---by Billy Graham
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Monday, July 4, 2011
What Can We Do About Corrupt Public Officials?
Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds
By A. E. HOTCHNER
EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.
There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.
Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.
In 1959 Ernest had a contract with Life magazine to write about Spain’s reigning matadors, the brothers-in-law Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín. He cabled me, urging me to join him for the tour. It was a glorious summer, and we celebrated Ernest’s 60th birthday with a party that lasted two days.
But I remember it now as the last of the good times.
In May 1960, Ernest phoned me from Cuba. He was uncharacteristically perturbed that the unfinished Life article had reached 92,453 words. The contract was for 40,000; he was having nightmares.
A month later he called again. He had cut only 530 words, he was exhausted and would it be an imposition to ask me to come to Cuba to help him?
I did, and over the next nine days I submitted list upon list of suggested cuts. At first he rejected them: “What I’ve written is Proustian in its cumulative effect, and if we eliminate detail we destroy that effect.” But eventually he grudgingly consented to cutting 54,916 words. He was resigned, surrendering, and said he would leave it to Life to cut the rest.
I got on the plane back to New York knowing my friend was “bone-tired and very beat-up,” but thinking he simply needed rest and would soon be his old dominating self again.
In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry.
“The feds.”
“What?”
“They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.”
“Well ... there was a car back of us out of Hailey.”
“Why are F.B.I. agents pursuing you?” I asked.
“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”
We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.
“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”
“But how do you know?”
“Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.”
All his friends were worried: he had changed; he was depressed; he wouldn’t hunt; he looked bad.
Ernest, Mary and I went to dinner the night before I left. Halfway through the meal Ernest said we had to leave immediately. Mary asked what was wrong.
“Those two F.B.I. agents at the bar, that’s what’s wrong.”
The next day Mary had a private talk with me. She was terribly distraught. Ernest spent hours every day with the manuscript of his Paris sketches — published as “A Moveable Feast” after his death — trying to write but unable to do more than turn its pages. He often spoke of destroying himself and would sometimes stand at the gun rack, holding one of the guns, staring out the window.
On Nov. 30 he was registered under an assumed name in the psychiatric section of St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn., where, during December, he was given 11 electric shock treatments.
In January he called me from outside his room. He sounded in control, but his voice held a heartiness that didn’t belong there and his delusions had not changed or diminished. His room was bugged, and the phone was tapped. He suspected that one of the interns was a fed.
During a short release he twice attempted suicide with a gun from the vestibule rack. And on a flight to the Mayo Clinic, though heavily sedated, he tried to jump from the plane. When it stopped in Casper, Wyo., for repairs, he tried to walk into the moving propeller.
I visited him in June. He had been given a new series of shock treatments, but it was as before: the car bugged, his room bugged. I said it very gently: “Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?”
“What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?”
“But how can you say that? You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write.”
“The best of that I wrote before. And now I can’t finish it.”
I told him to relax or even retire.
“Retire?” he said. “Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same damn question: what are you working on?”
I told him he never cared about those dumb questions.
“What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t any of them. You understand, goddamn it? None of them.” Then he turned on me. I was just like the others, pumping him for information and selling him out to the feds. After that day, I never saw him again.
This man, who had stood his ground against charging water buffaloes, who had flown missions over Germany, who had refused to accept the prevailing style of writing but, enduring rejection and poverty, had insisted on writing in his own unique way, this man, my deepest friend, was afraid — afraid that the F.B.I. was after him, that his body was disintegrating, that his friends had turned on him, that living was no longer an option.
Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.
In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide.
I was in Rome the day he died.
I did not go to Ketchum for the funeral. Instead I went to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, one of his favorite churches, and said goodbye to him there. I recalled a favorite dictum of his: man can be destroyed, but not defeated.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Liberals and Slavery
To be quoted whenever a liberal tries playing the race card about slavery: "Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks."—Thomas Sowell
Courage IS.....??
Following your conscience instead of "following the crowd".
Refusing to take part in hurtful or disrespectful behaviors.
Sacrificing personal gain for the benefit of others.
Speaking your mind even though others don't agree.
Taking complete responsibility for your actions...and your mistakes.
Following the rules - and insisting that others do the same.
Challenging the status quo in search of better ways.
Doing what you know is right- regardless of the risks and potential consequences.
Refusing to take part in hurtful or disrespectful behaviors.
Sacrificing personal gain for the benefit of others.
Speaking your mind even though others don't agree.
Taking complete responsibility for your actions...and your mistakes.
Following the rules - and insisting that others do the same.
Challenging the status quo in search of better ways.
Doing what you know is right- regardless of the risks and potential consequences.
Great Quotes About Slavery by Great Americans
"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."
- George Washington, letter to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786
"Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence."
- John Adams, letter to Robert Evans, June 8, 1819
"It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused."
- John Jay, letter to R. Lushington, March 15, 1786
"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil."
- Patrick Henry, letter to Robert Pleasants, Jan. 18, 1773
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."
- Thomas Jefferson, "Autobiography," 1821
"[The Convention] thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men."
- James Madison, Records of the Constitutional Convention, Aug. 25, 1787
"We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
- James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 6, 1787
"It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!"
- James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 42
"American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil."
- James Madison, State of the Union, 1810
Socialism = Government Slavery
At least Jefferson, Washington and the others didn't line their pockets at the benefit of the American people. They at least had an ounce of morality where is that morality now? I don't believe in slavery either that's why I'll do everything I can to get Obama and his cohorts out of office because we're well on our way to being slaves to the government. The fact that John Brown brought black people over and subsequently they became slaves was the climate of the times. Its in the past where it should be. There have been no slaves in America for a lot of years but still it's just about the only think a lot of the black American talks about. Not how to better their position unless of course its a government job that they get regardless of where they are capable of doing it or not. Using slavery as an excuse is getting kind of old and you need to come up with another theme song. Abraham Lincoln didn't even use it until he was losing the war and threw it in to rile up the emotions of the people. NO black person living today is a slave unless its to our government. They've had plenty of time to adjust and take on the responsibility the rest of us face. If they refuse to do so, then giving them welfare( or white people either,) isn't the answer. If you have no desire to be of any use to society then you're no use to it. If you desire to be independent and free then you work toward that goal. You can't legislate morality, self pride, intellect, or the desire to do things for yourself. First of all you have to want to do it. Then all else follows.
Finally, as I always say: Today, in the year 2011, would you be better off if your ancestors had of been left in Africa????
Be wary of buy-back programs
---by Kim Komando
Technology is constantly changing. There's always a newer, faster, shinier gadget on the horizon. That takes some of the joy out of buying a new computer, HDTV or smartphone. So, stores like Best Buy are launching buy-back programs.
It sounds like a great idea. You buy an eligible item like a camcorder, camera or HDTV. When it's time to upgrade, the store buys it back for a set price. Unfortunately, these programs aren't so great when you learn the details. Let's look at how this all works.
Best Buy
Best Buy's Buy Back Program is available on a wide range of products. You'll have to pay for it, though. At the low end, it costs $8 for Blu-ray or DVD players priced under $150. At the high end, it costs $180 for televisions priced between $2,500 and $5,000. If you're buying a computer or tablet, you'll pay $50 for the program.
Best Buy will buy back your item starting 31 days after purchase. This is considered the effective date. Unfortunately, it will only pay you a fraction of what you spent. It varies depending on the time since the effective date. And you will get a gift card, not actual cash.
If you take an item in on the 31st day, you'll get up to 50 percent of the original price. That's certainly not as much as you'd hoped. And remember that few items depreciate 50 percent within the first year.
After six months, the buy-back amount falls to 40 percent. Twelve months from the effective date, it will be 30 percent; at 18 months, it's 20 percent. The Buy Back Program ends at 24 months for all items except TVs. TVs are covered to 48 months at 20 percent.
These percentages are the maximum you'll receive. You'll need to keep all the original parts. Also, the item has to be in good condition, with only normal wear and tear. If the item is in poor condition, these values are cut in half. What constitutes poor condition? If there are dents, scratches, dirt or "other signs of use." If an item is substantially damaged, you get nothing.
Let's look at a real-world example. Say you purchase a 64GB iPad 2 with 3G for $829. You take it in after 11 months. The maximum you'll receive is $332. Subtract the $50 you spent for the program. That leaves $280. This may not sound shabby. But an original iPad with the same specs sells for upwards of $400 on eBay. Clearly, you'd be better to sell your iPad yourself.
Now, there are a couple of peculiarities. Best Buy uses the MSRP when calculating the buy-back price for cellphones, not the subsidized price. Also, Best Buy has a trade-in program for some items. It will give you the Buy Back price or 10 percent above trade-in value, whichever is greater.
TechForward
TechForward offers its Guaranteed Buyback plan. You can purchase the plan from participating retailers like Dell and Wal-Mart. Or, buy the plan directly from TechForward's site within 30 days of purchasing an eligible item.
TechForward's plan works essentially the same way as Best Buy's. However, the program expires after 24 months for all items. There are also slight differences in pricing. That iPad I mentioned above? TechForward will pay you $10 more than Best Buy will. It's not significant, but it's something.
Ultimately, I can't recommend these buy-back programs. In most cases, you're better off selling your old gear on eBay or Craigslist. (Click here for help maximizing your profits.) Also, these programs encourage you to upgrade your gear sooner than is really necessary. And that might be the costliest part of these programs.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Short Story of PC Killing Patients
Conservative history: Torment a liberal with the horrible tale of affirmative action gone oh-so poetically wrong: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Allan Bakke was a white med school applicant, initially denied a place despite his superior grades because of the University's PC affirmative action program that gave preference to ethnic minorities with much lower grades. One of the five black students admitted to themed school instead of Bakke was Patrick Chavis, whose subsequent "successful" career was compared favorably by affirmative action champions with Bakke's relatively undistinguished one as proof that social justice had been secured. What they neglected to report was Chavis's subsequent suspension by California's medical board for his "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician." He botched one patient's liposuction, hiding her in his home for forty hours, while she lost 70 percent of her blood; caused another patient severe bleeding, again stashing her in his home; and caused another to suffer a heart attack before bleeding to death.
Hitting the Beach? Best and Worst Assessed
Overall, beaches in the Great Lakes region were the worst, finds a new report.
Before you pick a beach to hit over the holiday weekend, it might be worth thinking about the quality of the water you plan to swim in, suggests a new report by the National Resources Defense Council.
After analyzing the results of water samples taken last year at more than 3,000 beaches from coast to coast and in-between, the NRDC concluded that serious contamination continues to plague beaches around the country.
In 2010, both coastal and Great Lake beaches were closed nearly 30 percent more often than in 2009, the study found, mostly because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and a surge in rainy weather that led to elevated bacteria levels. Overall, 8 percent of tested water samples exceeded public health standards last year -- about the same as the year before.
NEWS: Summer Beaches Can Make You Sick
When contamination levels get too high, swimmers may develop gastrointestinal illnesses, skin rashes, pinkeye and other health problems. And while risks are greatest for children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, it can be helpful for all beach-goers to keep an eye on water quality reports, said David Beckman, director of the NRDC's water program in Los Angeles.
Many thousands of illnesses a year could be spared via cleaner swimming water, he said. Water contamination also has a powerful economic impact as sick people miss work and tourists avoid dirty beaches.
"The good news is that the problem doesn't appear to be getting significantly worse, but we've stabilized at a level of unacceptably high pollution," Beckman said. "Even the best beaches can have something unexpected happen."
This year's "Testing the Waters" report was the 21st in an annual effort by the NRDC to encourage better monitoring and to protect people from pollution at beaches around the United States. For the 2010 study, researchers collected data on more than 130,000 samples of water from more than 3,000 beach segments on both coasts and around the Great Lakes.
The biggest sources of contamination, according to the report, are sewage pipes and stormwater runoff that dump fecal waste, oil and other kinds of pollution into lakes and oceans. There were more than 24,000 beach closings and advisories last year -- the second highest number in the last two decades.
Some parts of the country fared better than others. Great Lakes Beaches did the worst, with 15 percent of samples containing more contamination than is allowable by national water quality standards. The Southeast did best, with just 4 percent of samples exceeding standards. The Northeast, West, and Gulf Coast were all in the middle at about 7 or 8 percent.
Louisiana had the highest rates of contamination at its beaches, with 37 percent of samples failing quality tests, mostly due to the oil spill. Ohio and Indiana followed at rates of 21 and 16 percent. New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Hawaii and Delaware were the most consistently clean -- all showing excessive levels of contamination just 3 percent of the time or less.
The NRDC also rated specific beaches by evaluating trends in water quality alongside each community's track record for regular monitoring and prompt notification of the public about health hazards. Based on the system, the report awarded "Superstar Beach" status to beaches that were close to perfect for the past three years in a row.
Four beaches made the list: Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach in Sussex County, Delaware; Park Point Lafayette Community Club Beach in St. Louis County, Minnesota; and Hampton Beach State Park in Rockingham County, New Hampshire.
On the other hand, the study identified 10 beaches that have failed water quality tests more than 25 percent of the time for the past five years in a row. That list included parts of Avalon Beach and all of Cabrillo Beach Station in Los Angeles County; parts of Dohoney State Beach in Orange County; North Point Marina North Beach in Illinois; Beachwood Beach West in New Jersey; Florida's Keaton Beach, and four beaches in Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.
One goal of the NRDC's annual report, Beckman said, is to encourage communities to invest in infrastructure that would limit the amount of contaminated water that ends up in popular swimming areas. Simple measures can make a big difference and they don't have to cost much. Ideas include fixing old, leaky sewage pipes and adding grass around parking lots to absorb rainwater.
NEWS: Measuring Waves Without Getting Wet
The report also emphasizes the need for more rapid monitoring techniques, added Helena Solo-Gabriele, an environmental engineer at the University of Miami in Florida. With current methods that simply allow bacteria in water sample to grow, there is a daylong delay between testing and getting results.
"So, by the time you realize you should close the beach, it's been open for 24 hours," she said. "If you take another sample and it's clean, you might keep it closed on a day when it should be open."
Solo-Gabriele is looking forward to October 2012, when the Environmental Protection Agency plans to release new rules and guidelines for beach monitoring. Part of the change, she suspects, will be a switch to newer techniques that increase the speed of multiplication among bacterial DNA and deliver results in just four hours.
In the meantime, beachgoers can look online for water quality reports, including at the NRDC's website. Once you're settled on the sand, don't swim near a storm drain. If the water looks or smells funny, don't swim in it. Wash your hands before you dive into your picnic. And shower when you get home.
"There are benefits to enjoying the beach and there are some incremental risks," Solo-Gabriele said. "I wouldn't avoid the beach. I would continue going."
Independence
by John Pierpont, in Boston, July 4th, 1822
Day of glory welcome day!
Freedom’s banners greet thy ray,
See, how cheerfully they play
With thy morning breeze.
On the rocks where pilgrims kneeled,
On the heights where squadrons wheeled
When a tyrant’s thunder pealed
O’er the trembling sea.
God of armies! did thy “stars”
In their courses smite his cars,
Blast his arm, and wrest his bars
From the heaving tide?
On our standard, lo! they burn,
And, when days like this return,
Sparkle o’er the soldier’s urn,
Who for freedom died.
God of peace! whose spirit fills
All the echoes of our hills,
All the murmurs of our rills,
Now the storm is o’er,
O, let freemen be our sons;
And let future Washingtons
Rise, to lead their valiant ones,
Till there’s war no more.
By the patriot’s hallowed rest,
By the warrior’s gory breast,
Never let our graves be pressed
By a despot’s throne;
By the pilgrims’ toils and cares,
By their battles and their prayers.
By their ashes, - let our heirs
Bow to Thee alone.
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