Good morning Ranters!
( You too Lurkers!! ) Welcome to Reader Rant!
(…the fill-in version)

Today is Friday, June 26th – there are 188 days left in 2009...


Today is a sad day for America…

…two American icons passed away yesterday: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. America will miss them both very dearly...





On this day in history...

1096 - Peter the Hermit's crusaders forced their way across Sava, Hungary.

1243 - The Seljuk Turkish army in Asia Minor was wiped out by the Mongols.

1483 - Richard III usurped himself to the English throne.

1541 - Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of Peru, was murdered by his former followers.

1794 - The French defeated an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus.

1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the mouth of the Kansas River after completing a westward trek of nearly 400 river miles.

1819 - The bicycle was patented by W.K. Clarkson, Jr.

1844 - John Tyler took Julia Gardiner as his bride, thus becoming the first U.S. President to marry while in office.

1870 - The first section of the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ, was opened to the public.

1894 - The American Railway Union called a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers.

1900 - The United States announced that it would send troops to fight against the Boxer rebellion in China.

1900 - A commission that included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against the deadly disease yellow fever.

1907 - Russia's nobility demanded drastic measures to be taken against revolutionaries.

1908 - Shah Muhammad Ali's forces squelched the reform elements of Parliament in Persia.

1917 - General John "Black Jack" Pershing arrived in France with the American Expeditionary Force.

1925 - Charlie Chaplin's comedy, "The Gold Rush," premiered in Hollywood.

1926 - A memorial to the first U.S. troops in France was unveiled at St. Nazaire.

1924 - After eight years of occupation, American troops left the Dominican Republic.

1942 - The Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter was flown for the first time.

1945 - The U.N. Charter was signed by 50 nations in San Francisco, CA.

1948 - The Berlin Airlift began as the U.S., Britain and France started ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin.

1951 - The Soviet Union proposed a cease-fire in the Korean War.

1959 - CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow interviewed Lee Remick. It was his 500th and final guest on "Person to Person."

1959 - U.S. President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.

1961 - A Kuwaiti vote opposed Iraq's annexation plans.

1963 - U.S. President John Kennedy announced "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) at the Berlin Wall.

1971 - The U.S. Justice Department issued a warrant for Daniel Ellsberg, accusing him of giving away the Pentagon Papers.

1975 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency due to "deep and widespread conspiracy."

1976 - The CN (Canadian National) Tower in Toronto, Canada, opened.

1979 - Muhammad Ali, at 37 years old, announced that he was retiring as world heavyweight boxing champion.

1981 - In Mountain Home, Idaho, Virginia Campbell took her coupons and rebates and bought $26,460 worth of groceries. She only paid 67 cents after all the discounts.

1985 - Wilbur Snapp was ejected after playing "Three Blind Mice" during a baseball game. The incident followed a call made by umpire Keith O'Connor.

1987 - The movie "Dragnet" opened in the U.S.

1996 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Virginia Military Institute to admit women or forgo state support.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that made it illegal to distribute indecent material on the Internet.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws that allow for a ban on doctor-assisted suicides.

1998 - The U.S. and Peru open school to train commandos to patrol Peru's rivers for drug traffickers.

1998 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are always potentially liable for supervisor's sexual misconduct toward an employee.

2000 - The Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Corp. jointly announced that they had created a working draft of the human genome.

2000 - Indonesia's President Abdurrahman Wahid declared a state of emergency in the Moluccas due to the escalation of fighting between Christians and Muslims.

2001 - Ray Bourque (Colorado Avalanche) announced his retirement just 17 days after winning his first Stanley Cup. Bouque retired after 22 years and held the NHL record for highest-scoring defenseman and playing in 19 consecutive All-Star games.

2002 - David Hasseloff checked into The Betty Ford Center for treatment of alcoholism.

2002 - WorldCom Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection..


Quotes for the day:

 Quote:

The reason that the all-American boy prefers beauty to brains is that he can see better than he can think.
— Farrah Fawcett

 Quote:

I am bewildered at the length to which people will go to portray me so negatively.
— Michael Jackson

Have a good Friday everybody!!

clickable

A tribute

Yes, loganrbt, many good Americans die every day. Many of our troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan deaths number over 4,000.

It was not my intention to overlook the many good Americans that die each day, but, rather, to hightlight, two American icons who we all knew and, in some small part, each of whom having had some bearing on our own individual personal lives.

It is not that many Americans that these two icons did not touch in some way, or at some time.

A quiet protest that we consider entertainers icons but people who are awarded Nobel prizes for helping us live longer, healthier lives, or who represent our national interests over decades pass on in utter oblivion. Just sayin . . .

Great intro, Rick!

And for all the tributes on today's RT...

Ed McMahon and David Carradine also passed and were pop icons as well. That Keith Olbermann's show was entirely devoted to Michael Jackson was a little over the top. To me, anyway.

I heard an interesting bit on NPR -- a mother and her two children from Valdosta, Georgia, were outside Jackson's home last night. The mom remembers the music and the dancing. The 12-year-old son only knows Michael through the bad stuff he had heard. A lesson in the difference in generations, to be sure.

Thank you, logan, for helping to put things into perspective.

EmmaG

Funny, isn't it, that not too many years ago almost every 12 year old in the western world knew how to do the "moon walk", that 38 years ago we watched a 12 year old Michael sing "Rockin" Robin"
Being a pop icon is a tough job, he got caught so caught up in the appearance aspect of it that all those surgeries got him more ridicule than the love he was probably trying to find. There is a lot to celebrate about his life as an entertainer but his personal life was a tragedy.

Logan, I understand what you're saying, and appreciate it.

At the same time I don't think there's a lot of wailing and mourning going on here - rather, recognition of an amazing talent in a very strange and troubled man.

Huge numbers of people die every day - small children, mothers, leaders, writers, painters, scientists. Most of them we don't know, or even know about.

But there are those who are rarely gifted. For me, Michael Jackson wasn't so much a singer or a songwriter as a dancer and choreographer. I'm not particularly "into" dance but seeing him on a screen would pretty generally stop me in my tracks.

This "tribute" is pretty restrained, actually. Now, if I outlive Bob Dylan, that day you're gonna see a mess!

COINCIDENCE? I Think NOT!



From the Church of Ineffable Stupidity:

a) Mark Sanford, whirled traveller and secret member of "The Fellowship"

Apparently, his bible beating took place at the same place as John Ensign's, Washington DC's infamous "C" Street, where ultraconservative, ultra-religious congresscritters and senatwhores gather and hold prayer meetings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/25/AR2009062504480.html?hpid=topnews

Forgiveness? WHERE is this forgiveness thingie when it comes to Democrats or moderates? Anyone else recall what Ensign, Coburn, Sanford and other GOPers said about ex-President Clinton? The Fellowship apparently excels at one thing - christian hypocrisy.

- - -

b) Saaed Mortazavi, "The Butcher of the Press"
Iran's regime is in one hell of a bind. It obviously did not expect that Iran's citizens would object to its Chicago-styled election plans. The riots and marches that followed shook the ayatollahs to their very robes. The crackdowns that have followed have been violent, bloody, and murderous.

It is about to get worse. Saaed Mortazavi is the State prosecutor who really gets into his job. Assuming that your job is rape, torture, and murder of Iranians who you accuse of committing "political" crimes, ie, independent thinking.

Saaed is warmly regarded as a murderer and is lovingly named "Butcher" by Iranians who have crossed paths with this psychopath. For the Iranian government to send Saaed to deal with the hundreds of Iranians who were arrested over the past week, the message is clear. The ayatollahs are so scared of their own people, that the only response they could think of was to kill and torture anyone who dissents from the ayatollahs' iron fisted rule. By assigning The Butcher Saaed to this task, they aim to turn this green revolution into a blood red one.

The US National Soccer team, in an effort to support the Iranian players who have been arrested or banned for life because they dared sport the color green on their uniform, may be wearing green jerseys for the FIFA final on Sunday. That would be great.
- - -

c) BRAKING GNUS HEADLINE
Fox News apologizes to Gov. Mark Sanford for mis-identifying him as a "Democrat"

While briefly covering his adultery and recent trip to his sex partner in Argentina, Fox constantly flashed his name like this "Gov. Mark Sanford (D-SC)" just like they did with Ensign, .

Oh, and every Faux Gnus reporter covering Ensign or Sanford is guaranteed to claim that both sides of the aisle have the sex outside of marriage. Rupert Murdoch demands that they do. Except, only the GOPers try to force their religious beliefs on the rest of us, while they studiously ignore their own rules.

- - -

d) Oklahoma hookers crave salt and fat

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/24/national/a165045D26.DTL

I don't even know where to begin with a story like this. Not even a dip?