Michele Bachmann politicks and tries out a corn-dog at the Iowa State Fair and Sarah Palin can't resist a photo op

By Jack Brummet, Flyover States Editor & Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

Congresswoman and declared candidate Michele Bachmann has been hanging out in Iowa.  The Queen of Rage, as Newsweek described her in the notorious "crazy eyes" cover article, was in state for the big Straw Poll, and the big GOP/Tea Party Debate last night, at which you could probably say she didn't take on a lot of water, but didn't really make any headway.  However, the rumor-mill says that Pawlenty is considering dropping out, and a disastrous showing in the notorious straw poll may just push him over the edge.

Rep. Bachmann samples a local corn dog at the Iowa

State Fair. On Twitter Mike_FTW  wrote, "Ladies.

Gentlemen. Start your Photoshop engines. "

Ex-Governor Sarah Palin made a high-profile appearance. Of course she did.  It was a high profile GOP/Tea Party week.  And she has been out of the news cycles for two or three weeks.  She told reporters on at the fair on Friday that she had watched the debate on Thursday night and saw nothing that made her think that the Republican field was closed to late entrants.  We agree with her on that point, anyhow.  There's room, because there is maybe one marginally viable candidate. 

We say butt out, Democrats.  Quit rending your garments over Bachmann, Perry, Gingrich and the others.  Let them nominate their Goldwater, say a Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann.  In our own house, we need to decide who our own candidate will be.  At his break-neck fund-raising pace, it seems highly unlikely that BHO will pull an LBJ. But you just never know.

USA Today's web site reports "Sarah Plain caused a media and fan frenzy as they swarmed her from the minute she and her entourage stepped onto the fairgrounds."  She may be coy about whether she will run or not, but she can't resist a media opportunity.




"There is still plenty of room," said Sarah Palin, as she was mobbed by the press. “There is still plenty of room for a common sense conservative,” she said,  once again stirring up speculation that she might after all enter the 2012 fray. 

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Nasturtiums

Digital art by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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High School Students Unite! A 1970 flyer distributed around Seattle

By Jack Brummet
Seattle History Editor

Most of the time I was in high school, there were protests, moratoriums, sit-downs, the first earth day, and marches.  This flyer from Seattle attempts to organize a strike of high school students on April 16th, 1970, with the following demands:



1. The schools must serve the people....

2. We want an end to all the phony, unfair discipline in the schools....

3. We want better classes....

4. All police, narcs, school security guards and other types of pigs off campus....

5. We want all military recruiters kept off campus, and the schools must quit aiding the draft boards....

6. We want an end to all the white supremacy in the schools....

7. We want an end to all male supremacy....

8. We want an end to all lying texts and history classes....

9. We want every student to have the chance to enter college and the right to a decent job....

10. We are united with our sisters and brothers in the factories, the communities, the colleges, and all the oppressed peoples of the world."

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Alien Lore No. 211 - "neither the resources or the will..."

By Jack Brummet
Alien Lore/Paranormal Editor

The latest release of National Archives UFO files has just been made in the U.K.   Read in detail about the new files on the BBC website. 

"The latest set of government files on UFOs released by the National Archives show that the Ministry of Defence had neither the resources nor the will to study thousands of sightings reported to them over decades," writes Sanchia Berg.

According to Dr. David Clarke, "In what I believe to be the most important revelation so far, an intelligence officer reveals that 'lack of funds and higher priorities' had prevented any detailed study of the thousands of reports they had received since the end of World War II. "

Other recent Alien Lore articles on ATIT:

Alien Lore No. 210 - The crash artifacts from Roswell have been tested, and appear to be extraterrestrial
Alien Lore No. 209 - The Greatest Story Ever Denied
Alien Lore No. 208 - a sketch of two UFOs from Great Britain
Alien Lore No. 207 - The Greys, Betty and Barney Hill, and Zeta Reticuli
Alien Lore No. 206 - Conditioning Us For The Visitors
Alien Lore. No. 205 - NMA.TV hits another one out of the park: "Roswell Aliens, A Plot By Stalin?"
Alien Lore No. 204: Hitler's deal with The Greys
Alien Lore No. 203 - UFO lightships around Delaware PA, October, 2010
Alien Lore No. 202 - Dolan & Zabel on UFO Disclosure: "There is going to be blowback beyond belief:"
Alien Lore No. 201 - Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens?

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Faces No. 243 - The Auditors

Drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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"Magic Trip - Ken Kesey's search for a kool place" - the documentary is out

We are really looking forward to the documentary "Magic Trip - Ken Kesey's search for a kool place,"  by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood. 

The clips show some pretty sweet footage of Ken, Ken Babbs, The Merry Pranksters, The Grateful Dead, and Neal Cassady.  You can watch the movie on demand in various outlets (iTunes, HBO, Comcast on demand, etc.).   Check out their website here.  Interestingly, it's done by the same guys who recently released the grindhouse flick "Hobo With A Shotgun."

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A photograph of Seattle's Hooverville, circa 1934

click to enlarge

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Faces. No. 242 - Sextuplets

Drawings by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Goodbye, So Long, Farewell — 37 years ago today, Richard Milhous Nixon became the first President to resign from office

By Jack Brummet

Criminal Justice Editor

The date August 9th, 1974 is still burned into my head.  For weeks, we had all been waiting, hoping for, and expecting Dick Nixon to step down.  His former Vice-President Spiro Agnew [1] was now in prison, and would soon be most of his henchmen and White House inner circle.  This was a good thing.

President Nixon should have resigned long before August 9th; he could have ended what his successor Gerald Ford called "our long national nightmare." But he held on, even as incredibly incriminating evidence--hundreds of hours of "secret White House tapes, grand jury testimony, transcripts from numerous House and Senate committees and subcommittees, leaks from "Deep Throat,"  resignations, convictions, and indictments--poured in. As much as I admire him a few select, very specific fronts, he was the ultimate paranoid personality, and despite all his accomplishments, a real danger to society and liberty in general. I remember parties that summer night in 1974.  All that being said, I am something of a Nixon scholar, and have been to his museum and birthplace in Orange County.

clownin'

 

the historic meeting with Chairman Mao Tse Tung (now transliterated Zedong)






All This Is That articles on President Nixon:

Visiting Richard Nixon In NYC
Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon and The Alien Fun with Richard Nixon's Ghost
Nixon's Back Pocket speech in case of a space disaster
RMN's Comedy of Errors
The photographer who stole Richard Nixon's Soul
Lying and Contractions
POTUS 37, or, the comedy of errors
Presidents it was fun to vote against
Visiting Richard Nixon

 

[1] An excerpt from the hilarious Agnew page on the Uncyclopedia:  "Agnew, raised as a Democrat, suffered a head injury in 1951 that left him a Republican. His conscience gone, he became a politician, and made successful use of knockout drugs to secure appointment to the Baltimore County Board of Appeals. Finding the opportunities for graft as County Executive too limited, Agnew ran for Governor of Maryland in 1966. In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, he was narrowly elected after his Democratic opponent, Cliff "Screwtop" Hooper, made a number of gaffes, which included denouncing Maryland as "a cesspool of inbred hillbillies" and opening fire on crowds of his supporters with a shotgun." 
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Rick Perry's Report Card from Texas A & M (not so good)

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor with research by Jack Brummet, Editor in Chief

Governor, and Presidential hopeful, Rick Perry did not exactly reach for the stars during his college years at Texas A & M University.  Later in his career there, he did become a student leader.  But he could only do that after he emerged from academic probation.  If you check out the transcript below, you will note that he almost never earned a grade higher than a C in his courses -- a C in U.S. History, D in Shakespeare, and a D in economics. One semester, he even got a C in P.E. 

click transcript to enlarge

The Governor also got shelled in classes in his animal science major.  In fall 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, and flunked a second course on organic chemistry, and took a C in animal breeding. He did receive an A in world military systems and a class called the“Improv. of Learning," which were his only two A's in college. 

"A&M wasn't exactly Harvard on the Brazos River," recalled a Perry classmate in an interview with The Huffington Post. "This was not the brightest guy around. We always kind of laughed. He was always kind of a joke."

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Etymology Lesson: "Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass"

By Jack Brummet, Technology Editor
[thanks to Jeff Clinton for the news tip!]

The Tobacco Smoke Enema seems to have had some popularity in the mid to late eighteenth century.  It's hard to source this one because dozens of websites and blogs use the same exact wording:

"The tobacco enema was used to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum. The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase “blow smoke up one’s ass.” 

The Wikipedia claims a book by Eric Burns, The Smoke of the Gods as the source of the quote and photographs, however that book doesn't actually say that this contraption led to the phrase. That book says "To blow smoke up one's ass. Today it means to compliment in a crude and obvious manner; in the past it meant to cure in a manner even more crude." 

A simpler, more portable device: A: Pig's bladder; F-G: Smoking pipe; D: Mouthpiece to which the pipe is attached; E: Tap; K: Cone for rectal insertion. Medical monograph of 1773. Reproduced in The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times

The Tobacco Smoke Enema was just another of the many hundreds of quack medical devices contrived over the years, often involving magnetics, the healing properties of copper, machines to jiggle pounds off, all of which ended up being just about as effective as blood-letting.    There days all our miracle cures are not mechanical, but pharmaceutical.

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang claims that "to blow smoke" as an older phrase, from the mid-19th Century or later, and the phrase "to blow smoke up someone's ass" dates from the 1950s and is a modern addition to the older phrase.  A related (and great) phrase, is used less commonly: "blowing sunshine up your skirt."

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I miss Foundphotos.net

Jack Brummet
Visual Arts Editor

I miss Foundphotos.net. They're still around:  http://www.foundphotos.net/, but they don't update very often anymore.  They do, however, have extensive archives that you can browse through if you've never been there.  There's a lot of chaff among the wheat, but they come up with some amazing gems.  Like this one:

click to enlarge

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