the Union’s many mediocre generals, broke Lee’s back.
At Gettysburg, the South was poorly led.
In a related matter, much of Pennsy — between Philly and Pittsburgh — remains similar to Alabama. It’s very red with only a couple exceptions.
However, that doesn’t mean big crowds in Pennsylvania would rally to see Sarah Palin at Gettysburg.
Gettysburg and Palin = public relations nightmare.
Particularly after being allied with bikers on Memorial Day. Something the mainstream media has declined to notice.
Palin showing up as part of a big hoop-de-doo, with her demographic, would have had to feature an explanation on why she thought the South was noble. Her core audience in Pennsy has a significant component flying Confederate flags. It’s not minor but still shunned as untouchable.
The national news coverage of Palin doing her thing with bikers this weekend also dodged one sticky detail.
DD played biker bars for years in Pennsy.
Bikers are extreme right-wingers bigots. Period. They are overwhelmingly white undereducated power drinkers and not particularly representative of the broad American melting pot. While they tend to be romantically portrayed by Hollywood as strong and vibrant men of action, they’re more fairly described as undesirables in any voting demographic.
Many of them are still, in their minds, refighting the Civil War. (See Hunter Thompson or ask DD in e-mail.)
They are often quite fond of displaying Confederate flags, too. Ralph “Sonny” Barger was never known for empathy and tolerance or as a student of Dale Carnegie courses on how to make friends and influence people.
Gettysburg was a Union victory. Guys in biker colors, some with Confederate patches. Sounds like such a great match.
Gettysburg was not, as has been portrayed in a unintentionally annoying teaser for some dramatization on cable this Memorial Day weekend, a melting pot in which two armies fought and generated a future better nation.
The South lost a bloody battle and it was the beginning of its long end.
And just how many African American still-sore-over-the-Vietnam-War Harley gangs have you seen in your lifetime?
The sun was barely up Tuesday morning when supporters and reporters gathered in front of Sarah Palin’s bus in a hotel parking lot, hoping to catch a glimpse of the former Alaska governor, whose third day of her East Coast tour is expected to include stops at the Civil War battlefield here and possibly later at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
That lack of clarity is not stopping an outpouring of support in Gettysburg. Notes from well-wishers were taped to the door of the Sarah PAC “One Nation” bus, and by 6:45 a.m., two adoring fans were already posing for pictures in front of the bus. The young women, who refused to give their names, said they had waited for three-and-a-half hours on Memorial Day at a battlefield monument where Palin was ultimately a no-show for several hundred fans.
Two local news vans and a CNN bus were already on the scene early Tuesday morning.
You won’t find the bitterest taste in nature — it was created in a lab by accident. Bitter foods are inedible for some people, others barely notice — but kids are the most sensitive of all…
According to ABC (Australia), a genetics study coming out of the University of Barcelona currently published in the journal Biology Letters focuses on one particular [human] gene in the sequence that, when present, makes an individual sensitive to the taste of the organic compound phenylthiocarbamide.
This chemical is present in Brussels sprouts as well as cabbage and broccoli, and importantly from an evolutionary perspective, in many poisonous plants.
Love them or hate them, around 40% of the sprouts produced for the UK market are consumed in the weeks up to and including Christmas day. But the varieties on the table today are very different from those that we would have been eating in the past, according to Peter van der Toorn, head of R&D in the leafy vegetables section at agrochemicals major Syngenta.
‘We don’t have real bitter tasting sprouts anymore,’ Van der Toorn says. ‘Our product range has moved to a series of “classic??? tasting varieties and another series of super mild tasting varieties. But even the classic tasting sprouts are not as bitter as they were …
Some of the glucosinolates present in Brussels, for example, include glucoraphanin, glucobrassicin, sinigrin and progoitrin. Sinigrin and progoitrin relate to the bitter taste on eating Brussels sprouts. However, the story is complicated as a mixture of glucosolinates and other compounds are involved in the bitterness and flavour of Brussels, and this taste experience varies from person to person.
‘There are genetic differences between individuals that make us more or less sensitive to these bitter flavours,’ Mithen explains. ‘These genetic differences affect the expression of taste receptors that make the individual more or less sensitive to some of the compounds in Brussels.’
I’m apparently one of those people who perceive Brussels sprouts as irredeemably horrid. If force fed them, I gag.
Which is just what my mother used to do to me back in the Sixties.
When I was a kid dinner featuring Brussels was really to be dreaded. Just the odor of them cooking evoked a vague nausea.
My mother, never a reasonable person, took my perception that they were revolting as a personal affront. She would set the timer on the stove to five or ten minutes and threaten that I needed to eat the things before the alarm dinged.
If I couldn’t eat them, and such was almost always the case, the punishment was a leather belt and the rest of the evening confined to the bedroom.
“Look at the kid, he’s gagging, he’s gagging!” cackled the parents, insane with anger at the temerity of my reaction at the dinner table. Over forty years later it’s still fresh in the mind.
Laugh at Harold Camping but consider that the US is replete with extremists and kooks. And due to the shabby state of the nation many are in power locally.
[Mandate] that gold and silver coins replace federal currency as legal tender in [the] state.
South Carolina Rep. Mike Pitts has introduced legislation … banning “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin” in South Carolina.
Because anything that subverts US currency is unconstitutional the South Carolina dollar abolitionists worm about the edges with wording like this, from a local Fox News affiliate:
Sen. David Thomas, a Republican from Greenville, wants to make gold and silver coins another option in the Palmetto State. Lawmakers are calling it the Sound Money Legislation … Thomas also wants a special joint committee to study the need and process for establishing an alternate currency.
“What do you think about about gold and silver coins being proposed as SC tender?” Fox asks.
Perhaps not so much. The photos accompanying the story show a small band of exclusively white, mostly old, people.
Some of them hold signs — “Say No to Tyranny, No to IMF”, abolish the dollar, get rid of the Fed — which do nothing except establish it’s more standard Tea Party nihilism.
Enter the Central Bank, or Federal Reserve System. Enter INFLATION. Creating new money is inflation of the money supply. That causes prices to go up, or in other words, the value of a dollar to go down. The purchasing power has been diluted. You have been robbed …
We live in a world of Fiat money–it’s money because the government says it is, and they get all they want. You still have to earn yours.
Worth a mordant smirk, here’s a piece from the Edmonton Sun on America’s most prominent whack jobs this week — the 6 PMers.
We don’t have so many nuts people like that here in Canada, says the story’s primary source, a man who runs a survivalist supply store.
Then the fun really begins. No, his is a different flavor of extremist. The 6PMers think they’re going to heaven. The others — the ones with their eyes really on the ball — will be setting up shop in their Farnham Freeholds, saved by their gold, guns and stock of pemmican.
You’ll note the military dry goods man also has more intellectual elasticity going for him. After 6PM today, he knows his beliefs won’t have had to suffer the savage public beating of global amusement.
“Typically, Canadians seem to be a little more rational than that,??? said Gordon McGowan owner of Mil Arms, Edmonton’s leading military and hunting gear supplier.
“We’ve seen these wackjobs since the 16th century predicting the end of the world. Personally, I’ve never met anybody astute enough to have a conversation with the being that guides us all.???
McGowan says you don’t see Edmontonians running around, stocking up for the impending apocalypse, because they’re far too logical to buy into the hype.
[On the other hand, it’s never too late to buy gold and ammo — DD]
In the event of an act of terrorism, ecological fallout, economic meltdown or zombie invasion, McGowan — tongue firmly planted in his cheek — suggests you follow one simple rule, made famous by such apocalyptic films as The Stand, The Day After and 28 Days late: he who holds the gold, makes the rules.
“In a major, global disaster, it comes down to gold, guns and generators,??? he said. “You have to make sure you have bartering tools, gold, jewelry etc. And if you don’t have resources, you’ll have to have the guts to what you need by force.???
“If it came to the end of days, you need the skills to ride a horse and the guts to steal one,??? he advised.
Methinks the Sun reporter may have been having a little bit of sport.
And since we’re on the subject, once again, of fiat money and the end of the US, we have these readings, also from the other side of the street.
First, my old fave, the genuinely mindbending Lehigh Valley Scripture Spouting Old White Dude, who informs readers one can tell the end is nigh by the following:
