Miscellaneous News

Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird underwent surgery to correct a breathing problem, and he is doing well.
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I think northern California should have another National Monument--why not?

The proposed national monument also is in southern Oregon.
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Someday I'd like to try this.
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The ghost of Stella Walsh returns.
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Is the report of a 12-baby pregnancy a hoax?

Miscellaneous News

Civilization has indeed hit rock bottom, I am afraid:

Former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay will join 15 celebrities from the worlds of entertainment and sports in kicking up their heels on the new season of “Dancing With the Stars.

Here is more about the would-be successor to Fred Astaire:

DeLay, while he's not dancing, is trying to get criminal charges against him dismissed. The Houston-area Republican insists that the political corruption charges against him were drummed up by a partisan Democratic prosecutor.

In other words, fancy footwork he displays on Dancing With the Stars could benefit him in his legal troubles.
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Something really needs to be done to more regulate fertility treatments because there are far too many extreme multiple pregnancies like Nadya Suleman and now this one from Tunisia. I seriously doubt all of the babies would survive.
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Brothel owner/Hells Angels bigwig David Burgess is shit out of luck, according to an appeals court.

The Vancouver Sun

must have read my mind about the octuplets story and has run a piece about the danger of exploiting multiple births.

The financial rewards in the Gosselins' case appear to be great. The family recently moved to a McMansion surrounded by outbuildings and an impressive acreage. There have been episodes with them skiing in Utah, visiting Hawaii, touring Disney World. There was a tummy tuck for the mother and hair transplants for their father. The children, essentially, support the family's lifestyle. They are the family business.

Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, warns that the Dionne quint story is a cautionary tale to parents such as the Gosselins and the mother of octuplets.

"We saw what those kids said when they became adults. The Dionne story is kind of a cloud that hangs over this."

It's all about the parents and what THEY want, the children's feelings be damned.

Miscellaneous

As far as I am concerned, it's good riddance to the drag queen culture. If gays ever want to be taken seriously as some kind of oppressed group, this kind of garbage needs to go.

Politics IS serious business, and drag queens and gay pride parades do absolutely nothing to convince the general voting public of the gay activists' causes. As a group gays have no political sense whatsoever.
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One of the most bizarre stories of the past couple of weeks is the case of the woman who had octuplets, yet she already had six children previously. This woman is a divorced graduate student who is living with her mother.

Having 14 children is odd enough, but apparently these multiple births came about through IVF and raises all kinds of ethical questions going far beyond mere "choice":

The hospital where the octuplets were born - Kaiser Permanente in Bellflower, California - has said by the time the woman came to them she was already three months pregnant.

During an interview on CBS's The Early Show, Michael Tucker, scientific director of Georgia Reproductive Specialists, said: 'As the story's unfolded and it's gone from the potential use of just fertility drugs, or misuse thereof, to actual, apparently, IVF (in-vitro fertilization) with transfer of embryos, this is just remarkable to me that any practitioner in our field of reproductive medicine would undertake such a practice.'

The host asked Dr Tucker, who has a doctorate in reproductive physiology.

'Had she walked into a fertility clinic and said, "Listen, I've got other children, the oldest seven, the youngest two," is there any ethical responsibility on the clinic's part to say, "I'm not going to treat you," or, "You know what? This is not a good idea"?''

Dr Tucker's reply was unequivocal: 'I'm stunned, actually, that a clinic would proceed to treat a patient in this circumstance.'

And it gets better, for the woman, Nadya Suleman-Guiterrez, is said to have worked in a fertility facility.
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Get ready for some possible historical revisions regarding John Dean and Watergate.
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Merle Haggard is bouncing back from a bout with lung cancer.

He has this to say about the new president:

He confesses "I didn't vote for Obama," but can't deny the political and emotional sea change that the Illinois senator's ascension to the chief executive's office represents. "We're probably guilty of living up to the Constitution for the first time in the history of America, which is really something to say," Haggard says softly, looking a little battle-scarred in his Army-surplus jacket, black T-shirt, blue denim jeans and golden-brown ostrich boots.

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