I Quote:
Amendment # 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ”
That means that the state shall not establish an state sponsored religion, they shall respect ALL RELIGIONS and make them all feel welcome in the United States of America.
This does not mean that things that are religious in nature have to be banned from all public places, and you have to be careful not to say anything that can be construed to be religious in any government setting.
It means that if I wish to put the 10 commandments in the hall of the courthouse you can put the Koran next to it,and there is nothing that the government can do about it!
Now if I wish to have a Nativity scene on my lawn and someone else wishes to have a scene from the Mormon text.neither one of us should be offended Don’t all religions teach tolerance of others beliefs?
As for the atheists they must be tolerant of my beliefs if they wish me to be tolerant of theirs, it’s real simple if you don’t like it look the other way till you pass it.
OK Let em fly.

Singer-Songwriter from late 60’s (now deceased). I read an interesting review on him over the weekend. Sounds like it may be pretty good. Anyone heard anything by him? Curious minds want to know!

I hereby award J.J. the nickel-plated copper star award with the Presidential Seal imprint for having the most (so far) comments (24) on individual post entitled The Next Prez – a political quagmire of simplicity………

As an appropriate ending comment to that post, which will undoubtedly start a new onslaught of comments, I submit this statement by Art Spander, newspaper columnist: “The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.”……..

I provide the following as proof of this statement: The constant re-election of Ted Kennedy and those stupid New Yorkers that not only allowed two Arkansas criminals to take up residence there, but elected one of them as a Senator…… God help us…… Oh, jeez, I forgot to separate Church and state!…….

Did our forefathers actually intend for politics to be a lifetime career?…… I don’t think so, and therein, my friend, lies the biggest problem of these United States……

Got this from MSNBC this morning.
“The Kingsbury Manx aren’t your typical pop band. Their name sounds British, they’re from North Carolina but don’t sound Southern, and they eschew the typical catchy pop hooks. The title of their latest album, “The Fast Rise and Fall of the South,” sounds like it could be used for a Faulkner seminar; instead, it’s the moniker for an album that has that has one song that could be waltzed to, another that ends in a blare of feedback and a third that uses wine glasses as backing instruments.

The band sounds a bit like early Kinks (singer Bill Taylor sounds an awful lot like Ray Davies) meets Simon & Garfunkel — sort of a folk/pop/alt-country hybrid. It’s no surprise that Wilco’s Mike Jorgensen produced the record ” Jeff Tweedy and company were probably a bit of an influence (and rumor has it that the Manx boys will be opening for Wilco on their next tour). Manx songs have clean lines and a delicacy that feels as if every element has been carefully placed ” if I had one problem with the CD, it would be that it feels almost too controlled.”

Listened to the samples, sounds pretty good. Much like Dukes of Stratosphere. The one sample sounds like it could be Ray Davies. Pretty cool. Thanks again to TTop & jek for reviving my interest in listening to new things. I had almost given up!

Being a relative newcomer to this Blog, I went back & read some of the old posts. One in particular I enjoyed was the one about your favorite album or cd of all time. I think one of the criteria mentioned was that you had to like every cut on the album. There are several albums I like every cut on (Dave Mason-Alone Together, Harry Nilsson-Nilsson Schmilsson, Yes-Close to the Edge, Beach Boys-Pet Sounds, Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon, several Beatle albums, a few Moody Blues albums). Picking just one would be nearly impossible for me. Also, there are some guilty pleasures I wouldn’t dare mention to some of my former musician sidekicks for fear of reprisal . And is the case with most people, your favorites are usually the ones you grew up with, although jek seems to be a pup, he definitely doesn’t prove that theory. His list was an unusual one for a young whippersnapper A very good one, I might add.

PS-MR, I respectfully disagree with Let It Bleed. IMHO Sticky Fingers had it beat.

Here’s one you might be interested in: In 1988 an Austrian company tried to acquire future rights to Mick Jagger’s body……. The company planned to cremate Jagger and pack the ashes into hourglasses to sell to Rolling Stones fans……..

Anyone want to see Mick make an “Ash” out of himself?….. I wonder just how big the hourglass would be and what the projected cost per unit would be, and would they have cremated specific parts (if you know what I mean) to be sold at a higher price…….

On Deep Space Nine , Quark thought he was dying and put his decimated body on the futures market…… He only amounted to 52 disks and all 52 were purchased by his worst enemy so that he could destroy them in enjoyable ways……. Hopefully, Jagger would fair better if he ever decided to enter into such an Enterprise…….

By Albert Brooks
Newsweek

Nov 14, 2005 issue – So NEWSWEEK tells me they’re working on a cover story about a generation getting ready to turn 60. They ask me if I want to write something. I say, “Are you insane?” You want to do a magazine cover about turning 60? Do you want to go out of business?
Do you want newsstands to protest and young people to get sick? And by the way, I’m 58, not 60. I personally don’t associate with 60-year-olds. But I’ll write something.

Recently I have been embarrassed to be part of this generation. The reason? Madison Avenue. Madison Avenue is never wrong. They’re the neighbor across the street that sees you in the way you don’t see yourself. They’re young, they’re cocky, and what they say about the older generation becomes the truth. People still think there was a real Mr. Whipple, so I know whatever Madison Avenue says about us is what everyone’s going to believe anyway.

According to them, we started out changing the world, and now we’re most concerned about our retirement plan. And just to rub it in, they’re using the greatest songs from our generation and combining them with images of people with gray hair having fun, enjoying life, buying products and running in slow motion. They are taking the very things we were born to change and are now shoving them down our throats, with our own music as the lubricant.

Last night I was in my office and the TV was on in the other room. I heard Bob Dylan singing “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” I got excited. I ran into the next room, in slow motion of course, thinking maybe it was the Dylan documentary that Marty Scorsese did. It wasn’t. It was a commercial for Kaiser Permanente. It’s an effective commercial, because after I saw it I wanted to go to the hospital. Goddamn you guys, you are screwing with our best songs. I used to feel good when I heard that song. It reminded me of what could be and the life ahead of us and all that great stuff. Now I hear it and I think of health-care and prescription-drug coverage. Thanks, Bob.

I decided not to go to my 40th high-school reunion. I knew what I would see there and I knew it would depress me. I am now going to reveal a dark secret. Something I was told a long time ago and had promised never to divulge… Are you ready? Thirty years ago aliens came down here from a planet named Zeon. They gathered all the plastic surgeons in the world and took them into a cave. They showed them pictures of what the Zeonites looked like, and they said, “You must make all earthlings over 50 look like this.” And the plastic surgeons did. WAKE UP. WE LOOK LIKE CRAP. My entire generation looks like they’re standing in the hurricane-demonstration room. I call them my Category 2 friends. Their lips are the size of their feet. They take fat from their ass and put in their face. They inject botulism to ward off expression. All to look like Zeonites. Exactly who thinks this looks better than a wrinkle? I’ll tell you who: other Category 2s. They’re all pulled so tight they can’t see clearly, literally. Pull your eyes back right now as you’re reading this. The words are blurry, aren’t they? That’s the way Category 2s see. And that’s why they think they look good.

It’s not that we didn’t try. We did. We actually had the system by the throat for a whole minute. But the system won. The system doesn’t get tired, or get arrested, or have screaming children who need things. The system is patient. It held up houses and cars and boats and we said, “We don’t need that!” And the system said, “I’ll wait. And while I’m waiting I might even get bigger, just for the fun of it.” And damn it, when the drugs wore off and the love wasn’t free anymore, those houses and cars started to look good.

I was feeling OK about us, I really was, that is until Madison Avenue stepped in and told me the truth. Aging is like going through a funnel. You start out with so much room, spinning so fast, wondering just how far you can go, but in the end you wind up going through that hole. That little hole. And since you can’t take it with you, Kaiser Permanente wants it. I just wish Bob Dylan had held out a bit longer. I don’t think Kaiser deserved that song. I think he should have saved “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” for Depends

Reprinted from Sept. 2002 — Pitt junior Brandon Smith wanted a tattoo that proclaimed his manliness, so he decided to get the Chinese characters for “strength” and “honor” on his chest. After 20 minutes under the needle of local tattoo artist Andy Sakai, he emerged with the symbol for “small penis” embedded in his flesh.

“I had it for months before I knew what it really meant,” Smith said.

“Then I went jogging through the Carnegie Mellon campus and a group of Asian kids started laughing and calling me “Shorty.” That’s when I knew something was up.”

Sakai, an award-winning tattoo artist, was tired of seeing sacred Japanese words, symbols of his heritage, inked on random white people. So he used their blissful ignorance to make an everlasting statement. Any time acustomer came to Sakai’s home studio wanting Japanese tattooed on them, he modified it into a profane word or phrase.

“All these preppy sorority girls and suburban rich boys think they’re so cool ’cause they have a tattoo with Japanese characters. But it doesn’t mean shit to them!” Sakai said. “The dumbasses don’t even realize that I’ve written “slut” or “pervert” on their skin!”

In the last month, seven people unknowingly received explicit tattoos from the disgruntled artist. Kerri Baker, a Carlow College freshman, paid $50 to have the symbols for “beautiful goddess” etched above her belly button, but when she went into Szechuan Express Asian Noodle Shop sporting a bare midriff, the giggling employees explained to her that the tattoo really said, “Insert General Tso’s Chicken Here!”

“I don’t even like General Tso’s!” Baker sobbed. “I’m a vegetarian!”

Sakai doesn’t feel guilty about using hapless college students as canvases for his graffiti.

“I think I’m helping my fellow man by labeling all the stupid people in the world,” he explained. “It’s not a crime, it’s a public service.

I’m sure everyone’s aware of our larger cities across America selling the naming rights for pubic buildings built with taxpayers funds to private corporations…… I, personally, think this is criminal and should be viewed as a “conflict of interest” in that it is nothing more than an unfair business advantage and not only gives the impression that the particular city approves this corporation’s product over its competition, but also gives the impression that the corporation built the building (i.e. “The Ford Centre” in OKC) and is doing severe damage to small business and only goes to prove that America is run by big business and we’re in big trouble…… We have laws that concern separation of Church and state because of the reasons I mentioned above……. So-o-o, where are laws that apply to the separation of business and state or did our forefathers just not think we could possibly get this greedy?……….

BUT, since it’s here and a reality, why aren’t the Fed’s in on it?……. The government could make lots of money without raising taxes (hopefully) by selling cash sponsorship to corporations……… Like I said, they’ve got most of our money anyway, so why shouldn’t they pay for naming rights?…….. Disney could sponsor the penny because that’s a Mickey Mouse denomination anyway….. The quarter?….. Just get rid of the eagle and imprint the coin with a burger, the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese…… The dime?……. Sponsored by Wal-Mart, only now it’s marked down to 6 1/2 cents……….

The last part I got off my WELL,DUH! calendar (with a few MR changes), but I’m not so sure that it’s too far off base……

1st
” The larger the lie, the more people will believe it”
Adolph Hitler
2nd
“Those who do not remember the past, are condemned to repeat it”
Anonymous Soldier who helped liberate the Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Both are extremely relevant today, don’t ya think?
My Personal favorite.
“Anything you’re doing right now, that is not leading you toward your desired goal in life, Then what are you doin’ it for?”
Brother Dave Gardner

Thought I’d pass this on. Looks very interesting.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Google Inc.’s Internet-leading search engine on Thursday will begin serving up the entire contents of books and government documents that aren’t entangled in a copyright battle over how much material can be scanned and indexed from five major libraries.

The list of Google’s so-called “public domain” works — volumes no longer protected by copyright — include Henry James novels, Civil War histories, Congressional acts and biographies of wealthy New Yorkers.

Google said the material, available at http://www.print.google.com, represents the first large batch of public domain books and documents to be indexed in its search engine since the Mountain View-based company announced an ambitious library-scanning project late last year.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

The program is designed to make more library material available through a few clicks of a computer mouse and attract more people to click on the highly profitable ads that Google displays on its Web site.

During the next several years, Google wants to create digital versions of millions of books stacked in the New York Public Library and four university libraries — Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford.

Google declined to disclose how many books have been scanned from the libraries so far. The project is expected to require years to complete.

But a bitter copyright dispute is threatening to crimp Google’s plans. The Authors Guild and five major publishers are suing to prevent Google from scanning copyrighted material in the libraries without explicit permission. Because it plans to show only snippets from copyrighted books, Google argues its scanning project constitutes “fair use” of the material.

Google postponed the scanning of copyrighted books in August to give writers and publishers more time to opt out of the program. The scanning of copyrighted material resumed this week, with an emphasis on books no longer in print.

Sensing a market opportunity, Net Nanny, makers of Net Nanny filtering software, announced this week it will introduce NetNarrow, an English-only product that automatically filters out content that appears to be international. Specifically, the software looks for world datelines and keywords indicative of irrelevant foreign stories, including “Shiite,” “post-Apartheid,” and “Bob Geldof.”

Survey-taker Craig Barker of Brooklyn, New York, said he will be among the first to get NetNarrow. “On the Web, there are so many ways to get news from so many different places, I could really get some fresh insights into what’s going on in other countries if I wanted to,” he said.. “But I don’t want to.”

“You’d think these Internet people would know that,” Barker added. “I mean, that’s why the Internet is called America Online, right? It’s supposed to be about America.”

P.S. Thanks for Spellcheck for those of use too old, too illiterate or both

From MSNBC: What do you guys think?

Tax reform recommendations
Brief explanations of the two proposals by the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform:
— SIMPLIFIED INCOME TAX: Like the current system, this option levies taxes on individual and business income. The panel stripped out most of the tax deductions and credits available to taxpayers and added back only those that the panel members believed would encourage certain behaviors, such as saving, charitable giving or home buying. The panel said it wanted to shorten tax forms and remove some of the mystery involved in tax calculations.
— MODIFIED PROGRESSIVE CONSUMPTION TAX: To individual taxpayers, this system would appear almost identical to the simplified income tax. But, because of changes in the way businesses would be taxed, it marks a shift toward a consumption tax. Businesses could deduct their capital spending and wages from taxation, but they would lose a deduction for interest payments. This consumption tax would act indirectly, unlike a national retail sales tax. It differs from a pure consumption tax by applying a 15 percent tax on capital gains and dividends paid to individuals, a modification the panel made to prevent wealthy taxpayers from getting a much larger benefit than others.

Did anyone carve pumpkins this year?  Growing up I was deprived of carving pumpkins.  Maybe it wasn’t an Oklahoman thing, since I don’t recall seeing any on the streets near where I lived.  Since moving to Seattle, I’ve really enjoyed cuttin’ into ’em.  Here’s a picture of ours from this year.  We started with the salamander pattern from PumpkinLady.com and added the walking marks, the tree, and finally the parts sticking out of the sides.

Notice the half’-tree sticking out on the left and the sneaky salamander sticking out on the right, tail on top.

Here are some quotes from an article out of Friday’s The Oklahoman about how the poor oil industry is just barely surviving with all the devastating weather and oil shortages…….

“DALLAS – Exxon Mobil Corp. rewrote the corporate record books Thursday as the oil company’s third-quarter earnings soared to almost $10 billion, and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion (CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? 100 billion!!! – MR)……. Anglo-Dutch competitor Royal Dutch Shell PLC wasn’t far behind, posting a profit of $9 billion for the quarter…… They come on the heels of similar eye-popping gains reported this week by BP PLC, ConocoPhillips Inc., and Marathon Oil Corp……

To put its performance into perspective, Exxon’s revenue for the three-month period was greater than the annual gross domestic product of some of the largest oil producing nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, even though it lost considerable production because of a string of hurricanes that battered the U.S. Gulf coast……. Robert Kaufmann, a professor at Boston University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, says production will return to pre-hurricane levels and hurricane-related losses will disappear in future earnings reports, but profits will remain high…..

“Exxon is a good corporate citizen but it does not work for the welfare of the country (Du-u-u-h – MR),” said oil analyst Fadel Gheit at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York….

Those results led Democrats in Congress to demand a new windfall-profits tax….. “Big oil behemoths are making out like bandits, while the average American family is getting killed by high gas prices, and soon-to-be record heating oil prices,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement…… But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said President Bush opposes such a move (surprise-surprise – MR) and is instead considering a wide range of proposals to help cushion consumers, including the creation of an emergency reserve of gasoline and other refined products (We all know what happens to reserves, or do we?….. By the way, where are all those reserves we supposedly built-up during the last gas crunch? – MR)……

Looks like I’ll have to go along with the Demos on this one……. Of course, that depends on where the windfall-profits tax money would go…….

Just think, these are the people that are running (and ruining) our country…… We have no need to go to a foreign country to get screwed on crude oil, seems to me we have the “crudest” people in the world right here among us….. Next election look for the new “Bend-Over” voting booths (I guess that’s kind of a “crude” thing to say….eh?……)