David Drake

Number One: The Tri-State Tornado on March 18, 1925:
Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were all affected by the Tri-State tornado.
Death toll: 695
Injuries: 2027

Number Two: The Natchez Tornado on May 7, 1840:
The Natchez Tornado first touched down in Concordia Parish, Louisiana then followed the Mississippi River for 7 miles before hitting Natchez Mississippi.
Death toll: 317
Injuries: 109

Number Three: The St. Louis/East St. Louis Tornado on May 27, 1896:
The St Louis tornado struck the southwest end of the city of St Louis Missouri creating a path of destruction through the urban area.
Death Toll: 255
Injuries: 1000

Number Four: The Tupelo Tornado on April 5, 1936:
The Tupelo tornado first touched down near Coffeeville and skirted the center of Tupelo but destroyed residential sections of the city.
Death Toll: 233
Injuries: 700

Number Five: The Gainesville Tornado on April 6, 1936:
The Gainesville tornado was actually a pair of funnels with the smaller one hitting north of the city and the larger one heading for downtown
Death Toll: 203
Injuries: 1600

The RNC said the ad was in legal violation because its content was misleading. Asked about the prospect of legal action from Republicans in a conference call late Monday afternoon, DNC Chairman Howard Dean responded: “Let them do it.”

The 30-second spot, slated to run on CNN and on MSNBC, highlights McCain’s comment that it would be acceptable if U.S. troops remained in Iraq for 100 years. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was talking about a peace-keeping mission, not active conflict.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama will know when it's time to drop out of the nomination race after the end of the primaries in early June.

"We want the voters to have their say. That's over on June 3," he said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Dean, saying he was speaking from experience as a candidate for president in 2004, said he won't have to force anyone from the race.

"Either of these candidates, if it's time for them to go, they'll know it and they will go," he said. "They don't need any pushing from me. You know when to get in and you know when to get out. That's just part of the deal."

The most recent poll averages from Real Clear Politics show Indiana is a dead heat, with both candidates receiving support from 45.5% of likely voters.

[...]

Manufacturing will be a key to a Clinton victory in the Indiana primary, as 20% of all those employed statewide work in manufacturing jobs. To win the state, Barack Obama needs to capture the student vote and urban voters, [He won't be able to do this. - Drake] specifically those in Indianapolis, where 25% of all votes statewide will be cast.

[...]

Students and African American voters, however, can only take Obama so far in Indiana, a state where 86% of the electorate is white. He must also reach blue-collar workers, who account for 31% of the state’s 6.3 million residents and have recently supported Clinton.

Barack Obama has taken off the gloves in his battle to win the American presidency - and in so doing has left critics wondering whether he is not just another conventional politician grubbing for votes. [Why, yes he is, thanks for noticing! - Drake]

[...]

...it is Mr Obama who has not "got it done". He is convincingly, perhaps insurmountably, ahead in the number of states won, his share of the popular votes cast, and his tally of elected delegates. But he has yet to win over enough party grandees, the "super-delegates", to be sure of securing the nomination.

If he fails to wrest Indiana from Mrs Clinton, who is slightly ahead in the polls, his campaign fears that the remaining uncommitted super-delegates will lose faith in his ability to win and back his rival instead.

[...]

Mr Obama now exhibits irritation at his need to keep explaining himself to those voters - including the white working class, older, women and Catholics - who remain stubbornly resistant to his charms. [It's not that they are stubborn, they just recognize a huckster when they see one. - Drake]

[...]

The conservative columnist David Brooks, once an admirer, complained that he has morphed into "a more conventional politician", guilty of "the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics". The liberal commentator Paul Krugman condemned Mr Obama's reliance on the message that Mrs Clinton is unlikely to overcome his lead among pledged delegates.

Council Member Dave Thune said the proposal [to make it easier to allow outdoor consumption of alcoholic beverages] has some good attributes, but he wants to make sure it doesn't get abused.

Fifty civic boosters sounded off Thursday about downtown St. Paul.

Among the concerns mentioned: A lack of retail and nightlife, too many panhandlers loitering, some decrepit buildings, no "real" grocery store and not enough incentives for businesses to set up shop.

A Chinese primary school teacher and a beautician have filed a suit against CNN in New York over remarks they say insulted the Chinese people and are seeking $1.3 billion in compensation -- $1 per person in China, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The case against the Atlanta-based cable channel, its parent company Turner Broadcasting and Jack Cafferty, the offending commentator, comes after 14 lawyers launched a similar suit in Beijing alleging that Cafferty's remarks earlier this month violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people.

Cafferty said the United States imported Chinese-made "junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food" and added: "They're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years".

CNN said Cafferty was expressing an opinion about the Chinese government, but the Foreign Ministry demanded an apology and accused the network of trying to drive a wedge between the Chinese people and leadership.

The lawsuits come amid a wave of criticism in China against Western news outlets in the wake of recent unrest in Tibet and disruptions to the Beijing Olympic torch relay abroad.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of quoting a particular passage of Scripture. The quote, however, does not appear in the Bible and is "fictional," according to biblical scholars.

In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, "The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature."

Cybercast News Service repeatedly queried the speaker's office for two days to determine where the alleged Bible quote is found. Thus far, no one has responded.

Distinguished biblical scholars, however, cast doubt on the existence of the passage.

John J. Collins, the Holmes professor of Old Testament criticism and interpretation at Yale Divinity School, said he is totally unfamiliar with Pelosi's quotation.

"(It's) not one that I recognize," Collins told Cybercast News Service. "I assume that she means this is a paraphrase. But it wouldn't be a close paraphrase to anything I know of."

Claude Mariottini, a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Cybercast News Service the passage not only doesn't exist - it's "fictional."

"It is not in the Bible," Mariottini said. "There is nothing that even approximates that."

[...]

"The quote does not exist in the Old Testament, neither in the New Testament," said the Rev. Andreas Hock, a doctor of Scripture who teaches in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Denver's St. John Vianney Seminary.

"Even in pieces or bits, (it) cannot be found in the Old Testament," he added.

Interestingly, Pelosi has mentioned the quote before, Mariottini noted.

"In truth, (she) has used this 'passage' in many different ways, and all of those usages have nothing to do with the Bible whatsoever," he said.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold.

[...]

The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

[...]

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread...

[...]

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

[...]

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

Scientists who study the environment here, though, say disappearing moose and other changes are tangible evidence of global warming, making the region a research incubator that could improve understanding of the effects of climate change.

"Temperatures are increasing … more in the center of North America than on the edges, so it turns out that we are sitting in a sort of hot spot," says Lucinda Johnson, at the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) in Duluth.

Senator Hillary Clinton has kept her presidential bid alive with a nearly 10-point victory over Senator Barack Obama in Tuesday's crucial Pennsylvania primary.

[...]

On the morning after the Pennsylvania primary, Senator Hillary Clinton summed up her feelings about her nearly 10-point win on the CBS Early Show.

"Senator, did you hear about Jimmy Carter's trip. He said he could get Hamas to negotiate?" a reporter asked Obama Monday as he ate his waffle, sausage and orange juice with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who ordered pancakes.

Obama responded: "Why is it that like I can't just eat my waffle?"

"I'm just asking.." the reporter said.

"I'm just gonna eat my waffle right now," Obama said.

Obama's waffle comments were used by the Republican Party to cast him as unwilling to answer tough questions about foreign policy issues, and held up as an example of his closed media relations style.

No wonder Obama figures Hillary will win. Diebold at work again. No paper trail at all.

Obama doesn't seem to be the candidate that Diebold will install this year, if the fascist mouthpieces have their way.

The man who is now as much part of the Hollywood Establishment as he was a political player with the Democratic Party is very careful not to upset any of his celebrity friends.

He wouldn’t dream of suggesting that their lavish jet-setting and gas-guzzling lifestyles could be reined in for the good of the environment.

When we point out that David Beckham has recently been given the dubious title of having the worst carbon footprint in history – clocking up enough air miles to fly to the moon and owning 15 gas-guzzling cars, Mr Gore shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

He knows what is coming next.

When asked what he would say to the football icon – a hero to millions – about his impact on the environment, Mr Gore refuses to be drawn.

He gives a huge belly-laugh at the notion that Posh and Becks could invest in an environmentally-friendly hybrid car such as a Toyota Prius.

He careful considers his answer before saying: “I don’t think that’s my place. I don’t want to get into personally criticising anyone.”

One hour in a Gulfstream jet burns as much fuel as driving a family car for a year.

BARACK Obama has come out swinging on the eve of the latest vote in the tortuous choice for the presidential ticket for the Democratic nomination, one that could seal the end of Hillary Clinton's fight for the nomination.

[...]

"Look, our campaign's not perfect. There've been times where, you know, if you get elbowed enough, eventually you start elbowing back."

Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in Minneapolis this morning to talk to Minnesota veterans.

[...]

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, a DFLer who represents Minnesota's 1st Congressional District, organized and moderated the discussion. Walz is up for re-election this year, and Pelosi is also hosting a fundraiser for him while she's in the Twin Cities.

...began in 1982 the members all lived in an elderly housing project in Northampton, MA called the Walter Salvo House. The first group included elders who lived through both World Wars. One of our members had fought in the Battle of the Somme as a 16 year old and another, Anna Main, lost her husband in the First World War. Anna was a stand-up comic who at 88 told jokes that only she could get away with. She sang with us until she was 100.

[...]

The current performers in Young@Heart range in age from 72 to 88. There are some with prior professional theater or music experience, others who have performed extensively on the amateur level, and some who never stepped onto a stage before turning eighty. None of the current performers of Y@H were part of the original group that formed in 1982, but they have kept alive the spirit of the early pioneers and continue to push the group into glorious new directions.

“Tell me about your elite upbringing on the South Side of Chicago. How many silver spoons in your mouth?” [asked Stephen Colbert on his program].

“We had four spoons,” deadpanned Mrs. Obama during her late night talk show debut.

She added: “And then my father got a raise at the plant, and we had five spoons.”