President Bush unloads Abramoff contributions

Like many other politicians today, The President's re-election campaign is unloading the (now) dirty money they received from Jack Abramoff.

President Bush's re-election campaign is giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions connected to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who faced more guilty pleas as part of a broad-ranging political corruption investigation. Even that dirtbag Tom DeLay hucked his Abramoff money over the fence to a charity.

I do note, however, that the Bush campaign is keeping more than $94,000 that Abramoff "raised." Only the $6,000 came directly from Jack; the rest of the money came from his organization. And they talked about Bill Clinton parsing words. . .

Click on the title of this post to read the entire sordid story...
---o0o---

Tom Tomorrow nails it on the head

click cartoon to enlarge for legibility...


This is Tom Tomorrow's take on corruption. He could have written it today, or fifty years ago... could anyone nail the Abramoff and DeLay fiascos any better than this (in only two panels out of the eight)with a couple of drawings and a few words?
---o0o---

The West Virginia Mine Disaster

I watched MSNBC last night, flipping off and on to other news channels. The last I'd heard about the miners in West Virginia was that there was little hope. Probes sent into the mine showed it was highly toxic with carbon monoxide. The rescuers had found one body, which gave a little more hope, perhaps, that the others had escaped. The Governor was at a church with the families of the miners. And incredibly, word came to the church that 12 of the remaining miners were rescued. A cheer went up. They sang a hymn of thanks. The church bells rang.



A couple hours later word came again. The last call was wrong. It wasn't one dead and 12 alive, it was 12 dead and one alive. And then the recriminations began over how someone could do that to the families (when it was clearly a terrible mistake).

The Governor was grilled by the press in an endless press conference, although he didn't seem to have anything to do with the false news reports. Apparently someone misunderstood communications between the rescuers and their command center, and, of course, the cell phone network was activated and the familes were told that unconfirmed story. I had flipped off the television, thinking "well, that's pretty cool. This doesn't happen very often." And when I turned it on later, the new news was that the miners has perished.

You always feel for the families, in these all too public tragedies, but this was especially painful. . .those moments of hope have to make the other moments even worse. It also reminds me of the enormous changes cell phones have had on our society, and world. You can't really analyze this; it just sucks. I never did like the Bee Gees or U2 songs about mine disasters either. . .


---o0o---

Sweet hitchhiker

---o0o---

Alien Lore 58 - KGB's secret UFO files finally made public

This information comes mainly from Pravda and MUFON.

Files from the famous "Blue Folder" have been declassified for some time now. The Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich got the folder from the KGB in 1991. Today Comrade Popovich is the honorary president of the Academy of Informational and Applied Ufology.

The blue folder contains descriptions of UFO flights and reports on attempts taken by the military to engage and/or catch the aliens.

In 1968, 13 leading aircraft designers and engineers of a brand-new aircraft forwarded a letter to Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin. The letter requesed a organization dedicated to the study of UFOs. A reply to the letter was signed by an apparatchik, Shchukin.

"A number of competent organizations of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Chief Directorate of Meteorological Service, Defense Ministry and a few other agencies considered the issue of nature of the so-called flying objects. The organizations involved in the study of the atmosphere and space have been instructed to register and do research on any cases of UFOs for identification purposes. The USSR Academy of Sciences is charged with general monitoring of the phenomena, and therefore a special organization for the study of UFOs is not required."

Unlike the U.S., the Soviets appear to have acknowledged they were actively studying the UFO/Alien phenomenon.

Pavel Popovich was given the folder, a 124-page compilation of reports about encounters with UFOs filed by authorities, military units COs and eyewitnesses.

Mr. Popovich saw a UFO once while flying in a passenger plane from Washington to Moscow. According to him, the object looked like a shining triangle that popped up out of nowhere, for awhile it flew near the plane at about 600 miles per hour before vanishing.

Despite a cover letter denying any special program by the KGB for monitoring the UFOs, the contents of the folder indicated the opposite. The Soviet secret police launched investigations in several cases, and specifically one near Burkhala of the Magadan region in 1989. "The eyewitnesses claim to have watched a red shining sphere circulating above the village for half an hour." The northern lights are reported to have shone brightly all night long following the incident. The UFOs vanished after the explosion

KGB agents also studied what happened at the airport of the city of Mineralnye Vody on December 15, 1987. According to the airport dispatchers, at 23:15 flight No 65798 reported an "object resembling an aircraft with its headlights on." The radars showed no aircraft whatsoever. Three minutes later the UFO was gone.

The crew of another plane also observed the UFO flying in the area. The clock read approximately five minutes later. According to crewmembers, the UFO left a fiery trail in the air. The crews of the both planes reported that the UFO had disappeared after a flash resembling an explosion. A villager reported a burning plane flying over his village at 23.30. The eyewitness found no wreckage.

At times, the military tried to study UFOs independently. In August 1987, servicemen of an antiaircraft unit based on the Tiksi Peninsula tried to "get to know better" an unidentified flying object that appeared on a radar screen. Colonel Lobanov, duty officer of the military unit No 45038, said: "An unidentified target detected by the radar station of the commandant"s office of the antiaircraft unit at 05:45 Moscow time." The target moved speeds from 0 to 250 miles per hour. At 06.55 a helicopter took off for a closer examination of the object. Suddenly, the object became invisible. Another aircraft, the AN-12 flying in the vicinity at the time reported an emerald cloud with traces of purple and dark spots visible in the middle.

In 1987, five officers were dispatched to the northern part of Karelia in the Leningrad Military Region to accompany an object of unknown origin that had been located near the city of Vyborg. The object was said to be 50 feet long, 14 fee wide and 8 feet high. The military was never able to open the "extraterrestrial can." The object disappeared from the hangar late September. I don't know if its occupants awoke, someone stole the UFO, or it it just went up in smoke like a Mission Impossible recording...

On July 28, 1989, the arrival of an UFO spread panic among the personnel of a military unit stationed in the vicinity of Kapustin Yar, in the Astrakhan region. Corporal Valery Voloshin was on duty in the communications center at the time. He filed the first report on the case.



One of the documents from the "Blue Folder" describes a UFO encounter in 1984 in Turkestan Military District. Two fighters were scrambled, but all the attempts to shoot the UFO down failed. When the object was fired at, it descended down to one hundred meters above the ground to an altitude that made further firing by the fighters impossible. It is necessary to mention that despite the firing, the speed of the UFO did not change. During the flight the object passed above several military unit locations, and this made it possible to take photographs.

When the UFO approached the town of Krasnovodsk, a helicopter was scrambled to take another shot at downing the UFO. The saucer quickly climbed and hovered at an altitude that was inaccessible for the helicopter. After the pilots shot off all their ammunition the helicopter descended for landing; the UFO sharply changed its course and headed toward the open sea.

In 1985 a radar station under Captain L. Valuev in the Krasnovodsk region registered an unknown object at an altitude of 20,000 meters. Its dimension was about 1000 meters! The object did not move, but after some time a small disc having a diameter of approximately five meters flew out of the large object. This smaller disc-shaped UFO landed at the Krasnovodsk spit.

Patrol-boats of the Kaspian flotilla rushed to the landing place of the UFO, but when they approached it at a distance about 100 meters, the UFO took off and flew away for about a kilometre. Patrol-boats approached the UFO again, and it again flew away from them. The situation was repeated five times! Finally the object went up with tremendous speed. Its mark on the radar screen coincided with the mark of the mother craft, and then the large UFO flew into space.


The last document in the "Blue Folder" reports "On the 21st of March, 1990, officers in Alexandrovsky Town Department of Internal Affairs accepted a number of telephone calls from town and district residents about the appearance of unidentified flying objects in airspace.

"After obtaining more exact information it was established that rather large number of residents in the towns of Alexandrov, Strunino, Karabanov, villages Arsaki, Zhulino and in several other settlements became eyewitnesses of a UFO-and in several cases of two UFOs-on the 21st of March between 20:00 and 23:30. The flight of UFOs was accompanied by flashes of white light that followed one another after two or three seconds and resembled arc welding.

"But all eyewitnesses found difficulty in describing the appearance of the UFOs. In Karabanov one of the UFOs allegedly hovered above the Eternal Fire Memorial for the perished warriors, and a ray of light emitted from the object illuminated earth surface.

"A fighter piloted was scrambled towards the UFOs. He flew near one of the 'flying saucers' and saw against a background of Pereyaslavl-Zalessky town illumination 'a black body with two white flashing lights.'

"Shortly after the lieutenant colonel's report was published by the Soviet main military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (The Red Star), it was confirmed in the report that the author had revealed by sight a target having two bright white flashing lights.
---o0o---

Photograph: John Newton Brummet 2nd

click image to enlarge

You can probably tell I've had a scanner around the last couple weeks. This seems to be a studio picture of John Newton Brummet, Jr. (1922-1964). I'm John Newton Brummet, Jr., or the 3rd. This photo was taken in his hometown, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
---o0o---

The shipwrecked White House: image of destruction

Click image to enlarge

---o0o---

Guilty!: Jack Abramoff goes down - faces up to 30 years in the hoosegow - dozens of legislators scared s***less - the canary is about to sing

Jack Abramoff, the now very well-known D.C. lobbyist, took a fall today for conspiracy, corrupting public officials (yeah, it's almost an oxymoron), fraud and tax evasion. In a plea deal, Abramoff admitted to crimes that could net him 30 years in the can. He will also plead guilty to similar charges in Federal court in Florida. You may recall that Abramoff was already in hot water over a fake wire transfer he used to secure a bank loan of $60 million.

Abramoff may have gone down, but it looks like he intends to bring down plenty of politicians to cushion the fall.

Once Abramoff begins singing, this could be the heaviest corruption case--ever. Some sources believe that Singin' Jack could take down as many as two dozens legislators (up to and including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay).

Abramoff and his partner in crime, Michael Scanlon (who pleaded guilty last year), were also accused by prosecutors of conspiring to defraud Indian tribes in four states of millions of dollars.

OK, Jack, start naming names!

---o0o---

President: If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why

Yesterday, President Bush mounted his third defense in two weeks of his secret domestic espionage program. The President said that Americans understand this spying is protecting their security.

Government officials have said that perhaps thousands of people have been under surveillance.

"If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, " The President said, "we'd like to know why."

Did The President overstep his constitutional authority and violate a law intended to prevent government spying on its citizens? We'll find out sometime soon. Maybe. Congress raised the volume on their criticism today.

Click on the title of this piece to read the entire story from The Washington Post.
---o0o---

Photograph of an Eisenhower-era child

click photograph to enlarge
---o0o---

Alien Lore 57 - UFO Crash During The First Iraq War

This posting from "a high level source" appears on numerous UFOlogy BBSs and websites. The original, of course, WAS IN ALL CAPS, which I converted with a handy text editor called NoteTab Pro. This item was posted on an British amateur radio packet bulletin board "for world wide consumption." It is, shall we say, lean on details. The author, who appears to have been an eye-witness, never makes clear his nationality, exactly who "the Colonel" or "Petrokov" were, or what his relationship was to them.


DESERT STORM UFO
ALLEGEDLY SHOT DOWN

A high level source has revealed that an American Air Force F16 gunned down a UFO over Saudi Arabia during the "oration Desert Storm" war. Five nations are trying to cover up the encounter. I don't know all the details but I'm sure that when [garbled]. . .

The Saudis with me were so frightened that they asked American, British and French investigators to come to the crash site immediately.

The Colonel says he was visiting in Riyadh at the time and that he and a small Russian team were able to inspect the wreckage before American forces from Desert Storm arrived.

The craft was circular and made of a material I've never seen before, he says. About a third of it seemed to be missing--possibly blown away by the American missiles. The saudis wouldn't let us touch anything, but we saw instruments, machinery and other things that completely baffled us, he says. The markings on instrument panels and dials were not in any language he was familiar with. It seemed to be a relatively small craft, maybe 15 feet across, he says.

There were three chairs, probably for crew members, but they were so small they seemed to have been made for children. Evidently space aliens are only about three feet tall. Most amazing, though, is the fact that there were no bodies at the crash site, nor did there appear to be an engine in the craft.

The American missiles may have scored a direct hit on the engine, causing it to disintegrate, he says. ButIi checked with the Saudi radar technicians and they claim their instruments didn't show anyone ejecting or bailing out from the craft. Search helicopters were all over the area, which is a desert, and they did not spot any survivors in the vicinity of the crash.

During interviews with the radar technicians, Petrokov was told that the blip identified as the UFO appeared out of nowhere as four F16s were streaking toward Baghdad. One of the American planes broke from formation and headed for the UFO, he says. The alien craft started started moving southwest, away from the F16, and the American pilot gave chase. When the F16 was within three miles, the alien craft seemed to fire something at the plane but missed. The American then fired two missiles. Both hit the saucer. There was a teriffic explosion, and then the crash. When American investigators arrived, Petrokov says, he and his team were immediately ordered out of the area and flown back to Riyadh.

There were things they didn't want us to see--more, I think, than the fact that the craft was circular, that there were no survivors and that it was made of a foreign substance, he says.

Petrokov says members of his team were able to sneak pictures without the knowledge of the Saudis or Americans, but he was ordered to turn them over to Russian authorities the next day.

Petrokov says American Army engineers gathered up all debris and carted it away for shipment to the U.S.
---o0o---

Metaphysics Credentials

click image to enlarge

In case you ever doubted my grip (OK, maybe it's a touch migratory...my grip, that is) on questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation or analysis. . .my Doctor of Metaphysics credential.
---o0o---