A 73-year-old Michigan man and his son who lives in Colorado have been accused of sending U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak a letter threatening to spill the blood of the congressman and his family for his vote in favor of the health care reform legislation in March.

In 2007, a letter from Hesch was published in the Ogemaw County Herald in which he criticized Stupak for his support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Supporting Pelosi was akin to voting to “abandon the American concept of victory over our enemies and to emberace defeat,” the letter states.

“In light of America’s enemies joyfully embracing and encouraging you and Pelosi along with the entire Democrat Party…do you intend to continue to support position that can only be regarded as seditious at best?”

The letter is signed, Russell J. Hesch, LTC USA (Ret), and several West Branch area officials and residents said today he was well known and mostly respected within the community.

[snip]

FBI Special Agent Travis Lloyd, in a court affidavit, said Russell Hesch provided authorities a signed statement last Friday indicating he had written the threatening letter to Stupak and sent it to his son in Colorado with instructions to mail it from Denver so it couldn’t be traced back to either of them.

The letter was sent in an envelope that said “Stupak family” and was titled “Your Vote for National Health Care.” In it, the author accused Stupak of having “sold your sole (sic) to the devil.”

“Actions and decisions carry consequences,” it went on to say, naming Stupak’s wife and son by name. It then referenced the Showtime show “Dexter,” in which a police employee is also a serial killer, murdering those he believes should die.

Labels: American Idiots, domestic terrorism, right-wing hatemongers

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

(via)

This evidence indicating apparent research and experimentation on detainees opens the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials. There is no publicly available evidence that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.

“The CIA appears to have broken all accepted legal and ethical standards put in place since the Second World War to protect prisoners from being the subjects of experimentation,” said Frank Donaghue, PHR’s Chief Executive Officer. “Not only are these alleged acts gross violations of human rights law, they are a grave affront to America’s core values.”

[snip]

Physicians for Human Rights demands that President Obama direct the Attorney General to investigate these allegations, and if a crime is found to have been committed, prosecute those responsible. Additionally, Congress must immediately amend the War Crimes Act (WCA) to remove changes made to the WCA in 2006 by the Bush Administration that allow a more permissive definition of the crime of illegal experimentation on detainees in US custody. The more lenient 2006 language of the WCA was made retroactive to all acts committed by US personnel since 1997.

“In their attempt to justify the war crime of torture, the CIA appears to have committed another alleged war crime – illegal experimentation on prisoners,” said Nathaniel A. Raymond, Director of PHR’s Campaign Against Torture and lead report author. “Justice Department lawyers appear to never have assessed the lawfulness of the alleged research on detainees in CIA custody, despite how essential it appears to have been to their legal cover for torture.”

PHR’s report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama’s then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct “scientific research” to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

“If health professionals participated in unethical human subject research and experimentation they should be held to account,” stated Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights and lead medical author of the report. “Any health professional who violates their ethical codes by employing their professional expertise to calibrate and study the infliction of harm disgraces the health profession and makes a mockery of the practice of medicine.”

"We were terrible to animals," recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out.

"Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," Mr. Throckmorton said. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up."

Labels: Bush Administration crimes, sociopathy, war crimes

A late silent feature directed by John Ford, a short comedy directed by Mabel Normand, a period drama starring Clara Bow and a group of early one-reel westerns are among a trove of long-lost American films recently found in the New Zealand Film Archive.

Among the discoveries are several films that underline the major contribution made by women to early cinema. “The Girl Stage Driver” (1914) belongs to a large subgenre that Mr. Abel has identified as “cowboy girl” pictures; “The Woman Hater” (1910) is an early vehicle for the serial queen Pearl White; and “Won in a Cupboard” (1914) is the earliest surviving film directed by Normand, the leading female star of Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedies. The Clara Bow film “Maytime” (1923), presents the most famous flapper of the 1920s in an unusual costume role.

Getting the films, which were printed on the unstable, highly inflammable nitrate stock used until the early 1950s, to the United States hasn’t been easy. “There’s no Federal Express for nitrate out of New Zealand,” said Annette Melville, the director of the foundation. “We’re having to ship in U.N.-approved steel barrels, a little bit at a time. So far we’ve got about one third of the films, and preservation work has already begun on four titles.”

As the films arrive, they are placed in cold storage to slow further degeneration. “We’re triaging the films,” Ms. Melville said, “so we can get to the worst case ones first. About a quarter of the films are in advanced nitrate decay, and the rest have good image quality, though they are badly shrunken.”

As funds permit, the repatriated films will be distributed among the five major nitrate preservation facilities in the United States — the Library of Congress, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the U.C.L.A. Film & Television Archive and the Museum of Modern Art — where the painstaking work of reclaiming images from material slowly turning to muck will be performed.

Sony, the corporation that currently owns the Columbia library, has assumed the costs for “Mary of the Movies,” a 1923 comedy that is now the earliest Columbia feature known to survive. And 20th Century Fox, a descendant of the studio that made “Upstream,” has taken responsibility for preservation of that title. If all goes well, the restored “Upstream” will be receive its repremiere at the Academy in September.

Labels: history, movies

The women wore veils. The men donned green Hamas headbands with swirling Arabic script. They gathered by the thousands in a sunny, working-class plaza in Istanbul, bellowing: "Damn Israel!"

The Saturday demonstration seemed incongruous with the image Turkey has long had in the West as a secular friend of Israel and the United States.

But in recent days, public anger has flared over Israel's bloody seizure of a Turkish-flagged aid ship headed to the Gaza Strip, which is under an Israeli blockade. The incident occurred as Turkey has been strengthening ties with Muslim governments in the region -- becoming more vocally pro-Palestinian and trying to head off new U.N. sanctions on Iran.

That has prompted worried speculation at home and abroad: Is Turkey turning away from the West?

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, futility, insanity, Israel

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery -- already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes -- can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

The refinery will still meet federal water pollution guidelines. But federal and state officials acknowledge this marks the first time in years that a company has been allowed to dump more toxic waste into Lake Michigan.

[snip]

The company will now be allowed to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge into Lake Michigan every day. The additional sludge is the maximum allowed under federal guidelines.

Company officials insisted they did everything they could to keep more pollution out of the lake.

"It's important for us to get our product to market with minimal environmental impact," said Tom Keilman, a BP spokesman. "We've taken a number of steps to improve our water treatment and meet our commitments to environmental stewardship."

Labels: BP, corporatism, environment, greed

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Labels: assholes, gossip

Labels: food, weight

Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.

Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.

There is no suggestion that he acted improperly or had prior knowledge that the company was to face the biggest setback in its history.

His decision, however, means he avoided losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.

1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days (see map above from the Advance Response Plan). This makes it clear that BP could have stored adequate boom there before a rig failure like the Deepwater Horizon, and workers could have been mobilized to apply the boom in the 30 days that the response plan predicted oil would hit our wetlands.

[snip]

2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through. "No statements shall be made concerning any of the following: promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal." Even in BP CEO Tony Hayward's new television commercial his assurance is an ambiguous, "We will make this right," which does not specifically address preserving or restoring America's Wetlands.

[snip]

3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. "Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product." It is contradictory that the question and answer section discusses the choice of a dispersant with: "Have environmental tradeoffs of dispersant use indicated that use should be considered? Note: This is one of the more difficult questions" and "Has the overflight to assure that endangered species are not in the application area been conducted?" Brown pelicans and sea turtles would have been the answer to the latter.

With a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face outside a Columbia bar, Republican S.C. Sen. Jake Knotts called Lexington Rep. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American Republican woman running for governor, a “raghead” several times while explaining how he believed she was hiding her true religion from voters.

“She’s a f#!king raghead,” Knotts said.

He later clarified his statement. He did not mean to use the F-word.

Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. He claims she is hiding her religion and he wants the voters to know about it.

“We got a raghead in Washington; we don’t need one in South Carolina,” Knotts said more than once. “She’s a raghead that’s ashamed of her religion trying to hide it behind being Methodist for political reasons.”

President Obama’s father is from Africa. His mother is a white woman from Kansas.

On her website, Haley says, “Being a Christian is not about words, but about living for Christ every day.”

Knotts, a former boxer and cop from West Columbia, said he wasn’t worried about being called a racist for the remarks he made. He says he was elected to the Senate to represent his constituents which he says he does well. He says many of his supporters are black.

“This is Jakie Knotts trying to let the people know,” he said about his motivations for leveling the inflammatory charges against a minority Republican frontrunner for governor just days before the June 8 primary elections. He says he’s called her a raghead before.

Knotts is backing Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer for governor.

Bauer this week fired one of his lead consultants, Columbia lobbyist Larry Marchant, for what he called “inappropriate conduct.” Marchant told the media shortly after that he’d had sex with Haley at a conference in Utah while they were both married. The claim comes after blogger Will Folks said he’d also had a relationship with Haley in early 2007.

Knotts showed up unexpectedly at the Flying Saucer bar in Columbia’s Vista for a live taping of the online political talk show Pub Politics, which is co-hosted by Senate Republican Caucus political director Wesley Donehue and his Democratic counterpart, Phil Bailey. Democratic S.C. Rep Boyd Brown of Fairfield County was a guest.

Knotts initially made the racial slur on the show.

Neither Donehue, Bailey nor Brown challenged Knotts on his remark during or after the broadcast.

“I was floored,” Donehue said after the cameras were off.

“Senator Knotts took it a step too far,” Bailey said afterward. “I don’t agree with it … [but] it’s not my job to question Jakie Knotts.”

After the broadcast, Knotts stood in a corner on the deck of the bar and defended his remarks.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve said it,” Knotts said. “I’m not on a crusade to downgrade her, but if someone asks me I’ll tell ‘em. And look here, someone wants to vote for her knowing the truth, vote for her.”

Knotts said that South Carolina is a religious community.

“We need a good Christian to be our governor,” he said. “She’s hiding her religion. She ought to be proud of it. I’m proud of my god.”

Labels: assholes, bigotry, faux moral outrage, morons, Republican lies

Labels: cat blogging

Labels: pop culture, video

Many would assume that BP—the company responsible for the Gulf Coast disaster—will cover the entire cost of cleanup. But we learned from the Exxon Valdez spill that the reality is very different:

The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, which eventually contaminated approximately 1,300 miles of shoreline. The total costs of Exxon Valdez, including both cleanup and also “fines, penalties and claims settlements,” ran as much as $7 billion. Cleanup of the affected region alone cost at least $2.5 billion, and much oil remains.

Yet Exxon made high profits even in the aftermath of the most expensive oil spill in history. They made $3.8 billion profit in 1989 and $5 billion in 1990. And this occurred while Exxon disputed cleanup costs nearly every step of the way.

Exxon fought paying damages and appealed court decisions multiple times, and they have still not paid in full. Years of fighting and court appeals on Exxon’s part finally concluded with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2008 that found that Exxon only had to pay $507.5 million of the original 1994 court decree for $5 billion in punitive damages. And as of 2009, Exxon had paid only $383 million of this $507.5 million to those who sued, stalling on the rest and fighting the $500 million in interest owed to fishermen and other small businesses from more than 12 years of litigation.

Twenty years later, some of the original plaintiffs are no longer alive to receive, or continue fighting for, their damages. An estimated 8,000 of the original Exxon Valdez plaintiffs have died since the spill while waiting for their compensation as Exxon fought them in court.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Labels: Baseball, friends

Still waiting for a response to the 300 resumés you sent out last month? Bad news: Some companies are ignoring all unemployed applicants.

In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason."

In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company's recruitment policies.

"It's our preference that they currently be employed," he said. "We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed -- with the economy being what it is, we've had a lot of people contact us that don't have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in."

There are about 5.5 people looking for work for every job available, according to the latest data from the Labor Department.

Sony Ericsson, a global phone manufacturer that recently announced that it would be bringing 180 new jobs to the Buckhead, Ga. area, also recently posted an ad for a marketing position on The People Place. The add specified: "NO UNEMPLOYED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONSIDERED AT ALL." When asked about the ad, a spokeswoman said, "This was a mistake, and once it was noticed it was removed."

Ads asking the unemployed not to apply are easy to find. A Craigslist ad for assistant restaurant managers in Edgewater, N.J. specifies, "Must be currently employed." Another job posting for a tax manager at an unnamed "top 25 CPA firm" in New York City contains the same line in all caps.

Labels: corporatism, economic death watch, greed, unemployment

We finally have the answer, and you're not going to like it: a new fleet of castles that float in the oceans. The super-wealthy are already building their first floating castle, a billion-dollar-plus luxury liner that offers permanent multimillion-dollar housing with the best protection of all: moats made of oceans, keeping the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.

This is the way Debbie Lorenzana tells it: Her bosses told her they couldn't concentrate on their work because her appearance was too distracting. They ordered her to stop wearing turtlenecks. She was also forbidden to wear pencil skirts, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits. Lorenzana, a 33-year-old single mom, pointed out female colleagues whose clothing was far more revealing than hers: "They said their body shapes were different from mine, and I drew too much attention," she says.

As Lorenzana's lawsuit puts it, her bosses told her that "as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly 'too distracting' for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear."

"Men are kind of drawn to her," says Tanisha Ritter, a friend and former colleague who also works as a banker and praises Lorenzana's work habits. "I've seen men turn into complete idiots around her. But it's not her fault that they act this way, and it shouldn't be her problem."

Because Citibank made Lorenzana sign a mandatory-arbitration clause as a condition of her employment, the case will never end up before a jury or judge. An arbitrator will decide. Citibank officials won't comment on the suit.

Her attorney, Jack Tuckner, who calls himself a "sex-positive" women's-rights lawyer, is the first one to say his client is a babe. But so what? For him, it all boils down to self-control. "It's like saying," Tuckner argues, "that we can't think anymore 'cause our penises are standing up—and we cannot think about you except in a sexual manner—and we can't look at you without wanting to have sexual intercourse with you. And it's up to you, gorgeous woman, to lessen your appeal so that we can focus!"

This isn't your typical sexual-harassment lawsuit, if there is such a thing. For one thing, such suits often claim that women are coerced into looking more sexy or are subjected to being pawed. Lorenzana claims that her bosses basically told her she was just too attractive. And when she raised hell and refused to do anything about it—as if there was anything she really could do about it—she lost her job.

[snip]

Citibank does have a dress-code policy, which says clothing must not be provocative, but does not go into specifics, and managers have wide discretion. But Lorenzana points out that, unlike her, some of the tellers dressed in miniskirts and low-cut blouses. "And when they bend down," Lorenzana says, "anyone can see what God gave them!"

Then the managers gave her a list of clothing items she would not be allowed to wear: turtlenecks, pencil skirts, and fitted suits. And three-inch heels. "As a result of her tall stature, coupled with her curvaceous figure," her suit says, Lorenzana was told "she should not wear classic high-heeled business shoes, as this purportedly drew attention to her body in a manner that was upsetting to her easily distracted male managers."

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Lorenzana recalls. "I said, 'You gotta be kidding me!' I was like, 'Too distracting? For who? For you? My clients don't seem to have any problem.' "

The managers instructed her to wear looser clothing. Lorenzana refused. "I don't have the money to buy a new wardrobe," she says, referring to her work outfits. "I shop where everyone else shops—at Zara!" Lorenzana recalls leaving the meeting feeling humiliated. Other female employees "were able to wear such clothing because they were short, overweight, and they didn't draw much attention," she later wrote in a letter describing the meeting to Human Resources, "but since I was five-foot-six, 125 pounds, with a figure, it wasn't 'appropriate.' " She was also furious. "Are you saying that just because I look this way genetically, that this should be a curse for me?"

Labels: personal musings, Sexual Harassment

"This is the first significant amount of oil residue to hit Mississippi since the Deepwater Horizon explosion six weeks ago," Gov. Haley Barbour said. "While it's the first, it won't be the last."

During a news conference in Jackson on Tuesday, Barbour said this is no reason for "anybody to panic." The state's beaches and ports remain open, and Barbour said, "We're told that it's not toxic."

"But it is a reason for everybody to remember that there is a likelihood that there is going to be more intrusion of some form of depleted oil, tar balls, tar mats, emulsified oil, that's going to reach the barrier islands," Barbour said.

Barbour said it appears the strand broke off Sunday from a patch of emulsified sheen situated some 11 miles off Mississippi's Horn Island.

The strand that came ashore Petit Bois had sunk slightly below sea level, and it went undetected in flyovers on Monday, he said.

Barbour said state officials have asked the Coast Guard to increase the number of vessels testing for oil sheens below the surface.

"I'm not blaming anybody or criticizing anybody," Barbour said of the fact it was not detected before washing onto Petit Bois, the easternmost of Mississippi's barrier islands, located near the Alabama border.

"We all understand that we should have found that this oil had broken off from the rest before this (Tuesday) morning," the governor said.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, corporatism, Greedy Republican Bastards, scumbaggery

"We're called as Americans to be vigilant to protect our liberty," she said in a recent interview. "At some point in each of our lives, we're called to service to defend and protect our Constitution."

In Angle's eyes, the country is under attack and she's willing to go to battle.

"What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability for sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock," she said. "That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways?

"That's why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?"

Labels: batshit crazies, domestic terrorism, Teabaggers

Labels: Republicans, sex, Teh Stoopid

Labels: capitalism, corporatism, greed

Mr. Obama had hoped to spend his summer creating jobs, passing financial reform, promoting his health care program, getting a Supreme Court justice confirmed and an arms control treaty with Russia ratified, pressing for international sanctions against Iran and jump-starting the troubled Middle East peace process. While not abandoning any of those goals, Mr. Obama now must find ways to continue pushing them while demonstrating to the nation that he is concentrating on a spill he has called “our highest priority.”

“This has hijacked his entire legislative agenda,” said Douglas Brinkley, a historian at Rice University who has written about Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was consumed by the Iran hostage crisis. “The White House felt they were on a roll. They were looking to be a new New Deal or new Great Society and they were just getting momentum going. Something this awful has sidetracked the agenda.”

Sara Taylor Fagen, White House political director under President George W. Bush, said the failure to contain the spill would make it hard for Mr. Obama to accomplish anything this year. “He’ll likely be managing the fallout for years to come,” she said. “Not until his re-election campaign will he have an opportunity to press reset.”

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, tinfoil

BP Plc’s failure since April to plug a Gulf of Mexico oil leak has prompted forecasts the crude may continue gushing into December in what President Barack Obama has called the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s attempts so far to cap the well and plug the leak on the seabed a mile below the surface haven’t worked, while the start of the Atlantic hurricane season this week indicates storms in the Gulf may disrupt other efforts.

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Extreme Greenies:see now why we push"drill,baby,drill"of known reserves&promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, American Idiots, Gulf of Mexico R.I.P., Sarah Palin

Labels: blockade, Gaza, Israel, Rachel Corrie MV, Turkey

Labels: closet cases, hypocrisy, Republican lies

We live in a world where Peyton Manning walks off the Super Bowl field without shaking anybody's hand. Where Tiger Woods leaves the Masters without a word of thanks to the fans or congratulations to the winner. Where NFL lineman Albert Haynesworth kicks a man's helmetless head without a thought.

So if you think sportsmanship is toast, this next story is an all-you-can-eat buffet to a starving man.

It happened at a junior varsity girls' softball game in Indianapolis this spring. After an inning and a half, Roncalli was womanhandling inner-city Marshall Community. Marshall pitchers had already walked nine Roncalli batters. The game could've been 50-0 with no problem.

It's no wonder. This was the first softball game in Marshall history. A middle school trying to move up to include grades 6 through 12, Marshall showed up to the game with five balls, two bats, no helmets, no sliding pads, no cleats, 16 players who'd never played before, and a coach who'd never even seen a game.

One Marshall player asked, "Which one is first base?" Another: "How do I hold this bat?" They didn't know where to stand in the batter's box. Their coaches had to be shown where the first- and third-base coaching boxes were.

That's when Roncalli did something crazy. It offered to forfeit.

Yes, a team that hadn't lost a game in 2½ years, a team that was going to win in a landslide purposely offered to declare defeat. Why? Because Roncalli wanted to spend the two hours teaching the Marshall girls how to get better, not how to get humiliated.

"The Marshall players did NOT want to quit," wrote Roncalli JV coach Jeff Traylor, in recalling the incident. "They were willing to lose 100 to 0 if it meant they finished their first game." But the Marshall players finally decided if Roncalli was willing to forfeit for them, they should do it for themselves. They decided that maybe -- this one time -- losing was actually winning.

That's about when the weirdest scene broke out all over the field: Roncalli kids teaching Marshall kids the right batting stance, throwing them soft-toss in the outfield, teaching them how to play catch. They showed them how to put on catching gear, how to pitch, and how to run the bases. Even the umps stuck around to watch.

Labels: sheer awesomeness, sports, things that make you glad to be alive

Holiday travel on the rebound

DOWNTOWN — Thousands of area residents renewed travel regimens this Memorial Day weekend, pouring onto highways and into airports as the nation officially ushered in the summer travel season.

Be it falling gas prices, enticing hotel and car rental rates or a slight uptick in consumer confidence, the Southland was expected to see nearly an 8% increase in the number of residents traveling over the holiday weekend, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Memorial Day weekend brings lower gas prices in Denver

Gas prices in Denver have dropped a few cents this week as motorists fuel up for Memorial Day weekend driving.

The price of a gallon of regular gas in Denver costs an average of $2.636 cents Friday, down from $2.68 a week earlier, according to the American Automobile Association's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

Mid-grade gas averages $2.819 in Denver on Friday, while premium is $2.946 and diesel is $2.984 -- all a few cents below prices of a week ago.

Expect heavier traffic during holiday weekend

Traffic for the entire holiday weekend is expected to increase compared to last year.

It’s the first time since 2005 that experts anticipate heavier Memorial Day weekend volumes on the region’s highways and roads.

About 4.3 million people say they plan to travel by automobile in the West Coast states, according to AAA of Washington.

AAA forecast: Cheaper gas, more travelers over Memorial Day

The American Automobile Association is projecting Memorial Day weekend travel to increase by more than 5 percent this year, fueled by lower gas prices.

About 32 million Americans will travel over the weekend, compared with 30.5 million last year, AAA said. More than 1.1 million Ohioans will travel 50 miles or more, up from 1 million a year ago.

A recent decline in gas prices is a key factor in the expected upswing in drivers hitting the road, AAA said. Regular gas prices in the Columbus area on Friday averaged $2.48 a gallon, down from $2.76 a month ago and below $2.60 in the same weekend last year. Average gas prices across the state were at $2.55 a gallon, unchanged from a year ago.

N.J. gasoline prices drop in time for Memorial Day weekend travels

New Jerseyans can travel to their picnics, beaches and Memorial Day ceremonies this weekend on fuel that is much less expensive than originally feared.

Despite dire predictions earlier in the year that gas would hit $3 a gallon this weekend — the unofficial start of summer — the average price for a gallon of regular gas in New Jersey fell 11 cents over the last three weeks, from $2.81 to $2.70.

That paralleled a national drop from $2.92 to $2.78.

Consequently, AAA of New Jersey is forecasting a 7.5 percent increase in the number of New Jerseyans traveling more than 50 miles from home this Memorial Day, compared to last year. At the same time, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority expects about a 2.5 percent traffic increase on both the Turnpike and Garden State Parkway.

"We have indications from our businesses that reservations are good," said Diane Wieland, Cape May County’s director of tourism. "It’s been one cold winter and we keep hearing that people can’t wait to get out and do something fun."

Local shrimpers helping the cleanup effort in Louisiana are reporting health problems after a plane spraying chemical dispersants on the oil spill passed within a mile of their boats. They claim that despite attending classes on petroleum waste management, they were not given protective gear, and are still using their old fishing boots.
BP responded that it is conducting constant air quality studies, and they appear to be within safe limits.

Another group of relief workers were taken to a New Orleans hospital, after bouts of nausea, vomiting, and severe headaches, in spite of having been properly trained and wearing protective gear. The hospital said they had been exposed to some unknown irritant.

Labels: 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, American Idiots