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On June 16, 1884 the first true roller coaster was inaugurated at Coney Island.
The roller coaster traces its origins back to railroad cars the were released to careen down existing graded tracks which had gone out of service. By 1885, the roller coaster had evolved into its modern form with the familiar lift hill.
Since then, designs have been introduced that almost defy the laws of physics:
And if you wish to have a near-death experience, go on:
You can deposit your barf bags in the container to your left as you exit the ride.
It’s actually quite simple:
1 ) 4 million people count 10 ballots each and report the results.
2 ) handwritten ballots across the world are fed into a Diebold machine pre-programed with the results.
3 ) Arthur Aanderson does the counting.
4 ) ballots? we don’ need no stinkin’ ballots!
5 ) Random sampling – pick one….
6 ) ask Katherine Harris
7 ) ask Ken Blackwell
8 ) Allah Akbar!
9 ) what? we have to count them all?and….
10 ) see Bush v. Gore.
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Dick Cheney has been trying to tell us that torture works (okay, he still refuses to use the word “torture”, but in the interests of accuracy and clarity, I will substitute the word “torture” for any other euphemism they may utilize), that we gained valuable intelligence from its use, and that “it saved lives.” Did it, Dick? Did it really save lives? Or did it cost lives? American lives? Americans in uniform? Did your insistence on the use, and staunch defense, of a series of illegally-authorized interrogation techniques, which were based on methods known to elicit false confessions, actually end up getting one or more of our soldiers killed?
Thanks to the ACLU, we now know that Dick Cheney was lying through his gritting teeth when he said we received valuable intelligence through the use of torture, particularly in the case of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (also, and more conveniently, known as “KSM”.) He claimed that intel “saved lives.” Given Dick’s well-documented history of spreading falsehoods, I have every reason in the world to believe that not only was this statement a lie, it was actually the opposite of the truth. I have reason to believe that people died because of the information we gained through torture. And the reason is a very simple one. KSM himself said, in his statement at his “Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing” (Pg 15):
I ah cannot remember now…I be under questioning so-many statement which been some them l make up stories just location UBL. Continue reading
Last weekend, after years of attacks by religious anti-abortion groups against himself his property and his staff, lawful abortion specialist Dr. Tiller was finally killed in the foyer of his church; long-time religious militant abortion opponent Scott Roeder is now charged with his murder.
Two years ago in Denver, Colorado, another abortion protest incident occurred in the foyer of a place of worship which also involved militant abortion opponents. In that particular case the local police responded immediately and no-one was killed.
In the subsequent trial of the accused, the litigant’s spokeswoman asked the judge to “consider the safety of ministry employees and visitors” when handing down the sentences.
Did you catch that?
The incident that the police so efficaciously reacted-to did not involve a confrontation between legal abortion providers and abortion opponents, but rather between two factions of the anti-abortion movement and with the aggrieved party asking for future protection from harassment and possible violence.
WTF?!!
After years of vandalism, fire-bombing, death threats and an assault with a deadly weapon by members of religious groups, Scott Roeder was observed by eye-witnesses and recorded on videotape in felony acts by attempting to sabotage the locks on Dr Tiller’s clinic—a federal offense under the FACE act.
The clinic provided the local police with the evidence of Roeder’s felony and the police did absolutely nothing.
That left Roeder free to take his anti-abortion crusade to the next level in which he “allegedly” murdered Dr Tiller in a church foyer a few days later.
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Wichita police were provided with all the evidence they needed to arrest Scott Roeder immediately and charge him with a federal crime. They could have involved the FBI. Roeder could have been held on bail and if he made bail he could have been monitored by the FBI whilst awaiting trial.
Instead, nothing was done.
Dr Tiller is now dead, his clinic now closed, his employees now unemployed and women are further denied their legal and medical rights.
Meanwhile radical officially ‘religious’ groups use the particulars and principles of secular law for their own convenience and benefit even as they refuse to abide by them and seek to overthrow them, actively or passively abetted by supposedly secular authorities.
Scott Roeder was encouraged by religious leaders, his actions given justification by certain media authorities, his act enabled by the criminal negligence of the Wichita police and culpable Federal authorities.
When a religious organization in Colorado felt threatened by another more militant religious group, secular authority acted on mere trespass, but when a secular organization in Kansas had been attacked multiple times with vandalism, fire-bombings and assaults with deadly weapons and given clear evidence to act, Wichita authorities did nothing.
Read the rest of 5th Estate’s post on his blog here.
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On June 15, 1992 US Vice President Dan Quayle persuaded a Trenton, N.J., elementary school student to spell potato as “potatoe” during a class spelling bee. This incident speaks volumes about George H. W. Bush’s decision to let Dan Quayle act again as his running mate in the 1992 campaign.
This incident even provided a spot of humor during the 2008 campaign, abetted of course, by Sarah Palin:
Those Republicans certainly know how to pick a winning candidate or running mate! Both of these people are fully capable of character suicide which is a self-inflicted form of character assassination. But Dan Quayle can certainly put his own case forward as he does during this clip:
Yesterday the American Medical Association came out against a public option for health care. And yesterday the President reaffirmed his support for it. The next weeks will show what Obama is made of – whether he’s willing and able to take on the most formidable lobbying coalition he has faced so far on an issue that will define his presidency.
And make no mistake: A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal health care. It’s the only way to make health care affordable. It’s the only way to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets. An ersatz public option – whether Kent Conrad’s non-profit cooperatives, Olympia Snowe’s “trigger,” or regulated state-run plans – won’t do squat.
The last president to successfully take on the giant health care lobbies was LBJ. He got Medicare and Medicaid enacted because he weighed into the details, twisted congressional arms, threatened and cajoled, drew lines in the sand, and went to war against the AMA and the other giant lobbyists standing in the way. The question now is how much LBJ is in Barack Obama.
If past is prologue, I have very little hope of a public option making it through this fight. President Obama spends too much time and political capital trying to be bipartisan and concilliatory. Now is not the time.
In my opinion, the President under-played his hand regarding health care for all Americans. He should have gone in with, “Single payer is the only way to go, that’s what I want for this country,” and bargained down from there — or fought like hell ala LBJ. Now the ideologues, big insurance, and corporate health care will spend billions to chip away at affordable health care for all — money that could be spent to actually fix the problem — if they really wanted to do so. But they don’t, so they won’t.
President Obama will only get one chance to fix health care. If he succeeds, he’ll be remembered for generations as one of the greatest, most successful presidents in this country. If he fails, it will be one more feather in the cap of the Right Wing Corporate America, and we will pay the price, because no one will ever try to fix the health care mess again.
Some congressional Democrats are willing and able to stand up to this barrage. Many are not. They need cover from the White House.
The President can’t do this alone. You must weigh in and get everyone you know to weigh in, too. Bombard your senators and representatives. Organize and mobilize others. And let the White House know how strongly you feel. This is one of those battles that define a presidency. But more importantly, it’s one of those battles that define the state of American democracy.
This is the battle we need to win. Our country has been slip-sliding into ill-health and ill-education since the 80s, and we absolutely must stop it, because our children are already paying the price.
The health care issue affects all of us (except those in the top 1%, I would guess), and while they have most of the money, we have more votes. It’s time to flood our Senators and Representatives — and the White House — with phone calls and letters, reminding them that they don’t represent Big Pharma or Big Insurance — they represent US.
Sara Robinson at Firedoglake wrote a great piece yesterday asking the right wing a simple question: Are you trying to start a civil war?
Dear Conservatives:
Your fellow Americans demand an answer — and we want it now. Just one simple question:
Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?
Just answer the question. Yes or no. Don’t insult us with elisions, evasions, dithering, qualifications, or conditional answers. We need to know what your intentions are — and we need to know NOW. People are being shot dead in the streets of America at the rate of several per month now. You may not want responsibility for this — but the whackadoodles pulling the triggers make no bones about who put them up to this.
You did.
For the past thirty years the right wing has been ratcheting up their violent hate speech. They have incited, incensed, and inflamed the more radical among us to stop taking it and start doing something about it. And some of them did. Continue reading
From Wikipedia:
In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress.
Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday.
Title 36 of the United States Code, Subtitle I, Part A, CHAPTER 1, § 110 is the official statute on Flag Day; however, it is at the President’s discretion to proclaim officially the observance.
The longest-running Flag Day parade is held annually in Quincy, Massachusetts, which began 1952 and will celebrate its 57th year in 2009.
The largest Flag Day parade is held annually in Troy, New York, which bases its parade on the Quincy parade and typically draws 50,000 spectators.
by Juan Cole (Informed Comment)
Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen
1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.
2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers. [Ahmadinejad is widely thought only to have won Tehran in 2005 because the pro-reform groups were discouraged and stayed home rather than voting.)
3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran’s western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.
4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.
5. Ahmadinejad’s numbers were fairly standard across Iran’s provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.
6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.
I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad’s upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.
But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.
To read the rest of this excellent article, go to Informed Comment.
Dr. Cole followed up this article with another excellent article this morning:
Class v. Culture Wars in Iranian Elections: Rejecting Charges of a North Tehran Fallacy
First Issue of Action Comics introducing Superman!
June 14, 1939 – The first issue of “Action Comics” introducing Superman is released!
Action Comics was the corporate predecessor of DC Comics. Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and it is considered the first true superhero comic. Though today Action Comics is a monthly title devoted to Superman, it began, like many early comics, as an anthology (according to Wikipedia).
More on Superman from Wiki:
The original story of Superman relates that he was born Kal-El on the planet Krypton, before being rocketed to Earth as an infant by his scientist father Jor-El, moments before Krypton’s destruction. Discovered and adopted by aKansas farmer and his wife, the child is raised as Clark Kent and imbued with a strong moral compass. Very early he started to display superhuman abilities, which upon reaching maturity he resolved to use for the benefit of humanity.
While referred to less than flatteringly as “the big blue Boy Scout” by some of his fellow superheroes, Superman is hailed as “The Man of Steel“, “The Man of Tomorrow“, and “The Last Son of Krypton” by the general public within the comics. As Clark Kent, Superman lives among humans as a “mild-mannered reporter” for the Metropolis newspaper Daily Planet (Daily Star in the earliest stories). There he works alongside reporter Lois Lane, with whom he is romantically linked. This relationship has been consummated by marriage on numerous occasions across various media, and this union is now firmly established within mainstream comics’ continuity.
Superman is a VERY important person in our household. I say “person” because to my son, he is VERY much a real person. My son would legally change his last name to “Kent” if he could.. He is constantly reminding us that we aren’t his parents – his REAL parents’ names are Jonathan and Martha…
Apparently Superman is important to actor Nicholas Cage as well – beings he named his newborn son “Kal-El” (born October 3, 2005). Go figure..
I know today is Flag Day (June 14, 1777 – The Stars and Stripes is adopted by Congress as the Flag of the United States) but I just had to go with Superman..
So, who’s YOUR favorite action hero?
John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer connected to the torture program put in place by the Bush Administration, has been ordered to testify in court about accusations that his work led to the torture of a detainee. More at ThinkProgress and Raw Story.
From Raw Story:
Former Bush administration attorney John Yoo was ordered on Friday by a federal judge in San Francisco to testify in an appeal brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held for more than three years and allegedly tortured while in U.S. military custody.
Yoo was one of several administration lawyers who authored legal memos which outlined a legal range for torture, a war crime under the Geneva Convention relative to the prisoners of war.
“Judge [Jeffrey S.] White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, ‘at length become willing to run the risk of being less free,’” noted The New York Times.
Yoo, while at the Office of Legal Council in 2002, authored a majority of the department’s opinions on torture along with Jay Bybee, who now serves as a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Steven Bradbury, the former OLC chief who now practices law in Washington, D.C…
Read more on this story…
I realize abortion (especially late-term abortion) is a really controversial topic/issue for people across the country, but do you suppose Bill O’Reilly understands JUST how utterly offensive he is, and how he comes across?
I was pretty impressed with how Joan Walsh handled herself in this ‘interview’ (ambush would have been a better description..). The longer the interview went, the deeper O’Reilly dissolved into lunacy. Facts didn’t matter.
Walsh was right when she said that they came from two different worlds – each with their own facts and figures. They weren’t going to meet in the middle or agree on anything. His purpose was to destroy her, not have a conversation or debate about an emotional, hot-button issue. He was the one who came out of the interview looking like a rude, insulting, pompous ass. He was trying to get even with Joan Walsh for her previously referring to O’Reilly as “vile” in something she wrote after the murder of Dr. Tillman.
He didn’t do himself any favors..
I have to agree with Joan Walsh here.. Billo, you really are some piece of work…
H/T: The Huffington Post
Joan Walsh followed up her interview with this article on her blog:
Why I Went On “The O’Reilly Factor”
Happy Birthday Wayne! Time to celebrate! I would never light sparklers on a birthday cake, but it certainly LOOKS exciting!
Hope you do something special today with that wonderful wife of yours.. 
June 13, 1971. This was the day the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers.
From Wikipedia:
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, were a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States‘ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Commissioned by United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1967, the study was completed in 1968. The papers first surfaced on the front page on the New York Times in 1971.
The study was classified as top secret and was not intended for publication, however, contributor Daniel Ellsberg gave most of the Pentagon Papers to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, with Ellsberg’s friend Anthony Russo assisting in their copying. The Times began publishing excerpts in a series of articles on June 13, 1971. Street protests, political controversy and lawsuits followed.
To ensure the possibility of public debate about the content of the papers, on June 29, U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (then Democrat, Alaska) entered 4,100 pages of the Papers to the record of his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds. These portions of the Papers were subsequently published by Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution provides that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, [a Senator or Representative] shall not be questioned in any other Place”, thus the Senator could not be prosecuted for anything said on the Senate floor, and, by extension, for anything entered to the Congressional Record, allowing the Papers to be publicly read without threat of a treason trial and conviction.
Later, Ellsberg said the documents “demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates”, and that he had leaked the papers in the hopes of getting the nation out of “a wrongful war.”
The most damaging revelation in the papers was that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks — which had all gone previously unreported in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, hurting President Richard Nixon‘s war effort.
Another controversy was that President Johnson sent combat troops to Vietnam by July 17, 1965, after pretending to consult his advisors on July 21–July 27, per the cable stating that “Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance informs McNamara that President had approved 34 Battalion Plan and will try to push through reserve call-up.” In 1988, when that cable was declassified, it revealed “there was a continuing uncertainty as to [Johnson's] final decision, which would have to await Secretary McNamara’s recommendation and the views of Congressional leaders, particularly the views of Senator [Richard] Russell.”
As the press rooms of the Times and the Post began to hum to the lifting of the censorship order, the journalists of America pondered with grave concern the fact that for fifteen days the ‘free press’ of the nation had been prevented from publishing an important document and for their troubles had been given an inconclusive and uninspiring ‘burden-of-proof’ decision by a sharply divided Supreme Court. There was relief, but no great rejoicing, in the editorial offices of America’s publishers and broadcasters.
Was it right to expose what the government was doing behind the curtains in regards to the Vietnam War in order to try and end it? Does the exposing abuse of powers and lies make us as a nation MORE safe, or LESS safe?
Your thoughts…
Linda Ronstadt, Dreams to Dream
Post your favorite tunes in comments. We’ll all enjoy them!
