Saturday, January 08, 2011

You can tell everybody this is your blog.

Late breaking new from WWII.
Some guy in Finland owned a dog that, when you commanded, “Hitler,” would raise its paw in salute. Its bark also sounded like “Heil.”

Newly unleashed documents, according to the Associated Press, have revealed: “In the months preceding Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin's Foreign Office commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly country to gather evidence on the dog and its owner — and even plotted to destroy the owner's pharmaceutical business.”

Nothing happened to the guy, or dog, however.

Recent study suggests….

The New York Times:“In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks.”

A study, conducted by the Weizmann Institute, in Israel, hopes to expand its study to include men’s tears. Neurobiologist Dr. Noam Sobel told the Times that “… researchers started with women because when they advertised for ‘volunteers who can cry with ease,’ they could not find men who were ‘good criers,’ readily able to fill collection vials. Fortunately, he said, ‘we have a male crier now.’”

No. It’s not John Boehner. That’s funny though.

Nature News!
The closing days of 2010 brought news of a series of shark attacks in the Red Sea – Here is Time Magazine. “Over six days, five swimmers were attacked by sharks. That compares to just six attacks over the previous decade in Egypt, according to the Global Shark Attack File, a scientific archive that documents shark attacks worldwide.”

Sharks themselves are rarely sighted in the Red Sea, and investigators have concluded that two of the attacks were by the same shark! A serial killer shark!

Time: “Local explanations for the shark surge varied wildly in the days following the first attacks, citing everything from climate change to the de rigueur blaming of local calamities on alleged Israeli plots. “

That’s right. The Mossad trained this shark to scare Muslims so they won’t go swimming. Or maybe it was Dr. Evil.

In other natures news!
Thousands of birds dropped dead from the sky in Arkansas. Anderson Cooper invited the Christian actor Kirk Cameron to venture his opinion about the event on television. He said maybe somebody should call a veterinarian. There is a popular video game called ANGRY BIRDS. I’m just saying.

My vow to you
I will never again tag a comment with “I’m just saying.” I suggest that the rest of you refrain as well.

Congress in action!
The House, in its wisdom, decided to read the United States Constitution aloud. Well, not ALL of it. Members skipped the part about slaves counting as three-fifths of a person, for instance. And members drifted away as the reading went on. This was partly because the reading was not continuous. As each distinguished colleague read a chunk, he would then yield the floor to the next distinguished chunk reader.
Thanks to Jed Lewison at DAILY KOS, I learned that it went something like this:
Rep. GOODLATTE: I now yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island, Mr. Langevin.
Rep. LANGEVIN: Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Rep. GOODLATTE: I now yield to the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Lance
Etc.

These symbolic moments take time!

John Boehner himself (again, according to the DAILY KOS) bailed on the reading halfway through to hold a press conference with Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Fox News dropped its covering of the reading to cover them.

In related news…
Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot over the weekend, along with some 17 others, two of whom died (federal judge, child). She was attending a series of constituent meetings at a Safeway in Tucson. The alleged shooter has been apprehended. Early reports indicate that he is some kind of crazy person.

During the Constitutional reading, she read the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Tea Party news.

The New York Times checked in with the Tea Party on January 1st. Part of that report?

“Do I think that they’ve recognized what happened on Election Day? I would say decisively no,” said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, which sent its members an alert last month urging them to call their representatives to urge them to “stop now and go home!”

“We sent them a message that we expect them to go home and come back newly constituted and do something different,” Mr. Meckler said. “For them to legislate when they’ve collectively lost their mandate just shows the arrogance of the ruling elite. I can’t imagine being repudiated in the way they were and then coming back and saying ‘Now that we’ve been repudiated, let’s go pass some legislation.’ ”

So…. Mr. Meckler is upset that the body elected to pass laws passed some laws. That’s the message I’m getting!

1 Comments:

Blogger Robert B. Livingston said...

Merle-- you can always make me laugh.

Along with a survivor of Aushwitz, a Parisian Resistance fighter, and a Belgian who flew in the RAF and was shot down, I once worked alongside a Finn whose job in WWII was to retrain captured Soviet dogs trained to sic Finns to sic Russians.

I also studied language with a man whose key job in the Red Army was to shout in Japanese "Give up! You're surrounded!" to Japanese who were surrounding them.

I have known few more resourceful, determined, and energetic men.

Somehow, all that, with my new knowledge about how to fight fascism by teaching dogs to salute, never gets on my resume-- but with things going the way they are today, I feel like I'm ready for just about anything!

Humor is the ultimate survival weapon.

11:55 AM  

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