From the human-hating defense contractors that brought you the Big Dog…

Its the “Rise V2″

And the Little Dog

I already posted this Petman video but it’s the most disturbing of all, so I figured I’d post it again  in case you didn’t catch it last time.

UN climate panel based claims on student essay

January 31, 2010
Physorg/AFP

A glacier in the Everest region, some 140 kms (87 miles) northeast of Kathmandu. The UN climate change panel based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain peaks on a student essay and an article in a mountaineering magazine, a British newspaper reported Sunday.

The UN climate change panel based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain peaks on a student essay and an article in a mountaineering magazine, a British newspaper reported Sunday.

The claims risk causing fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to apologise this month over inaccurate forecasts about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

In a recent report, the IPCC stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was caused by global warming and it referred to two papers as the source of the information.

But The Sunday Telegraph said one of the sources quoted was actually an article published in a magazine for mountaineers which was based on anecdotal evidence about the changes they were witnessing during climbs.

The newspaper said the other source was a dissertation written by a geography student who was studying for a master’s degree at the University of Bern in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The IPCC rejected as “baseless and misleading” a report this month from another British newspaper, The Sunday Times, raising doubts about the evidence behind its claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters.

Scientists have defended the IPCC since it admitted to errors over the Himalayan glacier claim, insisting its work is balanced and its conclusions are sound.

The Sharp Dressed Man Who Aided Mutallab Onto Flight 253 Was a U.S. Government Agent

Kurt Haskell
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, January 30, 2010

Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S. Government knew Mutallab had a bomb or intended to hurt anyone on Flight 253 when the U.S. Government let him board.

	Umar Farouk Abulutallab.

Since our flight landed on Christmas Day, Lori and I have been doing everything in our power to uncover the truth about why we were almost blown up in the air over Detroit. The truth is now finally out after the publication of the following Detroit News article:

http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa-to-avoid-tipping-off-larger-investigation

Let me quote from the article:

“Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.”‘

Now it all becomes apparent. Let me detail everything we know about the “Sharp Dressed Man” (SDM).

1. While being held in Customs on Christmas Day, I first told the story of the SDM.

2. My story has never changed.

3. The FBI visited my office on December 29, 2009, and showed me a series of approximately 10 photographs. None were of the SDM. I asked the FBI if they brought the Amsterdam security video to help me identify the SDM, but they acted as though my request was ridiculous. The FBI asked me what accent the SDM spoke in and I indicated that he had an American accent similar to my own. I further indicated that he wore a tan suit without a tie, was Indian looking, around age 50, 6′0″ tall and 250-260 lbs. I further indicated that I did not believe that he was an airline employee and that he was not on our flight.

4. During the first week of January, 2010, Dutch Military Police and the FBI indicated that over “200 Hours” of Amsterdam airport security video had been reviewed and it “Shows Nothing”.

5. The mainstream media picked up the “Shows nothing” story, which slanders my story. After visiting my office twice for a flight 253 special, Dateline NBC and Chris Hanson indicated that my story was “Unsubstantiated rumor dispelled as myth” and our story did not air during the tv special.

6. On January 2, 2010, I receive a call from a flight 253 passenger who indicated to me that it may be in my best interest to stop talking publicly about the SDM because he believes I am “wrong” in what I saw. He did not make any claim that he saw the SDM boarding gate incident at all. This call was made out of the blue after he made a “revelation” of this event on January 1, 2010. I later discover that this caller has ties to the U.S. Government.

7. On January 20, 2009, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission. Leiter indicated that: “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”

8. On January 22, 2010, CongressDaily reported that intelligence officials “have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.”

CongressDaily also reported, citing an unnamed “intelligence official” that Michael E. Leiter’s statement on January 20, 2010, reflected government policy and told the publication, “in certain situations it’s to our advantage to be able to track individuals who might be on a terrorist watch list because you can learn something from their activities and their contacts.”

9. On Janury 22, 2009, ABC News published an article that shoed a change of position in the government’s official story. Please see the following blog post for more information:

http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2010/01/initially-discounted.html

The U.S. government provided no explanation for the reason my story was initially discounted.

10. The SDM could not be from Al Qaeda. When speaking at the counter in Amsterdam, the SDM said the following “He is from Sudan, we do this all the time”. Who is “we”? If it is Al Qaeda, you surely don’t make such a statement to an airposrt security official.

11. The SDM could not be from airport security. The SDM did not dress in any secuirty uniform and did not appear to have any security badge. The SDM did not speak with a Dutch accent. The SDM dressed in a suit coat and pants. If the SDM was a higher up security official, he would not have to convince the ticket agent to let Mutallab on the plane without a valid passport. Instead, he would just order her to do it.

12. Could the SDM have been a U.S. Government official? He dressed in a suit and not a security uniform. Check. He indicated we do this all the time. Could “we” be the U.S. Government? Check. He spoke Enlish with an American accent. Check. Would he need to convice the ticket agent that this was a normal procedure to allow boarding without a passport? Check. Would he have the ability to obtain such clearance? Check. Could he enter this security area even though he wasn’t a passenger? Check. Would the ticket agent likely refer this request to a manager? Check. Would the U.S. Government not want this information public and try to hide it? Check.

13. The Amsterdam security video has not been released. A much more minor airport security violation occurred at the Newark New Jersay airport several days after the flight 253 incident. That video was released shortly thereafter.

14. Senators Levin and Stabenow, as well as Congressman Dingle, all refuse to discuss the matter with me.

With the information we already knew and the admission from the above referenced Detroit News article, we have evidence and claims made by government officials that the U.S. Government wanted Mutallab to proceed into the U.S. in order to obtain information on other terrorists involved with him. Once we take this statement and add it to my eyewitness account of a “Sharp Dressed Man” escorting Mutallab through the boarding process and allowing him to baord without a valid passport we can make the connection that the “Sharp Dressed Man” was a U.S. Government offical/agent.

The reasoning behind the following events now becomes very clear:

1. The reason Mutallab got through security despite the numerous warnings for months before our flight.

2. The reason why there have been so many lies from the U.S. Governemnt attempting to discredit my eyewitness account.

3. The reason why the Amsterdam airport security video is being hidden from the public.

4. The reason why the government is proposing a “Failed to Connect the Dots” account of the failure. The truth is too damning.

5. The reason why Mr. Wolf of the Obama administration indicated on the Keith Olberman Show that the White House was investigating a possible “intentional act” from within the U.S. Government as the reason for the Christmas Day attack.

6. The explanation for the cameraman and why he hasn’t been identified (Obviously, he was another U.S. Government agent) whose job was to film Mutallab for some governmental purpose.

7. The reason for the lax security after landing, which can be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved.

8. The reason for the failure to search or secure the plane and passengers after landing, which can also be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved.

9. The corporate media’s attempt to bury my eyewitness account.

10. Carl Levin’s, Debbie Stabenow’s and John Dingle’s intentional avoidance of my story and failure to return my calls/emails.

11. Janet Naploitano’s statement that “The System Worked”. From her point of view it probably did as this WAS PART OF THE SYSTEM!

Haiti: Obama’s Katrina

Patrick Martin
Global Research, January 28, 2010

Troops under United Nations command have opened fire on crowds of hungry Haitians seeking food, an ominous sign of impending confrontation between the people of the earthquake-wracked country and the armed forces dispatched there under the auspices of the imperialist powers.

On Monday, Uruguayan troops, part of the UN peacekeeping force deployed here since 2004, fired rubber bullets at people who crowded around food trucks, eventually pulling out and leaving sacks of rice to be fought over.

The next day, Brazilian troops proceeded more aggressively, using pepper spray and tear gas to hold off a crowd seeking food at a tent camp on the grounds of the devastated presidential palace. People ran from the spray coughing and with their eyes streaming.

Two tanks were brought up to menace the crowds when they began to reform, although Fernando Soares, a Brazilian army colonel, told the press: “They’re not violent, just desperate. They just want to eat.”

One soldier loaded a shotgun as the crowd watched, but did not fire. “They treat us like animals, they beat us, but we are hungry people,” one Haitian, Muller Bellegarde, told an American reporter.

The World Food Program (WFP) was delivering 107 cubic tons of rice, oil and beans to the palace camp, enough to feed 20,000 people for two weeks. As the trucks rolled up, thousands came out of their tents and began lining up, but the queues soon became disorderly as it became clear that there was not enough food for all who needed it. Another man told Reuters, “We are too many. Two trucks are not enough for us. They will fight, and the soldiers will shoot and fire gas.”

Violence also broke out in the seaside town of Jacmel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, after initially peaceful protests over the scarcity of tents for earthquake survivors.

Force was used as well by Haitian police at a food-distribution site in Cite Soleil, the largest and most impoverished section of the capital city. Police swung sticks and clubs to drive back the crowd.

While Haitians seeking food and scavenging in the rubble have been portrayed as “looters” by the media, and targeted for repression by both foreign troops and Haitian police, it was so-called looters who found a man buried in the rubble of a building on Rue de Miracle in downtown Port-au-Prince Tuesday. They brought US soldiers with the necessary equipment to pull the man, Rico Dibrivell, 35, out alive. He had a broken leg and severe dehydration, but said he had been trapped for 12 days rather than 14, falling victim to an aftershock rather than the original 7.0 quake.

On Wednesday, a teenage girl was pulled alive and apparently unhurt, though severely dehydrated, from beneath another smashed building. Coming 15 days after the main tremor, this marks the longest known survival of an earthquake victim in modern history. US and other rescue efforts were called off at the weekend.

The total number of American military personnel in Haiti, including those on ships just offshore, rose to 15,400 by Tuesday. One third of these are soldiers on the ground in and around Port-au-Prince, with the bulk of them from the 82nd Airborne Division, an elite unit that specializes in combat, not logistical support.

The heavy-handed US military presence has generated considerable criticism. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia boycotted a donors’ conference in Montreal to protest the US occupation of the country.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote in Granma, the country’s official newspaper, that the focus on US military deployment had blocked entry of doctors and medical supplies. “Send doctors, not soldiers,” he wrote. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared, “The U.S. government is taking advantage of a humanitarian tragedy to militarily take over Haiti.”

These sentiments were expressed, not just by regimes long at odds with Washington, but by officials of longtime US allies France and Italy. A French cabinet official, Alain Joyandet, said in a radio interview January 19 that the role of the U.S. in Haiti should be clarified. “It’s about helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti.”

The top Italian official dispatched to Haiti, Guido Bertolaso, the civil protection minister, said Monday that the US intervention had been “pathetic…. It’s a truly powerful show of force, but it’s completely out of touch with reality. They don’t have close rapport with the territory and they certainly don’t have a rapport with international organizations and aid groups.”

Clearly referring to the photo-op appearance by former US President Bill Clinton, who passed through the island and briefly unloaded water bottles at the airport, he said, “Unfortunately there’s this need to make a bella figura in front of the television cameras rather than focusing on underneath the debris…. Some individuals were putting on a vanity show for the television cameras instead of rolling up their sleeves.”

Such comments clearly stung, as shown by the comments by Clinton’s wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Speaking to a group of State Department employees, she declared, “I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake. Some of the international press either misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued what was a civilian and military response, both of them necessary in order to be able to deliver aid to the Haitians who desperately needed it.”

Haitian President Réné Preval, who has been virtually invisible to the people of his country for the past two weeks, emerged to denounce suggestions that the occupation of his country by foreign troops was a threat to its sovereignty. At a press conference with Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, he rebuffed a question about the occupation, saying, “We are talking about people suffering and you are talking about ideology.”

A French reporter asked why US troops were controlling flights into the Port-au-Prince airport. Preval replied: “You need to run the airport, you need technical help and they offered it to us. I really can’t understand why the need for that is so difficult to accept.”

Preval also announced that Haitian legislative elections, previously scheduled for February 28, would be postponed indefinitely.

The major initiative of Preval’s government is a program to relocate 500,000 people from Port-au-Prince to villages outside the capital region, but there have been few takers among those living in the rubble. A reporter for the French news agency AFP visited Croix des Bouquets, one of the relocation sites, and described it as “a vast, gravel wasteland with just a few people hanging about hoping for work.”

Meanwhile an extraordinary denunciation of the Obama administration’s conduct in Haiti was published in the Wall Street Journal, issued by three New York City doctors, Soumitra R. Eachempati, incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and Dean Lorich and David Helfet, orthopedic surgeons and colleagues of Dr. Eachempati at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Their statement appeared under the headline, “Haiti: Obama’s Katrina, Many post-quake deaths could have been prevented.” The three doctors, who were among the first to reach Haiti after the quake, wrote that the delays imposed by the US military on relief groups entering the county “proved tragic. Upon our arrival at the Haiti Community Hospital we found scores of patients with pus dripping out of open fractures and crush injuries. Some wounds were already infested with maggots. Approximately one-third of the victims were children. Most of the patients already had life-threatening infections, and all were dehydrated. Many had been waiting in the hospital compound for days without water, antibiotics or even pain medicine. The hospital smelled of infected, rotting limbs.”

They continued: “The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the US government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more…. Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of US and international soldiers standing around aimlessly.”

Mechanized exoskeleton technology ready for deployment

Your average US soldier suffers from the delusion that s/he’s protecting freedom, but they’re still mostly decent people. Albeit not very bright, but decent at heart. The people commanding them are another story entirely. And once this remaining bit of misguided human decency has been replaced by drones that won’t ask questions, the full blown extermination will begin.

Corporate Personhood: First Amendment Rights

revolutionnot.com

Supreme Court OKs unlimited corporate spending on elections (LA Times)

Reporting from Washington – Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations could spend as much as they wanted to sway voters in federal elections.

In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said that corporations had the same right to free speech as individuals, and for that reason the government could not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

…..

I have so many issues with this that it felt like someone kicked me in the chest. Watching this move through the system was worrisome. This decision has only further solidified the fascist take over of our republic.

I wrote about corporate personhood last year during Sotomayor’s admission into the court. She is very much questioning not just first amendment rights but giving any constitutional rights to corporations.

Once again, the strict constructionist conservative wing of the Supreme Court threw out their ideals and voted to further corporate power and it’s take-over of our government. It’s *($%^ infectious. It’s growing and they have bastardized the US Constitution again.

This is how the strict constructionists strayed to lands beyond from their ideals. Strict Constructionists

“Strict constructionism” is also used in American political discourse as an umbrella term for conservative legal philosophies such as originalism and textualism, which emphasize judicial restraint and fidelity to the original meaning (or originally intended meaning) of constitutions and laws.

The original intent of the constitution nor the 14th Amendment never even considered corporations as actual people. If they had intended Corporations to have the same constitutional rights as individuals they would have written “People and Corporations” throughout the document. In fact, before corporations had personhood, they needed a charter for organization which needed to be continually renewed by each state. That is the original intent of the Constitution.

There are a few arguments for it:

• Investor protection
• Management protection

There are so many arguments against it:

• They have a LOT money, translating into more and more effective speech for corporations
• They enjoy more rights in the form of lower tax rates and then just on profit. This is like taxing Caucasians 20% and everyone else 25%. Secondly, imagine if actual people were only taxed on what we “save” because all living costs were tax deductible? Also, imagine states fighting for your citizenship by giving you incentives like no state taxes for 10 years? These corporate “people” have preferential laws.
• It is a form of double representation. The investors are already represented as themselves. They vote and can put their own money towards a campaign. If you invest in a company but want another canditate to win other than what is being supported by the corporation, then the corporation is not accurately representing you.
• Corporations make false claims and representations. They use their First Amendment Rights to do great harm to the people. A great example of this is the Tobacco and Cigarette Industry claiming that smoking was safe and funding skewed studies.
• Financial Ratings companies like Standard & Poor and Moody say that their financial ratings are opinion and protected by the First Amendment. So, when they rated toxic assets as AAA they had no liability to their word even though the entire financial industry depends on these ratings accuracy. Giving them accountability may actually force them to give securities proper ratings.
• The Constitution cannot be cherry-picked. A real person cannot only have some right in the constitution. A person MUST have all rights. The problem is that corporations are slaves and cannot vote, to name two important conflicts with corporations having the full rights of the constitution.
• A corporation legally must maximize shareholder value. This is the highest law to the corporation and can even be sued by shareholders if found to not be doing this. These include things that could be “to the detriment of people.” Corporations do not have the same priorities as actual people who exist in reality. Two or three times a day, we eat. Without sufficient food we die. Corporations don’t have these daily existential crises

Solutions:

• Force the court to explain why corporations don’t have full First Amendment Rights as people do. Corporations are “artificial people” after all. Justice Clarence Thomas had the clarity to at least do away with this contradiction.
• Force the court to tell us how corporations are not slaves.
• Force the court to tell us how corporations will participate in voting during an election.
• Force the court to tell us how a corporation can use a firearm without any other person helping.
• Force the court to tell us how a corporation can be conscripted into a war if we re-instate the draft.
• Force the court to tell us why corporations younger than 21 can possess alcohol.
• Force the court to tell us why corporations don’t have identification cards like passports or driver licenses.
• Force the court to tell us how to imprison a corporation in a jail.
• Force the court to tell us why corporations owned by foreign entities, including foreign governments, can have rights under our constitution.

Any answers to these questions are purely rationalizations.

I don’t believe any of this can be done because a corporation by itself cannot think, learn, or feel. It cannot be thrown in jail for the lack of physical presence. It cannot pull a lever in a voting booth nor mark any paper. A corporation does not need food or water. It doesn’t even need toilet paper. It does not need to breath and cannot ever be hospitalized. A corporation never came out of a vagina (or c-section) nor must it eventually die. It cannot use a firearm. It is not conscious and can only act through proxies.

or we could just,
Remove corporate personhood. Singapore doesn’t have corporate personhood and, while investment and growth is hampered, it still has a thriving economy where the risk of corporations is priced, truly, into its market value.

I’m not quite sure how corporate protection should look but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

My last point is that this ruling clearly flies in the face of stare-decisis. This was an important aspect to confirming the Supreme Court Judges Alito and Roberts in the Judiciary Committee of Congress.

Obama has suspicious number of letter-writing fans named ‘Ellie Light’

By Sabrina Eaton, The Plain Dealer
January 22, 2010

Ellie Light sure gets around.

In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical “Letters to the Editor” in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area.

“It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything,” said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News.A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the San Francisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California.

Associated PressPresident Barack Obama has both detractors and fans. A curious number of his fans are named Ellie Light.Variations of Light’s letter ran in Ohio’s Mansfield News Journal on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New Mexico’s Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South Carolina’s The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California, all claiming separate addresses.

Light – who e-mailed an identical missive to this reporter on Jan. 16 without listing a hometown – would not answer e-mailed questions about the address discrepancies in newspapers that ran her letter, or her identity, although she did say she wasn’t a former co-worker of this reporter’s who had a similar name.“I do not write as a representative of any organization,” she said in an e-mail. “The letter I wrote was motivated by surprise and wonderment at the absence of any media support for our President, who won a record-breaking election by a landslide less than 18 months ago, and now, seems to be abandoned by all, supposedly for the infantile reason that he couldn’t make all of Bush’s errors disappear in one day.”

University of Missouri journalism professor Tom Rosenstiel, co-author of a textbook on journalistic values titled “The Elements of Journalism,” reacted with surprise and wonderment upon learning of Light’s widespread publication under multiple addresses.

He said newspapers might be able to avoid similar situations in the future by requesting street addresses and home telephone numbers from would-be correspondents, and verifying that those addresses and phone numbers exist.

“Just because it is inconvenient for us in the news business to find out who people are doesn’t mean it isn’t important anymore,” Rosenstiel said. “It is not OK for people to have multiple identities. This is something that people in the news business and in the business of printing “letters to the editor” need to be aware of.”

The Plain Dealer asks letter writers for a phone number for verification purposes.

This story was first posted at 4:54 p.m. Jan. 21.

Update: “Ellie Light” responded to this story in the comments below. Here’s what she had to say, and reporter Sabrina Eaton’s response.

EllieLight:

I did answer Ms. Eaton’s questions about addresses and the letter’s authenticity. She identified herself as a journalist who covers Washington. There was lots to write about this week, for example Teddy Kennedy’ seat falling to a Republican, or the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing corporations to donate unlimited funds to causes they support. Both those events portend unimaginable consequences for democracy in this country. And Ms. Eaton, a “Washington” journalist, decides to spend a few minutes pasting snippets of letters into Google and come up with a story about a letter writer. I’m sure such domesticity and small-mindedness would make Sarah Palin quite proud.

Sabrina Eaton:

I reported the item about you over several days in the spare moments I had between writing about yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, today’s presidential visit to Ohio, and other national news that affects Ohio. That’s why there was a bit of a delay between our email exchange and the publication of this item. I do have plenty of work to do. But I also thought your successful publication in multiple newspapers using multiple hometowns was newsworthy

Your emails to me did not explain how you appeared to have so many addresses. I will reproduce them below, to satisfy the curiosity of any reader who might care:

MY INITIAL EMAIL

From: SABRINA EATON

To: Ellie Light

Sent: Mon, January 18, 2010 1:05:57 PM

Subject: Questions on your recent “letters to the editor” omnipresence

Dear Ellie

My name is Sabrina Eaton and I’m a reporter in the DC Bureau of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper. Years ago, I had an entry-level reporting job at the Bergen Record in New Jersey. A more experienced reporter there was named Ellie Light, and I wondered if you were the same person. I sent you an email about this a few days ago and got a reply back with the single letter “s,” and didn’t know what to make of it. So I did a “Google” search on you, as well as one on Lexis-Nexis, and was surprised at what I found.

This email of yours has apparently been published in scads of newspapers. Each of them lists you as residing in their circulation area. How can you simultaneously reside in Kellogg (Michigan), Midland (Michigan), Follansbee (W.Va.), Myrtle Beach (S.C), Waynesboro (Va), Vallejo (Ca.), Mansfield (OH), Salinas (Ca), and Three Rivers (N.M.)? I also found your Haiti email printed in the paper in Lebanon, (PA). That one claimed you reside in Cornwall.

How did your missive end up in all these different publications, citing all these different residences for you? Where do you actually live? What do you actually do for a living? Are you sending these emails at the behest of any organization or politician? Are you the same Ellie Light who was once a reporter for the Bergen Record? Please respond ASAP because I plan to write about this.

Sincerely,

Sabrina Eaton

Plain Dealer, DC Bureau

ELLIE LIGHT’S INITIAL RESPONSE

>> Ellie Light 1/19/2010 12:20 AM >>>

Ms. Eaton,

I’m not the Ellie Light that reported in New Jersey. I suppose it’s a common name. I do not write as a representative of any organization. The letter I wrote was motivated by surprise and wonderment at the absence of any media support for our President, who won a record-breaking election by a landslide less than 18 months ago, and now, seems to be abandoned by all, supposedly for the infantile reason that he couldn’t make all of Bush’s errors disappear in a day. I think the wide interest in my letter is because of that vacuum, the appalling absence of support for the man we so recently, overwhelmingly elected.

Ellie

A SECOND EMAIL EXCHANGE:

After sending you this initial email on Jan. 18, I realized I hadn’t enclosed my telephone number, so I sent you a second email that gave you my phone number, if you wanted to call me up. Your reply to that email said:

ELLIE LIGHT’S SECOND RESPONSE:

>>> Ellie Light 1/19/2010 12:46 AM >>>

Ms. Eaton,

I just saw that you included your phone number as well, and for such enthusiasm, I should probably provide you with a further explanation, instead of being quite so coy. In my other letter to you, I said I was disheartened by the lack of support for the President. But perhaps more importantly, the lack of thorough, well-reasoned arguments that can be found on both sides of this issue. As I’m sure you’ve observed, Obama became quickly as polarizing has Hilary ever was, and few people can see past their emotions on the issue. Most public discourse includes terms like “Wingnut,” “Drink the Kool-aid,” “Socialist” and other far less polite terms. I get called “trash” and “Crypto-Stalinist,” not only by the Sarah Palin fans, but by The Left, who is furious at The Prez for not opening up the health care debates to CSPAN cameras.

So the reason why I expanded my submission was because I found that editors were eager to present a point of view on the topic that wasn’t so overheated and angry. Indeed, I think the viewpoint that my letter expressed was less important to the editors than the even and non-emotional tone.

ellie

**********

A FOLLOW-UP EMAIL FROM ME:

Because this email also failed to anwer my questions about the multiple addresses, I wrote you the below email, to which there was no reply:

Thanks for your response. But why did all those letters say you lived in all those different places? It seems quite peculiar.

The Phi Ratio and The Mathematical Fingerprint of God

Thanks to BSC for the link…