Feathers are being ruffled
Californians are worried that the chickens who lay the eggs that make their omelets aren't getting fair living conditions. That's how ballot initiatives were able to pass making it impossible for farmers who don't provide cages of a certain size for their chickens will be unable to market their eggs in the Sunshine State starting next year. Now the Attorney General of Missouri is suing, claiming that California has no authority to regulate how farmers in other states raise their chickens and produce the eggs they want to sell in CA.
He has a point. The initial proposal was to require all farm animals to have cages that allowed them to lie down, stand up, turn around and fully extend their extremities. Then when California farmers complained this would put them at a disadvantage in competing against farmers from other states, the protectionist legislation was enacted.
I'm all for cruelty-free food being made possible and available. But not at the price of ignoring one of the core concepts of our Constitution, the Commerce Clause.
* * *
If you're a smoker, cross CVS Pharmacies off the list of places you can still purchase smokes at. They are going "tobacco-free" by October of this year, a move that will cut their revenue by $2 billion.
It's a smart move. As part of the changes going on in healthcare, they are repositioning themselves to remain part of the system of delivering healthcare. Adding clinics in their stores, providing immunizations, smoking cessation programs and more, they are looking to create a healthier customer base and keep serving it.
We hear about the tragedy of and massive amounts of deaths caused by guns each year. In 2010, there were less than 40,000 deaths in the U. S. where a gun was the cause of death. The Food and Drug Administration says that tobacco was responsible for 480,000 deaths in 2009. Interesting, to say the least.
* * *
When someone wants their writings destroyed after their death, whoever they gave that task to is committing a horrific violation if they do not as requested. The late Pope John Paul II wrote it out in his will that his notes were to be destroyed. He assigned this task to someone he considered a "trusted confidant" but apparently that description is not accurate.
The reading public may not like this, but the truth is that a writer's works belong to the writer and no one else; until the moment that writer chooses to publish them. Dmitri Nabakov had no business allowing the posthumous publication of his father's "The Original of Laura" in 2009. The claims that the works of a famed author, or in this case, of a famous person, belong to history are nonsensical. A person's thoughts are their own. When they put those thoughts on paper, by pen or typewriter or computer, they do not give up ownership. Not until they sign a contract. Or give permission for posthumous publication.
J. D. Salinger chose to publish "The Catcher in the Rye" and we are all richer for it. According to writer/director Shane Salerno, Salinger left instructions for publication of some of his unpublished works beginning in 2015 and running through 2020. I look forward to reading those works. But if Mr. Salinger had chosen to have all of his unpublished works destroyed, I would support that decision.
I have a large number of unfinished, unpublished works. I haven't decided what I want done with them. But I expect that whoever I choose as the custodian of my writings after my passing will do what I want done with them. The reality is, no one will be particularly interested in those writings. They are mine and I will do with them as I please. The same should apply to the writings of anyone and everyone, even a Pope.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
There's a new job in Sochi that is a competitor for worst job in the world. Since some of the hotel rooms have toilets that can't handle the flushing of used toilet paper, the hotels are providing bins. Emptying the bins of used toilet paper has to really, really stink.
Now people are critical that the winner of "The Biggest Loser" lost too much weight and is too thin. A person's weight is their own business. If she's happy, everyone else should shut up.
Bob Dylan did a Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler urging people to "buy American." Four of Chrysler's ten assembly plants are located outside the United States and Chrysler is a wholly owned subsidiary of an Italian automaker. Is that really American?
Nefariousjobs.com is a website that sells "revenge" services. For $10,000 their "Total Annihilation" package promises to put 8 people to work full-time to ruin the life of the target. I'm not sure which is worse, someone who would run a site like this, or the people who would patronize it.
After reading about the Florida woman who spent $450 for a puppy from someone on Craigslist, and the dog was dead less than 24 hours later from parvo, I have to wonder how many other people are getting the shaft on Craigslist and it never makes the news. Has to be a lot. I'm not saying there aren't decent people on that site, just that when you're laying out big bucks to someone you don't know, caveat emptor.
It's great that suspects in the stun-gun theft of that Stradivarius violin are in custody. But did the violin get recovered? That's the important thing.
You have to love the audacity of some people. Suzanne Basso is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday in Texas for a crime that took place more than 15 years ago. She was sentenced to death in 1999. Now her lawyer is saying, "Why rush to judgment..." I don't see a process that's taken 15 years as a rush to anything.
Kudos to Jared Leto for his masterful handling of a heckler during an appearance in Santa Barbara.
Wonder if Clay Aiken's decision to run for Congress was prompted by the 2012 movie "The Campaign?"
Shaun White should tell the Canadian hoseheads who are calling him scared for pulling out of one event at Sochi to just "take off."
I'll take DMX in the second round over George Zimmerman.
* * *
February 5th in History:
62 – Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.
756 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang Dynasty, declares himself emperor and establishes the state of Yan.
1576 – Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.
1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
1631 – Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
1782 – Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.
1783 – In Calabria a sequence of strong earthquakes begins.
1810 – Peninsular War: Siege of Cádiz begins.
1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
1849 – University of Wisconsin-Madison's first class meets at Madison Female Academy.
1852 – The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
1859 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state.
1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "Welcome Stranger", is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
1885 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
1900 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal.
1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.
1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
1917 – The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.
1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.
1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
1937 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.
1939 – Generalísimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th "Caudillo de España", or Leader of Spain.
1941 – World War II: Allied forces begin the Battle of Keren to capture Keren, Eritrea.
1945 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
1946 – The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea.
1958 – Gamel Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1962 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence.
1963 – The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law.
1971 – Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission.
1972 – Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
1975 – Riots break in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship.
1976 – The 1976 swine flu outbreak begins at Fort Dix, NJ.
1985 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.
1988 – Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
1994 – During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell slams into a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo.
1997 – The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
2000 – Russian forces massacre at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya.
2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.
Famous Folk Born on February 5th:
Gaspar Schott
Elias Stein
Nancy Lincoln
Robert Peel
Dwight L. Moody
Hiram Stevens Maxim
Belle Starr
André Citroën
Adlai Stevenson
John Carradine
Peg Entwhistle
Red Buttons
Andreas Papandreou
Ruth Fertel
Norm Grabowski
Hank Aaron
Stuart Damon
Jane Bryant Quinn
Stephen J. Cannell
Roger Staubach
Cory Wells
Michael Mann
J. R. Cobb
Charlotte Rampling
Darrell Waltrip
Christopher Guest
Barbara Hershey
Tom Wilkinson
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Laura Linney
Tony Jaa
Trayvon Martin
In honor of the birthday of the lovely and talented Laura Linney, today's movie quotes come from "Primal Fear"
Marty: On my first day of law school, my professor says two things. First was; "From this day forward, when your mother tells you she loves you - get a second opinion."
Jack Connerman: [chuckles] And?
Marty: "If you want justice, go to a whorehouse. If you wanna get fucked, go to court."
#2
[arguing before the judge]
Janet: Next thing you know, he'll be objecting to introducing the murder weapon into evidence!
Marty: Well, now that you bring it up...
#3
Marty: Yeah, I'm Martin Vail, from the public defender's office. I'm handling the Aaron Stampler case.
Cop: Hmm, The Butcher Boy.
Marty: Yes, thank you, I forgot his real name.
#4
Marty: First thing that I ask a new client is "Have you been saving up for a rainy day? Guess what? It's raining."
He has a point. The initial proposal was to require all farm animals to have cages that allowed them to lie down, stand up, turn around and fully extend their extremities. Then when California farmers complained this would put them at a disadvantage in competing against farmers from other states, the protectionist legislation was enacted.
I'm all for cruelty-free food being made possible and available. But not at the price of ignoring one of the core concepts of our Constitution, the Commerce Clause.
* * *
If you're a smoker, cross CVS Pharmacies off the list of places you can still purchase smokes at. They are going "tobacco-free" by October of this year, a move that will cut their revenue by $2 billion.
It's a smart move. As part of the changes going on in healthcare, they are repositioning themselves to remain part of the system of delivering healthcare. Adding clinics in their stores, providing immunizations, smoking cessation programs and more, they are looking to create a healthier customer base and keep serving it.
We hear about the tragedy of and massive amounts of deaths caused by guns each year. In 2010, there were less than 40,000 deaths in the U. S. where a gun was the cause of death. The Food and Drug Administration says that tobacco was responsible for 480,000 deaths in 2009. Interesting, to say the least.
* * *
When someone wants their writings destroyed after their death, whoever they gave that task to is committing a horrific violation if they do not as requested. The late Pope John Paul II wrote it out in his will that his notes were to be destroyed. He assigned this task to someone he considered a "trusted confidant" but apparently that description is not accurate.
The reading public may not like this, but the truth is that a writer's works belong to the writer and no one else; until the moment that writer chooses to publish them. Dmitri Nabakov had no business allowing the posthumous publication of his father's "The Original of Laura" in 2009. The claims that the works of a famed author, or in this case, of a famous person, belong to history are nonsensical. A person's thoughts are their own. When they put those thoughts on paper, by pen or typewriter or computer, they do not give up ownership. Not until they sign a contract. Or give permission for posthumous publication.
J. D. Salinger chose to publish "The Catcher in the Rye" and we are all richer for it. According to writer/director Shane Salerno, Salinger left instructions for publication of some of his unpublished works beginning in 2015 and running through 2020. I look forward to reading those works. But if Mr. Salinger had chosen to have all of his unpublished works destroyed, I would support that decision.
I have a large number of unfinished, unpublished works. I haven't decided what I want done with them. But I expect that whoever I choose as the custodian of my writings after my passing will do what I want done with them. The reality is, no one will be particularly interested in those writings. They are mine and I will do with them as I please. The same should apply to the writings of anyone and everyone, even a Pope.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
There's a new job in Sochi that is a competitor for worst job in the world. Since some of the hotel rooms have toilets that can't handle the flushing of used toilet paper, the hotels are providing bins. Emptying the bins of used toilet paper has to really, really stink.
Now people are critical that the winner of "The Biggest Loser" lost too much weight and is too thin. A person's weight is their own business. If she's happy, everyone else should shut up.
Bob Dylan did a Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler urging people to "buy American." Four of Chrysler's ten assembly plants are located outside the United States and Chrysler is a wholly owned subsidiary of an Italian automaker. Is that really American?
Nefariousjobs.com is a website that sells "revenge" services. For $10,000 their "Total Annihilation" package promises to put 8 people to work full-time to ruin the life of the target. I'm not sure which is worse, someone who would run a site like this, or the people who would patronize it.
After reading about the Florida woman who spent $450 for a puppy from someone on Craigslist, and the dog was dead less than 24 hours later from parvo, I have to wonder how many other people are getting the shaft on Craigslist and it never makes the news. Has to be a lot. I'm not saying there aren't decent people on that site, just that when you're laying out big bucks to someone you don't know, caveat emptor.
It's great that suspects in the stun-gun theft of that Stradivarius violin are in custody. But did the violin get recovered? That's the important thing.
You have to love the audacity of some people. Suzanne Basso is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday in Texas for a crime that took place more than 15 years ago. She was sentenced to death in 1999. Now her lawyer is saying, "Why rush to judgment..." I don't see a process that's taken 15 years as a rush to anything.
Kudos to Jared Leto for his masterful handling of a heckler during an appearance in Santa Barbara.
Wonder if Clay Aiken's decision to run for Congress was prompted by the 2012 movie "The Campaign?"
Shaun White should tell the Canadian hoseheads who are calling him scared for pulling out of one event at Sochi to just "take off."
I'll take DMX in the second round over George Zimmerman.
* * *
February 5th in History:
62 – Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.
756 – An Lushan, leader of a revolt against the Tang Dynasty, declares himself emperor and establishes the state of Yan.
1576 – Henry of Navarre abjures Catholicism at Tours and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.
1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
1631 – Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
1778 – South Carolina becomes the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
1782 – Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.
1783 – In Calabria a sequence of strong earthquakes begins.
1810 – Peninsular War: Siege of Cádiz begins.
1818 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
1849 – University of Wisconsin-Madison's first class meets at Madison Female Academy.
1852 – The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
1859 – Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities, an autonomous region within the Ottoman Empire, which ushered the birth of the modern Romanian state.
1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the "Welcome Stranger", is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
1885 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
1900 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign a treaty for the Panama Canal.
1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic.
1913 – Greek military aviators, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis perform the first naval air mission in history, with a Farman MF.7 hydroplane.
1917 – The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, it forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia.
1918 – Stephen W. Thompson shoots down a German airplane. It is the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.
1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.
1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
1937 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.
1939 – Generalísimo Francisco Franco becomes the 68th "Caudillo de España", or Leader of Spain.
1941 – World War II: Allied forces begin the Battle of Keren to capture Keren, Eritrea.
1945 – World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
1946 – The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea.
1958 – Gamel Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
1958 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1962 – French President Charles de Gaulle calls for Algeria to be granted independence.
1963 – The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen establishes the principle of direct effect, one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions in the development of European Union law.
1971 – Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission.
1972 – Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
1975 – Riots break in Lima, Peru after the police forces go on strike the day before. The uprising (locally known as the Limazo) is bloodily suppressed by the military dictatorship.
1976 – The 1976 swine flu outbreak begins at Fort Dix, NJ.
1985 – Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.
1988 – Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
1994 – Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
1994 – During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell slams into a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo.
1997 – The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
2000 – Russian forces massacre at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya.
2004 – Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.
Famous Folk Born on February 5th:
Gaspar Schott
Elias Stein
Nancy Lincoln
Robert Peel
Dwight L. Moody
Hiram Stevens Maxim
Belle Starr
André Citroën
Adlai Stevenson
John Carradine
Peg Entwhistle
Red Buttons
Andreas Papandreou
Ruth Fertel
Norm Grabowski
Hank Aaron
Stuart Damon
Jane Bryant Quinn
Stephen J. Cannell
Roger Staubach
Cory Wells
Michael Mann
J. R. Cobb
Charlotte Rampling
Darrell Waltrip
Christopher Guest
Barbara Hershey
Tom Wilkinson
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Laura Linney
Tony Jaa
Trayvon Martin
In honor of the birthday of the lovely and talented Laura Linney, today's movie quotes come from "Primal Fear"
Marty: On my first day of law school, my professor says two things. First was; "From this day forward, when your mother tells you she loves you - get a second opinion."
Jack Connerman: [chuckles] And?
Marty: "If you want justice, go to a whorehouse. If you wanna get fucked, go to court."
#2
[arguing before the judge]
Janet: Next thing you know, he'll be objecting to introducing the murder weapon into evidence!
Marty: Well, now that you bring it up...
#3
Marty: Yeah, I'm Martin Vail, from the public defender's office. I'm handling the Aaron Stampler case.
Cop: Hmm, The Butcher Boy.
Marty: Yes, thank you, I forgot his real name.
#4
Marty: First thing that I ask a new client is "Have you been saving up for a rainy day? Guess what? It's raining."
posted by me at 3:29 PM
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