More George Carlin

Sung to "Oh Beautiful."

"O beautiful for smoggy skies,
Insecticided grain.
For strip-mined mountains majesty,
Above the asphalt plain

America! America!
Men sheds his waste on thee.
And hides the pines with billboard signs,
From sea to oily sea."

More medical humor from my sister Kathy.

A guy fell asleep on the beach for several hours and got horrible sunburn, specifically to his upper legs.

He went to the hospital, and was promptly admitted after being diagnosed with second-degree burns.

With his skin already starting to blister, and the severe pain he was in, the doctor prescribed continuous intravenous feeding with saline, electrolytes, a sedative, and a Viagra pill every four hours.

The nurse, who was rather astounded, asked, 'What good will Viagra do for him, doctor'?

The doctor replied, 'It won't do anything for his condition, but it'll keep the sheets off his legs. '

I got this joke from my little sister. Thanks Kathy.

The love story of Ralph and Edna

Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in,swam to the bottom, and pulled him out.

When the director of the hospital became aware of Edna's heroic act she immediately ordered Edna be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable.

When the director went to tell Edna the news, she said, 'Edna, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're being discharged, since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of the person you love. The bad news is, Ralph hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he's dead.

Edna replied, 'He didn't hang himself, I put him there to dry. How soon can I go home?'

Response to my letter to Senator Feinstein!!!

Dear Mr. Ferguson:

Thank you for your letter about the United States Embassy in Iraq. I appreciate the time you took to write and welcome the opportunity to respond.

I understand your concerns about the cost and size of the U.S. Embassy being constructed in Iraq. As you may know, in May 2005, Congress approved the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005 (H.R. 1268), which allocated $592 million for the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Congress later rescinded $20 million from the funds available for the Embassy's construction. The Embassy funds are needed to ensure the safety and security of our personnel, who are operating under difficult and threatening conditions. Please know that I will continue to monitor this situation and will keep your concerns in mind should the Senate consider additional legislation to fund the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

Again, thank you for writing. If you have any further comments, please contact my office in Washington, D.C. at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

This was much more of a response than I got from Senator Boxer. So our democrat controlled senate knew about this huge embassy being built in Iraq and approved the spending for it. I guess I can't really lay all the blame on President Bush and the republican administration. It's plain to see that neither party has any immediate plans for removing all the troops from Iraq.

By Jasmin Aline Persch
MSNBC
updated 8:43 a.m. PT, Wed., June. 25, 2008

Could America’s fastest train whisk us away from $4-a-gallon gas guzzlers?

Thanks to a $45 million infusion from a transportation bill signed by President Bush in early June, there could someday be a magnetic levitating train, or “maglev,” soaring from Disneyland to Las Vegas at a maximum speed of 310 mph — 180 mph on average.

After the research phase is complete in about three years, the private partnership behind the effort, American Magline Group, comes to its biggest crossroads: obtaining $12 billion in funding for construction.

Mapquest indicates the distance from Anaheim to Las Vegas is 264 miles and says you should be able to drive there in four hours and two minutes. But at 180 mph you could get to Vegas on this train in one hour and 46 minutes. More time to gamble away your money!!!

George Carlin - Dead at 71

Comedian George Carlin died Sunday in Santa Monica, California, of a heart attack. He was 71 years old. George Carlin had suffered previous heart attacks, including one at Dodger Stadium.

Known as a "cutting edge" comedian, he was once arrested for obscenity for his routine called, "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court where it was deemed that the routine was "indecent but not obscene."

George Carlin appeared on television doing stand up routines and had a series called, 'The George Carlin Show," where he played a cab driver. He also appeared in several movies and wrote a half dozen books.

Karen and I saw him live once in Las Vegas. He was vary funny. I remember his routine as Al Sleet, the "hippie-dippie weatherman" — "Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning."

Lest we forget

Iraqi War

4,104 U.S. Casualties

29,978 U.S. Wounded

Afghanistan War

532 U.S. Casualties

2,071 U.S. wounded

Arutz Sheva - Israelnationalnews.com
Hamas "Minister": Rice is a Serpent - Cobra

IsraelNN.com) Hamas "Minister of Culture" Atallah Abu Al-Subh called U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a "black serpent" in an interview on Hamas's TV this week, MEMRI reports.

"With the arrival of that black scorpion with a cobra's head, Condoleezza, I began to worry that she would use her venomous fangs and hiss to kill this initiative and new spirit that we should protect," he said.

Abu Al-Subh continued: "The arrival of Condoleezza Rice is not a good sign... Condoleezza Rice, you are not welcome. Every proud Palestinian views you as a murderer, and sees the blood of the children of Palestine between your lips and on your fangs. I pray to Allah that you will soon slither away, along with your master who is more Zionist than the Zionists, that murderer and criminal, whose place in history is more advanced than that of Nero, Hulagu, Genghis Khan, Timur the Lame, Hitler, and Mussolini, and before them that of Nimrod - that criminal murderer, little Bush, who is striving to fan the flames in this region."

I guess you could call those "no uncertain terms!!!"

ONE ANGRY MAN

The New Yorker
Peter J. Boyer June 23, 2008

Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" show, came across an interview of President Bush which included the following two questions;

Q: Mr. President, turning to the biggest issue of all, Iraq. Various people and various candidates talk about pulling out next year. If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?

A: BUSH: Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is—it’s bigger than Iraq—it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives. Iraq just happens to be a part of this global war. . . .

Q: Mr. President, you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

A: BUSH: Yes, it really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as—to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Incensed, Keith Olbermann sat down at his computer and began to write. After an hour, he had the first draft of a lacerating indictment of Bush, a twelve-minute-long (eighteen pages in teleprompter script) j ’accuse, addressed personally to the President.

“Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created includes ‘cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives’?” Olbermann wrote. “They are those in—or formerly in—your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.”

The denunciation hit the high notes of the most fevered antiwar rhetoric, accusing Bush (he of the “addled brain”), his alleged puppet master (“the American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney”), and the “tragically know-it-all minions,” “sycophants,” and “mental dwarves” who serve them in the Administration of perpetrating a “panoramic and murderous deceit” on America and the world. Intelligence was faked, W.M.D.s were imagined, Iraq was laid waste, and American freedoms were trashed.


Olbermann turned to Bush's golf remark, which he called the "final blow to our nation's solar plexus." He wrote:

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six and a half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you. . . . It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heartfelt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice . . . when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead. This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!

Happy Birthday Nicole Kidman

Happy Birthday wishes go out to Nicole Kidman who turns 41 years old today. Nicole Mary Kidman was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but moved with her family to Sydney, Australia when she was 4 years old. She attended elementary school with fellow actress Naomi Watts.





Nicole has starred in such movies as "Days of Thunder", "Eyes Wide Shut", 'Batman Forever", and "Moulin Rouge." Kidman won critical praise for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in "The Hours", in which the prosthetics applied to her made her almost unrecognizable. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role, along with a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and numerous critics awards.





Nicole was married to actor Tom Cruise for ten years and they adopted two children. Nicole is now married to country western singer Keith Urban and is due to have their first child in a couple of months. The couple maintain homes in Los Angeles, Nashville, Tn. and Sydney, Australia. Happy Birthday Nicole Kidman.

Quakes 9 - Storm 6

Karen and I took in a Rancho Cucamonga Quakes baseball game Wednesday evening. The Lake Elsinore Storm took the early lead, but the Quakes came back in the late innings to pull out the win.

It was a great evening for a game. Shirt sleeves all around.

Tremor, the Quakes mascot, came by to say hello.

Bush/Israel have Iran in their sights!!!

New York Times.com
Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt
June 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.

More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.

In a June 10, 2008 article from the Asia Times (atimes.com) entitled "Hawks still circling on Iran", Jim Lobe wrote the following;

Once again, notably in the wake of last week's annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference and the visit to the capital of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, there's a lot of chatter about a possible attack by Israel and/or the United States on Iran.

Olmert appears to have left the White House after meeting with President George W Bush and an earlier dinner with Vice President Dick Cheney quite satisfied on this score, while rumors - most recently voiced by neo-conservative Daniel Pipes - that the administration plans to carry out a "massive" attack in the window between the November elections and Bush's departure from office, particularly if Democratic Senator Barack Obama is his successor, continue to swirl around the capital.

My note: It's no secret that President Bush has aims at attacking Iran over it's nuclear program. On every stop that Bush made on his recent European trip he could be heard repeating the threat to Iran that "all options were still in the table." Based on the above cartoon, others are of the same opinion.

Belated Happy Birthday to Garfield

Happy birthday wished go out to the comic strip "Garfield" who turned 30 years old on Thursday the 19th of June.

Reading a new book!!!

I picked up this book earlier this week and I'm about 1/3 of the way through it. It seems to be a very good book. You can find out more about it from eckharttolle.com/a_new_earth.

I will blog more from the book as I go along.

Been bikin'

Even with the heat up over 100 degrees, I've been able to ride my bike. Tuesday I rode about 16 miles mostly around here. It was quite an eventful ride. Somewhere along the ride the display part of my odometer fell off and was lost. Then closer to home I dumped my bike twice. I recently purchased clips for my pedals and as I lost my balance I couldn't get my feet out of the clips and fell. Fortunately both times were in the dirt and at locations where no one saw me make a fool of myself. Also I landed in soft dirt, almost at a stand still, so I wasn't hurt. (Except my pride) I have learned to take my feet out of the clips on any surface other than pavement.

So, Thursday I went back to Featherly Park for a ride. I guess I rode about 16-18 miles. Mostly on the pavement and no falls. I found that the bike trail that runs along the Santa Ana River has another park that it passes. I stopped there for a break. When I left my car for my ride the temperature was 92 degrees. When I returned it was 101!!! Most of the last 2.5 miles was at an incline so I was pooped when I got back to my car.


Friday I went out again and kept close to home. I stopped in the park for a break and took this photo of some passing clouds. It was only about 92 when I finished my ride, but later on whey Corey and I returned from running some errands, it was 107 degrees.

The heat is on

Summer is here boys and girls. Yes sirre, the heat is on here on SoCal. But isn't that what we've been waiting for? Isn't this why we live in SoCal?

The temperature is gonna hit 99 degrees here, and as I type this blog I see that it is already 95 degrees here in Ontario, Ca. The temps are supposed to top 101 for the next couple of days.

Gotta love it!!!!

Happy Birthday Paul McCartney

Happy Birthday wishes go out to Paul McCartney who turns 66 yrs old today. 66 yrs old!!!!! James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, England. He is described as a singer-songwriter, musician, artist, and activist.

Paul performing recently in Kiev.

Paul performing with The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on September 9, 1964. I remember watching that Ed Sullivan show on our little black and white TV with the rabbit ears.

One lie after another

Most people learn at a very young age that once you tell a lie you have to back up that lie with another and another. Apparently President Bush never learned that lesson.

On Sunday President Bush was at a state dinner in London with Prime Minister Gordon Brown when asked by a reporter about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

He responded by saying, "Still looking for them,” sparking a strange moment of levity. Mr. Bush continued: “We didn’t realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff.”

So President Bush would like you and I to believe that our $40 billion intelligence units at the pentagon were taken in by a bluff by Saddam Hussein who was just playing like he had weapons of mass destruction??

And how can President Bush joke about such a thing when his decision to invade Iraq has caused the death or wounding of millions of people, both U.S. and Iraqi alike.

Psychopathic personality: "a person characterized by emotional instability, lack of sound judgement, perverse and impulsive (often criminal) behavior, inability to learn from experience, amoral and asocial feelings, and other serious personality defects. " Websters New World Dictionary of the American Language

Hmm?? Is there a shrink in the house????

Feel the Pinch

Newsweek
Jessica Ramirez
June 16, 2008 12:00 A.M.

According to George Flint, Director of the Nevada Brothel Owners' Association, revenue for the 25 businesses in his membership organization is down by as much as 45 percent. The reason: Sex for money may be recession resistant but it's not recession proof. "Business is in a lower slump than I've ever seen it before," Flint says.

In Nevada, the world's oldest profession has been very lucrative. In a typical year, legal brothels generate about $50 million in total revenue and have an economic impact of about $400 million on the state. But in the last 18 months the industry's cash flow has taken a dive. Why? Like other businesses around the country, bordellos throughout the state are feeling the pinch of rising gas prices and a weak economy.

What's this world coming to???

Me, my Dad, and my little sister, Kathy.



Me, my lovely wife, Karen, and Josh & Corey

My oldest son, Scott, and his family, Bruce, Rebecca, and Melissa.

From left to right; my grandson Ethan, his Dad and my son Brian, Brian's girlfriend Celina, my son Corey, and my wonderful wife Karen.

This and that from the weekend

Saturday I went for a bike ride and managed 21 miles, mostly over the back roads of the former dairy land near my house. I managed to pick up another sticker and had to stop in the park to change the inner tube. This is the first time I've had to remove the back wheel and it was a bit more challenging than the front. About a half hour later I was back on the road. I've been told I should invest in whats called "green slime" to reduce the chance of flat tires. "Green slime" is apparently a gooey substance put inside the inner tube that attacks punctures and seals them.


Along the way I stopped for a break and bought a bottle of water near my regular Mobil station. As you can see, the price of gas just keeps on climbing. I looked back to some old blogs and found that on May 31st I paid $4.11 a gal. So in two weeks gas has gone up $0.50 a gal!!! At this rate it will be $5.00 a gal by the end of the month. And what happened to the days when gas generally ran up $0.10 a gal between regular, special, and super?? Now its $0.12 a gal more for special and then another $0.10 a gal for super. Just another way to get our money.


Saturday evening Josh, Karen, and I went to the movies and saw the new Indiana Jones movie. It was entertaining, but I wouldn't go see it again. I guess I can only handle so much chasing and fighting at one time. I think I like the National Treasure movies with Nicholas Cage better. Without giving away the whole move, I have to say that the movie confirmed everything I have been saying for months about how aliens once visited earth!!! LOL!!!