Late For Westboro Baptist
PG heard that the Westboro Baptist Church was in town. A schedule was distributed, and a call for counter protesters issued. While PG is not into sign waving, he can take pictures, and write snarky things.
This was the schedule:
The Ritz-Carlton at 181 Peachtree st 10:00AM-10:30AM.
The CDC from 11:00AM to 11:30AM,
The Jewish Community Center from 12:00PM to 12:30PM
The Atlanta Jewish Times from 12:45PM to 1:15PM
PG got a slack start, and did not want to go downtown. However, the last two stops were in his area. He also did not see WBC going from the CDC to Tilly Mill Road in a half hour. After a while, PG was on his way.
There was a lot of road work in the area. Whether this was part of a grand scheme or not, it did delay PG. Finally, Tilly Mill Road appeared. Eight Dunwoody Police cars were pulling out of a synagogue parking lot.
At the JCC, security men stood in front of a gate. When asked about the Westboro Baptist Church, the man said they had already left. He did not seem to miss them.
The Address for the Jewish Times is an building on Perimeter Center West. PG had delivered to the office. The entire length of PCW was one lane, due to road construction. PG pulled into a nearby parking lot, and started to walk. There was no action at the building at all.
After walking 270 degrees around the building, PG heard some hoots and hollers. He walked up to Peachtree Dunwoody Road, and saw about twenty protesters in front of the Home Depot. (Bernie and Arthur have retired.) They were leaving for the day as PG arrived. He did get a picture of the policeman taking down a barricade.
Number Nine
Henry Kissinger told a joke to Richard Nixon. It became known as Mr. Nixon’s favorite joke. A man asked Richard Wagner, Do you spell your name with a W. He replied, Nien, W.
It is 1027 pm, edt, on September 8, 2009. Soon it will be 09-09-09. It is already that day in Europe and Asia, not to mention Africa. If Africa is backwards, remember that it is, time wise, ahead of America by several hours.
)()()( oops, the shift key just loves to make trouble. Lets try this again. Be sure to leave the 9mm alone. Or use the canine squad. If you see Kay, give her love potion number nine.
090909 is a really neat day. And not just because the day after tomorrow is 911, and we know goes on then. 090909 is the last day of its type until 01/01/2101. A day expressed by three zeros and three single digit numbers.
Nine is the largest of the single digit numbers. It is a baseball team, without the DH. A baseball game lasts nine innings, just like a pregnancy lasts nine months. A pregnancy is not considered a complete game if it is rained out after the fifth inning.
Nine is pronounced the same as No in German. Is today known in Berlin as oh no, oh no, oh no? Will Yoko Ono make an appearance to celebrate? Will The Supremes reunite and square to become the Supreme Court?
Nine is an odd number. Nine is three squared. If you multiply a number by nine, and then add the digits of the sum together, you will get nine. An example is 2×9=18, and 1+8=9.
Nine is six upside down. A pristine pastime popularized 69. Jimi Hendrix wondered if six turned out to be nine, he don’t mind.
The Beatles did a song called Revolution number nine, which said “turn me on dead man” if played backwards. Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine.
The Best Thing BHO Has Done
PG thinks that making a motivational speech to schoolchildren is the best thing BHO has done so far.
The POTUS jobs has two parts…style and substance. The substance part is important, and will be endlessly argued over (as it should be). The speech tuesday is show biz, the President as leader. A speech to school children encouraging them to study hard cannot be anything but positive.
A portion of the audience tomorrow is African American children. Many of these kids have been turned off to education. Tomorrow, a man that millions idolize, the first dark skinned President, will be speaking to these kids. If their performance in school is improved one percent, then the speech is worthwhile.
The speech is also smart politics. Millions of these students will be voting age in 2012, as well as the teachers who will be listening. Maybe that is why the Repubs are so upset about this.
PG is also grateful that this was not tried when he was in school. Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy might have been alright. Lyndon Johnson would lose the crowd as soon as he said “Mah fellow Amuricuns”, and Richard Nixon was not a crook.
BHO is going to make mistakes, and get a few things right. He may turn out to be a disaster as POTUS. The act of making a speech to schoolchildren, telling them to study hard, is one thing he is doing right.
Ricky Hollywood
The Levi Johnston story gets stranger every day. The Alaska redneck/babydaddy has a feature in the upcoming Vanity Fair. The magazine…which knows a thing or two about teasers…released a few strategically selected quotes last week. A video was also released, showing scenes from a photo shoot. The co star of the video is “Tank” Jones. Mr. Jones is the manager and bodyguard for Mr. Johnston.
The video is a piece of work. At the 3:20 mark, Jones and Johnston are in a car, discussing posing for Playgirl. That would be Levi on display, unless Playgirl has become a haven for chubby chasers. Mr. Johnston says that if he is going to pose naked, then his manager needs to be there. Levi is spitting in a cup while this goes on.
Sherman “Tank” Jones is a private investigator. ( Here is his twitter account) His primary employer is an attorney, Rex Butler. Mr. Butler defended Sherry Johnston ( The mother of Levi) when she went to court on drug charges. At some point, Tank Jones went to work with the Johnston family, including Levi. Conservatives4palin reported on this May 3, 2009. An audio clip was included of a talk radio show visit by Rex Butler. Tank Jones is described as being a mentor to Levi Johnston.
Before mentoring Levi Johnston, Tank Jones dug dirt in divorce cases. As you might imagine, he says that people can be really, really dumb. This is one story: “When it comes to men who cheat, it’s typically their lack of organizational skill that nails them, Jones said. Like the guy who faithfully got both his wife and his secret lover spendy “undergarments” every Christmas, until one year when he mixed them up. When the wife opened her present, she found undies not only in the wrong size but the wrong gender. The boyfriend was equally dissatisfied with his Christmas gift, and showed up at a family dinner to return the bra and panties.”
A month after the radio show, TheDailyBeast had a story, “Shopping with Levi Johnston“. (This is the source for pictures of the two) Mr. Johnston and Mr. Jones had invented a new persona for Mr. Johnston, “Ricky Hollywood”. Tank was gently reminding Levi that he was in the lower 48, and he should be nice to the weirdos that he is going to meet.
Not everyone is impressed with Rex Butler. Many are questioning who pays the bills for the disabled Sherry Johnston. A commenter at Palinsgate said: ” Having watched Rex Butler in action when he defended the murderer of my nephew, I am ecstatic that Levi chose him as an attorney. Butler is an idiot in court. The Johnstons deserve him “
Not Abortion Product
PG made a mistake. The preacher in front of the GP plaza held a picture board, which was poorly rendered. PG made the mistake of assuming it was abortion pictures. It turns out to be an image of Jesus on the cross.
The Georgia Pacific building is on the site of the Lowes Grand Theater. On December 15, 1939, Gone With The Wind had its world premiere there. In a church choir was the ten year old Martin Luther King Jr. GWTW was about as real about the ante bellum south as the starship troopers were about intergalactic warfare.
The GP plaza is where Forsyth Street comes into Peachtree. For some reason, the wind on Forsyth Street is very strong, and this volume of air beats against the GP plaza. On DragonCon parade Saturday, the wind coming back from the plaza was a measure of revenge.
A theme of the post yesterday (see comments) was the importance of knowing fantasy from reality. The preacher was living a fantasy. Few are impressed by his rhetoric. He creates ill will for Jesus. The grossout pictures of the crucifixion do the same. PG posted last week about the damage that selfish preachers do to Jesus.
It should be noted that photography did not exist when Jesus lived. Nor did people speak English. That does not prevent people from believing that an English translation, of a Greek rendering, of Aramaic lessons is the inerrant word of G-d. If you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of G-d, then it is not much of a leap to believe those pictures were real.
Another problem is the placement of the spikes. The spike that held feet to a cross was driven into a spot between the Achilles heel and the bone. No bones were broken, and the feet were secured to the cross.
The spikes that held the arms were driven through a space in the wrist. Here again, no bones were broken, and the arms were not going to be pulled away from the cross. In the picture, there was a rope tying Jesus to the cross at this spot, and the spike was going to go in a couple of inches up the arm.
But when you believe your fantasy, details like this are not important.
Reality And Fantasy
PG was reading about Afghanistan while waiting for the time to go downtown. Dragon Con is in town, and the parade is at ten am. PG has decided to go downtown and see the costumes this year, so next year he can sleep late. Meanwhile, what is being said about Afghanistan ( of AfPak fame) is just as much a fantasy as DragonCon.
People are discussing the war. Perhaps not as many as needed, but it is a start. There is a two prong discussion… Should we be fighting in Afghanistan, and Are we doing it right?
Uzi just called to say he is on his way to the train station, so this needs to be wrapped up asap. There is a man named William Kristol. He writes think pieces for various newspapers. Mr. Kristol…he had a deferment and never served in the Vietnam era military…was known as the Brains behind Dan Quayle.
Mr. Kristol discusses counterinsurgency in a recent oped piece. The classic counterinsurgency theory is that you have you have one soldier per fifty civilians in your theater of war. Afghanistan has an *estimated* population of 28 million. Do the math. Mr. Kristol observes: “But as the military historian Fred Kagan explains, counter-insurgency theory and experience suggest that if the Afghan National Army is expanded, as Gen. McChrystal proposes to do, and if there is a surge of several brigades of American forces “to bridge the gap between current Afghan capacity and their future capacity, while simultaneously reducing the insurgency’s capabilities,” then we would have roughly the number of forces necessary to carry out the strategy.”
The fantasy downtown will have more colorful costumes.
The first thing in the parade was a crew of flag totin wannabe soldiers. This struck PG as being disrespectful of the real troops. Whether you agree or disagree with the war, the fact is that these fine men and women are fighting a hot war, with real dead and wounded. It is not a fantasy. PG suspects many of the uniform models in the parade would not last ten minutes in actual combat.
That was a bit of a comedown, but PG got over it. DragonCon is about fantasy and enjoyment, and if you think too much the fun goes away. There was a lot to look at…pretty and plain, imaginative and derivative, and on and on. PG hopes that the harem girls were more suited for that activity, than the starship troopers would be in a laser fire fight.
When the real police came through, and told people to get on the sidewalk, the first part of the parade was over. A man with a bullhorn and pictures of abortion product started to scream about Jesus.
PG and Uzi went walking through the horror of Five Points to Underground, before heading north to Peachtree Center. The food court was packed, with football fans cheerfully co- existing with intergalactic trailer trash. There was no place to sit down and eat, so PG went back to the Doraville train. The ride was over.
The Cost Of War
There is a controversy about a picture from Afghanistan. A soldier is being treated, after being hit by a grenade. Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard later died.
Few graphic images from the “War on Terror” have been seen on this side of the Atlantic. The burden of the war is on the volunteer soldiers, and the families who support them. Many people in America have no contact with anyone fighting eight time zones away.
Even less is said about why we fight. The revenge for 911 has long ago been taken. Any fantasies about establishing a democracy in Afghanistan are foolish.
The war has spilled into Pakistan with even less debate or public concern than was focused on Afghanistan or Iraq. Nuclear armed Pakistan is an unstable country, with a nervous border with India. The United States is killing women and children in Pakistan from unmanned airplanes.
Who Invented Peanut Butter?
PG got an email from Uzi, with a list of home remedies, and alternate product uses. Peanut butter has three alternative uses, which is one more than preparation H. No one ever made a preparation H and jelly sandwich.
To remove labels off glassware, rub with peanut butter. To remove ink from the face of dolls, treat with peanut butter. To get the scratches out of CD’s, use peanut butter, and wipe off with a coffee filter.
Peanuts were used by the Incas in 950 b.c. It probably didn’t take much imagination to grind the beans into a paste. To claim inventing peanut butter is like claiming to invent the knot.
In recent times, Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis patented a peanut butter-making machine in 1903. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented a “Process of Preparing Nut Meal” in 1895. Kellogg served the patients at his Battle Creek Sanitarium peanut butter.
Joseph L. Rosenfield invented a churning process that made smooth peanut butter smooth. In 1928, Rosenfield licensed his invention to the Pond Company, the makers of Peter Pan peanut butter. In 1932, Rosenfield began making his own brand of peanut butter called Skippy.
Did someone say George Washington Carver? Dr. Carver discovered hundreds of uses for the peanut. However, Dr. Carver did not patent peanut butter, as he believed food products were all gifts from God. The Incas beat all of these men by 2800 years.
In 1976, a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia was elected President. It is also known the his brother Billy ran the family business, while Jimmy got mixed up in politics. While President, Mr. Carter was revealed to be a major user of Preparation H.
Now that we are confused about who invented peanut butter, the next question is, why butter? In The Netherlands, the product is called Pinda Kaas, or peanut cheese. It could as easily be mud, goo, or cream, as butter.
A google search on “why is peanut paste called peanut butter?” yielded an article about salmonella issues. Wikipedia sheds no light on the subject, but does mention that peanut butter is an effective bait for mouse traps.
Inventors.about.com has a page about “The history of peanut butter”. Portions of the text were copied into this post.
In Sickness And In Health
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
“No one” Is this the individual, or the United States? With the individual, death occurs when the body no longer functions. Is this going to happen to the United States?
What is the health care the United States cannot afford? Is it taking over the medical industry, by the government, with all that is implied? The political cost is steep, and perhaps the financial one as well. At what point does the amount of FRAUD ( Federal Reserve Accounting Unit Dollars) in circulation outweigh the goods and services produces enough to render the FRAUD useless?
Should America go broke because she is sick? Fighting an endless war of choice in Babylon, operating health care as a profit center, pumping billions of tons of co2 into the atmosphere…some would say America is sick. Should America go broke because she is sick? Will America die because she cannot afford health care?
Maybe this is the entire planet that is set to die. Out of control population growth is a reality. As the United States is learning on her southern border, this affects us. When you say no one, does that really mean no one. Is the baby in Zimbabwe as important as the Alpharetta housewife? And when does this system break down under the need, and die because it went broke?
At some point choices need to be made. Prevention and healthy living should take a priority over healing the sick. A fair and effective way needs to be found to pay for health care. The economy needs to thrive for the same reason. A way of living that is going to be sustainable needs to be put into place. Heath care is just another stone in the foundation, but the one that, when pulled out, brings the entire house down with it.
Anything To Get Attention
John Oxendine is running for governor. He is doing whatever it takes to let people know. A few weeks ago, Mr. Oxendine was feuding with a 15 y.o. blogger. The latest gimmick is a proposal to build an expressway through the uber trendy northeast side of Atlanta.
To be fair, some of his transportation ideas are sound. There is this banana shaped road, going from north georgia to south georgia, that would divert traffic from the Atlanta area. This was the original function of I285. Next time you are on that parking lot at rush hour, remember, it was supposed to be a low traffic bypass for the Yankees going to Florida.
The idea that has the eyes rolling is the proposal to build a highway in the I485 corridor. The original plan was to build an expressway that would connect highway 400 with the Freedom Parkway. When it was first proposed, it was called I485. It was killed by neighborhood opposition.
PG suspects that Mr. Oxendine knows that this intown expressway has zero chance of being built. At this stage of the game, he is trying to get attention. One idea is to open a restaurant. Atlanta used to have an eatery called the Pig and Whistle. The new version could be the Ox and Dine.
Thank you AtlantaTimeMachine and GeorgiaNavigator for the pictures. The spell check suggestions for Oxendine are trendiness, unending, and spending.
Labels Belong On Jars
Abraham at twentytwowords wrote… “When I asked about churches last week, some of you reminded me you’re not Christian.So…Non-Christian readers, what (non)religion are you?” That is 23 words.
PG answered the original post “home churched”. He decided to answer the follow up question. Unlike most of the others to answer, PG wanted to keep this under 22 words.
PG was raised in the Southern Baptist Church. There is a tradition in the Baptist Church to make a “profession of faith”, usually when the kid is around 10. For various reasons, PG never did this, and was never baptized. PG decided when he was 17 to quit attending. He has been to Briarcliff Baptist one time since then…he worked for a blueprint company, and delivered a set of plans to the church office.
PG went back and forth on the religion issue. In 1979, there was a week in Camp K, a moonie facility. After reading, thinking, and prayer, PG chose to live in harmony with Jesus worshipers.
In 1998, PG went to work for Redo blue. There were seven hellish years working closely with a Professional Jesus Worshiper. By the end of that experience, PG was alienated from Jesus. He wished to never hear the J-name mentioned again. Living in the Jesus happy United States, PG could seldom go 24 hours without having Jesus shoved in his face.
After a temper tantrum from the PJW, PG wrote down two sentences. “I am not interested in your opinions about G-d, The Bible, Jesus, or life after death. My opinions about G-d, The Bible, Jesus, or life after death are none of your business.”
There probably is not a religion that PG could fit into without a lot of shoehorning. Atheist is out, because PG suspects that there is a G-d. What form she takes is a matter of dispute. As for belief, PG questions that belief is the proper approach to G-d.
Agnostic sounds like something you would blow out of your nose. Judaism is a party that PG is not invited to. Buddhism makes some good points, but PG is awfully occidental. As for christianism, PG sees Jesus in the words and deeds of his believers. In his seven years at redo blue, PG saw an estimated 1400 hours of loud, hateful ministry. I am not talking to you!
As for the obsession with life after death that infects Jesus worship, PG feels pity and disgust. This is not a good focus for a religious practice, nor does it excuse verbal abuse. PG has ideas about life after death, but this post is waaay over 22 words.
PG decided that this label thing was not going to work. Labels belong on jars, and PG’s hair is a half inch over jarhead level. The best solution was to write a list of beliefs. The good news here is that numbers do not count against the total of 22 words.
1. My beliefs are my business. 2. Practice outweighs belief. 3. G-d probably exists. 4. G-d does not write books. 5. Jesus has nothing to do with Life after death.
This is 25 words. Three words need to go. Line 4 states that G-d does not write books. This implies that G-d does, indeed, exist. Line 3 can be eliminated, and the answer reduced to 22 words.
Greeted As Liberators Part Two
Paul Wolfowitz has been a government player for years. After finishing his education, he got a job in the Nixon Administration, and worked with Ford and Reagan. He became a star under GHWB and GWB. Apparently, Paul Wolfowitz never served in the military.
Under George W. Bush, Mr. Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defense. After 911, he became a forceful advocate of War in Iraq. He is regarded by some as the “Architect of the War in Iraq”.
On February 27, 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz testified before congress. “There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army—hard to imagine.”
The conquest was the easy part. The occupation, the act of putting humpty dumpty back together, has been the tough part. More than a few people saw this in 2003.
Mr. Wolfowitz gave an interview to Vanity Fair magazine May 9, 2009. The interview had a quote about WMD. Mr. Wolfowitz said “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason,”.
The possession of WMD by “next Hitler” Saddam Hussein was one of the leading reasons for the invasion. Iraq was known to have used poison gas against the Kurds (while he was an ally of the United States). The warehouses of WMD have never been found in the current occupation. There is speculation as to whether these supplies existed at all, or whether they were disposed of prior to the invasion.
In 1941, The United States was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. A declaration of war was issued within a week. There was no settling on an issue for bureaucratic reasons.
PG found a transcript of the complete interview. HT to TomDispatch. Apparently, Mr. Wolfowitz likes to talk. The part that interested PG concerns the Cruise missile, and other “smart” weapons. It seems as though the research on these weapons was almost suspended. The United States was negotiating arms control with The Soviet Union. The Cruise missile was almost abandoned as a concession to the Soviets. The Navy supported this, as they felt that the torpedoes on submarines were taking up too much room already. It is tough to imagine the current US military without “smart” weapons.
Chamblee54 
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