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I post this every year on July 4th. This is the obituary of my great-great-great-great-grandfather Selah Woodworth Jr., who blew himself up on July 4th of 1825 by double-charging a cannon during the celebrations. This bit of paper from our family Bible was printed while Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both still alive.

Just for fun, how about we stump each other with exotic or unusual airplane photos. Upload to Tinypic so no one can cheat by looking at the image source. I'll go first. What is this aircraft?

Where do folks think they will go to gloat and torment the Left on Election evening? DU and Kos police their places pretty well, especially around elections, and hit and run insults that will soon be deleted are no fun. I remember indymedia.org was a pretty free wheeling place with lots of despairing lefties and no moderators in 2004, but pretty much a ghost town lately. Huffington Post gives conservatives a fairly long leash and a lot of angry lefties that will rise to the bait, but if you piss off enough people you will get your account suspended. This...

LT. COL. REZK MOHAMED U.S. Air Force (Retired) Lt. Col. Rezk M. Mohamed ll, U.S. Air Force (retired), 78, of Las Vegas, passed away July 30, 2010. He was born April 3, 1932, in Manhattan, N.Y., and was a 48-year resident of Nevada. Known by friends and relatives as "Col Mo" or just simply "Mo," he received numerous citations and awards while serving over 23 years in the U.S. Air Force. Col Mohamed is a graduate of the Nellis Center's USAF Weapons School and has himself flown over 100 missions as F-105 "Thud Driver" over North Vietnam during the Vietnam...

Sarah Palin is already president of right-wing America—and it’s a position with a very big salary.

<p>Racecar driver Danica Patrick was pulled over for speeding earlier this month in north Scottsdale.</p> <p>The popular Indy car racer was pulled over Dec. 9 in a gold 2007 Mercedes near 14700 N. 100th St. for going 54 mph in a 35 mph zone, police said.</p>

First let me say that I think McCain and Palin are going to pull off an upset victory. I will do all in my power to make it so. But I would like to start a thoughtful thread on where the Palin phenomenon will take us if they lose. I want to take a long-term view. Suppose we look back from 2030 or so, long after she has served as the first woman President, and saved our Constitution, our free-market economy, our democratic polity, and the Western way of life from the socialists and Islamists. How did she do it?...

This evil white hand striking down a promising black, Hispanic, or Asian prospect is a central part of the narrative of the evil American empire. Take it away and more than 50 years of scholarship and political mobilisation in many countries will fall apart. If Obama is elected president, thousands of public intellectuals, radical professors and social activists, and nationalist politicians and journalists will be plunged into crisis. . . . . Ironically, the Republicans, although more openly racist, do better. It took George Bush, not Clinton, to appoint a Gen Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as America’s foreign affairs...

While any girl or boy can, technically, grow up to be president, only Tina Fey can become Sarah Palin, at least on “Saturday Night Live.” And even for her, that means a hairdresser, a team of wig makers, colorists and a pound of human hair.

My friends and I here in safely-Republican Arizona are wondering how we might best help out the party in neighboring "purple" states on Election Day. We've taken the Monday through Wednesday off work, and want to make a road trip to either Nevada or Colorado to help with the "ground game" of getting our voters to the polls. Do we contact the campaign, or the state Republican parties, or what? Is it better to go to Democratic strongholds like Denver or Las Vegas, or to concentrate on the rural areas? We can provide our own vehicles and pay for our...

So does anyone know yet what the Palin family's Secret Service code names are? I assume that for Sarah herself, there can be no other: BARRACUDA. The First Dude might like SLED.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Apple Inc. reported that profits in its fiscal fourth quarter surged 67 percent due to strong sales of Mac computers and the iPhone. Results trounced Wall Street's expectations.

Reuters story- not quoted.

Freeman Dyson: My optimism about the long-term survival of life comes mainly from imagining what will happen when life escapes from this planet and becomes adapted to living in vacuum. There is then no real barrier to stop life from spreading through the universe. Hopping from one world to another will be about as easy as hopping from one island in the Pacific to another. And then life will diversify to fill the infinite variety of ecological niches in the universe, as it has done already on this planet. ... Concerning the climate models, I know enough of the details...

The most toxic recreational drugs, such as GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and heroin, have a lethal dose less than 10 times their typical effective dose. The largest cluster of substances has a lethal dose that is 10 to 20 times the effective dose: These include cocaine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often called "ecstasy") and alcohol. A less toxic group of substances, requiring 20 to 80 times the effective dose to cause death, include Rohypnol (flunitrazepam or "roofies") and mescaline (peyote cactus). The least physiologically toxic substances, those requiring 100 to 1,000 times the effective dose to cause death, include psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, when...

He looks like a good cop. He's got the 'stache, the short-cropped hair, the pushed-out chest and the shiny badge. He sounds like a good cop too; drawled and official. He's got a TV reporter's microphone in his face and a brick of marijuana in his hand, and he's answering questions—not in the "I just accidentally Tasered an old lady" kind of way, but with a grin of accomplishment. The total bust was in the neighborhood of 275 pounds. This is the old Barry Cooper. Top cop. Total prick. He claims more than 300 felony drug arrests during his eight...

This is directed at upper crust ladies or those who would like to be. I am quite well off, but have lousy fashion instincts, taste and sense for what women want. For my wife's present I typically just go to Tiffany's or Louis Vuitton on Christmas Eve, and buy what the cutest sales girl recommends. I had to do this for a number of years before my wife forgave me for the cookbook I gave her one year. I'm trying to do better this time. Any women want to tell me what's hot among the ladies who lunch this year?...

Well, two years ago I posted this thread: Whee! I'M TOASTED! Cheers to W! What are YOU drinking?. Well-lubricated hilarity ensued for the rest of the evening. Once again I find myself half-sloshed on an election evening with no work scheduled for the following day, but this time the champagne remains untouched in favor of several stiff glasses of scotch on the rocks. Ahhh, alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. So sayeth Homer J. Simpson. Anybody else want to get soused along with me? Name yer poison, and bottoms up! -ccm

DENVER — Arthur Sena spent years living in a hole that he had dug near the railroad tracks. He would probably still be there, defying offers of help from social workers and using cardboard to ward off the chill, if Denver had not adopted a radical strategy of putting homeless people into apartments of their own, no strings attached.

A liberal lawyer in Los Angeles is threatening to throw nearly three dozen homeless center residents back on the streets because of something he finds indefensible: The center's founder is a Republican and voted for President Bush.