Free Republic

Dick noted (in Valis, I believe) that the Christian fish symbol resembles a snippet of DNA turned on its side.

What is it with the previous "leaders" of the executive branch and dogs? Remember this story from a few years back about Al Gore's neglected dog:

Paul Harvey, June 22 1994
A secret service agent guarding VP Gore's house alerted the Humane Society when he noticed a growling and snarling dog underneath the VP's porch. Upon arrival, the HS vet ordered an immediate operation for the dog, which was suffering from a maggot infestation in one of its haunches due to an unattended open wound. The dog turned out to be the Gore family pet.

Thanks to FReeper Varmint Al for posting these links on his site:

Gore's Dog

Gore's Dog Left Outside to Die Under VP Porch

Gore's Poor Pup Coconut -- What Happened to Coconut?

Here's some of the stuff they're teaching the students as part of "Global History & Geography" (June 2001):

Document 6

The United States and 34 other industrial countries met in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, to discuss world environmental concerns.

6 Identify two environmental issues discussed at the Rio Conference. [2]

_________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

Document 7

The selections below are taken from information provided by Greenpeace, an
international environmental and conservation organization

Selection 1

Selection 2

7a What is one environmental problem identified by Greenpeace? [1]

_________________________________________________________________

And from earlier in the test there's this cartoon:

Which reminded me of something written by the late Edward Zehr (who wrote for the Washington Weekly):

"With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Marxists have taken refuge in the environmental movement, their last, best hope for keeping alive the fantasy of a command economy. Since Marxist economics have proven useless as a means of providing for the wants and needs of the people, the new crypto-Marxists have resorted to an attempt to shock and terrify people with 'scary scenarios' of global environmental disaster, whether it be an impending ice age or catastrophic global warming. (Eco-extremists are nothing if not flexible). The bottom line of their message is, "unless you do EXACTLY as we say, you are all doomed to utter ruin if not extinction. " Environmental catastrophe has replaced nuclear winter as the left's "kinder-schreck" (bogeyman) of preference. The object of the exercise is to frighten the public into accepting a much reduced standard of living.

Thanks for the post and the ping. I saw Big Country at the Hollywood Palladium back in late '83 or '84
and I've never grown tired of the song "In a Big Country."

I think Don Myers was alluding to this sort of demographic data:

Diversity in the U.S. The 10 cities of 100,000 or more with the largest percentage of white residents and the 10 with the greatest percentage of blacks, according to new Census Bureau reports. The census allowed people to list themselves as a single race or as a mix of more than one. Thus, two figures are shown, the first for whites or blacks alone or combined with another race, and the second for those listing white or black only. The census listed only the 20 most racially uniform cities. Whites: Livonia, Mich., 96.5 %, 95.5 % Cape Coral, Fla., 94.4, 93.0 Boise City, Idaho, 94.4, 92.2 Independence, Mo., 94.0, 91.9 Scottsdale, Ariz., 93.6, 92.2 Springfield, Mo., 93.5, 91.7 Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 93.5, 91.9 Sioux Falls, S.D., 93.4, 91.9 Warren, Mich., 93.3, 91.3 Manchester, N.H., 93.3, 91.7 Blacks: Gary, Ind., 85.3 %, 84.0 % Detroit, 82.8, 81.6 Birmingham, Ala., 74.0, 73.5 Jackson, Miss., 71.1, 70.6 New Orleans, 67.9, 67.3 Baltimore, 65.2, 64.3 Atlanta, 62.1, 61.4 Memphis, Tenn., 61.9, 61.4 Washington, 61.3, 60.0 Richmond, Va., 58.1, 57.2

Incidentally, according to data from this site (SUNY Buffalo?), Amherst is 89.3% white and 3.9% black.

If anyone is interested in what is in the Regents Exam, it's available on the web at http://www.edusolution.com/regentsexams/regentsindexpage.htm

Zehr was great. He will be missed.

(And thank you, JeanS, for regularly posting his work for the past few years).

Is this "OLD RAILWAY STATION" the one clinton had bulldozed so he could build his LIEBURY ????????????

Belated response (not much time to spend online these days): No. Clinton's liebury will be in Little Rock. The railway station mentioned in the article is located in Hope, the town in which Clinton was born.

Hope Depot Museum

The old Hope Depot, built in 1912 as home to the Iron Mountain/Missouri Pacific Railroad in Hope has been restored to its former glory. Now known as the Hope Visitor Center & Museum, the building is furnished as it was in its heyday as a bustling train depot. The building boasts its original three waiting rooms, a ticket office, baggage room and Railway Express room. In addition, the Depot features exhibits on the birth and childhood years of President Bill Clinton in Hope, exhibits on the town's colorful history and an exhibit on Hope's world championship watermelons.

I never saw you look like this without a reason
Another promise fallen through, another season passes by you
I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child

Chorus:

In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime

Chorus

So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you
Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered

Donald Gerth of CSUS was the winner of the 1999 "Sheldon Award," given by U.S. News columnist John Leo to the year's wimpiest college president (see late 1999 FR thread here):

... The last finalist is Donald Gerth, president of California State University-Sacramento, where 3,000 copies of the State Hornet were stolen in October. But first, a quiz: Suppose a campus has bomb threats, four outbreaks of violence at the football game (one of them fatal), and a picture in the campus paper of a dangerous chokehold being applied to a man who resisted arrest at the game. Which of these events would cause the campus to erupt? Answer: none of the above. A major eruption came because the man shown resisting arrest was a Latino, thus reflecting badly on all Hispanic-Americans. Because of this editorial insensitivity, Latino students stole the papers, used them to barricade the editorial offices, then presented a list of nonnegotiable demands, including a permanent ban on publication of any material depicting minorities in a negative light.

During this uproar, President Gerth said nothing. When the State Hornet got a bomb threat and death threats, he did nothing. But a month later, when the ethnic studies department received a bomb threat, he whirled into action. He called out campus police and contacted the FBI. He sent out a stern campuswide letter condemning the threat and demanding tolerance.

Citing the obvious double standard, a faculty member said, "I think we've got your man for the Sheldon." Yes, you do. Congratulations, Donald Gerth, Sheldon laureate 1999.

If you look at a photo of x-42's father, named Blythe (can't think of his first name), it's obvious that Chelsea inherited that man's looks. She's the image of the Blythe grandfather.

Do not concur. From a Pennsylvania newspaper (1998):

Who Is Clinton's Father?

The N.Y. Daily News reported that Rush & Molloy's lead item asks who Clinton's father really is. This much is known. Clinton was born to a woman named Virginia Cassidy of Hope, Arkansas. The official biography claims that an intinerant salesman named William Blythe married the young Cassidy, and was the father of William Jefferson Blythe, who was born on August 19, 1946.

Rush & Molloy quote David Maraniss, a Washington Post writer and author of the 1995 Clinton bio "First in His Class." Maraniss notes that nine months before Clinton was born, Blythe was serving with the Army in Italy. Blythe only returned states' some six months BEFORE the birth. Get the picture. Clinton's mother was asked about this anonmaly and her response was Clintonesque. She told reporters back in 1992 that she wanted Bill so badly she "pushed" hard for an early labor.

Maraniss now tells Rush & Molloy that after the publication of his book, he was contacted by a Louisiana family. Family members claim that one of their male relations had a love affair with a young Virginia Cassidy at the time Clinton was conceived. The Louisiana family knew too many details about Virginia to have made up the story. "I don't think it was a fraud," Maraniss tells Rush & Molloy.

That's one theory. Folks in Hope have been talking about Clinton's real father for quite some time. If you visit the town's museum, housed in an old railway station, several pictures appear of Virginia with a man purported to be her husband William Blythe. When one visitor remarked that the older Blythe just bore no resemblance to the reputed son, the docent in charge suggested to the visitor in an ironic tone, "You just keep looking at that photo, you'll find all sorts of resemblances ..."

Another writer who couldn't find any resemblances was the American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell. Tyrrell wrote in his best-seller "Boy Clinton" that one theory about Blythe's fatherhood goes like this: Virginia had an affair, one of many, before marriage. She got pregnant. She had her baby. Back then, having an out-of-wedlock baby carried a stigma. To solve that problem, one of Virginia's family or friends at the county morgue found someone of her approximate age who had died recently. Virginia was "married" to the man. As it turns out, Blythe died shortly before Clinton's birth in a car accident near Hope.

Gross has a fine record with his PIMCO bond funds, but he's been calling for 5 to 6% stock returns since '96 or '97, when he wrote the book Everything You Know About Investing Is Wrong

The co-author of the story, Ms. Brumberg

Condoleezza might be a Freeper.

(I don't want to go to) Chelsea

Here's another bona fide cheese story from today:

Physicists Contribute To Better Cheese Manufacturing

A new, more sensitive, way of deciding when cheese curd is ready to be cut from the whey is published today in the Institute of Physics journal Measurement Science and Technology.

Researchers from the University Ibn Zohr in Morocco and Le Havre in France have demonstrated a new technique that could make significant savings by reducing waste and simultaneously obtaining more consistent high quality cheese.

Link: www.unisci.com/stories/20014/1108015.htm

Stich stuff:

Unfriendly Skies

Defrauding America

Drugging America

CIA Drugs

I saw a commercial for the Bahai religion a while back. Featured prominently was the idea of "world government" and I seem to recall also seeing the UN logo. Below is a snippet I found after a brief search (emphasis added):

But the UN Secretariat isn't opposed to all religion, she said. "They don't mind Hindus and Buddhists, because they've got more flexible moral codes. And they love the Bahai's because Bahai's are big on world government. But they don't like Orthodox Judaism, Christianity or Islam -- any religion with an absolute moral code is an obstacle to them."

They should exchange the announcers on MNF with the cast of SNL.
The commentary on MNF wouldn't be any worse, and SNL wouldn't be any less funny.

Last month the WSJ's Walt Mossberg wrote an informative review of Windows XP. See Windows XP Has Stable System; Keeps Users in Microsoft Corral. Hope you find it of interest.