Sunday, April 26, 2009

David Duke

David Duke gets himself arrested in Prague just for being David Duke.
A former US Ku Klux Klan chief arrested here on a speaking tour was freed during the night but will be forced to leave the country later Saturday, Czech police said.

David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana-founded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, arrived in Prague on Friday at the invitation of a local far-right group, Narodni Odpor (National Resistance).

The 59-year-old US citizen had been due to give three lectures in Prague and Brno in the east of the country and present the Czech translation of his 1998 book "My Awakening."

He was arrested Friday afternoon in the Black Eagle restaurant in Prague's old town and questioned for several hours on suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights, police said.

But, then they let him go. Too bad they didn't keep him.
They always call him a "former Klan leader". They never mention his background as a Nazi. He was a Nazi before he started a Klan group (he was never a member of the Klan, he just started a Klan group as a fundraising device).

I went to college with Duke. I didn't know him, but he was a regular at the Thursday afternoon Free Speech Alley at LSU in the late 60's, early 70's. Wearing a little Nazi armband, a brown shirt, giving little Nazi speeches. It wasn't Klan type stuff at all (and Baton Rouge is close enough to Mississippi to where I could tell the difference), it was just American Nazi nonsense.

I can't remember the guy's name, but I did know one of his Nazi followers -- he was the husband of a woman who was majoring in quantitative business analysis, my major. The QBA majors was a small clique, so I knew him (I think in 1971 there was 7 undergraduate QBA majors at LSU). In 1971 I was a senior, fixing to graduate in January 1972, and the guy I can't remember the name of offered me a job working for David Duke doing market research. He was in the process of starting up a Klan/Nazi fund raising business and wanted to do some demographic analysis of census data to do target mailings. He offered me $12k a year.

In 1971 that was pretty good pay for a new college graduate.

I turned down the job. The Klan didn't seem like a really good career path to me.

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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Woman gives birth on 5th Ave., New York

Just what every woman wants, an audience witnessing her giving birth.

A pregnant woman successfully gave birth to a baby girl on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park Friday as cheering well-wishers applauded the doctors who delivered the child.


Well-wishers applauded??!!

Pleaazzzeee. It's not a sporting event.

Only in New York.

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

Cheap Wedding

In these days of needing to saving money, I thought this was a great idea for a wedding. Hold it at your local VFW. (Veteran of Foreign Wars hall)

4/25/09-Saturday) – Wedding Ceremony of ALR 256 Members Bob*(Director) and Laurie* (Secretary) at Post 256 (Wichita) - The wedding will take place at Post 256 at 4:30 pm. The couple will provide a smoked hog and a keg of beer. All other condiments will be pot luck, so bring your favorite dish to share. The reception will be directly after the wedding. Classic Rock Band “Lulu Bangs” will perform at the reception from 7:30 p.m. to ??? The Reverend Keith* from Junction City will conduct the ceremony.


* names were changed

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Friday, April 17, 2009

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

He wrote this song the year I was born, 1949. I grew up listening to my Daddy playing it over and over again.



Entertainment Weekly calls it the Most Heartbreaking Song of all Time.

h/t Althouse

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Word of caution for Somali Pirates

While reading an article in allafrica.com, regarding the killing of the Somali pirates by the U.S., this comment posted caught my eye.

Author: Thom
Tue Apr 14 14:49:38 2009

The pirates and Somalia really need to examine the lessons of Afghanistan before targeting the United States. The Taliban had a pretty good deal. It ran a nation, dominated its residents, and had full access to a national treasury. Today the Taliban live in caves and murder fellow Muslims. It was all because they harbored a group that attacked the United States on September 11.

A Somalia that protects pirates, pirates who attack the United States, may have a very short future! Somalia's friends could get it in a lot of trouble. Watch for the unmanned drones...


Interesting viewpoint.

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Barry and the Pirates


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Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Health Care?

An example of why health care costs are so expensive in the U.S.

From a respiratory therapist.

My next work task will be to make a "round" and administer breathing treatments to people. Also, I will write down numbers from mechanical ventilators.

The breathing treatments are totally unindicated in about 98% of cases. Doctors order them for non-respiratory problems such as kidney failure or a broken femur. We are literally giving people treatments so it "looks like" we're doing something. This is why medicine is so expensive. The numbers from the ventilators are useless because nobody, not even other respiratory therapists, will ever look at them. I could show up, clock in, go home, and then come back later and clock out, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. The really scary thing is, most of what happens at a hospital is like this: we kill time while people heal themselves.

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Piracy on the high seas

Well, the African pirates finally did it, they boarded an American flagged ship. They woke the sleeping giant. Or did they?
President Barack Obama was following the situation closely, foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said.

Following the situation?

What about the cavalry? How about sending the Navy with a few big guns, missiles, airplanes, and marines? Then follow that situation.

I'll grant that sending the Navy isn't going to be immediately effective.
U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said the closest U.S. ship at the time of the hijacking was 345 miles (555 kilometers)away.

That's a pretty large distance for quick response. But if a ship flying an American flag means anything it needs to mean "Don't mess with me". It needs to mean that the US will respond with serious force If it doesn't mean that then it doesn't mean anything.

In 1968 I was on a Navy gunship type destroyer when the Pueblo was boarded and captured by North Korea. We were sailing enroute to the Naval Gunline of the DMZ of Vietnam. When the Pueblo sent out their distress messages every ship in the 7th fleet heard it. We were hundreds of miles south of them, in the middle of the Pacific, and there's no way we could respond quickly enough to be of any direct assistance to the crew of the Pueblo.

That didn't matter. We changed course, sailing North, fully expecting to go to war with North Korea. We didn't get orders to sail North, our Captain just did it, assuming that we'd be getting orders to do so soon.

In 1968 the crew of a US Navy warship had a large proportion of what was basically draft-dodgers -- sailors who had joined the Navy as a way to avoid the draft since the draft typically meant 2 years in the infantry. In 1968 2 years in the infantry did not seem like a rational career plan to many of us.


Going to war with Vietnam was just something we had to do, even though (to paraphrase Cassius Clay), "No Vietnamese never done nothing to me". But North Korea was different. When they seized the Pueblo they did something to me personally. I wasn't on that ship. But I could have been. And if I had been I'd have wanted to know that Col. Custer and Major Reno were fixing to come riding right over the top of that hill over there. That's the whole point of flying under a US flag.

Of course the Navy didn't look at it that way, we soon got orders to resume course to Vietnam. The crew of the Pueblo could be assured that LBJ would "monitor the situation".

Update Althouse comments on Rush's thoughts on the hijacking.

Update: It's time to authorize a campaign medal for the crew of the Bainbridge for a job well done.

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