Chamblee54

PG got an email with a few “clever” pictures of BHO. They will not be reprinted today due to copyright issues. ( The edited picture he did print is from Proceed at Own Risk. )If you want to see a few, go to the source. While you are there, you might get a clue as to why BHO got elected.
The Repubs made a mess. We got mixed up in wars, where the only victories will be ruinously expensive. The economy is a mess. And yet, the “right wing” continues to point fingers, and play any number of rhetorical games. We were offered Sarah Palin as a Vice President.
On the other hand, BHO has a fanatic constituency now that is hypersensitive to criticism. It is going to be a long four years. The POTUS is a magnet for criticism, satire, humor, and meanness. It is just the way it is. BHO is a product of Chicago politics, and can more than take care of himself.
Yes, BHO is the first dark skinned President. He had a white mother, and his father was from Kenya. He is not the descendent of slaves. By the Jewish tradition… i.e. the children of a Jewish mother are Jews….BHO is white. And yet, African America claims BHO as one of their own. People are being set up for disappointment.
On the other side of the fair and balanced fence, the conservatives are a piece of work. PG looks at sites like iowntheworld and is reminded of how little he has in common with the conservative movement.
It makes you wonder why anyone would want to be POTUS. As firebug William T. Sherman said:
“If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.”

There is a dandy little squabble going on right now. On the one hand there is Corey Lynxx. He makes videos without wearing a shirt, or lighting his face. He might have other talents, but that is not evident from his videos. Mr.Lynxx got upset with a local restaurant owner, and decided to call the man at work to discuss this problem. The restaurant owner, a man named Shaun, was busy at the time and declined to discuss Corey’s problem.
The next player in this miniseries is Andisheh Nouraee. Copy and paste is wonderful for Persian names, even when he is usually called Andy. Mr. Nouraee writes a column for Creative Loafing that PG seeks out every time he gets a copy. The column makes tries to make sense of the world beyond the lower 48, and manages to crack a joke or two along the way. Andy was offended by the manner in which Corey was dealing with his problem, and made a video of his own.
The next two entries in this exchange were made my Mr. Lynxx ( Which is a handle. PG is not sure what his “real” name is.) The video monger manages to light his face, not that it is especially attractive. He eats a sandwich and continues to talk. Numerous comments are made about the hirsute Mr. Nouraee. Apparently, Corey Lynxx does not like bears.
The last chapter, for now, of this melodrama shows Andy, speaking in the style of Chris Crocker. It is not as funny as his column. It should be noted that writing a column for publication takes a bit more skill that putting a talking head video on youtube.
Andy wrote a cover story at CL a while back about the best five blogs in Atlanta. A lady named Spacy Gracey was not included, and said lots of mean things about Andy. Nor was Chamblee54 mentioned.
Meanwhile, PG took a look at Andy’s twitters. A Federal Judge ruled in favor of Alabama and Florida, in the tri state lawsuit over the water of the Chattahoochee River. The Atlanta area has grown astronomically in recent years, without attending to the basic need of people for water. The Georgia legislature would rather worry about the State Flag, than provide water for the unstoppable development in the metro area. The Judge has ruled that Congress will need to solve this problem in the next three years.
You really have to look carefully at the fishwrapper to find this story. When PG opened the page to get this link, the headline about water was “below the fold”. Above it was a story about how “Long, hot days have inspired these six cool cocktails. Bottoms up!” PG wonders about the priorities in Cox Country.

While eating breakfast, PG perused something called “execution of the day“. On July 15, 1953, John Christie was hung in England. He was 54. Chamblee 54, who is 55, sees a pattern. The original source says it all better: “Albert Pierrepoint was given the job of dispatching him, so Christie was hanged at Pentonville Prison on this day in 1953, aged 54.”
Mr. Christie lived at 10 Rillington Place, which was the title of a movie about his exploits. He was in the habit of murdering people and hiding the bodies in the house. He also had two middle names…his full handle was John Reginald Halliday Christie. He married a girl named Ethel Waddington. Do you have any trouble believing he was British?
The first known murder was in 1943. There was a war going on, and killing was quite the fashion. Mr. Christie had a girlfriend named Ruth Fuerst. She did not survive a nooner. In his eventual confession, Mr. Christie said “‘I left her there in the bedroom. After that I believe I had a cup of tea and went to bed”. The story continues: “The second was in 1944 – a neighbour, who was convinced he was a doctor. He didn’t persuade her otherwise and the 32-year-old was gullible enough to listen when he told her to inhale some gas scented with friars’ balsam. The carbon monoxide rendered her virtually unconscious enabling Christie to have his way with her. As with Fuerst, he strangled her either before or during the rape.
You may be wondering what he did with these two bodies…he buried them both in the garden and in one report he may even have used one of their leg bones to support fencing.”
Things were quiet for a while…well not really, there was this family of three…but things were relatively quiet until 1952. At that time Ethel Christie met her maker, with the help of her husband. He wondered what to do with the body, until he saw  loose floorboards in the living room.
Within a few weeks, more women passed away, with his assistance, and were stored in various parts of the house. John Christie moved out of 10 Rillington Place. The new tenants complained about the aroma, and before long John Christie had a noose around his neck.
This charming story has some ” Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)”. These include: “Angry at God?” and “African American ex-computer hacker designs service to fake caller ID (PR).”

Uzi sent PG a video this morning. It is a satire on Alcoholics Anonymous. It is for unpleasant people…in this video they are all males, with ethnic diversity. The name describing these people is a body part used for elimination. Since this is a profanity light blog, so we will call it assbleep. (The video bleeped the H word) It is a rude thing to say about donkeys.
After viewing the video, and the inevitable youtube suggestions, PG visited JoemyG-d. He saw a post about someone who needs to go to one of these meetings. This would be Ralph Reed.
Mr. Reed was for several years the Chairman of something called the Christian Coalition. It was a political organization that supported candidates that passed the smell test. After a while, Ralph Reed left the Christian Coalition to start his own firm, Century Strategies.
This is where the story gets personal to PG. There is an office space on Presidential Drive, down the street from the round hotel. Redo blue had a facility in this space, which employed PG. After a merger, Redo left the space. This was when Ralph Reed was starting Century Strategies. He rented the space on Presidential Drive for his new company. It gives PG a warm feeling to think that Ralph Reed’s assbleep has contributed to the same commode as PG’s assbleep.
Apparently, the independent consulting business is not what it should be. Mr. Reed ( his full name is Ralph Eugene Reed Jr.) wants to have something called the Faith and Freedom Coalition. As the man says : “This is not going to be your daddy’s Christian Coalition. It has to be younger, hipper, less strident, more inclusive and it has to harness the 21st century that will enable us to win in the future.”
Something else that didn’t work for Mr. Reed is running for political office. In 2006, Mr. Reed ran for Lieutenant Governor in the Republican Primary. PG had to make a values decision. In the Democratic primary, Cynthia McKinney was running for re election. Here were two politicians who needed to retire, but PG could only vote against one. PG chose the Republican primary, and helped Ralph Reed spend more time with his family. In another act of electoral hygiene, the Democrats sent Cynthia McKinney to the Green Party.

The Waxman-Markey bill, aka cap and trade, is more confusing and intimidating the more the PG hears about it. Talk to a dozen “informed” people and you will hear fifteen opinions. It is enough to make you want to kill a celebrity, so we can spend two weeks on the funeral.
According to “Andrew Sullivan” ( The trademark blog is run by employees while Sir Andrew does other things), Congress never saw a copy of the bill before it was voted on. A 300 page amendment was tacked on at 3am the day it was to be voted on. And thats not the best part.
“When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had “placeholders” — blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language — including one for the regulation of climate derivatives. The last-minute amendments, too, had yet to be incorporated. Even the House Clerk’s office lacked a complete copy of the legislation, and was forced to place a copy of the 1,200-page draft side by side with the 300-page amendments.”
A few posts back on Sullivan, there was a proposal on atmosphere repair that was out of a bad sci fi movie. The idea is to pump sulfur dioxide into the air to offset the impact of carbon dioxide. Here is more about this gem.
“We may indeed already have the technological fix, though mysteriously it receives little attention. Sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain and the poster child for cap and trade–because the cap and trade program for sulfur dioxide has been a big success–is the opposite of a greenhouse gas: it cools the atmosphere by reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth’s surface. Injecting relatively small quantities of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere would offset the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide in heating the earth’s surface. The opposition of environmentalists to using a pollutant to combat global warming and therefore seeming to approve of pollution, and concern with the bad effects of increasing the amount of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere (effects that might not be limited to a modest increase in the amount of acid rain), have thus far kept this option from serious consideration in political circles.”
The atmosphere on planet earth is a marvel, quite possibly unique in the universe. It supports a wide range of life forms, from amoebas to Bruno. This blanket of gas evolved over a period of billions of years. Man has changed it more in the last two hundred years than nature did in four billion before that.
Those numbers don’t mean too much like that, so lets put them into another form. Comparing 200 years to four billion years just takes a calculator. That is like comparing one minute to 38 years. What G-d created ( or nature evolved, or however you explain it), what took 38 years to create, industrial man has nearly ruined in one minute.
In the interest of showing how we got our numbers, here is the breakdown. Divide 4 billion by 200 and you get 20 million. Divide 20 million by 1440 ( the number of minutes in a day) gives us 13888 days. Dividing 13888 days by 365 gives us 38 years. Even if the earth is less than four billion years old, the fact remains that industrial man has destroyed in almost no time what took a long time to create.
Ok, so we are pumping way, way too much carbon dioxide into the air. Global warming may be the least of our problems. And now, Congress is going to reverse this damage by passing bills, with 300 pages of placeholders for future language. And if that doesn’t work, we might pump “relatively small quantities of sulfer dioxide” into the atmosphere.
It should be noted here that PG is neither a lawyer nor a scientist. He doesn’t know a whole lot of what he is talking about here, including the four billion year figure. He just lives on the planet, and depends on the atmosphere to live.

The internet has spawned numerous fads. A site will go up, become mega popular, and then go away. There is always something new, and sometimes even improved. The first adventure today is thisiswhyyourefat. ( Crazy Owl once knew someone named Godurfat). This a series of photos of dishes “to die for”
The one featured today is “The Luther Rory…A one third pound of sirloin topped with two slices of white American cheese, four strips of bacon, peanut butter, between two Krispy Kreme donuts.”
Well, you need a dessert after something like that. What about “Flapjack Fiasco…Layers from bottom to top: pancake; cookie dough; pancake; peanut butter and jelly; pancake; chocolate and bananas; pancake; caramel, oreo, marshmallow, sprinkles, M&M’s; pancake; caramel buttercream frosting granished with Trix cereal.
If that doesn’t satisfy you, there is : “Mork’s Dork From Ork…A half pound duck and pork patty, cheddar cheese, seven pieces of maple bacon, sauteed onions and zillion island sauce on a kaiser roll.”
The next part of this double feature is Awkwardfamilyportraits. This popular outlet has charming family pictures, and stories from readers. One story goes like this:
“Settling into university and making new friends is always going to be a big thing, and having two friends to stay at home after a drunken night out, my mother (them being two giggly girls) felt in good company enough to invite them upstairs excitedly whilst I was out of the room. The girls – also in possession of terrible hangovers – mystified but intrigued, followed my mother where they were told to close their eyes for a mere moment. When they opened them, my mother was sitting on the edge of her bed with her brand spanking new ventriloquist doll, apparently deciding it would be an appropriate morning to perform an impromptu comedy sketch. Awkward.”
On a lighter note, PG finished reading “Genius and Heroin“. ( Amazon calls it a catalogue). There was nothing in the rest of the book that was worth repeating. A person is born with talent and problems, not always in that order. Eventually the person dies. The output of the talent lives on. The problems stick around as well, although modern drugs have put a dent in syphilis. Mental illness and substance abuse keep getting bigger and better.

The morning started in Saturday MARTA fashion. There was an OTP family going downtown, and they were staying together. At Brookhaven, a lady told the driver that a man had tried to assault her. The train was stopped until a police officer came to investigate.
After a long wait at five points, PG got on the west train. He had never been to the Bankhead Station before, and was not sure how the system worked down there. PG left the train at the Ashby station, and saw Will and Eli. PG had met them the week earlier on the machete hike. A train soon came along, with the message board saying Vine City. A lady from MARTA then came by to tell people that this was the train going to the Bankhead station.
At Bankhead, a crowd of 30 or so people was milling around. By their backpacks and water bottles, it was easy to guess that this was the urban hiking group. A few more people were en route, so the start of the hike was delayed by a few minutes. By this time PG had stashed his phone in his pack, and was blissfully unaware of time.
The plan was to walk along the beltway corridor, from Bankhead station to Piedmont Hospital. The hardy hikers could go on to Piedmont Park. As it turned out, only about half of the hike was on the beltline route. The part from Bankhead station to the Howell Mill gulch was needed for access to the beltline path.
The hike began through a wooded area behind the Bankhead Station. This area had a few homeless shelters, whose residents were not around. The first rail portion was behind the Fulton County Jail and Dog Pound. It was a pleasant stroll, with kudzu on both sides. There is an abandoned quarry in this area, which is going to become a city park.
The rail tracks the hike was on are active tracks. While approaching a tunnel, a train was heard in the distance. A decision was made to get off the tracks while the train passed.
The ground beside the tracks was muddy, with the algae of run off sewerage apparent. Eli took a leadership role in jumping off the tracks. His right boot sank a foot deep in sewage enhanced mud. PG saw this, and decided to be careful where he stepped.
The train passed by, and the group proceeded through the two tunnels. The second tunnel was an old concrete tunnel that was about 100 yards long. PG said to himself, this is so #@%&* cool.
Before long, the group made a ninety degree turn, and was on another line. Soon, another train came down the tracks, this one pulling only another engine. A white truck pulled up on a gravel road, and had a chat with the hikers at the end of the procession.
According to Eli, the man was very nice. He said he got nervous when his crew tells him there are thirty people hiking on the railroad tracks. People, please be careful. Soon, the engine carrying train came back in the opposite direction as before. PG suspected that the CSX railroad was just showing off.
The rest of the hike went smoothly. Soon, they reached Piedmont Hospital. No one needed to go to the ER. PG decided to retire at this point, and walked up the hill to Peachtree Road. After another hefty wait, a bus appeared. Some of the hikers were not used to the Breeze Card system, and there was some confusion while everyone got paid up. The cash customers had to pay again to use the trains. PG wondered if he saved much time by not hiking to Piedmont Park.

It started when PG saw a cell phone for four dollars at a yardsale. The antique Nokia had been dropped, had keys that got stuck, and did not text out. If PG wasn’t the slacker that he is, the Nokia would have been in cell phone heaven long ago. The Motorola seemed like a good bet at four dollars. It was in a plastic bag with Disney cartoons on it. PG thought that the phone was made for little girls to talk on. If this was the case, it would be a sturdy piece of equipment.
The first call was to T Mobile. PG said “agent” after entering his phone number, which he thought would bypass the voice activated system and get a live person. “Agent”, while golden with AT&T, is useless with T Mobile. PG has a short temper when dealing with voice activated robots (VAR). After much anger, he got to talk to a person.
PG talked to several “Ladies of the World”(LOTW) while dealing with this issue. They were all very kind, but did not completely understand English. The first asked for the PIN. PG vaguely remembers using a PIN when he set the account up, but had no clue what it was. He went and got the papers from setting the account up, to no avail. The lady suggested he call 611 and set up a new PIN. (The first call was from a land line, the second from the Nokia) This entailed another round of VAR, and pushing the wrong button to land in limbo. Meanwhile, the human representative hung up.
PG then tried to dial 611 and set up a PIN. The robot said that you could call another number for a direct connection. When he got to the point of entering the new PIN, PG punched in what seemed like a good number. He was asked to repeat the new PIN, the 6 key on the Nokia stuck. When he pressed the 6 key to get it to work, it repeated the number twice. The backspace button is one of the non functioning buttons. PG hung up in dismay. Another call was made to 611, on the Nokia. PG made friends with the VAR long enough to get a PIN.
The next call was to T Mobile. PG said “representative” as suggested by LOTW one. The VAR was not deterred, but continued to ask questions. Finally, another LOTW took the line. It was suggested that PG take the SIM card out of the Nokia and put it in the Motorola. The Motorola said it was an invalid SIM card. The LOTW suggested that PG call Motorola and get an “unlock code” to make the thing work.
At this point, the land line rang. It was a stupidvisor from the days of working at Redo Blue. It seems like a friend of PG’s, a lifelong bachelor, had gotten married.
Back to the telephones, this time to Motorola. The VAR was less persistent, and yielded without protest to the LOTW. Before long, PG was told that Motorola could not unlock the phone to allow it to use a T Mobile SIM card. He would have to call a company called Trackfone.
The last call of the day was to Trackfone. Before a LOTW was available, PG needed to wait on hold for a few minutes. Finally, the representative was on the line. It seems like the SIM in the phone that PG bought had been suspended for non payment two years ago. Trackfone would need to send a new SIM card ( which was free of charge). It was not possible to unlock the Motorola to accept a T Mobile SIM. The new SIM should arrive in three to five days, although it may take as long as seven.

MJ is gone, but not forgotten. The rest of the news is kinda rotten.
In Iran, the protest and bash cycle is starting up again. In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu is acting strange. ( It might not be acting). It would be a natural move for him to start a war with Iran, or maybe a feel good crackdown in Gaza. He has the bomb.
Back in the YouEssAA, the pundits just won’t leave Sarah Palin alone. Andrew Sullivan posted a few words on why he won’t let up. His thesis is that a woefully deficient woman was almost elected Vice President, and he doesn’t like that.
To PG, this is too little and too late. In 2000, George W. Bush ran for president against Al Gore. W turned out to be a dangerous mistake. Maybe, if the press had scrutinized him with the vigor they are showing Mrs. Palin, W would have lost the election.
There have been indications that 911 was motivated by a personal grudge against the Bush family. If Al Gore had won the election, 911 might not have happened. Even if it had, it is reasonable to speculate that Gore’s reaction would have been more competent. There is a good chance Mr. Gore would not have invaded Iraq to punish Saudi Arabia.
Of course, the failure of the W regime is one reason why the McCain-Palin ticket went down in flames. And, at the end of his administration, BHO may look just as bad as W did in 2008. BHO is going to make mistakes, and the special interests that control him are essentially the same ones that controlled W. In 2016, Sarah Palin may look like a good alternative.
Maybe she quit because she is pregnant again.

PG is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. The economy is based on getting folks to move here. The whining is tolerated if the checks clear.
There is a list of rules today on FunnyJokes about life in the west. PG suspects that it is similar to what goes on here. People from the outside world don’t always fit in. Sometimes, making a list of suggestions helps to relieve the stress.
PG has met enough people from the west (they move to Georgia just like everyone else) to know that rule 13 has a LOT of exceptions.
Editorial comments by PG below are in gray.
Cowboy rules for: Arizona, Texas , Colorado , Oklahoma , New Mexico , Wyoming , Montana , Utah , Idaho ,and the rest of the Wild West are as follows:1. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.//2. Turn your cap right, your head ain’t crooked.//3. Let’s get this straight: it’s called a ‘gravel road.’ I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you’re gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.// 4. They are cattle. That’s why they smell like cattle. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don’t like it? I-10 & I-40 go east and west, I-17 & I-15 goes north and south.. Pick one and go.( As Lewis Grizzard used to say, Delta is ready when you are)//5. So you have a $60,000 car. We’re impressed.. We have $250,000 Combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.(Both bankers are worried)//6. Every person in the Wild West waves. It’s called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.// 7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin’ in during the hunts, we WILL shoot it outa your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the time.// 8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really want sushi and caviar? It’s available at the corner bait shop. (Do you really want to eat sushi from the corner bait shop?)//9. The ‘Opener’ refers to the first day of deer season. It’s a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.//10. We open doors for women. That’s applied to all women, regardless of age.// 11. No, there’s no ‘vegetarian special’ on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef’s Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham and turkey.//12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah . . We don’t care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat IT AIN’T REAL CHILI!!//13. You bring ‘Coke’ into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring ‘Mary Jane’ into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.// 14. College and High School Football is as important here as the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.//15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don’t hit the water hazards – it spooks the fish.//16. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump crap ain’t music, anyway. We don’t want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!

PG retrieved his free copy of the Neighbor Newspaper, and looked for the editorial page. He had not been angry enough lately, and wanted to see what Dick Yarbrough had to say. PG soon heard the familiar ding ding ding of his BS detector.
Mr. Yarbrough was commenting on the subject of journalists who do not have their priorities in line. A prime example was some comments by Mike Wallace. The story was that Mr. Wallace… “who once proclaimed to a group at Harvard that if he were traveling with enemy soldiers he would not warn U.S. soldiers of an impending ambush.”
This made PG think, and the result was an unpleasant headache. He sent an email to Mr. Yarbrough. Nitpickers in the audience will note the use of first person. And yes, PG is using his “real” name.
I read your column today about Mike Wallace, and journalists in general. Mr. Wallace is 91 years old. He is not going to be traveling with enemy soldiers anytime soon. I seriously doubt that he ever has. So what if he says he would not warn American troops of an upcoming ambush? Even if he was in the company of enemy troops, how would he have knowledge of an upcoming ambush? And how would he get the information to our troops?
Also, do you have a reference for this quote? What was the context? What was the “group at Harvard”? Did you consider that this might never have happened?
In the last administration, someone had a problem with a journalist. The get revenge, his wife was outed as a CIA agent. Maybe the quote should have been, “You’re Americans first and Government Officials second”.
You are hereby warned…you are corresponding with a blogger who is likely to use this conversation for his blog.
Luther Mckinnon https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/
Mr.McKinnon. Blog your little heart away. You can find all the references on the Internet. I don’t have time nor inclination to be your secretary. Peter Jennings was also in attendance.
Dick Yarbrough Syndicated Columnist http://www.dickyarbrough.com
Thank you for your fast reply.
A google search to “Mike Wallace said at Harvard that if he were traveling with enemy soldiers he would not warn U.S. soldiers of an impending ambush.” yielded information about those comments.
One advantage of writing online to “dead tree” journalism is the ability to provide a link to more information. Below are two sources about this discussion. http://www.mrc.org/Profiles/wallace/welcome.asp and http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2006/cyb20060317.asp#5.b
My other questions remain. I can sum them up in six letters…so what?
An elderly man was answering a hypothetical question. There was no way Mr. Wallace was going to be traveling with enemy troops in a war.
Luther Mckinnon
One, justifying his comments as being from an “elderly man” strikes of ageism. Be careful.
Two, when you have attained the status of Gene Methvin, I will take the time to tell you “so what.” Don’t think you are quite there yet. Too judgmental, too quickly. But at least you care.
All the best.
Dick Yarbrough Syndicated Columnist http://www.dickyarbrough.com
To begin with, I am 55, and rapidly approaching grumpy old man status.
I had another thought on the subject. Let’s say the enemy had an embedded American journalist. This enemy ( the war and enemy were not specified) knew that this journalist would report back to the American troops. What would stop them from giving this reporter phony information, that would put our troops in danger?
This panel discussion was in 1987 ( when Wallace was a chipper 68). This was fourteen years before 911. It is tough to imagine what sort of war they were discussing. It is also tough to imagine the taliban having an embedded American reporter.
At any rate, I think I have plenty of material for a good post here. I will provide links to your column, and to the online articles about the panel discussion. This way anybody reading can look at all the materials, and make up their own mind. I might even do a google on Gene Methvin, and see if I can find that column.
Thank you for your help. Luther Mckinnon
Go get ‘em. DY PS: 55 is a young man.

After sending this letter, PG took a look at the video. It was a panel discussion for PBS that was taped at Harvard. The question that started it all is not shown.
Peter Jennings begins by saying that he would try to warn the Americans, although it would cost his life. Mr. Jennings was glad this was a hypothetical situation. Mike Wallace then said he would cover it like a journalist covering any other story. The moderator sits down on the panel in front of Mr. Wallace and confronts Mr. Wallace.
At the 1:05 mark in the video, Mr. Wallace says “I’m an old man I don’t know what I’d do”. A nervous smile soon follows. Body language readers should enjoy that part of the video. Soon, the discussion is so hypothetical as to be useless. PG cannot tell if the issue is whether to warn American troops, or to turn off the cameras while the fighting takes place.
It is never made clear exactly what the reporter was supposed to do to help the US troops, If he had warned the US forces, he would have either been killed, or passing along deliberate misinformation. If the reporter was on the enemy turf and photographed Americans being killed…there are two sides to that, it might inspire the home front to greater efforts on behalf of our troops. Or it might arouse anti war sentiment.
This discussion was in the late eighties, long before the “War on Terror”. The panel seems to be discussing something out of World War II, with regular armies in a conventional war. It is tough to imagine the Taliban with embedded American Journalists. It is even tougher to figure out what a 22 year old video of a retired journalist superstar has to do with much of anything.

The other day, PG was researching the 10:09:36 quandary, and he found a place on the web called Stupid Question™ .It should be noted that Stupid Question™ is a registered trademark. The bottom of the home page is littered with disclaimers. The Boortzesque nadir is: “Stupid Question™ contents are for informational purposes only. Readers are encouraged to think for themselves and act at their own risk”.
Stupid Question™ is now defunct. The property of John Ruch, SQ wallowed in knowledge from June 25, 1998 until May 23,2005. The last recorded question was Q: Did the military ever really try to build a “death ray,” or is it just science fiction?—Michelle, from the Internet. The answer was that the Masters of War tried, but failed. A death ray was too expensive, and simply not feasible for a host of reasons.
The first question is from the ever popular anonymous. Q: Is it true that Keith Richards had a blood transfusion to clean the drugs out of his body? If so, how does that work? It seems like the picker, and fashion model, went to a clinic in Switzerland once. He was connected to a dialysis machine, and his blood was filtered for a few days. It didn’t work, and he was soon smack at it. It is like Mark Twain said about quitting cigars, he has done it dozens of times.
This went on once a week for seven years. The results will provide PG with lots of material when there are no dead celebrities to make fun of.
Ok, so you want one more today? On April 19, 2001, Tom Bryant asked : “Q: What’s the difference between ketchup and catsup?” The answer is that they are both English versions of the same asian word. They both refer to tomato puree. This is like the way a historic Russian ruler is spelled czar and tsar. They all mean the same thing. You might even say ta-may-toe or ta-mah-toe.
This does not address an issue that has caused PG to stay awake at night. Whenever you get a little condiment package of ketchup, it always says “fancy ketchup”. Is there plain ketchup? And why does a place like McDonalds only serve “fancy ketchup”?