Was not Michelle Obama her great-great-great-grandfather’s granddaughter?

The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors

We knew that the Sunday article about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one of those readers would provide us with the first glimpse of two key figures in the first lady’s family tree: The white man who owned Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother, Melvinia Shields, and his son, who most likely fathered Melvinia’s child.

–

The photo came from Jarrod Shields, a science teacher at a community college in Alabama who also happens to be the great-great-great grandson of Henry Wells Shields. He was getting ready to mow the lawn when his wife, Tonya, got a call about the article and called him to come inside. Jarrod had grown up knowing that his family had once owned slaves and always wondered what happened to their descendants. His wife sent me an e-mail this week, outlining her husband’s connection to the Shields family, along with the photograph.

When I spoke to Jarrod by phone, he told me that he hoped that he might be able to meet his extended black family, he said of the descendants of the slaves his ancestors had owned. “I always really wanted to say I was sorry.

Why is Jarrod sorry?  

“I always really wanted to say I was sorry. I also wanted to let them know that we’re glad that you’re part of our family, however it came about.”

http://www.nytimes.com/interac…

The sentiment is appreciated but why should Jarrod be sorry and Michelle not sorry?  Didn’t they both have the same ancestry?

The obvious goodwill and good intentions of Jarrod Shields leave a bitter aftertaste to those who will see instead of only feel.

As long as there is “them” and “us” based only on an insane and uncertain color line, there will continue to be armies of victims like Trayvon Martin on both sides of the line.

The lines extend far beyond the separate and unequal societies to a very lethal effect on scientific medical research as one example.

Best,  Terry

Why Client No. 9 Can Seek Office No. 3

I think I speak for a lot of New Yorkers when I ask this question: Is Eliot Spitzer the best we can do?

Seriously, we can’t find another candidate who hasn’t shamed public office with what he admits was “horrendous” behavior in which he “lied?”

It’s not that Mr. Spitzer isn’t gifted. His work as New York attorney general from 1999 to 2006 was one of the most dynamic in the history of the job. He took on Wall Street’s questionable dealings, was a true maverick and thumbed his nose at Washington regulators who had become inured to Wall Street practices.

When the public interest aligns with Mr. Spitzer’s political ambition, the results can be spectacular.

But does Mr. Spitzer, who earned the nickname “Client No. 9” in a humiliating prostitution scandal, deserve a second political life?

Why would anyone ask such a question since Bill Clinton made a sex scandal a badge of honor?

Consider Mr. Stringer. On the one hand, he has been a relatively faithful city politician. He championed the Second Avenue subway, bike lanes and women’s rights. He took a controversial stand against hydraulic fracking. His scandals have been garden variety: use of taxpayer funds for travel and the like.

But Mr. Stringer doesn’t produce much in the way of headlines. Many New Yorkers probably don’t know who he is.

Who?

This New Yorker is looking forward to hearing more about gardening.

many may be tempted to vote for Kristin Davis, the Wall Street madam who is running and was accused of supplying Mr. Spitzer with his trysts.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat…

When my sister and her husband owned a motel [no, not at all the kind of motel rented by the hour], I was more than a little fascinated to learn the aging spinster-looking lady talking business with my sister was the local madam.

Not since Charles Bronson played a serial killer accountant has there even been remotely such fun in accounting.

Best,  Terry

“Lying is the American Way of Life.” – F. Lee Bailey

Who would know better about that than an expert practitioner in the brotherhood (and increasingly sisterhood) of lying?

Truth be told, Bailey was a rather poor liar – so bad that he had to use technicalities on appeal to spring defendants falsely [or truly] convicted.  Not many jurors were likely to be convinced by Old Foghorn.  You have to give him credit for trying.  Even worse is famed defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz.  His decree that O.J. Simpson must surely have been innocent because most wife beaters don’t kill their wives is a landmark in atrocious logic.

New engine plans to tap hot spring for power in California

A Californian project at the Surprise Valley Hot Springs is planning to utilize its low heat resource of 180 degrees Fahrenheit (ca. 82 degrees Celsius) to generate power with a new power engine called PwrCor.

In a release yesterday, U.S. based company Cornerstone Sustainable Energy (“CSE”) announced “it has entered into an agreement with Warner Mountain Energy Corporation to begin the first phase of development of a geothermal energy plant to be located at the Surprise Valley Hot Springs in Cedarville, California

http://thinkgeoenergy.com/arch…

This is just one of many new small waste heat generators that has no particular advantage that sticks out except that I have posted a lot about that very special area. 🙂

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

The megawatt potential of the last drilling on the nearby Paiute Indian reservation at Ft. Bidwell started with a small project for a small heating utility.

Of course megawatts take megadollars and so the decades roll by with those kinds of dollars blown away on the wind and sun.

BTW the motel with a horse farm and riding stable at poverty prices was a grand place to stay.  Horse has some advantages for transportation yet though it helps if you don’t get kicked like I once did.

Best,  Terry

For any fans of an excellent fellow on the wrong track:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/02…

You will get no argument from me that restraint of commerce in favor of General Motors and Ford is a bad thing.

You will get an argument that electric cars are the wave of the future.

If you haven’t had battery problems, you just couldn’t live in cold country.  Until Mr. O’Donnell and his wrong way thinkers warm the planet so that winters are banished forever, the idea of an all battery car is a nightmare.  Hybrids offer a little more – like intermittent energy sources – with continued reliance on fossil fuels.

We can do better.

Much better.

Reliance on waste energy is the ticket.

Generation of power from waste heat is already a big business.  But not nearly as big as it should be.

Strangely Mark Twain’s report of mummy power [“bought by the ton or the graveyard”] to fuel the locomotives of the Trans-Egypt Railroad are still disputed though there is contemporary evidence.

Apparently some think Twain was just trying to be funny.  He did that a lot.

But today even crematoriums are generating power from fresh corpses of loved ones. This is an aging report from TreeHugger on a very new definition of people power:

http://www.treehugger.com/rene…

The future is now but not widely advertised for obvious reasons.

There are much better sources than people power and no shortage whatever.

Best,  Terry

A papal bull issues eternal truth that is not to be questioned.  I have an unquenchable admiration for the choice of wording.

The most undeniable liberal groupings do the same but would never, ever call it bull.

How can anyone explain the leaders of the Enlightenment regarding a bloodstained autocrat – Catherine the Great – an ideal ruler?

Was there ever a report of any opposition from liberals of the day to George Washington’s diversion of troops from fighting the colonial overseers to destroy the food and shelter of the Seneca and Cayuga villagers in the winter of 1779, the coldest winter ever recorded in the Americas?  The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign is a largely forgotten stain on America and its Revolution.

Of course we know that was just a continuation of the genocidal attacks on the “Noble Savages” that have lasted to this day though in less virulent form.

When MSNBC puts Chris Matthews, a dubious liberal at best, on air with grand words about the faces carved into the background of the Lakota’s sacred Mt. Rushmore, did they not know that the poorest tribe of the poorest population in America on which statistics are available has refused tribute of billions of dollars for the insult?  Indian genociders are not admired among Indians.

Today misguided antiscience superstition is more dangerous to continuation of survival of humans than it has ever been IMNSVHO.

From the organic foods hoax to obliteration of clean, green energy by devotion to relatively feeble and environmentally damaging intermittent energy that assures the continuation of fossil fuel mining and pumping, liberals so imbued with such false doctrine are a threat to the planet.

Best,  Terry

A papal bull issues doctrinal that is not to be questioned.  I have an unquenchable admiration for the choice of wording.

The most undeniable liberal groupings do the same but would never, ever call it bull.

How can anyone explain the leaders of the Enlightenment regarding a bloodstained autocrat – Catherine the Great – an ideal ruler?

Was there ever a report of any opposition from liberals of the day to George Washington’s diversion of troops from fighting the oppressors to destroy the food and shelter of the Senecas and Cayugas in the winter of 1779, the coldest winter ever recorded in the Americas?

Of course we know that was just a continuation of the genocidal attacks on the “Noble Savages,” that continue to this day though in less virulent form.

When MSNBC puts Chris Matthews, a dubious liberal at best, on air with

t

Finnish Fortum CHP Plant Dents Russian Dominance in Lithuania

Russian gas supplier Gazprom’s 100 percent prevalence in Lithuania has been shaken up in the seaport city of Klaipeda, where Finnish energy firm Fortum has opened a $173-million combined heat and power plant (CHPP). The 20-MW biomass and waste-fuelled plant will produce 40 percent of Klaipeda’s heating needs and decrease its dependency on Russian gas approximately as much.

“Use of sorted waste and biomass as fuel in the CHPP will offer a sustainable and cost-effective solution for city and is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by about 100,000 tons annually in the city,” said Andrius Kasparavicius, head of the communications department at Fortum Klaipeda.

The plant is believed to have far-reaching political and economic ramifications. “Finland is known for high transparency of business. The plant will be not only an example for Lithuania of an excellent foreign investment but also an example of political and business culture investment,” said Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite.

http://www.renewableenergyworl…

Horrors!

Think what this sort of thing would do to our high-priced, sometime solar and wind energy monopoly, not to mention the badness it would do to Exxon and other fossil fuel pushers who depend on sometime, high-priced inferior energy.

You will never hear Obama talking highly of such things that could make the world free from fossil fuels altogether.

Best,  Terry

If you intend to be offended by the title, then you will be and maybe we can discuss the weather or something.

I am in absolute awe of Chris Hayes but his use of the soft racism equating ethnicity to race to attack the hard racism of John Roberts is like fingernails on a blackboard to me.  It is akin to the Southern ladies using “nigra” in place of the awful word that showed they were more cultured than their menfolk.

Ethnicity is about culture.

Race has always been about biology, no matter how perverted it might have become.

So what is a reporter to do to make himself understood?

How about not mixing the two?

When Elizabeth Warren claimed American Indian ancestry, there was no reason to doubt her beyond her sketchy knowledge.  Hard racist Scott Brown declared Warren was no American Indian because anyone could tell by just looking.  In a pig’s eye.

But Elizabeth was not remotely an ethnic American Indian, whatever her ancestry. She seemed surprisingly ignorant of what that would mean – without intending any insult.

We will never sideline the ubiquitous racism in American society until we know the difference between biology and culture.

I bet, dear reader, I could explain it quite easily to Chris Hayes talking face to face but I may not be able to explain it to you.

Best,  Terry

This is an actual preview of a cancer post on a stock message board site:

#### Cancer

Advaxis Requests Orphan Drug Designation for Treatment of HPV-Associated #### Cancer

Even links get the censor treatment if the %$^*^%$ cancer site is mentioned.

And copied research abstracts and papers lose something with certain words included.

The [censored] cancer is anal cancer that is al lowable on this unexpurgated libertarian site.

For certain there is reason to consider “anal cancer” an expletive but I wonder if asshole cancer would pass muster.  It might.  

This is a horrible, horrible cancer but no worse perhaps than pancreatic or brain or melanoma or bone cancer.

The idiot censors are a very bad joke but it is not easy to tell jokes about cancer.  Worse even than patent jokes.

I suspect my keyword “cancer jokes” will be very lonely.

Best,  Terry

Commentary: Markets need morals and regulators need muscle

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) – “Is the entire stock market (and the system it supports) completely corrupted?”

When that question appeared in a recent MarketWatch poll, 76% of the nearly 1,400 respondents agreed with: “Yes, it’s legalized theft.”

Legalized theft? Like the bribes Mexican police demand or the taxes dictators seize to build villas? Investors think the stock market is theft?

http://www.marketwatch.com/sto…

And the answer given is that the investors are surely right in the headline article in a business site that obviously leans right.

Huh?

Kos and Ed [Schulze] and most anyone that has even a pretense to liberal credentials says we gotta go along with the most egregious corruption and a rightwing business source says that is wrong?

Has the world turned upside down again?

Of course it’s nonsensical to expect businesses in the hunt for money to place a high priority on morality except as a business tactic.  It is akin to asking coyotes to stop eating sheep.

The real problem is the like of Kos and Ed seeking love in all the wrong places and, in a different vein, the same could be said of Obama and Pelosi. Even the wingers are scandalized.

Best,  Terry

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…

Not the greatest source but there is some fun stuff here corroborated by others copying each other. 🙂

“The United States previously requested Hong Kong to issue a provisional arrest warrant for Mr Snowden. Because the US request failed to fully comply with the requirements under Hong Kong law, the US Department of Justice was asked to provide further information in consideration of the relevant legal conditions,” the Hong Kong government statement added.

“The failure to provide sufficient information in this case meant there was no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden’s departure,” it said.

Previously, Mr Snowden has said both that he was willing to go through the Hong Kong legal system and that he would consider asylum elsewhere, particularly in Iceland.

Looks like Obama just hasn’t been able to hire competent lawyers.

I have very personal reasons for loving Snowden’s yearning to move to Iceland.

When I was in an Army class I was totally incompetent for, there was a very real threat of failure leading to assignment to Iceland.  At that time GI’s were caged in a very small area for a year because Icelanders had complained about their women were marrying American soldiers and leaving the country.

Iceland didn’t figure it had a lot of young women to spare.  I don’t know if the population has increased but prosperity surely has on the back of geothermal power despite the financial fiasco.

If you’re not caged inside a wire fence, I expect Iceland would be a wonderful place to live, especially if you share an interest in geothermal power that remains under dark clouds of superstition and ignorance in these United States.  Geothermal is a religion in Iceland.  The Icelanders even considered commercializing the hothouse cultivation of bananas in the country.  They are grown in demonstration sections.

Bobby Fischer was the last “traitor” that I know of to find refuge in Iceland.  

Best,  Terry