October 31, 2014

Trees - and if you would please tell me which you like. I want to enter a learning curve :)

I’ve not had the time to be very active here, I could only be very sporadic, but I’m roaring back.
In the last week I dusted off my secondary camera (Sony Alpha 500) because the primary one (Sony Alpha 65) is getting repaired and now that I finished a huge job and have time again I took about 400 photos in a week. Pretty natural in the glorious and flaming Indian Summer in the South.

So, if you’ll still have me, I’ll be around again, participating.

These I took this afternoon, stopped at the side of the road, it’s in town, near a library and a school.
Which do you like best, if any.

October 31, 2014

Elon College is not just a four letter word in the crossword puzzles. Here it gives NC H*O*P*E

http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/elonpoll/10_30_14_ElonPollExecSummary.pdf

This is a new poll
wish I knew how to post the chart directly.
It shows how Kay Hagan is moving up very nicely.

October 30, 2014

Obama Urged to Apologize for Anti-Fear Remark By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—President Obama is coming under increasing pressure to apologize for a controversial remark that he made on Tuesday, in which he said that the nation’s Ebola policy should be based on facts rather than fear.

While the anti-fear tenor of Mr. Obama’s comment was offensive enough to some, the President made matters worse by suggesting that science would play the leading role in guiding the nation’s Ebola protocols—a role that many Americans believe should be played by fear.

Across the country, Democratic candidates have sought to distance themselves from the President’s incendiary statement, especially in states like North Carolina, where science and facts have record-low approval ratings.
Carol Foyler, a Democratic consultant in Colorado, said that she was “smacking my head” at the President’s divisive comment.

“He’s unpopular enough as it is,” she said. “Aligning yourself with science and facts is a surefire way to alienate millions of Americans.”

www.borowitzreport.com

October 29, 2014

Oh no - I have now seen the light - take me off the list as a Republican. HAVIN’ FUN with pollsters.

A few days ago I had a polling call from the Republicans, they got my name almost right, and since it’s a bit unusual I answer to most anything.
They said are you “Mary” and added my last name and I said yes and they thanked me for being Republican. They really did. And I started to guffaw. I almost choked, actually, since this struck me as very funny.

I said - no - if it says I’m a Republican it's wrong because there isn’t a single one of those I could vote for. Please take me off this list - because the way they are ruining my state I can’t imagine voting for them in my lifetime.
She said, OK, but I’m not sure, you are definitely on this list and have been a long time.
And I said: Let me thank you ahead of time for changing this for me.

So afterwards, like a lightning bolt, it occurred to me that they thought I was my EX-sister-in law whose name is Mary and who retained my unusual last name after my brother’s death and who chose to no longer have a family connection.

Since then I have had no less than three phone calls asking for Republican Mary who I then profess to be.
I patiently answer all the pertinent answers about affiliation, and who I am voting for, and my color, and my proclivities and I am turning Mary into a card carrying, newly devoted Democrat.

Since they did not take her off their lists, at least I take responsibility for her repentance and her come to Jesus conversion, over and over.
I never ever asked them to be taken off that list again, just told them I had changed my long standing Republican views.

It just makes me smile. We need some levity. We will win this thing.
Let's keep getting out the vote, and let's keep talking up the importance of this election.

October 28, 2014

Colbert Took Apart 'History Buff' Louie Gohmert. He was blistering him. It doesn't get any better.

Do yourself a favor and watch this.
Stephen put words to how I feel about this man in a way I never could, and honestly, I can't get enough of it

Enjoy!
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/whfeyg/louie-gohmert-on-gays-in-the-military

October 27, 2014

Without Borowitz we would not know this: Chris Christie was sworn in as medical doctor

TRENTON (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that he was “sick and tired of having his medical credentials questioned,” Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) had himself sworn in as a medical doctor on Sunday night.

Dr. Christie acknowledged that becoming a doctor generally requires pre-med classes, four years of medical school, plus additional years of residency, but he said that the Ebola epidemic compelled him to take “extraordinary measures, as we say in the medical profession.”

Dr. Christie said that, beginning on Monday, he would begin a series of random “house calls” to check New Jersey residents for Ebola and assign them for quarantine. “I can usually diagnose someone with Ebola in under a minute,” Dr. Christie said. “Even faster if I don’t actually see them.”

The doctor said that before moving forward with his plan to quarantine scores of New Jersey citizens he suspects of having Ebola, he consulted with other prominent epidemiologists, including Dr. Rick Perry, of Texas. “He concurs,” he said.

Dr. Christie defended his quarantine plan against critics, noting that unorthodox procedures in medicine often face opposition at first. “We’re used to hearing that the nurses and doctors who treat Ebola patients are heroes,” he said. “But the real heroes are the people who lock up those heroes.”

www.borowitzreport.com

October 25, 2014

Polltaker is Borowitz: Majority of Americans Favor Quarantining Wolf Blitzer

WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report) — Amid concerns that the spreading fear of Ebola has become a greater threat than the virus itself, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans favor a quarantine of the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

While poll respondents supported quarantining more than a dozen cable-news personalities, including the entire cast of “Fox & Friends,” a full seventy-two per cent gave the nod to a quarantine of Blitzer.

At the Centers for Disease Control, a spokesman said that a Blitzer quarantine was “very much on the table,” and that the C.D.C. had come up with a workable plan.

“Essentially, we would do a lockdown of ‘The Situation Room’ and provide Wolf with food and water until the crisis passes,” he said.

www.borowitzreport.com

October 25, 2014

Today I met one of the young blacks with whom the parents have had “the talk”.

I live in the South.
And my neighbors have guns. But I forget that. And often I realize I shouldn’t - or that I shouldn’t have!

Not til it was all over, and I ruminated about how strange I felt about the incident, did I put it together.
The talk had told the young black man to not come onto a white person’s property because they could have a gun and their life might be in danger.

My layout is a huge, mostly graveled business like back yard, fenced, with a 10 foot gate, and it was open because I worked on a project and expected a visitor.
I saw a young black man stand at the gate, and he obviously wanted my attention. So I waved him in. He would not come.
I was busy, I waved him in with grand gestures next - but he still would not enter through the property perimeter.
I walked towards him then, irritated really, because why did he make me do that when obviously he was the one who needed me, not the other way around.

It turned out he needed to call someone, and asked me for the use of my phone.
I actually had to go get the phone, take it to him at the gate and then go pick it back up from him later.

NO WAY
No earthly way
would a person with white skin have had to jump through the hoops of such considerations, they would have walked up after my gesturing without second thoughts.

I so wish America could face up to what it has done and is still doing to its black citizens.
I’m an immigrant who came in on a coal freighter from Europe in the sixties, and because my skin is pink I was never stigmatized.

I once asked my (Democratic) Mother-in-Law who thought it was so great that her son had married a German how she would feel about that if Germans were black.
“That would make a huge difference” she said.

What I witnessed today, and of course often do in many ways, shows you that difference.

I'm sad about how this very simple incident shows our white folk privilege is inherent and does not extend to our fellow citizens of color. Jim Crow is alive in so many ways.
I'm glad that Germans are rarely black makes my life a whole lot less complicated.

October 16, 2014

Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science - Andy Borowitz (cowering)

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—There is a deep-seated fear among some Americans that an Ebola outbreak could make the country turn to science.

In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.

“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”

Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”

At the end of the day, though, Dorrinson hopes that such a doomsday scenario will not come to pass. “Time and time again through history, Americans have been exposed to science and refused to accept it,” he said. “I pray that this time will be no different.”



www.borowitzreport.com

October 8, 2014

A Peek into the Bedroom of Potus and Flotus / seems good'n safe now (Darkow cartoon)