Welcome to Japan!—complimentary marijuana given to tourist

A traveler arriving at Tokyo's Narita airport over the weekend went away with an gnarly souvenir from customs -- a bag of cannabis.

A customs official hid the reefer in the Hong Kong passenger's suitcase as part of a training exercise for drug-sniffing dogs. Unfortunately—or maybe because he had dipped into the bag himself—he lost track of both drugs and suitcase during the practice session, a customs spokesperson said.

"The dogs have always been able to find it before," NHK quoted him as saying. "I became overconfident that it would work." Standard Operating Procedure calls for the tests to be run using specially marked luggage.

Somewhere in Tokyo, a tourist is either horrified or overjoyed.
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PO'd GF sets BF's house on fire

From the Associated Press yesterday: 'Trenton authorities say anger over a failed romance fueled a Pennsylvania teen's decision to set fire to the city home where her ex-boyfriend lived."

No one was actually killed in Thursday's fire on Hillcrest Avenue; but 10 people who lived there were left homeless. Nineteen-year-old Shanta Dargbeh of Bristol Township was arrested the next day and now faces 10 felony charges.

Authorities say Dargbeh became angry after hearing that her ex-boyfriend had taken another girl to the Trenton High School prom last weekend. Dargbeh is being held on $250,000 bail.
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Is this a girl/woman thing, or are there men who have torched their wandering paramour's houses too? Remember singer Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of the hit group TLC? She set a fire that that destroyed the house of her boyfriend, football player Andre Rison, in an Atlanta suburb.

Lopes, 24 at the time, started a fire with either his tennis shoes, or cardboard, that eventually engulfed the entire $900,000 mansion after Rison and friends returned from an all-night party, according to contemporary news reports. Lisa died in 2002 at the age of 30 in The Honduras, the only fatality in a car accident in which she was driving.
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No cigar, Bill: Ex-Prez Clinton claims vast left-wing conspiracy against Hillary

click President Clinton and a few of his former playmates to enlarge

Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that Democrats will likely lose in November if his wife Hillary Clinton is not the party’s presidential nominee. He also said that some people (a vast left-wing conspiracy?) were trying to “cover this up” and “push and pressure and bully” superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely.

"I can’t believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these super-delegates to come out,” he said at a South Dakota campaign stop Sunday, in a speech reported by ABC News. “'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.'"

The former impeached president added that his wife had not been given the respect she deserved as a legitimate presidential candidate.
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John McCain: It's fine for Bush to appear with me as long as no one gets any photos

Click the President to enlarge

Washington, D.C., May 26th, 2008,
by Pablo Fanque, All This Is That National Affairs Editor

On Tuesday last week, President Bush and preumptive GOP nominee Senator McCain were scheduled to appear at a McCain for President/RNC Victory Reception celebration at a Phoenix convention center. On Wednesday, POTUS was supposed to appear at Salt Lake City’s Grand America Hotel with Mitt Romney for a similar event, followed by a posh dinner at the Romneys’ home.

The Phoenix Business Journal reports that “Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.” All This Is That found this story, among other places, at Mike Allen's Playbook blog on Politico.com.

In short, McCain is glad to exploit whatever remnant of star power and influence POTUS has. . .as long as it isn't in public, and won't be photographed or recorded. As long as the dogs of the fifth estate are kept at arm's length, President Bush is welcome. This makes sense to me. . .however, I want to make it clear that President Bush is welcome to appear on All This Is That whenever it fits into his schedule. Anytime, Mister President!

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Poem: Holding together

Chart courtesy or NASA - click to enlarge

1
We could hold together,
Like the water
Covers this sweet green sphere,

And eventually become
A beige world of one purpose
On the road of love,

With no jihads or wars,
Klans or factions,
Bombs or bullets,

Corporations or landlords,
Parties or armies,
Walls or fences.

2
There is one ocean
With seven names
And into this ocean,

Sooner or later, flows
Every river, creek, and teardrop,
Every lake, bay, and lagoon.

Every spring and aquifer,
Every pond and swamp,
Every snowflake and mudpuddle.

But to coalesce people
You need a nucleus,
A leader

With greatness of spirit, love,
Consistency, and strength.
Let he or she who wishes to gather others

Under their wing ask themselves
If they are equal to the undertaking
When no natural laws create the union.

3
The door is locked.
You jiggle the knob.
The door eases open.

4
Water fills
The lacunae of the earth
And clings fast

In a way we can never
Cling to each other.
Water flows to join water

Because the laws of nature
Will not be broken.
Selah.
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Weezer video Pork and Beans references YouTube memes/viral videos

Photograph transmitted Sunday from Phoenix probe shows possible life on Mars

A photograph of Phoenix shortly after landing - click to enlarge

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander touched down safely Sunday on the Red Planet. The Mars probe will soon begin to sift through the icy soil for any signs of present or former life.

"We've passed the hardest part and we're breathing again,'' Mars Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein said in a statement released by NASA. Mars' rugged terrain and equipment failures have previously led to the failure of more than half of all Mars missions, including an ancestor of the Phoenix lander that was destroyed in 1999.

Phoenix sent a signal confirming it had safely landed in the northern polar region of Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on its website. The message took 15 minutes to travel to Earth from Mars at the speed of light.

As Phoenix began transmitting pictures to earth, scientists were shocked by the first images they received. Even before Phoenix began its probes in the soil, it broadcast back photographs that stunned the scientists on the Phoenix project at NASA. The photograph seems to show what earthlings might describe as a Yeti, or northwest-variety Sasquatch, striding across the Martian terrain. Scientists are at a loss to explain the photo, and anxiously await the next series of photographs, due to be transmitted later today. A website on the Internet, called Life on Mars obtained and posted one of the first photographs received by NASA, apparently leaked from the mission center. The photograph as it originally appeared today is located here.

click to enlarge (original 640 x 480 pixels)

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Jack Brummet & the rest of the All This Is That staff

click to enlarge

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John McCain posts thousands of pages of medical history, with nary a reference to his mental health

Click the Senator to enlarge

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Hillary Clinton: The Tanya Harding of Politics

click Hill to enlarge

It's like Tanya Harding's kneecapping has come to politics. Only the senator from New York has more lethal fantasies than that nutty skater. - Michael Goodwin, NY Daily News

See earlier All This Is That articles on Clinton's RFK statement here (Clinton crosses the final line) and here (Hey...RFK got shot in June didn't he?

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Hillary: "Hey...RFK got shot in June."

click to enlarge

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The Younger Generation: John Sebastian's completely baked but loving ruminations & tune at Woodstock

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Clinton crosses the final line?: "[RFK] was assassinated in June in California."

A statement by Hillary Clinton to an editorial board sent the press (rightfully) into a feeding frenzy on Friday. The South Dakota newspaper the Argus Leader asked The Senator why she didn’t believe the party was fracturing due to the protracted contest. Clinton said “my husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June.”



“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” she continued. If you've been a reader of All This Is That for any time at all, you probably know that she is treading on sacred ground here. She has fiddled with, and shamelessly exploited, our worst fears by invoking the name of a great Democratic hero who was struck down as he was on the very precipice of greatness. Correction: he had finally achieved greatness, we were just slow to catch up to it. To me, at least, the death of RFK was far more tragic than even the assassination of his brother because it was not just a President, but hope itself that was extinguished that bleak June day in 1968. Not just because it paved the way to the Nixon Presidency, but because the end of the Vietnam War, the granting of true Civil Rights, and the escalation of the war on poverty ended that night. How dare Senator Clinton even obliquely bring this up in reference to Senator Obama! Her feeble and disingenuous "apology" cuts no ice with anyone. As far as I am concerned, she doesn't deserve to be elected the dogcatcher of Camden, New Jersey. She shouldn't be allowed to even attend the Democratic Convention in Denver.



After the New York Post story made the rounds of the press corps on blogs, text messages, and the Drudge Report, reporters here at Clinton’s town hall meeting abandoned any pretense of listening to the event, searching out the first Clinton flak-catcher they could find for a response.





Campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee gave reporters what they were looking for. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer,” he said. This is a steaming cauldron of ca-ca, and Hillary Clinton has once again crossed the line. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this isn't the final deal-breaker on the burgeoning "Draft Hill for Veep" movement. It probably should be...


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Alien Lore No. 129 - A report by a visiting Nordic Grey

click to enlarge

Observations by a Visiting Nordic (from the Krill Papers

In October, 1987, UFO researcher George Andrews was successfully able to contact one of the Nordics not associated with the Greys, through a woman in California. What follows are the comments made by the alien:

"Were you a culture about to invade, you would not do it with a flourish of ships showing up in the heavens and undergo risk of being fired upon. That's the type of warfare slightly less evolved beings get into. You would create intense confusion and disagreement with only inferences to your presence -- inferences which would [in turn] cause controversial disagreement.

The Greys are insidious little fiends. They did exactly [to us] what they're doing here [to you]. You are not on the verge of an invasion. You are not in the middle of an invasion. The invasion has already taken place. It's merely in its final stages.

"What would you invade? [Here he describes the operational plan of the Greys from the beginning.] You would go to the most secret of communities within a society. In the case of the United States, you would go and infiltrate the CIA. You would take over some of them and you would take over part of the KGB.

"You would create great dissension and disagreement between factions of the public at large -- some groups saying they have seen UFOs, others saying 'No, no, this is not possible.' You would involve two major countries in an on-going idiotic philosophical disagreement so that while the Soviet Union and the United States constantly battle back and forth about who has which piece of territory or whether one invades Iran or whether one invades Afghanistan or whatever... whether one dismantles one nuclear warhead or the other dismantles another group of warheads -- you would sit back and laugh if you had the capacity to laugh.

click to enlarge

"You would present yourself indeed to some in a group who would protect you [CIA or MJ-12] thinking they had a secret more secret and more perfect knowledge of something than anyone else on this planet had, and they would covet you and you would trust their own greed and you would trust their own mass stupidity to trap them. And you'd do it on both sides

"You'd show yourself to some of the mass populace to further involve [factions of] the government in an attempt to shut them up, to keep them even more busy quieting them and trying to 'stop more information about UFOs from getting out.' You'd have the mass populace to a state where they distrusted the government. 'Oh, why don't they believe us? Why can't they understand that these things are really happening? We're not crazy!'

"So you would have battles constantly about whether UFOs exist or they don't exist. You would have the public and the government at each other's throats. You would set two major superpowers at each other's throats. And you would have set up groups like 'haves' -- the wealthy but contented -- and the 'have- nots.' You would plant the seeds of massive discontent.
"Eventually you might have some show of ships landing in the 1990s. One or two. By the time they have landed, be assured they will be in complete control. You will start doing crossbreeds and more crossbreeds, generation after generation.

"You bribe the government with a few tidbits -- a Star Wars system. You tease and tempt the Soviet Union with a laser system far finer than any of their own scientists could think of. And you always have that subtle inference -- just on the borderline of consciousness so that UFOs don't seem to believable, yet you keep it couched in secrecy and make it seem quite so insane that no one would believe them. On top of it, you would unleash forces that would want to kill them [UFO contactees] if they disclosed that the CIA is dealing with the exact same things the [contact victim] is.

"Maybe one or two hundred years from now, some of the Greys will even physically mingle and you may have some creatures walking around who are pretty much hybrids between Greys and your own race. For now, anything that walks around will look much like yourselves. It's simpler. It holds down on mass panic.

"Everyone who has experiences with them [Greys] will be at odds with the government. To add to that, we will go into a complete phased of earthquake after earthquake and upheaval after upheaval.

"The inner core of the CIA is deeply controlled by the Greys. The CIA sees interaction with the Greys as a path to greater scientific achievement.

"One reason you are seeing so many different kinds of UFOs is that other cultures are watching with extreme interest. Scientists from other cultures arrive to watch. The Greys have not only taken over the intelligence agencies, they have also taken over what those agencies call 'lunatic fringe groups.' "
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