Thank you Tammy Bruce for alerting the Twitterverse to this great video.

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The road crews that plowed the main street into our subdivision blocked every driveway with a two to three foot wall of ice. When I got to the street working from the front door forward I realized the snow drift the plow left was solid ice.

Just as I was ready to put down my plastic snow shovel and get a pick and metal shovel the Good Samaritan drove by. I don’t know his name.

The man was driving a black pick up truck with a snow plow attached at the front. He motioned for me to get out of the way. Next thing I knew he had shortened my task by a good hour or more by moving the wall of ice out of my way. Hooorah! He looked out his passenger window and asked me, “Did that help?” I said, “Yes sir,” and he drove off into the sunrise.

Thank the Lord for the random act of kindness and thank you Good Samaritan in the black pick up truck whoever you are.

My thanks also to the snow crews that kept our streets plowed even in the dead of night. Despite being eight miles from civilization our neighborhood was clear for emergency vehicles.

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My fav Annapolis blog has some snow video!

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Clever snow related story at Hometown Annapolis

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Dystonia is not fun, it isn’t funny. It is a painful movement disorder with life-changing consequences. It is not fully understood other than it is a unique physical neurological condition. The two-hundred-fifty-thousand of us that have the third most common movement disorder in the US just below Parkinsons, did not appreciate all the bad press. At least I didn’t. We like awareness to avoid discrimination and to help  gain understanding and acceptance as any handicapped individual would like but not poorly researched news hysteria.

I applaud Dr. Novella for his candor.

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via Delusional Duck.

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Why Governor O’Malley makes my skin crawl. He NEVER convened a committee to study sex crimes and punishment in this state as he was supposed to and never saw that new tough laws were enforced. Now he is suddenly ready to announce an effort to create tough new laws? Huh? What is wrong with this picture?

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You have to read it to believe it. Environmental madness run amok. Beetles over families in O’Malley’s Maryland. Lusby residents above the cliffs face continuing erosion and the potential loss of their homes and the state will not allow cliff repairs to save the homes because a BEETLE needs the cliff face to live.

This is simply madness.

Thanks to Larry Hogan who alerted us all to this on FaceBook:

“Larry Hogan Environmental regulation run wild in Maryland! 80 Calvert County familes risk losing their homes, because O’Malley’s DNR officials would rather save the beetles, and the beetles love the eroding cliffs the homes are dangling from? O’Malley official says they “try to accomodate the wishes of the landowner but, we can’t …do it at the expense of the beetles”. What about the endangered people who own the property?”

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via DickMorris.com.

Please read this. Progressives in Washington are planning to shove this down our throats and Dick knows how it is to be done. When I read this I was aghast that any politician would have the nerve to subvert the legislative process. I subscribe to Dick’s regular emails at DickMorris.com and usually find them very insightful.

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Great news!  Have to tell Father Daly?

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My impression at the time was that the officers involved were taking a casual approach to vehicle safety. I didn’t want to call. In years past I served as a Reserve Police Officer at a California city police agency. The types of police behavior I have observed in Maryland are unlike any I ever saw in California. We were taught in our various schools and academies that as police officers were morally obligated to set an example. We were required by law to break the traffic regulations only with emergency lights and sirens engaged. Failure to do so could subject an officer to serious discipline or even termination.

Unfortunately I remember what I’ve seen on the road, and I am still too frequently unimpressed. Some years back I observed a sheriffs marked patrol car and state patrol running lights only, no sirens, up the hill Southbound on route 261 at the NRL well over sixty mph. A blind hill. One was in the proper lane the other was alongside the other in the lane for on-coming traffic. Both of these officers were damned lucky there was no one coming the other direction.

A couple of years ago I saw a deputy run a late yellow which turned red as the last half of his vehicle went East bound across highway on route 231.  I also recall a county speed trap where a vehicle exceeding the speed limit was waved by as the car behind it going the same speed was stopped. The first car had FP plates.

There is obvious effort by the Sheriff to set standards and I believe he intends to do what is ncessary, but I told him on the phone that I believed there is a culture of reckless driving in maryland and police officers and their families are part of the problem.  Just last week I saw an unmarked blue police vehicle on highway tailgating another car in the fast lane and the operator of the police car was leaned into his cellular telephone.

I regularly see drivers of FP and FOP plates disobeying traffic regulations. Excessive speed, tailgating, gliding through stop signs. It is not uncommon. It is all too common.

Vehicle safety is one of those moral standards that starts from the top down and the finest have to set the example and not be part of the problem.

To the Sheriff’s credit, I have seen more of the state police officers taking what I consider unsafe risks than I ever have the Sheriffs deputies.

I would ask the Sheriff to accept to reports of the behavior of persons driving vehicles with police personal tags. Like the one the one on Mother’s Day one year that passed me on north bound Highway four at well over seventy miles in a fifty-five mph zone in a driving rain.

Next I would ask him to consider that issuance of the FP or FOP plates be considered a privilege and that any vehicle operator in a vehicle with such plates be required to observe all traffic regulations. Soomeone has to set the examples.

In Maryland, the majority of drivers DO NOT stop at stop signs. If tailgating were an Olympic sport the gold medal winners win be from Maryland. Gliding through red lights for right turns is common place and speeding on our two lane highways must be considered a right by majority. A speed limit sign is meaningless. Drivers that do observe the speed limit are harassed by tailgaters. Stopping at a stop sign often elicits a confused look or waving arms by the driver behind the stopped vehicle.  To that moron the stop sign is actually a yeild sign. Pick any uncontrolled intersection in the county and watch. The police do it too!

It doesn’t make much effort to make these observations and begin to wonder who is setting the examples in our state. Police managers need to get out on the road in unmarked vehicles and asses the situation because aggressive reckless driving is pandemic in this state and we have too few example setters setting the standard of behavior.

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When I get tired of reading I can play old radio plays (mp3 files) that I downloaded from Zootradio.com my favorite old radio play site.  Using a male to male stereo cable I connect the headphone jack to a set of small amplified computer speakers. The Kindle DX brings new life to Sherlock Holmes episodes of the 40’s. Oh and don’t forget Orson Well and the Third Man.

The coolest part of shopping for Kindle books are the free books Amazon has made available. Amazon has quite a few Jack London titles. I’m a big fan of London. When I lived in California I visited Wolf House and his grave. When I was a kid I think I read White Fang three times.

Since I wrote my first comments on the device my Kindle fell from the seat of the car onto the curb as I got out of the car.  It was either damaged at this point or after placing it back in the car the car door slammed against one corner. When I got home I discovered the display had been damaged. I contacted Amazon using their on-line procedure of sending a form email first and then accepting telephone call from a support person. Amazon truly impressed me.  The warranty took care of my broken Kindle. Amazon had a new one in my mail box with forty-eight hours.

When I purchased the Kindle I bought this Belkin cover for it. In m ost circumstances it is all I needed but for longer trips I may consider a larger container with more padding. In a few days I should receive the clip on light I ordered for the Kindle. The reading light situation isn’t perfect in my home. I figure one of the small battery powered lamps will do the trick.  My only hope is the battery life of the lamp will be as good as the Kindle’s.   The Kindle has given me a great deal of enjoyment in the four or so months that I have owned it.  The good things about it out weigh the few gripes I have. Maybe I should have also purchased the extended warranty?  Perhaps you are thinking about purchasing a Kindle yourself. Feel free to use the links on this page to make your purchase and support DougWeb. While I am home and not able to work every little bit helps.

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1. The oil company filled my tank at the end of Winter when we had typically stopped using oil heat. They had NEVER delivered this late ever. Why did they? Because they could deliver at a much higher price to the consumer and then themselves take advantage of much lower home heating oil prices in the Summer months.

2. Once the company’s tanks were full at the lowest prices they could find they were ready to change the steadily climbing oil price we always see in the heating season. Sure enough I have been sitting on a full tank of heating oil since late March I believe. (Purchased at a Winter price) I usually purchased refills in September before the prices really started to climb. Funny how the oil company never refilled in the Summer months so we could save a little.

3. The price of home heating oil is steadily climbing as predicted and I won’t need oil now until the PEAK of the heating season. I will be paying the higher price the company dreams up for “guaranteed price customers.”

4. Whether I choose to use oil or use wood, I am now locked out of saving monthly becuase these greedy extortionists now want money every month of the year ostensibly to help me pay large bills (which have gone down this year some.) Heating oil companies and now INVESTMENT companies. They are involved in the tricky finances designed to maximize their profits at our expense. Getting us all to sign up was very easy last year compared to this year. They are, in my opinion, outside of the capitalist market inside the new greed market that charges whatever the market will bear and then whatever else they can get away with. A bean counter somewhere made a hefty bonus dreaming up this whopper.

I may have actually saved money in the long run by paying the higher, non-guaranteed price of oil in the Winter and refilling myself on the non-guaranteed price in the Summer!. That brings up another question, why does Maryland allow a two-tiered oil price system where those that don’t have credit or do not want agreements have to pay a higher price for oil than those that do. It sure seems like discrimination to me. (Seniors, the poor, the business savvy.) Since I moved here I have always thought that energey was just another racket in Maryland, with our government looking the other way as long as the taxes were paid.

5. Their terms change at whim. regardless of the agreement I paid each bill as a I got it thinking the agreement ran October to February as my heating season always did. No it ran twinkles months. The greedy trolls didn’t want me to pay for the oil since they were no longer an oil company. They’re a bank, an investment form, another sales and marketing oligarchy just like all the rest.

I hate sneaky businesses that make offers with their fingers crossed behind their backs and I hate lousy customer service. I went to this company because they actually picked up the telephone when I had a questions. The previous company in this area, also a large one, never returned calls, and if they kept appointments they were never kept on the first try or they were late. The reason of course is that they are no longer an oil company delivering a service at a fair market price, they are a bank, an investment firm, a financial house looking at dollars and their bonus checks.

The Feds and State of Maryland probably appreciates this maneuver because they can expect higher fuel taxes the way the oil company, excuse me the oil bank, has the deliveries timed to the government’s and their advantage.

All these little changes in many industries have been occurring before our very eyes. Every month each one adds more and more stress to the consumer. The bank managers and oil bank managers don’t worry about it because their bonuses keep them up with the times.

As a senior citizen in Calvert County and a resident of Maryland I am sick of being treated this way. If government and industry has its way we will all be much worse off as the years go on. Old age may be the worst time of our lives thanks to American business and American government.

We have reached that point for American business. One customer doesn’t matter unless the bill isn’t being paid. When they lose one or two it is of no concern because there are no enough people to take the place of everyone the business loses. Now all American business cares about is squeezing every last penny out of every customer however they can accomplish it.

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***VANDAL VACATION*** from WWW.REVOK1.COM on Vimeo.

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Teresa Kimari, Petaluma, California In Memory of my Friend

In 1977 I was the best man at the wedding of Kenneth  and Teresa. I had grown up with Kenny Kimari. We were inseparable friends since I moved to California from Ohio back in 1963. When Kenny met Teresa so did I. Even though Kenny lived far off in Northern California near Eureka at the time I vacationed up there just to be with a friend that I considered my brother. When Kenny met Teresa I knew in my heart she was his special jewel. The find of a lifetime. Men have scoured the world over for the perfect wife and Kenny found Teresa dispatching police officers for a small Humboldt County town. They were peas in a  pod.

We were all in police work by 1977. Kenny was a police officer, I was a dispatcher at a bay area police agency. We spoke the same language and understood shift work, stress, maddening work hours, and all the sacrifices.

It was pretty easy for me to see why Kenny loved Teresa so much.  We all three became close friends. She accepted me into her new world with Kenny because she knew how much Kenny meant to me as a friend. Teresa has been my best friend for some thirty-two years sharing Kenny and their life together. Last week MS finally took her away from Kenny and their three children and from friends like me. People that met her and loved her for her smarts, her common sense, her sense of family, her wonderful kids, and the marriage she and Kenny worked so hard on for all of those years.

Last year I got a chance to say goodbye to Teresa when I visited California after having been gone for seven years. I cried while I held her hands as she lay there in the hospital and she would have none of it. That’s how she was.  She switched the conversation to catching up on everything we had missed just like real best friends do. Even so I was a devastated that I was going to lose my friend that couldn’t beat the disease she fought so hard to conquer. She on the other hand was very happy to see me kept chatting away.

My best friend Teresa Kimari is gone, but I have pictures that Kenny gave me. One was of her dispatching police calls at one of her former agencies and the other was the wedding party where I was Kenny’s best man. Kenny was the best man at my wedding but then you probably guessed that.

Teresa was an advocate of the MS Society and despite her handicap, and as the disease slowly took her mobility, she fought hard to fund the fight for a cure.  This is her memorial page at the Society. Visit the page if you knew my best pal Teresa and remember her with a donation in her name. Keep Kenny and his kids your prayers.

Teresa made that last police broadcast. She’s 10-7, and off duty, but her voice will ring in the hearts and minds of those officers she watched over and protected and especially in the hearts of those like me that really got to know her as the wife of my life-long friend. I am so thankful that I still have Kenny and his kids. Teresa left a legacy only the most wonderful mom and friend could leave. I see Teresa in each of the kids. I will always treasure the memories of Teresa Kimari and as hard as it is Teresa,  I will do my best to celebrate your life and stop tearing up every time I think of losing you.

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The other day I received an email request from a Yahoo email account. The student was in a two-day rush to complete a story on what sound like a pro-graffiti event recently held in the San Francisco Bay Area. The student used the Fox News line, to keep the story “fair and balanced.”

Most of the requests I get are intended as harassment. News outlets use real email accounts that identify who they are, provide telephone numbers, give themselves time to write a story, and schedule an interview. I tried to be polite:

I am a 1983 BCA gradudate of SFSU. Never once have I had an interview from a student of SFSU but at least one or more so-called “professors” have spoken very poorly of me on their public website without ever having actually met me. So I’m not enthusiastic about interviewing. The NoGraf Network and graffiti victims are usually labeled as racists, right wing whackos, idiots, and haters by those that promote vandalism in our communities anyway and my interviews have almost always been used to stir the pot against the anti-graffiti movement. (e.g. taken out of content)

I guess all I can say is that San Francisco is a victim community with a very serious graffiti problem. I suggest that you visit your Department of Public Works, the police, a graffiti victim or two. Much of what I believe is located at the Anti-Graffiti FAQ at http://www.dougweb.com/faq.html. My efforts are now focused on helping the NoGraf Corp at http://www.nograffiti.com in any way I can as a Director of that non-profit.

Because of the various threats I have received over the years I also have to ignore emails from the free and anonymous email services like yahoo or gmail. If you had had time to send a request on school letterhead I may have considered a response. Since I have absolutely no way of determining who you really are I must respectfully decline. It appears you may have left the other side of the story to the last minute anyway so how could you do it justice?

Regards,
Doug Smith

——————

Had this person done his homework he would have found many in the San Francisco community to be against vandalism of all kinds. The police, homes associations, churches and so on. I had the great privilege once to be invited as a guest to a news conference where then Mayor Willie Brown spoke eloquently against graffiti vandalism. He and I were on opposite sides of some political issues but I always found him to be rooted in common sense when it came to the image of his city adn the safety of neighborhoods. The San Francisco Department of Public Works has always been and remains to this day one of the most forward thinking city departments when it comes to graffiti abatement and the quality of the neighborhoods. The trouble has been that the number and persistence of the vandals in that part of California has always been a challenge for any anti-graffiti movement. The vandalism is encouraged by bizarre opinions of far-left students and some educators and groups that have been taken in by the promises of vandals to use only regulated walls.

Other great anti-graffiti cities exist in the SF Bay area. San Jose comes to mind. MY associations in the past with city employees and volunteers in San Jose from the abatement crews to gang interventionists have always been positive. San Jose city government always did its best to battle vandalism.

I had been away away from California for seven years when I went back for a visit in 2008. What I did see there was that vandals are more prolific and abatement on State property…Well I have to be careful here. I saw a lot of vandalism on State freeways, signs, and over passes. I can’t speak to the effectiveness of the abatement programs.It was extremely sad to see.

What I do know is that the City of Santa Rosa, California took the lead in 2008 and sponsored an Anti-Graffiti Conference with the NoGraf Corp (of which I am a Director.) Now I am particularly proud of that department because of their long-time anti-graffiti efforts and because my best friend was an officer there for many years. SPD is a superb police department. SPD rocks!

No, it wouldn’t have taken much for this probably pro-graffiti student to discover there is much more to interviewing one person to be fair and balanced when writing about an event that may have glorified vandalism. So to all of you young aspiring journalism students, take it from a former BCA grad. Do your homework, use more than the Internet to get your story and start writing weeks before your deadline.

Hats off to graffiti fighters everywhere especially the abatement volunteers. America’s unsung community heroes. Through your persistence cities and towns learn to remain vigilant.

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There are search companies that scan websites, even personal websites like mine, looking for “shudder” stolen content. Their bots are anonymous, that is uninvited, disobey the robots.txt protocols, and take what they want – if they can get through. Since most of these commercial secret police do not behave as a bot should behave certain data strings or the lack of same give them away and the bot are blocked. I never realized after having used a WordPress protection plugin what some of these blocked were attempting to do. What else were they wanting to use MY content for I wonder?

Then there is the new crop of real secret and private police silently making their own lists. American business is now scanning the blogosphere for blogs that their clients want tracked for political, commercial, or law enforcement purposes. Tame personal blogs like mine. When you don’t consider yourself a threat to democracy and the American way but still find an American business gathering your pages for thorough analysis and you don’t know who their customer is, it is more than a little creepy. It is stifling. (I don’t see the press even writing about it. The press is paying those other companies to scan our blogs to make sure our content isn’t actually their content.)

Then there are the those whom I believe are claiming to do one thing but perhaps actually doing another. Groups, and perhaps companies, looking for ways to hack into your private sites so that spam can be placed against your wishes.

After having worked in the software industry I am really worried about the great institution we call American business. What I saw in the business gives credence to the creation of these new Internet denizens claiming to be part of the business community. What I learned in the 90’s was that American business now uses trickery, propaganda, and lawyers to put competitors out of business. What we no longer use as the effective measure of success is product quality, value, and customer service so the market can decide.

American business now goes for the jugular and that extends to their interactions with customers. Customer service is severely lacking. Problems are not solved they are avoided or made so difficult to solve that the customer gives up. Fees are egregious but touted as necessary for a company to survive. The companies can somehow still afford to pay huge salaries even while making layoffs and reducing quality and service.

The threats to the common blogger and consumer on the Internet are no different than anywhere else in this environment. American business or capitalism as we thought we knew it doesn’t exist. (Not entirely true there are still honest companies but they are in peril.) Greedy bean counters are not interested in charging what the market will bear and provide service, quality, and value all the while while maintaining their honesty and integrity. No the new new marketing, sales, and bean counting elite have decided capitalism means they must take huge salaries and charge what the market will bear and then whatever else they can get away with. They remain in command of their market share only if they put competition and critics out of business by whatever means available to the company – all honesty, integrity, value, and service aside. The success of a company is no longer determined by service, quality, value, honesty, and integrity. The better product, the better concept, the better service may die. Success is determined by greed.

Bloggers need to start watching their logs more closely. Most have very little to fear unless we actually lose the First Amendment someday, but some American business may do what they can to paint you into a corner. I worry that blogging by individuals may be the new target of certain business and political elite.

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