Althea Trying On Nice Faces (And Failing In One Attempt)

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This morning I showed my niece Althea the pictures of her twin brother August trying on his mean face (click the link to see his pictures). I asked her if she would also do some mean faces for me. She said she wanted to do nice faces. . .and she mostly succeeded. /jack

POTUS 23: Pres. Benjamin Harrison - The Last Bearded President

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President Benjamin Harrison was a one term Republican. I love that phrase! One term Republican Presidents are my favorite species of Presidents...next to two term Democratic Presidents.

Harrison was 5' 6" tall, and the Democrats called him "Little Ben." President Harrison narrowly won the Presidency; he lost the popular vote and won the electoral college (like Pres. George W. Bush).

Following the death of his wife during his term in office, he seemed to flounder. His party was severely beaten in the mid-term congressional elections. After losing touch with his core supporters, he just didn't have the gas to win the election. Although he was renominated by the Republicans, their luke-warm support cost him the election. He was trounced by Grover Cleveland (POTUS 24 and POTUS 26). He is mainly remembered today as an early proponent of free trade around the world.
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POTUS 27: Pres. William Howard Taft - Who Preferred To Be Remembered As Chief Justice

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President William Howard Taft was a judge, a Governor of The Phillipines, and later The Secretary of War. POTUS 26, Teddy Roosevelt, hand-picked him as successor. President Taft had a fairly uneventful Presidency and lost the re-election to Woodrow Wilson (POTUS 28).

After leaving the White House, he taught law school for years and was eventually tapped to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. President Taft said in later years that he much preferred the bench to the Oval Office.
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[1] B/W photograph corrected and altered digitally. Hand tinted portrait, with added digital background,

$25,000 Worth of Ann Coulter

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Click on the title to link to a news article about her talk at KU last night.

Some samples from her talk at a Kansas university last night: In her opening remarks, she promised to answer questions from liberals, if they can "thrash their way to a coherent thought." "I've come to find I like liberals a lot more," Coulter said. "They're kind of cute when they're cold, shivering and afraid."

When hecklers began yelling at her she said: "I think there are some people in the audience who meant to be at the sexual reorientation class down the hall." And then, she sent a few bullnecks out to clean up the hecklers: "Could 10 of the largest College Republicans start walking up and down the aisles and start removing anyone shouting?" Coulter asked, "otherwise, this lecture is over."

Several people responded, leaving their seats to confront the hecklers, and verbal confrontations erupted in parts of the auditorium. Coulter resumed her critical remarks, calling Sen. Ted Kennedy a "human dirigible" and the Democrats' "spiritual leader." She also made fun of the Democrats' dalliance with filmmaker Michael Moore and former presidential candidate John Kerry, who she said got away with telling "big, fat, enormous lies."

She also blasted the nation's judicial system for its handling of the Terri Schiavo case. "We no longer have a single check on the judiciary," she said.

Coulter was paid $25,000 for her appearance.
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Augie Trying On Mean Faces

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POTUS 9: Pres. William Henry Harrison - The Drive By President

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President Harrison was probably the first empty suit elected to the Presidency. In the end, the damage was slight.

He rode to victory on the coattails of leading a much embroidered battle with Indians called Tippecanoe. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," was his slogan, and it has remained probably the best known campaign slogan in American history. The Whigs selected Harrison as a candidate because they believed in a strong congress and a weak president; Harrison filled the bill perfectly. The Whigs turned out 82% of the eligible voters with such blandishments as live music, baloon rides, and free whiskey.

President Harrison's campaign slogan proved to be prophetic. Harrison died of pneumonia one month and a day after assuming office and was succeeded by President John Tyler. Despite his highly-truncated tenure he is better known than a lot of Presidents. Is he the most prominent amongst the obscure??
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POTUS 34: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower - A Most Detached President

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Ike was essentially the CEO of World War II. He rose from being a mere Lietunant Colonel in 1941 to a five-star general in 1945. As supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, he commanded the most powerful army, navy, and air force ever assembled on this great green sphere. He commanded the assault on Nazi-occupied France that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. In peacetime he commanded the NATO forces. He ran for President, and stomped Adlai Stevenson. Twice.

He was unable to duplicate his battlefield victories. Ike had a congressional majority for only two years of his presidency, and truth be told, not a lot was accomplished in those eight years. Ike, in particular, turned his back on the great racial divide that would soon fracture the country once again.

There is a large body of scholarship and innuendo to suggest that President Eisenhower, like many of his presidential brethren, catted around and around and around on his wife, Mamie. Kay Summersby, his British driver, is often mentioned as the booty call.

He was succeeded as President by Jack Kennedy in 1961, who narrowly beat Richard M. Nixon, Ike's barely tolerated Vice-President.
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Gee Whiz!

A worker with India's main opposition party displays an antiseptic aftershave made of cow urine at a stall in party headquarters in New Delhi February 25, 2005. Alongside life-sized posters of Hindu nationalist leaders, Indian political activists can now buy lotions, potions and pills to cure anything from cancer to hysteria to piles -- all made from cow urine or dung. (B Mathur/Reuters)

The Skeleton On The Moon

By Jack Brummet
Extraterrestrial Affairs Editor

This source for this post is an article from MUFON's (the Mutual UFO Network) web site. The authorship--like much of UFOlogy is murky. In any case, it is amusing. You have to admit, it would be a little spooky to find footsteps and bodies on the moon.  And wearing jeans!

America'a Apollo 11 lunar module photographed a human skeleton on the moon when it landed there in 1969.

That's the claim of Chinese astrophysicist Dr. Kang Mao-pang,who first floored the world when he released pictures of bare human footprints on the moon at a news conference in Beijing last winter. The scientist claimed to have received those photos --- which were so secret the Apollo 11 astronauts didn't even know they existed -- from "an unimpeachable U.S. source."

The photograph of the human skeleton was included with a second batch of photos and documents he received from the same source. "The Americans have conspired in a cover-up of monumental and possibly even criminal proportions," Dr. Kang told newsmen in Beijing. "They hid photos of bare human footprints on the moon for 20 years and managed to keep the human skeleton secret even longer. The implications of what they found up there are staggering," he continued. "But the Americans apparently feel that nobody else in the world is privileged enough to share the information."

The story goes that Dr. Kang's allegations stunned U.S. space and intelligence experts, one of whom went into hiding after reporters tried to question him in a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Other sources also allegedly refused to comment--even when told that the Chinese expert has copies of over 1,000 NASA photographs that clearly show bare human footprints and a human skeleton on the lunar surface.

Intriguingly, the skeleton appears to have been wearing jeans. Judging from the position of the bones, it seems likely that the person it belonged to was at least partially dismembered and met with a violent death. It is also probable that the skeleton was transported into space long after the person was killed. The decomposition of bone and flesh would not have been possible in the airless atmosphere of the moon. The Chinese expert further noted that the age of the skeleton cannot be estimated without analyzing the bone firsthand.

"Like the footprints on the moon, these photos were taken by a remote camera aboard the lunar lander and were given to me by an American source who is beyond reproach," said Dr. Kang. "I am also in the possession of classified documents and letters that describe the footprints as being fresh and the skeleton unquestionably human. The question that must be answered is how the footprints and skeleton go to the moon. The obvious implication is that extraterrestrial lifeforms were involved but we'll never know unless the Americans release the information they have."

The documents Dr. Kang quoted from are stamped "top secret" and dated Aug. 3, 1969, which means they were written just two weeks after astronauts Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon--in boots, not barefoot--on July 20, 1969. Large portions of the text have been redacted in black ink. It's clear that U.S experts agreed extraterrestrials had something to do with the bare footprints and skeleton on the moon.

Repeated attempts to get officials at any level of government to address Dr. Kang's report were unsuccessful. Explained a Washington source: "Nobody's going to say anything until President Bush gives the go-ahead. This isn't any ordinary cover-up. It makesWatergate look like a Sunday School picnic. It's that damn big."

Jack Note:  As wonderful as the story is, it has unfortunately been traced back to the July 15, 1997 issue of  none other than the Weekly World News...

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POTUS 38: Pres. Gerald R. Ford - Pardon Me, Mister President!

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President Gerald R. Ford was another short-time President, serving the remainder of President Nixon's term when he was run from office in disgrace. With the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew, he was vaulted from Congress into the Vice-presidency, and soon, the Oval Office itself. In his short time as President, he was the victim of two assassination attempts. There were probably many reasons why he lost the '76 election to POTUS 39, James Earl Carter; chief among them was the divisive pardon he granted to the former president for all crimes and misdemeanors committed while he was in office. President Ford, at ninety years old, is now the oldest surviving President.
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poster for Del's Latest Movie

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Letter from President George W. Bush

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Good Friday & Easter Weekend

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To commemorate the weekend, a detail from Mark Ryden's great painting The Last Rabbit.

POTUS 29: Pres. Warren G. Harding - He Never Lived To Rue The Day

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A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, called Harding's speeches "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."

President Harding is often considered the most corrupt President ever (check out "The Teapot Dome Scandal"), in a close horse race with POTUS 38, President Richard M. Nixon. Like Nixon, he was probably less an actual crook than a chronic and pathetically inept judge of associates. He was a machine politician and came to Washington with baggage: an army of wardheelers and bosses. Many were indicted and convicted and served prison time.

President Harding never had to face total ignominy, alas; he died on a west coast trip two years into the 29th presidency.

Some writers and historians believe he was poisoned by his wife, who was fed up with his infidelities. Some scholars give this credence since she would not agree to an autopsy.

President Harding was succeeded by his Vice-President, Calvin Coolidge. Keep cool.
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AN OPTICAL ILLUSION

click to enlarge - You have to see it larger for this to work.

Nothing is actually moving here. If you squint, it stops. Click the title for a link to the source. Or maybe a source. . .I couldn't tell if the person who posted was the creator or not... /jack
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POTUS 11: Pres. James Polk - The Man With The Mullet

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President Polk was possibly the first and last President to sport a mullet. He was the first "Dark Horse" candidate to become President. Nominated as an alternative candidate on the eighth ballot, he got the nod on the ninth.

There was no dancing, singing, or alcohol in the Polk White House. He had no children. Polk's wife Sarah sat in on cabinet meetings and was extremely influential in her husband's decisions. President Polk was another one-term President, which was probably just as well, since he died a few months after his term ended.
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Old School Corporate Software Scam

After my office recently received the third new release of some business software in a couple of weeks, I remembered how it went at **** ****. 

In the mid-90s, I worked at a large and now defunct software company that made software named after well-known Latin dances.

Right before a new product hit the shelves or any customers had seen it, the first PTF (programmatic temporary fix) patches would be posted. We fixed the bugs we missed or didn't have time to tackle before we "went gold." First we fixed "known failures," bugs we knew about, and shipped with anyway. We ranked that list according to how users would howl when they were victims of the unexpected behavior. Fortune 500 firm's failures were escalated even further up the priority list).

At **** ****, we never called software errors bugs. They were failures. This was to remind us that we had failed our customer. Mostly, we failed the customer in order to book revenue for the quarter

Once the software was deployed "in the field," the bugs really started rolling in. We created new patches every day. These were collected every week into a cumulative PTF. Once a month, cumulative PTFs were collected into a "TMP" release, and once a quarter, all the TMPs were released as an "update."

The best part was that we received something like $250 per year per seat (many hundreds of thousands of dollars for some companies) to fix all the bugs we put in in the first place.

After a year or so, we tossed all the fixes in with some new features and then charged for an "upgrade." Is this a great country, or what? /jack

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Your Co-worker Could Be a Space Alien, Say Experts

from The National Enquirer, August, 1984

Here's How You Can Tell - By Michael Cassels

Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human -- but you can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. They listed 10 signs to watch for:

1. Odd or mismatched clothes. ``Often space aliens don't fully understand the different styles, so they wear combinations that are in bad taste, such as checked pants with a striped shirt or a tuxedo jacket with blue jeans or sneakers,'' noted Brad Steiger, a renowned UFO investigator and author.

2. Strange diet or unusual eating habits. Space aliens might eat French fries with a spoon or gobble down large amounts of pills, the experts say.

3. Bizarre sense of humor. Space aliens who don't understand earthly humor may laugh during a company training film or tell jokes that no one understands, said Steiger.

4. Takes frequent sick days. A space alien might need extra time off to ``rejuvenate its energy,'' said Dr. Thomas Easton, a theoretical biologist and futurist.

5. Keeps a written or tape-recorded diary. ``Aliens are constantly gathering information,'' said Steiger.

6. Misuses everyday items. ``A space alien may use correction fluid to paint its nails,'' said Steiger.

7. Constant questioning about customs of co-workers. Space aliens who are trying to learn about earth culture might ask questions that seem stupid, Easton said. ``For example, a co-worker may ask why so many Americans picnic on the Fourth of July,'' noted Steiger.

8. Secretive about personal life-style and home. ``An alien won't discuss details or talk about what it does at night or on weekends,'' said Steiger.

9. Frequently talks to himself. ``A space alien may not be used to speaking the way we do, so an alien may practice speaking,'' Steiger noted.

10. Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain high-tech hardware. ``An alien may experience a mood change when a microwave oven is turned on,'' said Steiger. The experts pointed out that a co-worker would have to display most if not all of these traits before you can positively identify him as a space alien.
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POTUS 18: Pres. Ulysses Grant - The Man Inside Grant's Tomb

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Pres. Grant is often portrayed in history as a drunkard. Historians differ on this point; no one disagrees that he enjoyed whiskey. In the army, he served in the Mexican War and later became famous as President Abraham Lincoln's commander of the Union Armies (from 1864). After the war, he was elected to two terms as President and his administration was hit with numerous corruption scandals. He is buried in Manhattan. . .in the famous mausoleum, Grant's Tomb.
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POTUS 16: Pres. Abraham Lincoln - The Most Beloved President?

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President Lincoln, or Lanky Link, as Lord Buckley called him.

He built the Republican Party into a strong national organization and brought the northern Democrats into the Union fold. He went to war against his own countrymen. He had little choice. In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves in the Confederacy. In reality, that would take a while, and many people think we're still working at it.

He made a few jokes about his face, and truth be told, in many of those daguerreotypes he looks like he is carrying the weight of the world. The contemporary painter Mark Ryden often includes an image of Lincoln in his paintings.

He never got to fully preside over the peace, because he was killed on April 14, 1865, by a deranged actor.
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An unusual report of a UFO and a green-faced entity seen near an old U.S. Air Force Nike Missile Base in Redmond, Washington

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.





From a MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) Report. This UFO and alien sighting occurred a couple of miles away from my office.

DATE: June 24, 1988
TIME: Sometime between 12:30 and 2:00 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
LOCATION: Redmond, Washington
DURATION: Estimates vary, around 7 minutes for sighting of UFO; about 45 minutes total duration including sighting of face, possibly longer

SOURCE OF SIGHTING: UFO Information Service (Goudie)

INVESTIGATORS:
Donald A. Johnson, Ph.D., MUFON
Don Olson, MUFON
Rita Andreeva, MUFON

Four 11-year-old girls who had attended a private Christian elementary school together were having a slumber party reunion at the home of one of the girls on Education Hill in Redmond, Washington. At a few minutes after either 12:30 AM or 1:30 AM they were looking out the window to see if they could find the girl's dog. They were downstairs in the TV room, while the parents and brother and sister of the host were asleep upstairs. They witnessed a craft-like UFO, described as either a domed-disc or two plates put together edge-to- edge, hovering in the night sky. It had white and red lights and possibly faint green lights around the rim of the object. Of the two girls interviewed, both thought right away that it was a UFO (i.e. "spacecraft"), and not an aircraft because it was similar to a picture they had once seen in a book.

The UFO was hovering at about 30 degrees above the horizon when first sighted. It was described as smaller than a house in size, possibly 25 feet in diameter. The UFO moved to the right horizontally about 10 degrees, reversed direction abruptly and moved back in a straight line to the left 10 degrees, moved back to the right 5 degrees to a center position, and then moved really fast straight down. It moved down behind some tall evergreen trees and the girls thought that it probably came down in a clearing in Nike Park, about 3-4 blocks from the girl's home where they were staying. The UFO was reported to be visible through the window of the TV room for a total of between 2 and 7 minutes.

Sometime later, within 15 minutes to a half an hour, two of the girls witnessed a frightening face. The accounts of how the face appeared to them varies. In one account the girls thought they saw something like a shadow or a figure at the top of the stairs leading up to the kitchen. The became scared and hid in their sleeping bags; they zipped them over their heads and lay next to each other. They conversed through the bags and agreed to look at the same time, so that it would not be too scary. As they pulled the bags down from over their heads they saw a dark, mossy green face only about arm's length away. Really frightened, one of the girls pulled the sleeping bag over her head, and when she looked out again in a few minutes, the being was gone. The other girl's account said they were lying on their backs trying to get to sleep and staring up at the ceiling when all of a sudden they both saw this green face. She watched it for about 45 seconds, "and then it just, went away". Asked if it just vanished like it was a slide from a projector or something, she said, no, it wasn't like that. It was just like a real face, but it was green in color and it was looking at them. The second girl appears to be unclear about how the face appeared because she also reports she covered her head with the sleeping bag at one point but can't remember when.

The face was described as greenish in hue, with red, glowing eyes. Interviewed separately, both of the girls said there was something like a dent in one of the cheeks. One girl said it looked
like the "face on Mars" photograph she saw in the newspaper about a week later, while the other girl said it had pointy ears and bushy eyebrows. When asked a direct question later about the pointed ears, the second girl said she didn't remember any ears. If the face had indeed been attached to a body, one girl figures that the being must have been about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall.

About 10 to 15 minutes later the second girl, who lived there, saw a clump of rainbow colored lights slowly revolving in her kitchen and flashing light all over the ceiling and refrigerator. The first girl made a vague reference to lights in the kitchen but apparently did not see the rainbow-colored clump of lights hovering in the kitchen (the kitchen is partially visible from the TV room, up half a flight of stairs).

The girls became noisy discussing what they had seen woke the mother. The mother came down and ordered them to go to sleep. Apparently nothing further happened that night.

Of the other two girls, they are certain that one saw what they saw but would not consent to be interviewed by UFO investigators. They are unsure what the fourth girl saw. The second girl, the one at whose home the events occurred, reported that she had had a precognitive experience during that previous day, recalling during a croquet match that she had dreamed those exact events some weeks before. She also reports that since the UFO incident she is no longer subject to nose bleeds, which she reports have occurred to her chronically throughout her life and also occur with her father. She also said that a soccer injury to her knee no longer gave her any pain after the encounter, and she attributes the healing to the event.

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POTUS 42: Pres. William Jefferson Clinton - The Comeback Kid

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In 1997, Bill Clinton's penis became the first penis in White House history to have a formal statement issued on its behalf - in terms of its "size, shape, direction, whatever", as Clinton's lawyer Bob Bennett put it. It was also the first to be photographed by a naval surgeon as Exhibit A in a sexual harassment case.

President Clinton was a well-loved president, despite his reputation as a womanizer. He was an intelligent man, and a Rhodes scholar. He could work a room. So far, the democrats have been unable to field another candidate with even a fraction of his charm and charisma and ability to win elections. In his two terms of office, the economy was gangbusters, and we largely avoided any war at all.
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POTUS 7: Pres. Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson - The Star Of The $20 Dollar Bill

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President Jackson is probably best known for his mug that stars on the Twenty Dollar Bill. He was a hero in the War of 1812, where he took the British for a ride. He was the first populist president who did not come from the aristocracy, the first to have his vice-president ( John C. Calhoun) resign, and he was the first to marry a divorcee.
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POTUS 35: Pres. Jack Kennedy - Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye

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President John F. "Jack" Kennedy was only President for 1,000 days. He got into two hairy situations with Cuba. He was another President who liked to party, and despite having a good looking, intelligent wife, he had numerous girlfriends, including Judith Exner, Angie Dickinson, and Marilyn Monroe. He was killed under still mysterious circumstances in November, 1963.
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POTUS 40: Pres. Ronald "Dutch" Reagan - B Movie Actor To President

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President Reagan was a nice guy, an avuncular leader with unrelentingly bad policies. Did he help defeat communism, or was he in the right place at the right time? Probably the latter. The White House from 81-89 seemed too often to operate on autopilot. The Contra-gate affair and Ollie North were scary and depressing. Later revelations that the President and Nancy consulted astrologers before making decisions were a little spooky. Like all republican presidents, I like him a little better in retrospect.... /jack
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'Mein Kampf' Now A Bestseller In Turkey

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Is it just curiosity -- or a sign of growing anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiment in Turkey? After two bootlegged versions of Hitler's bizarre (and almost unreadable) book appeared, they climbed the charts. Click the title, or here, for a link to the Associated Press story...
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POTUS 14: Pres. Franklin Pierce - The Most Handsome President?

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Franklin Pierce was considered a very handsome man. Today he is remembered mainly for not being remembered. He presided over some tranquil times (which turned out to be the calm before the storm...but isn't that always the story?). He only governed for one term.

Campaign 2008

An aide to Senator Clinton today slagged the John Kerry campaign for running an inconsistent campaign (duh!). Sen. John Edwards's and Sen. Kerry's aides have been trading potshots.

I expect tomorrow someone from the Kerry camp will slag Sen. Clinton for failing to bring about national health care.

Earlier this week, a New York Times report claimed unidentified Kerry associates said Edwards had privately promised the Massachusetts senator to hold off on a 2008 White House run -- if Kerry runs.

"Personal, confidential conversations between Sen. Kerry and myself are going to stay personal and confidential,'' Edwards said in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle following a Thursday speech to the San Francisco Bar Association.

And so it begins. . .
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A New Army

click to enlarge - This is a prototype for the new soldier. We replace our soldiers around the globe with 'Bots. . .we could have friendly ones, and ugly ones, depending on the war zone. Think of all the money we'd save in Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, and Somalia. No more complaining about the bad G.I. chow, no more rapes and civilian atrocities, no more barracks or uniforms, no conscientious objectors or deserters. No flag draped draped coffins or uncomfortable calls to the bereaved relatives. If they get blown away, you just melt 'em down and crank out another one. If an entire batallion is destroyed, there's more work for the robot factory in Kenosha, WI.

Bigfoot

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Many Bigfoot sightings over the last 50 years occur close to Mount Rainier, not far from where I used to go fishing (See "Fishing With The Old Man" in the January All This Is That archives). As far as we know, this map shows the approximate range of the North American Bigfoot, which may well be a cousin to the Yeti (The Yeti presumably crossed into North America over the land bridge between Russia and Alaska).

This is also the location of Kenneth Arnold's highly publicized flying saucer sighting in 1947, which many believe triggered the whole flying saucer phenomena. Maybe there's something in the water up there?
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China parks to curb throwing horses to the lions

Tue Mar 15,10:24 PM ET - BEIJING (Reuters) - Safari parks in China have agreed to stop feeding their lions and tigers large live animals such as horses -- at least in public.

The gory eating habits could lead visitors to believe that animals, both hunter and prey, were only human playthings, Xinhua news agency on Wednesday quoted Xie Youxin, the deputy general manager of the Wild Animal World in Chengdu, as saying.

"The bloody scene could also have implanted violent tendencies in youngsters," he said. Chengdu is the capital of southwestern Sichuan province.

Managers of 22 of 30 safari parks nationwide who signed an agreement last week said they acknowledged that wild animals had the same sense of "agony, terror and annoyance" as human beings.

Animal rights activists have criticised the state of China's zoos and the mistreatment of wild animals captured for their fur, or in the case of bears, for the healing power of their bile.

But the safari park agreement only restricts the release of large domestic animals, such as oxen and horses, during the presence of visitors, the agency said.

"Feeding when the park is not open is permitted. Parks are allowed to continue to sell small birds for visitors to feed the wild beasts."

"The Defense Of Marriage" Is A Steaming Pile!

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I don't have a particular axe to grind with marriage per se. I've been with the same wonderful wife for 30 years. In my capacity as a cleric, I have performed numerous marriages.

The Defense of Marriage people are becoming more organized, or they are all reading from the same hymnal (authored by Hannity, O'Reilly, Rush, and Coulter). Someone is feeding The Hive "talking points" because over and over in the last few weeks, I have heard several people on radio and television say that gay and lesbian marriage will lead to:

Incest

&

Bestiality!

The Ann Coulter brigade takes the slippery slope argument to an extreme. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry will ineluctably lead to people marrying their mothers and their goats, with polygamy not far behind. "This won't happen right now," they say, "but twenty years from now..." They believe this flawed argument will play well in the boondicks, with the religious right, and in flyover states.

Everyone in the Defense of Marriage hive brings up the twisted notion that same-sex marriage weakens The Institution Of Marriage. This is harder to swallow than the argument that people will marry their llamas. What weakens marriage is, presumably, divorce (see photo, above). Statistics tell us that between 43% and 50% (believe it or not, no one actually knows for sure!) of all marriages fail--that is, end in divorce. What weakens marriage more than the institution collapsing on its heterosexual own, with no help at all from same-sex marriage? Maybe same-sex marriages will turn the tide! I doubt they will do any worse than we heteros have done.
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Heroes And Villains, Concluded

A poem never actually ends; eventually the poet abandons it. Likewise, I am abandoning the Heroes And Villains. This could go on forever::::::::::::I have left out so many heroes--Marianne Moore, Frank O'Hara, Ken Kesey, Marilyn Robinson, Orson Welles, Edmund Wilson, James Wright, T.S. Eliot, directors, actors, painters, poets, Robert Lowell (although I did include his two students Plath and Sexton), Gandhi, The Buddha, even some members of the Beatles and Grateful Dead. Miles, Sarah Vaughn, Clifford Brown, and Herbie Hancock, are missing, as is Mingus, Duke, Ella, Charles Lloyd, Branford Marsalis, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Elvin Jones, all comedians, Lord Buckley, Jean Shepherd, and untold numbers of villains and despots. I missed Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, Buddy Holly, Bird, Nat King Cole, McCoy Tyner, The Kinks, Weezer, Bruce Springsteen, Phillip Glass, Wagner, Bartok, Bernstein, Bach, Mozart, Charles Ives, Simon and Garfunkel, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads, and The Ramones, among others. I left out most novelists and dramatists, except Shakespeare. Melville, Twain, Homer, both Fieldings, Proust, Joyce, Conrad, Wharton, and Austen are all missing. I missed dozens of painters I love like Rembrandt, Mark Ryden, Bruegel, Motherwell, Keith Haring, Basquait, Miro, Klee, Frieda Kahlo, Picasso, Borofsky, Lichtenstein, Michelangelo, the Dutch Masters, the Flemish painters, the New York School, and on and on. I missed the Beats entirely. I missed many rock, bluegrass, blues, jazz and blues bands. I missed all 18th and 19th century poets and novelists. Where was Big Star, The Byrds, The Posies, (did I do Zappa?), Nirvana, The Sonics, Paul Revere, Old And In The Way, Johnny Cash, Bob Wills, and Hank Williams? How could I miss my great heroes Dolly Parton and Bob Dylan?

I struggled to find enough women villains. Sometimes I would research female villains and find they weren't villains after all.

I always have a bit of a struggle between writing and art. I am going to attempt to go back to the old format of All This Is That, where I actually do some writing, with some art every day or so...I must admit, 'though, I am already tempted to start work on a different series of digital art. We'll see what happens! For now, I want to get back to My Worst Jobs, the stories about Mel, my childhood, and Fifteen Years Of Vacationing With The Hokits.

Here is the complete list of Heroes And Villains. The series is woefully incomplete, but probably an OK start. You can find these digital paintings here, and in the All This Is That Archives (just over there, on your right...). /jack


No. 1--> Adolph Hitler & Lyndon Johnson
No. 2--> Bishop Tutu & Il Duce
No. 3--> Jack Kennedy & Torquemada, Or, Two Catholic Boys
No. 4-->Jeffrey Dahmer & Daniel Boone
No. 5--> John Wilkes Booth & Emily Dickinson
No. 6--> Jerry Garcia & Tokyo Rose
No. 7---> Two Bald Guys--> Hideki Tojo & John Glenn
No. 8--> Mother Jones & Heinrich Himmler
No. 9-->Maria Mitchell & Idi Amin
No. 10--> Ma Barker & Elizabeth Gaskell
No. 11--> Gaius (Caligula) & Rachel Carson
No. 12 --> Maximilien Robespierre & Artemisia Gentileschi
No. 13--> Nero & Phil Lesh
No. 14--> Joan d'Arc And Ivan The Terrible
No. 15---> Gertrude Stein & Richard M. Nixon
No. 16 --> Josef Stalin & Calamity Jane
No. 17--> Erzsebet Bathory, & Mother Theresa
No. 18--> Joni Mitchell & Maier Suchowljansky
No. 19--> Born in 1903--> Zora Neale Hurston & John Dillinger
No. 20--> Two More Catholics--> Keelin Curran & Pope Alexander VI
No. 21--> Chrissie Hynde & Bruno Hauptmann
No. 22---> Elvis Costello & Billy The Kid
No. 23--> Pol Pot & Anne Sexton
No. 24--> Billie Holiday & J. Edgar Hoover
No. 25--> Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm & Senator Joseph McCarthy
No. 26--> Born in 1893--> Anita Loos & Joachim von Ribbentrop
No. 27--> Edith Piaf & Hermann Goering
No. 28--> President George W. Bush & Andy Warhol
No. 29--> Phyllis Schlafly & Peter Jackson
No. 30--> Nina Simone & Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
No. 31--> Morris Dees & Queen Mary I
No. 32--> John Lennon & Carrie Nation
No. 33--> Congresswoman Bella Abzug & Pope Urban VI
No. 34--> Mata Hari & Dr. William Carlos Williams
No. 35--> Doris Lessing & Typhoid Mary
No. 36--> David Duke & Virginia Woolf
No. 37--> Bob Weir & Albert Anastasia
No. 38--> Eleanor Roosevelt & Lee Harvey Oswald
No. 39--> William Shakespeare & Queen Ranavalona I
No. 40--> Larry Rivers & Lucrezia Borgia
No. 41--> Brent Mydland & Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
No. 42--> Mickey Hart & Sirimavo Bandaranaike
No. 43--> Ron McKernan a/k/a Pigpen & Harry Robbins ("H.R.") Haldeman
No. 44--> Mohammed & John Wayne Gacy
No. 45--> Two Guys With Hands on Chin--> Senator Robert F. Kennedy & Rabbi Meir Kahane
No. 46--> John Coltrane & Mao Zedong
No. 47--> Harriet Tubman & Marie Louise of Orléans
No. 48--> General William Tecumseh Sherman & Louis Armstrong
No. 49--> Mario Cuomo & Ann Coulter
No. 50--> Vlad Dracolya a/k/a Vlad The Impaler & Jesus Christ
---o0o---

Heroes And Villains No. 50--> Vlad Dracolya a/k/a Vlad The Impaler & Jesus Christ

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Heroes And Villains No. 49--> Mario Cuomo & Ann Coulter

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Heroes And Villains No. 48--> General William Tecumseh Sherman & Louis Armstrong

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Heroes And Villains No. 47--> Harriet Tubman & Marie Louise of Orléans

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Heroes And Villains No. 46--> John Coltrane and Mao Zedong a/k/a The Chairman a/k/a Mao Tse Tung

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Britney Spears Gives Michael Jackson advice to get his life back together -- get drunk and start a fight!!

from Teenhollywood.com:

Toxic star Spears believes Jackson - currently in the midst of a trial - needs to adopt a more masculine persona and get embroiled in a punch-up to help toughen him up, regardless of whether he is guilty or not of the allegations.

She tells American magazine Allure, "If he did those things, I feel sorry for him. I feel like he probably feels alone, and he needs some help."

"He needs someone to be like, 'ok, let's buck you up, let's give you a moustache, let's rough you up, let's go to a bar, let's get drunk and be a man.'

"And if he didn't do those things, I feel sorry for him. Either way, he needs to get in a fight."

---o0o---

Heroes And Villains No. 45--> Two Guys With Their Hand Wrapped Around Their Chin--> Senator Robert F. Kennedy & Rabbi Meir Kahane

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Heroes And Villains No. 44--> Mohammed & John Wayne Gacy

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Heroes And Villains No. 43--> Ron McKernan a/k/a Pigpen & Harry Robbins ("Bob" or "H.R.") Haldeman

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A quote From Hitler's Henchman

It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

- Reichs-Marschall Hermann Goering

Goering is also featured in All This Is That, in Heroes And Villains No. 27

Heroes And Villains No. 42--> Mickey Hart & Sirimavo Bandaranaike

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Heroes And Villains No. 41--> Brent Mydland & Mohammed Reza Pahlavi a/k/a "The Shah Of Iran"

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Heroes And Villains No. 40--> Larry Rivers & Lucrezia Borgia (a/k/a The Duchess of Ferrara), Daughter of Heroes And Villains No. 20, Pope Alexander VI

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Heroes And Villains No. 39--> William Shakespeare & Queen Ranavalona I Of Madagascar

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Heroes And Villains No. 38--> Eleanor Roosevelt & Lee Harvey Oswald

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Heroes And Villains No. 37--> Bob Weir & Albert Anastasia a/k/a "The Mad Hatter" and Co-director of Murder, Inc.

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Heroes And Villains No. 36--> David Duke & Virginia Woolf

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Heroes And Villains No. 35--> Doris Lessing & Typhoid Mary (a/k/a Mary Mallon)

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