Gone Fishing?

I'll be visiting my Alma Madder for a few days. I won't be doing any blogging while I'm gone.

The picture is of a dome at the college I attended in the town I grew up in. I'll let you speculate where it is. See if any of you recognize it or can guess as to where it is.

Organic Planet Festival

All was good at Halvorson Park in Eureka this Sunday. Speakers included Dr. Tyrone Hayes, speaking on pesticide effects on Frogs and People, Organic & Sustainable Sports (not sure what that was all about), Organic Gardens, Natural Burial, Eating Locally and Your Pesticide Free City. There was also music from Queen IDA & Her Zydeco Band and others.

I really enjoyed the "Worlds Largest Organic Salad." Eureka Natural Foods did a fantastic job and the salad didn't run out right away like last year. Wildberries Marketplace and the Co-Op gave door prizes including a Bike and Free Groceries.

The weather was perfect. A few contrails and some light clouds brought many canoes, kayak's and boats to the event.

The event highlighted sustainable living, organic food and clothing and some of those guys with electric vehicles were there showing off their non gas powered cars. There were also a couple of people with the water to hydrogen conversion kits on their cars, an old pickup and a new Subaru.

Pretty cool stuff.

One woman had to be taken away by stretcher, she seemed like she would be o.k. though.

I did bad by driving to the event from Trinidad. I could have taken a bus from Arcata and cut my drive in half. I will try to remember this next year.

Corporations that funded McKinleyville campaign to benefit financially from school bonds

The newspaper McKinleyville Press is reporting in it's August 19th edition that a McKinleyville couple has accused the McKinleyville Union School District Board of Trustees of corruption and has asked them to invalidate Measure C, the recently passed school bond.

David Elsebusch and his wife Penny say that 90 percent of the campaign contributions for Measure C were illegal. They say the school district hired several consulting firms which contributed money toward the passage of Measure C, and that they benefited, or will benefit financially from the bonds passage. Elsebusch says he obtained the financial information from form filed with the County Elections Office. He is requesting that District Attorney Paul Gallegos enforce the county's ordinance, Measure T, which prohibits our of county corporations from contributing to local political campaigns, and to collect 10 times the amount of contributions for the county's coffers.

President of the Board of Trustees, Terrie Smith said "Measure T - no one caught that," she added. "None of the attorneys caught that. It was something that slipped through. No, I don't feel good about that. But Do I feel we should backtrack all the hard work that we've done, and undo things? I don't think so... I don't feel that any member of that campaign committee did anything knowingly illegal, corrupt, wrong in any sense."

There is more in the article that hasn't appeared on the papers web site as of this posting.

Thanks to the McKinleyville Press for this report.

You Can't Force Oil Companies To Drill Off Shore

The Associated Press reports that nearly two million off shore acres of oil and natural gas leases went up for auction today. The area was in the Gulf of Mexico near Texas. The Department of the Interior said they got 423 bids from 47 companies willing to explore for oil and gas. What was not expected, given all of the recent rhetoric from oil companies, congress and presidential candidates that we need to drill, drill, drill, was the fact that only about 10 percent of the leases made available today were actually bid on. You can offer the coasts of the United States to these companies but you can't force them to exploit it.

If what republicans and pro oil people are saying is true, that we must drill our way out of the energy problem, it is not going to get done through the private sector. If this is really what the country needs, then we should nationalize the oil companies and get the job done.

We offered the leases and there weren't many takers. Put up or shut up!

This should tell us all that the oil companies will do what is best for the oil companies and not what is best for the U.S. We need to get serious about alternative forms of energy and stop playing games with the oil companies. They are making record profits and laughing their asses off at all of us dumb citizens that buy into the political bull sh*t.

Nationalize the oil companies or get serious about solar, wind, geothermal and hydrogen.

More here.

Pesticides Killing Honey Bees?

WASHINGTON - August 18 - The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit today to uncover critical information that the US government is withholding about the risks posed by pesticides to honey bees. NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country. The phenomenon has come to be called “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, and it is already proving to have disastrous consequences for American agriculture and the $15 billion worth of crops pollinated by bees every year.

See More.

It should be noted that earlier this year in France, a massive die off was attributed to Bayer Chemical products made to coat seeds of plants that make the plants poisonous to insects was blamed on a collapse of honey bees there.

See More.

World's farmers turn to raw sewage for irrigation

00:01 18 August 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

The future may not smell too rosy – it may lie in sewage. As cities and industries suck up ever more of the world’s scarce water resources, agriculture is destined to rely increasingly on recycling the contents of urban sewers, according to a new international study of “wastewater agriculture”.
The good news – for farmers at least – is that the irrigation water from sewers comes with free fertiliser in the form of the nitrates and phosphates bound up in human faeces. The bad news is that this coprological cornucopia is filling vegetables sold in city markets with heavy metals, pathogenic bacteria and worms.
An estimated one fifth of the world’s food is growing in urban areas, with perishables like vegetables to the fore. But a 50-city study by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) – a World Bank-backed research agency based in Sri Lanka – finds that often the only source of the essential irrigation water to grow many of those crops is city sewage.

Click for full story. This is yet another reason to eat locally grown food from Humboldt County.

Only Handicap Parking at Burger King and McDonalds in Eureka?

I was puzzled the other day when pulled into the Burger King between 4th and 5th st. in Eureka. I was on my way home and needed something in my tummy. As I entered the parking lot of the Burger King, I noticed that there wasn't anywhere to park. There were plenty of open spaces but they all had red curb painting. In most places that means Fire Zone and you will be towed away at your own expense. The only legal place to park were the handicap spaces painted blue. I don't have a handicap sticker because I am not legally handicap. I noticed that across the street at McDonalds, all the parking berms and curbs around the entire parking lot there were also painted red. Why is this? Is it because they only want us to use the drive thru?

Maybe they just don't want our business. Maybe everything is a fire zone because of the flame broiling they do at Burger King. This doesn't explain the parking lot size fire zone at McDonalds though.

Apon further study I noticed that the Les Schwab store on Broadway has all of their parking spaces painted yellow. That usually means loading zone. Probably not a problem though as they usually run out of the tire store and meet you right there in the parking lot to serve you and quickly move your car to the service bay.

House Judiciary to examine claim of White House intel forgery

From The RawStory.com

Nick JulianoPublished: Wednesday August 13, 2008
The blockbuster claims that White House officials conspired to forge evidence linking Iraq to 9/11 plotters and ignored clear intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein's lack of WMDs may not be getting as much attention as it should in the US press, but some key lawmakers are beginning to take notice.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers says his staff will investigate these allegations and others aired in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.
"I am particularly troubled that the decision to disseminate this fabricated intelligence is alleged to have come from the highest reaches of the administration," Conyers said in a press release Tuesday evening. "The administration’s attempt to challenge Mr. Suskind’s reporting appears to have been effectively dismissed by the publication of the author’s interview recordings and transcripts. I have instructed my staff to conduct a careful review of Mr. Suskind’s allegations and the role played by senior administration officials in this matter."
The announced probe garnered quick praise from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who has waged a months-long campaign to convince his colleagues and Democratic leaders in the House to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Suskind has said the allegations outlined in his book could be impeachable offenses.
According to Conyers' office, the Judiciary Committee staff's investigation will focus on the following areas:
· The origin of the allegedly forged document that formed the basis for Bush’s 2003 State of the Union assertion that Iraq sought yellowcake uranium from Niger;· The role of this document in creating the false impression that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had a working relationship with Iraq;
· The relationship between this document and other reported examples of the Bush Administration considering other deceptive schemes to justify or provoke war with Iraq, such as the reported consideration of painting a U.S. aircraft with UN colors in order to provoke Iraq into military confrontation;· Allegations that the Bush Administration deliberately ignored information from Iraq’s chief intelligence officer that Iraq possessed no WMDs;· The payment of $5 million to Iraq’s chief intelligence officer and his secret settlement in Jordan, beyond the reach of investigators;·The September 2007 detainment and interrogation of Mr. Suskind’s research assistant, Greg Jackson, by federal agents in Manhattan. Jackson’s notes were also confiscated.
Kucinich, who was a Democratic presidential candidate earlier this year, last week requested an investigation of the book's claims.
"If true," he said, "the Administration fabricated evidence and used it to lead the country into an unprovoked war."

Looking for an Expert on Contrails

The photos to the left of the blog are just some of the photos I have taken of contrails that don't disappear. Normal contrails fade away but these get bigger and bigger until the whole sky is a hazy overcast. I have taken heat from people on other blogs about what I have photographed and seen so I am asking, is there is anybody that is an expert on these that would like to shed some light on the subject? Why do some modern contrails disappear as they should and some grow to cover the sky? This hasn't always been the case. Why?

I should note that the picture to the right and above was not taken by me.

Longs Drug Stores Bought by CVS Caremark Corp.

In a deal valued at 2.9 billion dollars, including the assumption of debt, CVS Caremark says they will buy the Longs Drug Story chain. Longs has 521 stores in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Arizona. Longs also operates Rx America, a prescription benefits management program that services 8 million members. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Top Law Enforcement Offical: Breaking Laws, Not A Crime

Today the U.S. Attorney General told the American Bar Association at their annual meeting, "not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws."
He was referring to improper political considerations in hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers by the Justice Department.
He said the federal government makes a distinction between "career" and "political" appointees, and it's a violation of civil service laws and Justice Department policy to hire career employees on the basis of political affiliation of allegiance.
An internal investigation concluded last month that for nearly two years, top advisers to former A.G. Alberto Gonzales discriminated against applicants for career jobs who weren't Republican of conservative loyalists.
More on this story

Law Professor: Counter Terrorism Czar Told Me There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

Steve Watson at Prison planet is reporting that there will be a 9/11 event on the Internet.

Steve WatsonInfowars.netTuesday, August 5, 2008
Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.
Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.
Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled “2018: Life on the Net”, Lessig stated:
There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.
The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Click here to view whole story.

Is the DEA using Blackwater Mercenaries?

This is from the RawStory.com and the L.A. Times:

Deleted photo sparks fears DEA hiring mercenaries
Muriel KanePublished: Monday August 4, 2008

When a California medical marijuana dispensary, Organica Collective, was raided last Thursday by agents of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and local police, the Los Angeles Times ran a dramatic story on the incident, accompanied by a set of photographs showing the raid and its aftermath.
According to the Times, witnesses described the DEA agents as "removing computers, medicine and money, and using a steel cylinder battering ram to get into the upstairs bedrooms." When they left four hours later, all that remained was "trash, counters strewn with open and empty glass jars, piles of receipts thrown on the ground, upturned couch cushions, bits of marijuana on the edges of counters and an ATM with its doors torn open and emptied. ... An outdoor vegetable garden had plants uprooted, along with marijuana plants removed by the agents."
However, one particular photograph from the Times story has drawn more attention than anything else. That picture, which has now been widely reproduced at blogs, shows a long-haired man, wearing a Blackwater tshirt and with a pistol at his belt, passing a box marked "DEA Evidence" to other agents participating in the raid.
Blackwater, a private mercenary army often employed by the US government for security services and by local police forces for training, has drawn widespread criticism for its shoot-em-up tactics in Iraq and has recently aroused suspicion by its establishment of a private intelligence service and its growing role in global drug enforcement.
A medical marijuana website may have been the first to draw attention to the picture, noting, "We’re used to the DEA calling in help from various federal agencies and local law enforcement. But I guess none of their usual buddies were available yesterday because from the picture below, which appeared in the LA Times today, it looks like they had to resort to calling in Blackwater."

Read the rest of the story at the RawStory.com