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Today in History....January 25

* 1776, the first national memorial is ordered by Congress. It was built in in honor of Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, who had been killed during an assault on Quebec on December 31, 1775

* 1905, at the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine's superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the "Cullinan," it was the largest diamond ever found

* 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service

* 1919, in Paris, delegates to the peace conference formally approve the establishment of a commission on the League of Nations

* 1956, in a long interview with visiting American attorney Marshall MacDuffie, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev adopts a friendly attitude toward the United States and indicates that he believes President Dwight Eisenhower is sincere in his desire for peace

* 1959, American Airlines opened the jet age in the United States with the first scheduled transcontinental flight of a Boeing 707

* 1961, President Kennedy held the first presidential news conference carried live on radio and television

* 1968, the Israeli submarine Dakar, carrying 69 sailors, passes the island of Crete and radios its position --- then disappears. The exact fate of this vessel remains a mystery to this day

* 1971, Charles Manson and three women followers were convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people, including actress Sharon Tate

* 1981,the 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days arrived in the United States

* 1997, responding to recent cases of deadly food poisoning, President Clinton said in his weekly radio address that he would seek $43 million dollars to implement a state-of-the-art early warning system for food contamination

* 2002, J. Clifford Baxter, a former Enron Corp. executive who'd reportedly complained about the company's questionable accounting practices, was found shot to death in a car, a suicide

* 2006, Hamas won a large majority of seats in Palestinian parliamentary elections

* 2007, Ford Motor Co. said it had lost a staggering $12.7 billion in 2006, the worst loss in the company's 103-year history

Today in History....January 24

* 1848, James W. Marshall discovered a gold nugget at Sutter's Mill in northern California, a discovery that led to the gold rush of '49

* 1908, the first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell

* 1924, the Russian city of St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in honor of the late revolutionary leader (however, it has since been re-named St. Petersburg)

* 1943, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill concluded a wartime conference in Casablanca, Morocco

* 1972, the Supreme Court struck down laws that denied welfare benefits to people who had resided in a state for less than a year

* 1978, a nuclear-powered Soviet satellite plunged through Earth's atmosphere and disintegrated, scattering radioactive debris over parts of northern Canada

* 1985, the space shuttle Discovery was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the first secret, all-military shuttle mission

* 1989, confessed serial killer Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida's electric chair

* 1995, the FDA approved Olestra, the nation's first zero-calorie artificial fat. ALSO: Specialist Michael New was discharged from the U.S. Army after a court-martial jury convicted him for refusing to wear a UN beret for a peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia

* 2003, the new Department of Homeland Security officially opened and its chief, Tom Ridge, was sworn in

* 2004, the United Nations for the fist time commemorated the 60-year anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi, ym"sh, death camps, directly linking its own founding with the end of the Holocaust in some of the strongest language ever

* 2007, Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee dismissed President Bush's plans for a troop buildup in Iraq as "not in the national interest" of the United States

One Down, Three To Go

It is strange that the qualities we are looking for in a sitting President - thoughtful, calm, and serious - are exactly the qualities which we penalize in those running for President, sorry to see Fred Thompson withdraw.

Now who? Don't know, but Romney is intriguing, The American Thinker has an interesting article on Mitt......Why they Hate Mitt Romney.

We can't forget that we are at war with a relentless enemy. Victory in Iraq or Afghanistan is not victory in the war. It will take years of relentless pursuit of our enemies to put an end to the evil of Islamic terrorism.

And we also have extremely dangerous rivals, if not enemies, in Russia and China. As Russia provides Iran with anti-missile defenses, specifically designed to shoot down American planes in the event we should need to take military action against Iran, it should be clear to us all that the so-called "end of history" and "peace dividend" were, to say the least, premature.

We need, above anything else, a president who can be trusted to be both careful and dogged in pursuing our foreign policy. The Democratic Party has no candidate fit to be trusted with our foreign policy in this dangerous world. And the Republican Party has only Rudy Giuliani who shows that he already understands how the job is done, with McCain as a decent second and Mitt Romney as a lightweight who might be able to learn the job, hopefully in time.

A nice preview of what we can expect on the world scene took place with assasination of Benazir Bhutto. Rudy and McCain showed worldly presence and leadership, Romney too, but not as much and Huckabee was a disaster. I'll vote for whoever is the nominee, Rudy, Mitt and McCain get the nod here............and Rudy/Mitt battling it out for my vote.

Today in History....January 23

1368, in a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries

* 1556, the deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000

* 1793, Russia and Prussia partition Poland

* 1845, Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November

* 1897, Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction

* 1904, the Ålesund Fire: the Norwegian coastal town Ålesund is devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless and one person dead.
Kaiser Wilhelm II funds the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style

* 1920, the Netherlands refuses to surrender ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies

* 1941, Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler, ym"sh

* 1943, Jewish-led Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

* 1950, the Knesset approved a resolution affirming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel

* 1964, the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified

* 1973, President Richard Nixon announces that a peace accord has been reached in Vietnam

* 1985, O.J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner elected to the Football Hall of Fame

* 1996, the first version of the Java programming language is releasedn

* 1998, fighting scandal allegations involving Monica Lewinsky, President Bill Clinton assured his Cabinet during a meeting that he was innocent and urged them to concentrate on their jobs

* 2001, the Chinese Communist Party stages a self-immolation in Tiananmen Square to frame Falun Gong and escalate the persecution

* 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl is kidnapped -- and subsequently beheaded
-- in Karachi, Pakistan by practitioners of that "religion of peace"

PUSS in boots???

DAMN, sort of not surprised after last week.

WOW.... if true,....... John McCain wtf are you thinking??? I think I'll go over to his house and ask.......I can see his house (condo....a cool $4.5 Million) from our office 2 blocks away........... whoop-di-effen-doo.

........if it is Ronald Reagan that Republicans want, Mr. X is extraordinarily close to that venerated man. Ronald Reagan stood for two great beliefs: that big government is a big problem for a free society and that America must be militarily strong and lead the war against global communism.

Substitute "global jihadism" for "global communism" and you have Mr. X's twin pillars, here's Dennis Prager's endorsement for POTUS.

Speaking of Ronald Reagan, VDH writes about Mr. Reagan... "the candidates try to "out-Reagan" each other by claiming they alone are the true Reaganites while their rivals in the primaries are too liberal, flip-floppers or without consistent conservative principles.

In short, Ronald Reagan has been beatified into some sort of saint, as if he were above the petty lapses and contradictions of today's candidates. The result is that conservatives are losing sight of Reagan the man while placing unrealistic requirements of perfection on his would-be successors.

They have forgotten that Reagan — facing spiraling deficits, sinking poll ratings and a hostile Congress — reluctantly signed legislation raising payroll, income and gasoline taxes, some of them among the largest in our history. He promised to limit government and eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. Instead, when faced with congressional and popular opposition, he relented and even grew government by adding a secretary of veteran affairs to the Cabinet.

Two of his Supreme Court appointments, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, were far more liberal than George W. Bush's selections, the diehard constructionists, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Reagan's 1986 comprehensive immigration bill turned out to be the most liberal amnesty for illegal aliens in our nation's history, and set the stage for the present problem of 12 million aliens here unlawfully.

Republicans forget all this — but so do Democrats, who for their own reasons want to perpetuate an unflattering myth of Ronald Reagan as an extremist right-wing reactionary.

In foreign affairs, Reagan was not always sober and judicious. He shocked Cold Warriors by advocating complete nuclear disarmament at his Reykjavik summit with Michel Gorbachev.

In the middle of Lebanon's civil war, he first put American troops into a crossfire. Then, when 241 marines were blown up, he withdrew them. That about-face, and the failure to retaliate in serious fashion, helped to embolden Hezbollah's anti-American terrorism for decades.

The Iran-Contra scandal exploded when a few rogue administration officials sold state-of-the-art missiles under the table to Iran's terrorist-sponsoring theocracy, and prompted opposition talk of impeachment.

In other words, a great president like Ronald Reagan made mistakes. Here's the rest.

Today in History....January 22

* 1905, Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, beginning of the 1905 revolution

* 1917, during World War I: President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe

* 1946, creation of the Central Intelligence Group, forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency

* 1957, the New York City "Mad Bomber," George P. Metesky, is arrested in Waterbury, Connecticut and is charged with planting more than 30 bombs

* 1963, Elysee treaty of cooperation between France and Germany is signed by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer

* 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in Roe v. Wade striking down state laws restricting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. ALSO: George Foreman breaks Joe Frazier's professional career undefeated heavyweight world boxing champion status

* 1984, the Apple Macintosh, the first consumer computer to popularize the computer mouse and the graphical user interface, is introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous "1984" television commercial.

* 1987, Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself at a press conference on live national television, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism

* 1990, Robert Tappan Morris, Jr. is convicted of releasing the 1988 Internet worm

* 1995, two practitioners of that "religion of peace" from the Gaza Strip blow themselves up at an Israeli military transit point killing 19

* 1997, Madeleine Albright becomes the first female secretary of state after confirmation by the United States Senate

* 1998, Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty in Sacramento, Calif., to being the Unabomber in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

* 2002, Kmart Corp becomes the largest retailer in American history to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

A). moron

B). coke-head

C). commie loving, freedom hating prick

D). narcissistic megalomaniac midget with a severe god-complex

E). model for all of Hollywood to follow

F). all of the above

......chewin' the.....coke with Hugo.

Check this out.... The 5 most horrifying bugs in the world....."They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary ******* place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance." Wanna bet PETA gets involved?? Heh. Warning....strong language warning.

Today in History....January 21

* 1789, the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston

* 1793, after being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France is guillotined

* 1861, during the Civil War: Jefferson Davis resigns from the United States Senate

* 1908, New York City's Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance prohibiting women from smoking in public. (However, the measure was vetoed by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. two weeks later)

* 1924, Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin begins to purge his rivals to clear way for his leadership

* 1950, Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury

* 1954, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, then the First Lady of the United States

* 1976, commercial service of Concorde begins with London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes

* 1977, President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all American Vietnam War draft evaders, some of whom had emigrated to Canada

* 1985, because January 20 had fallen on a Sunday, Ronald Reagan's public inaugural ceremony (for his second term as President) was moved to Monday, January 21. Due to bad weather, the ceremony was held indoors in the United States Capital Rotunda

* 1997, Newt Gingrich becomes the first leader of the United States House of Representatives to be internally disciplined for ethical misconduct

* 1999, in one of the largest drug busts in American history, the United States Coast Guard intercepts a ship with over 9,500 pounds (4,300 kg) of cocaine on board

* 2004, NASA's MER-A (the Mars Rover Spirit) ceases communication with mission control. The problem lies with Flash Memory management and is fixed remotely from Earth on February 6

* 2003, the Census Bureau announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America's largest minority group

Joe Jr., 3.5 yrs of age, battles the effects of Global Warming here in Arizona.

Dude has STONES OF DIAMONDS........ or whatever the hardest substance is

Terje Haakonsen's incredible descent snowboarding down almost a vertical face. How the hell the guy could even stand on top of that mountain is a feat in itself. It gets good at 1:20.

Feels good to be a Swede/Norwegian.....finally.....whatever team this cat is on, I'm on it.

Screw Islamofascism, Let's Get To The Important Stuff

Sen. Clinton will reportedly hold a news conference next week to decry the lack of African-American characters in fairy tales, and note that her husband was “doing what he could to advance Civil Rights in this arena.”

“Each night, as American children go to bed,” Sen. Clinton will reportedly say, “they hear fantastic tales from which blacks are almost entirely absent. African-American children are made to feel that there’s no place for them in imaginary society. While caucasian children live in blissful ignorance, in a fantasy world that’s lilly, or should I say snow, white.”

From none other than ScrappleFace ....heh.

Speaking of fairy tales.....
......this photo was/is the biggest load of BS around .......here's our conniving lovebirds one week before Lewinsky becomes a part of the American vernacular

LIMBAUGH ENDORSES FRED THOMPSON:

Well, David Limbaugh, anyway.

Today in History....January 18

1778, English navigator Capt. James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, which he dubbed the "Sandwich Islands"

1803, Thomas Jefferson requests funding from Congress to finance the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson officially asked for $2,500 in funding from Congress, though some sources indicate the expedition ultimately cost closer to $50,000

1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it.
(Scott and his party perished during the return trip.)

1919, the Paris Peace Conference, held to negotiate peace treaties ending World War I, opened in Versailles, France

1943, during World War II, the Soviets announced they'd broken through the long Nazi siege of Leningrad (it was another year before the siege was fully lifted). ALSO: The deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the concentration camp at Treblinka is resumed-but not without much bloodshed and resistance along the way. AND: A wartime ban on the sale of pre-sliced bread in the U.S. -- aimed at reducing bakeries' demand for metal replacement parts -- went into effect

1950, People's Republic of China formally recognizes the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and agrees to furnish it military assistance; the Soviet Union extended diplomatic recognition to Hanoi on January 30. China and the Soviet Union provided massive military and economic aid to North Vietnam, which enabled North Vietnam to fight first the French and then the Americans

1990, at the end of a joint sting operation by FBI agents and District of Columbia police, Mayor Marion Barry is arrested and charged with drug possession and the use of crack, a crystalline form of cocaine. ALSO: A jury in Los Angeles acquitted former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, of 52 child molestation charges.

2002, two Israeli tanks and an armored personnel carrier parked outside the headquarters of Yasser Arafat, ym"sh, confining the terrorist to his office complex a day after a Palestinian gunman burst into a banquet hall and gunned down six Israelis

There is no racial difference between India and Pakistan, but one has democracy and the other has Islam - and oh what a difference that makes!

Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. They have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124). They have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Their culture, traditions and cuisine are all the same. They watch the same movies and sing the same songs. What is it that Indians do and Pakistanis don't: read it here.

h/t ROP

Capitalism & Billionaires

.......that evil pair for the most part, leads to altruistic motives.

"I am impressed that the strong majority of the world's richest individuals (about 30 out of the 39 richest Americans) made their money rather than inherited it. The wealthiest individuals are mainly self-made because inherited wealth gets dissipated over a couple of generations through bad investments, or is given to various charities, or gets broken up and divided among many
grandchildren, cousins, and divorced members. For this reason, no descendants of John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, or other titans of the beginning of the century are among the very wealthiest."

Read the rest by Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate in economics on The Proliferation of Billionaires

Couldn't Have Said It Better.....

.....so instead of re-skinnin' a post, here's John Hawkins take on rooting for Hillary......

Today in History....January 17

* 1595, Henry IV of France declares war on Spain

* 1819, Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Colombia

* 1893, Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate

* 1899, United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean

* 1916 , the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) is formed

* 1917, United States pays Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands

* 1929, Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip

* 1945, Soviet and Polish forces liberated Warsaw during World War II.
ALSO: The Nazis, ym"sh, begin the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces close in. AND: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappears in Hungary while in Soviet custody

* 1946, the UN Security Council holds its first session

* 1949, "The Goldbergs", the first American TV sitcom, debuts

* 1950, the Great Brinks Robbery, 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston

* 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex"

* 1973, Ferdinand Marcos becomes "President for Life" of the Philippines

* 1977, convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States

* 1982, "Cold Sunday" in the United States sees temperatures fall to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities

* 1985, British Telecom announces the retirement of the United Kingdom's red telephone boxes

* 1991, Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation

* 1997, a court in Ireland granted the first divorce in the Roman Catholic country's history

* 2003, on the 12th anniversary of the Gulf War, a defiant Saddam Hussein called on his people to rise up and defend the nation against a new U.S.-led attack. ALSO: Tom Ridge sailed through Senate confirmation hearings on his way to becoming the nation's first Homeland Security Department chief. AND: Gertrude Janeway, the last known widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, died in Blaine, Tenn., at age 93 (she had married John Janeway in 1927 when he was 81 and she was barely 18)