The story came to the wires as a simple article about a whole country being cut off from the internet, but the real story here  is how a 75 year old woman makes her daily bread.  Light bulb moment, maybe we could implement this program in the good ole USA.  When you’re old and wore out from working the factories and sweat shops, grab a shovel and settle down to some of that easy life. Man it’s enough to make a good republican have wet dreams… 

An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighboring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday. The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fiber-optic cable on 28 March.

Here’s the jump: Georgian woman cuts off web access to whole of Armenia

I could put up a big list and go on and on about all the different ones, mainly groups formed to influence the healthcare debate of late, and now the airways are literally flooded with ads supported by the great influx of money from these “Organizations” to the many campaigns.

Which brings us to the jump de jour: (NPR)Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law … a sorted tale of how two “businessmen” wanted to sell a prison to AZ. Upon finding that there were not enough prisoners to fill the thing, they then set about to create a demand for their new prison.

Be certain to check out the article about one of the “Organizations” that helped the two entrepreneurs on this jump also at NPR: Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny

"This is the 9^th straight month of private sector job growth in the midst of a devastating recession that has put a serious strain mostly on the poor and middle class. There has been a total of 863,000 private sector jobs created in 2010, exceeding the total created under the Bush/Cheney regime."

Read that again: 2010 has had more private job creation than during the entire 8 year tenure of George W. Bush.

Here’s the jump: It’s Official: More Private Sector Jobs Created In 2010 Than During Entire Bush Years

So this is where the Tea Baggies, Republicans, and general clod-hoppers would take the country.  A country where 5 men can brutalize a woman in the street…..MAN YEAH!

I can understand the subduing of a trouble maker, but the guy with the shoe to the head should do some serious time in the big house.

Well, this reporter has done the research for us, have a look-see…

Do I like the bill?  Well, it is a start and its all we have.  So yes.  And here are my main reasons why:

Personally I have been classified as uninsurable since the age of 18.  And this is probably the result of pure medical misdiagnosis more than any other attributing factor.  But the record is there and that is that.  When I have tried to purchase health insurance in the past, they almost laughed at me.

I could go on with a list of things that I think will improve our lot, but what really blows me away is the introduction of one tiny concept into our whole healthcare systems.  It is the one thing that has the power to ultimately make America healthier.  This concept is so foreign to our present system that it is being called radical by some.  The concept of providing incentives to the medical system to actually keep people healthy, instead of the current system of paying only to treat the already sick.  Do 100 gallbladder surgeries and 15 of them have to go back to the hospital and you get paid less.  Do 100 gallbladder surgeries and no one has to go back to the hospital, then you sir are paid more.  What a novel idea.  One that is long over due.

Graphs include, “United States National Debt and the Presidents Responsible”, “United States National Debt 1791 to Present”, “Change in Average Revenue and Spending by Administration”,  and my favorite, “United States National Debt versus Percent of Gross Domestic Product”.

Here’s the Jump: United States National Debt

Bush team, Congress negotiate $700B bailout

Levity aside, this guy should be occupying a cot at the Club Fed instead of a seat in the U.S. Senate.  If only half of the what the evidence shows is true, then this one is a traitor to his countrymen and should be afforded a traitor’s trial and a traitor’s fate.  These people make decisions that affect people’s everyday lives and decisions that have literally cost many people their very lives.  To think, for even an instant, that some of those decisions were based on favors or gifts or money, is truly disgusting.  If I were an Alaskan voter, the only future decision I would want him making is whether he wanted to work in the laundry or in the license-plate shop.

The sad Reality of the situation is bleak.  We all know that the Justice Department has been heavily padded with Republican operatives and it’s perplexing that they would bring these charges at this time. 

Jump to Anchorage Daily News

I ran across this in the LA TIMES  and want to share it with you.

Obama without his script

Judging by his reaction to the Georgia-Russia crisis, Obama’s make-believe presidency isn’t ready for prime time.

Jonah Goldberg
August 12, 2008

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a “prenaugural” address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.
It’s an understandable ploy. More than most candidates, Barack Obama needs to appear like a plausible commander in chief because he’s not only inexperienced (during the last Summer Olympics he was still an Illinois state legislator), he’s novel. The name, the skin color, the cosmopolitan upbringing: Fair or not, all of these things give Obama the aura of otherness that is both part of his charm and a potential handicap.
If the would-be president can seem plausibly presidential, voting for him might not seem like such a crapshoot. It all makes sense, even if it fosters an air of presumptuousness.
(David Letterman recently offered a list of the top 10 signs Obama is overconfident. Among them: “Asked guy at Staples, ‘Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?’ “; “Having head measured for Mt. Rushmore;” and “Offered McCain a job in gift shop at the Obama Presidential Library.”)
Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend. Taking advantage of the Olympic distraction in Beijing, the Russians invaded South Ossetia, a territory on the north side of Georgia, a democratic U.S. ally. Out of the blocks, the Russians bombed civilians, rolled tanks across an internationally recognized border and threatened to launch an all-out, destabilizing war. Now it looks as if their army has cut Georgia in two.
Moreover, Russian bombs reportedly targeted the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia on its way to the Mediterranean — the only oil pipeline in Central Asia not under Russian control. Russia is tightening its chokehold on oil and gas at precisely the moment energy costs have become the paramount domestic issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Obama’s response?
First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and “restraint” from both sides — followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.
The invasion of Georgia elicited a wan written communique instead of the sort of exciting rhetoric we’ve come to expect from his make-believe presidency. But he did make it in front of the cameras the next day for a rally celebrating his vacation in Hawaii. He promised “to go body surfing at some undisclosed location.”
During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama — who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups — proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”
Now, of course, this is a bit unfair in that Obama had planned his no doubt well-deserved vacation for a very long time. But presidential vacations are always well planned — and often interrupted.
Indeed, President Bush’s jaunt to the Olympics as a “sports fan” should also have been cut short the moment tanks started rolling over a country he’d proclaimed a “beacon of liberty” during his visit there in 2005. By Monday, both Bush and Obama were playing catch-up to Sen. John McCain, who seemed to have grasped the gravity from the get-go and whose support for Georgia is long-standing. He took the lead from the outset, demanding on Friday morning an emergency meeting of NATO and Western aid to the fledgling democracy.
The geopolitical significance of Russia’s invasion of Georgia at this stage is hard to gauge. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may not wish to revive the Soviet Union or the Cold War, but he clearly seeks to restore Russia’s imperial stature. And Item One on that agenda is to crush Georgia’s independence and smother hopes for NATO’s expansion to Russia’s “near abroad.”
The campaign significance for Obama is easier to calculate. He has been playacting at being presidential in order to convince voters that we live in a “new moment” with “new challenges” — and that he is the president we need for this new era.
This moment calls for more than playacting, yet Obama looks lost without a presidential script. Events in the Caucasus — and, for that matter, in Beijing — suggest that the times aren’t so new after all. Two powerful antidemocratic foes are once again flexing their muscles at a moment when America seems weak and distracted.
That is not a new challenge but a very old one. Perhaps this is not a time for a novice spouting grand rhetoric about a new page in history, but for someone who’s actually read the pages of some old, but still relevant, books. Perhaps this is not the time for playacting.
Perhaps it is not the time for body surfing?
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com