Just a note on this Labor Day, that some jobs are bit too much labor for the money. While jobs are tight, this is one ad (sent to me by one of my colleagues from China) that you do not want to answer. The business man (who appears a non-Chinese man working in China) looking for “open minded ladies” appears to be really an ad for a highly educated prostitute. What is interesting is the claim to be working in various cities including New York. If that were the case, he could find himself in the custody of less than opened officers.
Continue reading “Labor Day Special: Businessman In China Seeks “Open Minded Ladies” But You Might Want To Read The Fine Print”
Category: Bizarre
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
There are gigantic salt deposits under the state of Louisiana. Geologists tell us the salt dome under Assumption Parish is about the same size as Mt. Everest. Some of the deposits are as deep as 35,000 feet as shown in this not-to-scale drawing. In fact, huge salt deposits are under large patches of the North American continent along the Mississippi River valley all the way up to Lake Erie. The city of Cleveland is sitting on top of a large salt deposit.
Salt settled out of the water when these areas were part of the ocean as the continent of North America was forming. We have all seen what happens if you dissolve salt in water. It reaches a saturation point, where no more salt can be dissolved. At that point, the excess salt settles to the bottom. That process is still going on at the surface in places like the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Once the water evaporates, it leaves behind places like the famed Bonneville Salt Flats. The excess salt in the water in those formative years of this continent settled out into enormous deposits. The primary deposits of salt are deep underground, as far as ten thousand feet or more. However, like glacier ice, solid crystal salt becomes somewhat plastic under great pressure. At ten thousand feet, the overburden of rock and sediment creates pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch. Salt deposits find weak places in the rock, and start squeezing upward in plumes, called “salt domes.” These extrusions come nearer the surface, making the salt more accessible so it can be mined. When I lived in Louisiana as a kid, I remember the salt mines being an everyday topic of conversation. The salt is not only used for food, but has many industrial uses as well. During World War Two, the salt mines provided essential minerals used in the manufacture of ammunition and high explosives. Salt mining in Louisiana has been going on since before the Civil War. Some of the mine shafts go down as much as ten thousand feet, and some of the salt caverns that have been mined are enormous.
Continue reading “Bayou Corne Sinkhole: A Growing Enviornmental Disaster in Louisiana”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
In yet another sign of the apocalypse by ignorance, a recently released poll by Public Policy shows that 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans believe Barack Obama was more responsible than George W. Bush for the inept federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The poll asked: “Who do you think was more responsible for the poor response to Hurricane Katrina: George W. Bush or Barack Obama?” The results were startling. Only 28 percent picked the right answer and 44 percent answered “Not sure.” Never mind that at the time of the great storm Barack Obama could only get into the White House by invitation or that he had barely a year under his belt in the U.S. Senate, the state with a quarter of its population being deemed functionally illiterate blames the current President.
Submitted by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
It has happened again. This time in Logan, West Virginia. Schoolteacher Nikki Bailey came home from visiting a sick friend in the hospital, only to find a work crew from CTM Industries removing the last few pieces of her belongings from her house. The workers told Ms. Bailey they had been sent by a bank to clean out her house for foreclosure.
There is one minor detail. Her house was paid off in full twenty-five years ago. She showed reporters around the house, and everything was gone to the bare walls. Her pictures, diplomas, awards, and all her belongings.
Continue reading “Another Foreclosure Bungled: West Virginia this time”
Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Most readers of Jonathan Turley’s blog are concerned with the direction that this country has taken of late. In truth the problems we see are merely the manifestations of a long term trend that has resulted in a lack of respect for our republican form of government as defined by our Constitution. One merely has to go through the range of stories covered only in this past week’s Jonathan Turley blogs, to understand that we are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history. The issue to me is whether our country goes fully down the road towards empire. The phenomenon of a nation with overwhelming military superiority becoming imperial is a drama played out over and again over eons on the world’s stage. With empire perforce comes the trappings of an imperial state and with it the creation of an elite class defined by the term “nobility.” When a society defines an elite, whether called “the Nobility”; “the Cream of the Crop”; “The Upper Crust”; or even “Celebrities”; you can be certain the need to have an “underclass” becomes imperative. From a psychological standpoint once someone has the need to define themselves as being “elite”, they of necessity have to have people of “lesser worth” to compare themselves to and to differentiate their status. For a society to maintain this status hierarchy there then arises the necessity to have the “underclass” see ”their betters” as superior beings, living superior lives to their own. The “elite” must by definition be more beautiful, more wise and smarter than the “mob” beneath them. The “elite” set the trends and the fashions and it seems the “mob” is always one or two steps behind their lead. I believe that this is what we are observing today in our country. As an example within the past month we have been treated to the spectacle of one cable news network (CNN) devoting 24 hours of exclusive coverage to the birth of an heir to the English Throne.
To my mind there is no person in America who exemplifies the trend to establish a 21st Century nobility in this country, via celebrity, than the man now known as “The Donald”, the sadly ubiquitous Mr. Trump. As a New Yorker at the beginning of this man’s rise to fame, I watched with amusement and then disgust as he turned himself into a “brand” that to us common folk represented wealth, fame and its attendant luxury. Continue reading “Trumped!”
It appears that, if you live in Detroit, there is no escaping debt — not even with your own death. Detroit’s funeral directors received a curious message for the city last month reading “FYI, city of Detroit can’t process death certificates because they have no paper and don’t have money to buy any.” It is the ultimate hellscape scenario: you cannot even legally die. The question is how this refusal to issue death certificates will affect the myriad of insurance and legal obligations of surviving families. Vendors are now refusing to issue credit to the city and the paper vendor has demanded cash. The city refused, so families have been left with the undead.
Government officials and environmentalists have been struggling to deal with a crisis in the loss of honeybees in the United States — a loss that threatens a major part of our economy. Pesticides are believed to be the culprit and companies have been under closer scrutiny as the crisis over the massive loss of bees worsens. Now, Ben Hill Griffin Inc., one of the largest citrus growers, has been found to have violated rules on the use of pesticides that resulted in the killing of millions of bees. However, the fine for the violation is just $1,500. By the way, that is not the maximum fine.
If David Wayne Jordan, 36, goes to prison, he is likely to be viewed as the modern Robin Hood. In this case, the man of Bellingham forest was using his skill with a bow to bring marijuana to the men of Whatcom County Jail. The arrow with a small baggie of pot missed the alleged target, the second-floor recreation area. After his arrest, Jordan insisted that he was aiming at a squirrel. Presumably, the squirrel would eat the pot, become disoriented and then fall to its death outside of the prison wall.
International media is reporting that Kim Jong-un ordered his ex girlfriend, Hyon Song-wol and members of her orchestra machine-gunned to death shortly after watching one of their popular performances. They were accused of the rather incongruous crimes of making pornography and possessing bibles. The notion of a cabal of bible-thumping pornographers would be laughable in most countries but perfectly consistent in “the second happiest place on Earth.” Indeed, the bizarre environment created in North Korea makes it very difficult to dismiss stories that would initially appear a hoax. The fact that this is considered in the realm of possibility says much about the state of North Korea.
A California Sutter County District Attorney Carl Adams has been named a “person of interest” in the suspected arson of the Yuba City home of Sarah Garibay, 32. Garibay was the mistress of Adams, who is married and the father of three. While Adams could well be entirely innocent, but his conduct in the matter at a minimum raises questions of his fitness to continue in office.
Continue reading “California Prosecutor Named As “Person of Interest” In Torching Of Lover’s Home”
Many people were horrified at the death of 88-year-old World War II veteran Delbert “Shorty” Belton in the parking lot of his Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge. Belton survived the Battle of Okinawa where he was wounded but lost his life in a parking lot at the hands of teenagers Kenan Adams-Kinard and Demetruis Glenn, both 16, in Spokane, Washington. Now, it has been disclosed that Adams-Kinard says that the whole thing was a crack deal gone bad with Belton as the dealer in a type of Geriatric edition of Breaking Bad. The teen said that the whole thing started when they went to get a “zip of crack cocaine from Shorty,”
Russian police have shutdown an art gallery in the latest attack on free speech under President Vladimir Putin. The police declared a painting to be illegal and pornographic because it depicted Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in women’s underwear and another of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church covered in tattoos. The paintings were seized from the Museum of Power. Last year, we saw how a protester was arrested for spitting on the image of Putin during a demonstration. It appears that after years of cultivating a cult of personality with action-hero photo ops and staged acts, Putin is not about to let a bunch of artists mock his well constructed image.
There is a controversy brewing at Tulane Law School where I began my academic career. The law school was the scene of a confrontation between controversial conservative filmmaker and activist James O’Keefe and former U.S. Attorney James Letten whose office handled the prosecution of O’Keefe for his entry in the office of Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu under false pretenses. Letten is now an Assistant Dean at the law school. Letten never explained why he recused himself from the case but O’Keefe suggests that he was responsible for leaking confidential information to the media. In the video below posted and edited by O’Keefe, Letten confronted O’Keefe and accuses him of “terrorizing” his wife and violating state and federal law by appearing at the law school. Letten calls O’Keefe and his crew a bunch of “hobbits” and berates the filmmaker. While I am no fan of O’Keefe, I am afraid that I do not see the basis for the alleged crimes by O’Keefe or the basis for his being held by law enforcement outside of the law school. The school has banned O’Keefe from the campus after the confrontation with Letten.
Stacey Dean Rambold, 54, is a former teacher who confessed to a sexual relationship with Cherice Morales, a 14-year-old girl at his high school — a girl who later committed suicide. Despite the original charge of multiple counts of statutory rape and a sentencing to 15 years in prison, Yellowstone County District Judge G. Todd Baugh suspended all of that sentence but 31 days and then gave him credit for one day in jail. That left a sentence of 30 days for statutory rape.
We have previously discussed how students are being punished for out-of-school postings and statements on social media sites, a trend that I have criticized. Now, with the Supreme Court expanding the power of school officials to discipline students and teachers for outside activities, schools are creating their own surveillance and monitoring systems in our society. The Glendale Unified School District has hired a company called Geo Listening to monitor the conversations and postings of all of its students to detect any areas of concern. It is the latest example of how privacy in America is dying by a thousand papercuts.