"America is built on freedoms - of speech, religion, press, assembly, AK-47s and your face."---Mike Strobel

When all is said and done there is nothing left to say or do.
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Today is as good as it gets, and our tomorrows won't be any better
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These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, EPA, FBI, DEA, CDC, or FDIC. These statements are not intended to diagnose, cause, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. If you feel you have been harmed/offended by, or, disagree with any of the above statements or images, please feel free to leave.
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"The trouble with Republicans is that when they get into trouble they start acting like cannibals"-Richard Nixon
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Waiting for the last breath

Waiting for someone close to die.

We go through the motions of checking to see if our mourning clothes fit and are cleaned and pressed and making the necessary contacts touching base with all the close kin exchanging the necessary nice comments.

Sitting next to the death bed in the hospital room waiting for that deep deep breath to be taken indicating the body's last struggle to maintain life. Nothing is harder than the cushions in those chairs. They get that way because the weight of the world seems to come crushing down on the person sitting there hopelessly helpless waiting for that moment when it will all be over. Or more correctly, the moment that the ending formalities of the gathering of the clan can begin.

The mind goes over the details of the selection of the funeral home, casket, church, time of services and such so that hopefully nothing will get in the way of those who will feel inconvenienced by the passing of the "loved" one. Taking a deep breath, steeling the nerves for the unintended to be heard comments of "She sure picked a good time to die, Why did it have to rain today of all days, Whew it sure is hot but not as hot as where he's going to be for the rest of eternity, What made them choose those kind of flowers anyway...don't they know she hated those kind...", and similar comments from unthinking people who don't think they can be heard.

And there's the grief to follow about what one should have done. Should I have made them go to the doctor sooner? I should have insisted on the surgery. Why didn't I spend more time with them when I had the chance. And more self condemnation.

Waiting for the last breath

U.S. Currency with a star next to the serial #

Star Notes

When an imperfect note is detected during the manufacturing process after the serial number has been overprinted, it must be replaced with a new note. A "star" note is used to replace the imperfect note. Reusing that exact serial number to replace the imperfect note is costly and time consuming. The "star" note has its own special serial number followed by a star in place of a suffix letter.

The serial number of the imperfect note that was removed is not used again in the same numbering sequence.

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FEMA's concept how to help out Iowa flood victims

Here's how FEMA helps you out. First they run over you and then hit you with a golf club because you were in the way. Good job Vincent.

CEDAR RAPIDS - A Federal Emergency Management Agency housing inspector was arrested this morning after police said he nearly hit a Penford Products employee with his car, then slammed his arm with a golf club.

Vincent Koley, 74, of Chapin, S.C., was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon after the 11:30 a.m. incident, the Cedar Rapids Police Department reported.

Koley was driving south on First Street SW when he nearly hit Penford employee Tom Kramer in the crosswalk in front of the plant at 10th Avenue SW, police said. Kramer, 54, of Lisbon, was able to get out of the vehicle's way without being hit, and pushed off the side of the car.

Koley stopped the car and jumped out, police said. Kramer told him to slow down and that he was in the cross walk. Koley replied that "he didn't have to slow down, he was with FEMA," police said. The two argued for a minute, and when Kramer turned to walk away, Koley took a golf club out of his car and struck Kramer across the arm, breaking the golf club.

Koley got back into his car, but numerous Penford employees observed the incident and surrounded the car so Koley couldn't leave, police said. Koley then began to nudge his car forward, forcing Kramer, who was in front of the car, onto the car's hood.

Koley was booked into the Jones County Jail.

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Lightning followed a man for years and then...

Lightning strikes back

A British officer, Major Summerford, while fighting in the fields of Flanders in February 1918 was knocked off his horse by a flash of lightning and paralyzed from the waist down. Summerford retired and moved to Vancouver. One day in 1924, as he fished alongside a river, lightning hit the tree he was sitting under and paralyzed his right side. Two years later Summerford was sufficiently recovered that he was able to take walks in a local park. He was walking there one summer day in 1930 when a lightning bolt smashed into him, permanently paralyzing him. He died two years later. But lightning sought him out one last time. Four years later, during a storm, lightning struck a cemetery and destroyed a tombstone. The deceased buried here? Major Summerford.

In 1899 a bolt of lightning killed a man as he stood in his backyard in Taranto, Italy.
Thirty years later his son was killed in the same way and in the same place.

On October 8, 1949, Rolla Primarda, the grandson of the first victim and the son of the second, became the third.

15 Astonishing Retirements, Bonuses and Cash-Outs in Corporate America

If you think professional athletes gets sickeningly outrageous pay take a look at these payouts in business.

1-----Lee R. RaymondExxon Mobil Corp.: Raymond bailed in 2006 with a golden parachute that totaled more than $351 million. Raymond’s biggest contribution to the petroleum powerhouse came in 1999, when he struck up the merger between Exxon and Mobil to create the largest and most profitable oil company on earth. Ever the accountable penny-pincher, Raymond has said that he will partly reimburse the company when he uses Exxon Mobil's private jet for personal use.

2-----Edward WhitacreAT&T: Whitacre walked away in 2007 with $158.5 million after a 43-year career with the telecommunications giant. Shareholder wealth and a long tenure as the company's CEO were the reported reasons for the size of his retirement package. To sweeten the deal, AT&T will pick up the tax tab for the bulk of Whitacre's benefits, as well as provide his family with insurance for life.

3-----Richard HandlerThe Jeffries Group Inc.: Not to be shown up, Handler launched into retirement with a cool $202 million package in 2007. The company told The Wall Street Journal that Handler’s work in growing the share price 400 percent in his seven-year stay earned him his pretty payout. Handler is currently the chairman and CEO of the Handler Family Foundation, a nonprofit that benefits underprivileged children. He also chairs the board of trustees for his alma matter, the University of Rochester.

4-----Michael D. EisnerDisney.: Eisner stepped down as CEO in 2005 after the media-dubbed "Disney War," in which stockholders and board members squared off against Eisner and other members of the company. His 2004 letter detailed his plans to depart the company in 2006, but due to the corporate drama, Eisner decided to cut his stay short by a year. It is estimated that Eisner accumulated over $1 billion in bonuses, salary and stock options during his 21 years at Disney.

5-----Henry A. McKinnellPfizer Inc. : When Henry A. McKinnell decided to throw in the towel at Pfizer in 2006, he left with a $213 million parachute with the possibility of more, contingent upon company stock. In his time as CEO, the Pfizer’s stock went down 40 percent, costing shareholders $140 billion. At a company meeting held in Lincoln, Neb., a plane was seen flying over the building with a banner that read “Give It Back, Hank!”

6-----Jack Welch — General Electric Co.: Jack Welch said his goodbyes in 2002, taking a modest $9 million. Per year. For the rest of his life. This pretty little pension comes with perks like charge accounts at his favorite restaurants, use of the company plane, maid service at his multiple abodes and other parting gifts. The exact specifications of Welch's departure gift basket were murky at best, even to key shareholders, which prompted the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to ask for further documentation.

7-----Charles PrinceCitigroup Inc.: Charles Prince retired with a $42 million package in 2007, contingent on the company’s stock performance. Add this to his 1.61 million shares of stock, which are currently worth about $53 million, and his nest seems to be fairly feathered.

8-----Stanley O'NealMerrill Lynch & Co. Inc.: Stanley O’Neal retired with a solid $161.5 million in 2007. His departure was influenced by the company’s loss of $2.3 billion in Q3 of that year, followed closely by a pesky $8.4 million government charge for botching credit and mortgage investments after the U.S.'s subprime mortgage crisis.

9-----Robert NardelliThe Home Depot: Robert Nardelli decided to part ways to the tune of $210 million in cash and stocks in 2007. Nardelli was hired in 2000 to beef up company profits, and while the company’s revenue and profits nearly doubled in his first five years, they fell short of his projected goals.

10----James KiltsThe Gillette Co.: The year 2005 saw James Kilts get merged out of a job when Procter & Gamble munched up Gillette into its corporate kingdom. The now former CEO shouldn't have any hard feelings: Procter & Gamble gave him a $165 million payout full of perks and cash. Procter & Gamble was even nice enough to provide Kilts with $13 million to cover the transaction’s resulting taxes, ensuring that his pockets stayed deep. In 2007, Kilts joined the Board of Directors at Pfizer.

11----Dick CheneyHalliburton: When his vice-presidential ticket was punched in 2000, Cheney stepped on to the White House lawn and quietly gave up his title as CEO of a little government-contracting company named of Halliburton — with a $34 million rip cord on his golden parachute. Cheney was kept on the company’s payroll after retirement, however, and was paid deferred compensation for his years of service. He also retained around 430,000 shares of Halliburton stock, which eventually led to questions about his business ties to a company that seemed to have benefited quite well from the War on Terror.

12----Angelo MoziloCountrywide Financial Corp.: It is never fun showing up for work if you’ve been labeled as the man who is responsible for a national crisis. But instead of hiding away in an undisclosed location while his public-relations people apologized, Angelo Mozilo — former CEO of Countrywide Financial — showed up and faced the music with class. As head of one of the nation’s leading mortgage companies, Mozilo was at the forefront of the subprime-mortgage bubble that began to burst in 2007. Mozilo turned his back on $37.5 million in severance pay and perks, as well as a $400,000 annual salary. He instead opted to testify on the whole mess before the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March 2008. After the housing-loan episode, Countrywide Financial agreed to be bought by Bank of America Corp. to the tune of $4.1 billion. Don’t go feeling sorry for our hero though: Mozilo's bare-bones retirement package, which he received for his years with the company, totaled around $23.8 million.

13----Robert TollToll Brothers Inc.: On the other side of the subprime-mortgage coin, some CEOs are receiving bonuses regardless of the industry's current public image. Luxury-home builder Toll Brothers Inc. announced in March 2008 that chairman and CEO Robert Toll will receive a scheduled $17.5 million bonus, along with his current 2 percent annual draw from the company's earnings before taxes.

14----John J. MackMorgan Stanley: In 2006, John J. Mack received a $40 million bonus, as Morgan Stanley's stock went up 42 percent. His monetary reward set a Wall Street record as the largest bonus of its time but was promptly topped the following year.

15----Lloyd BlankfeinThe Goldman Sachs Group Inc.: Besting Mack in 2007, Lloyd Blankfein saw a $60.7 million bonus when he peeked into the envelope.

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Your choice: Punch a flight attendant or smoke

Do not drink too much at the airport before getting on your flight. Airports are boring and sad and they make you want to kill the pain with copious amounts of gin. Don't do it — or you could end up punching a flight attendant in the face.

Christina Elizabeth Szele of Woodside, NY was charged with assault and interference with flight attendants after she caused such a disturbance that her flight was diverted to Colorado.

According to an FBI agent who witnessed the event, Szele yelled "obscenities and racial epithets" when a flight attendant tried to keep her from smoking, prompting the flight attendants to restrain her in plastic cuffs... Szele then broke through the cuffs, and commenced punching.

Szele had been drinking and doesn't remember any of it, says the AP.

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(above photo is not of the woman in the article)

Learning the English language is a headache

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.

If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?

Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England .
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing,
grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns
down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother's not Mop?

Brain Teaser #061808

What do the following words have in common:


Banana
Dresser
Grammar
Potato
Revive
Uneven
Assess




Are you peeking or have you already given up?
Give it another try . . .




Go back and look at them again; think hard.




OK . . . Here You Go . . Hope You Didn't Cheat.
Answer: No, it is not that they all have at least 2 double letters.




In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter, put it
at the end of the word, and then spell the word backwards, it will be the
same word.

Winning the lottery and age

The odds of my winning the lottery are better than that of picking out a decent watermellon.

Now that I'm older, here's what I've discovered :

1 - I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

2 - I finally got my head together; now my body is falling apart.

3 - Funny, I don't remember being absent minded.

4 - Funny, I don't remember being absent minded.

5 - All reports are in; life is officially unfair.

6 - If all is not lost, where is it?

7 - It is easier to get older than it is to get wiser.

8 - Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.

9 - I wish the buck stopped here; I sure could use a few.

10 - Kids in the back seat cause accidents.

11 - It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.

12 - The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you're in the bathroom.

13 - If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would have put them on my knees.

14 - When I'm finally holding all the cards, why does everyone decide to play chess?

15 - It's not hard to meet expenses ... they're everywhere.

16 - These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter...I go somewhere to get something and then wonder what I'm here after.

What happens when Southerners move North

Tornado in Iowa June 10, 2008

A huge tornado funnel cloud touches down in Orchard, Iowa, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 9:04 p.m. Lori Mehmen of Orchard, took the photo from outside her front door. (note: it is not the one that went through the boyscout camp)

I would hardly be inclined to be standing there to take a photo. Seeing that to me means get down and find a hole to be in.

Oh the long polar nights can get so lonely

(Reuters) - One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported Monday.

Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them.

The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter.

"Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable," Henriksen told the Southland Times newspaper.

About 125 scientists and staff are stationed at McMurdo base, the largest community in Antarctica, during the winter months when there is constant darkness.

The first sunrise will occur on August 20 and McMurdo's population will start to increase again in September when supply flights resume, peaking at more than 1,000 during the summer period.

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When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.~ John Lennon
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