Archive for June 23, 2009

NASA Activist Hansen Arrested in West Virginia

June 23, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized

NAOMA, W.Va. (AP) — Actress Darryl Hannah, NASA scientist James Hansen and other mountaintop removal mining opponents have been arrested during a protest in southern West Virginia.

State Police arrested Hannah, Hansen, former Rep. Ken Hechler and 27 other protesters Tuesday after they blocked State Route 3 near a Massey Energy subsidiary’s coal processing plant in Boone County.

They were among several hundred protesters who rallied outside an elementary school near the plant’s coal storage silo.

After the rally, the crowd marched quietly to the plant and attempted to enter the property. They were blocked by several hundred coal miners chanting “Massey.” Protesters then sat on the road and were arrested on misdemeanor charges of obstruction and impeding traffic.

I wish I had a cushy, highly-paid government job like Hansen. He gets to go agitate against essential business, break laws, and still get paid by the taxpayer.

Personally, this taxpayer is damn sick and tired of his paid agitation. The man crossed the line a long time ago and should have been fired then. He’s not a scientist and hasn’t been for a very long time, if at all.

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New Swine Flu May Have Originated in Asia

June 23, 2009 · Filed under Agriculture, Flu, Livestock

Per the NYT:

The highly unusual virus — which includes genetic bits of North American human, avian and swine flus and Eurasian swine flu — has yet to be found in any pig anywhere, with the exception of a single herd in Canada that was found infected in late April.

A carpenter who worked on the farm after visiting Mexico had been thought to have infected the herd. But in mid-June, Canadian health agencies said he was not to blame. The whole herd was culled and the virus has not been found elsewhere in Canada, which it would have been if it were endemic, since American and Canadian laboratories test thousands of flu samples to help the pork industry develop vaccines.

However a pig in Hong Kong was found to have a virus nearly matching the new flu in 2004. That flu, which had seven of the new flu’s eight genome sequences, was noted in a paper in Nature magazine on June 11, which called it a “sister virus.”

Scientists tracking the virus’s lineage have complained that there is far too little global surveillance of flu in swine. Public databases have ten times as many human and avian flu sequences as they do porcine ones, said Dr. Michael W. Shaw, a scientist in the flu division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and there are far fewer from Asia than from North America and Europe, and virtually none from South America or Africa.

“Something could have been going on there for a long time and we wouldn’t know,” Dr. Shaw said.

But national veterinary officials said no close relatives of the new virus were in any of the large private North American databases either.

That makes it most likely, they said, that it has been circulating in Asia.

Interesting.

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First Coast Tea Party

June 23, 2009 · Filed under Uncategorized

2 Jul 2009 – 5:30 PM -7:00 PM

Jacksonville, FL

July 2 Freedom Rally!

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted YES to legally separate from Great Britain and become a free nation. Two days later, on July 4th, the final document known as the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted by twelve colonies.

Kick off your Independence Day weekend by joining the First Coast Tea Party at our July 2 Freedom Rally!

“We the people” of the First Coast will gather in Jacksonville to support:
• Fiscal responsibility: Stop debt, bailouts, pork projects and wasteful government spending.
• Limited government: We oppose the government takeover of healthcare and the increased taxes to fund it.
• Individual liberty and responsibility: The United States is a constitutional republic, and we do not want our country’s core principles changed.

WHAT: First Coast Tea Party Freedom Rally

WHERE: The Jacksonville Landing

WHEN: Thursday, July 2nd
5:30 p.m. Freedom Rally at the Jacksonville Landing

BRING: Your friends, family, and neighbors–along with your own handmade signs

We urge First Coast residents to join us on July 2. Stand up for our liberties, our Constitution, and the principles of our Founding Fathers. Please make copies of this flyer and distribute to everyone you know. Working together, we can Reclaim America!

The First Coast Tea Party is a grassroots organization of everyday Americans protesting irresponsible fiscal policies and intrusive government.

RSVP now at www.firstcoastteaparty.org

If you are mad as hell at your elected “representatives”, now is the time to stand up and be counted.

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