"President Barack Obama called rap star Kanye West “a jackass.”
Vice President Joe Biden told a senator to “Gimme a f—-ing break!” Economic adviser Christina Romer declared that Americans had yet to have their "holy s—-” moment over the economy.

Those who pay attention to political rhetoric say an unusual amount of profanity has emanated from this White House – even without counting famously colorful White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. But before this statement becomes fodder for yet another partisan debate (with conservatives saying Obama is disgracing the presidency, and liberals that the media are once again being unfair), they quickly add that Team Obama is no crasser than administrations past. It’s just that they are being quoted more accurately.

What’s different, according to linguists, media analysts and reporters who’ve covered past administrations is the media: Networks and newspapers have become far more willing to run with quotes, video and audio of political figures and their aides saying things that never used to be repeated. They attribute the growth of the political potty mouth alternately to the proliferation of recording technologies; intense interest in all things Obama; the explosion of new media platforms that both circumvent and push traditional media while sharpening competition; a general coarsening of the public dialogue; or some combination of all of those factors.

“Cursing happened all the time, across the board, wherever you went in the White House or on the trail or in campaign offices – it simply wasn’t written about,” said Haynes Johnson, a former reporter for The Washington Post who covered the campaigns or presidencies of every president from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, and has written books about the working White House, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and, most recently, the 2008 presidential election ..."

Full story via politico.com

Just speaking for myself, I welcome the profanity. I think it's a refreshing change of pace from all the puling, pandering, politically correct vapidity they're usually spewing.

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"Deborah and Thomas Weaver are cringing at the onslaught of jokes to come. Ghosts? They think they have ghosts in their house? The Cleveland couple spent three days last week letting a film crew from the cable television channel Animal Planet film them, their dogs and their home for a story about how their dogs were affected by ghosts they say appeared in their home three years ago.

The Weavers, both in their 50s, say their dogs and a niece living with them, who they say is psychic, started noticing ghosts in 2007. Since then, they say, they and other relatives and friends have heard noises, have watched doors open and have seen ghosts appear in the home, near West 150th Street and I-480.

"It's really not a joke," said Thomas Weaver. "It's something that really does happen."

For three years, though, they wouldn't tell people, for fear of being ridiculed. Relatives staying with them knew, as did close friends who visited. But other than Deborah's sister, who lives next door, no neighbors were ever told. Those neighbors found out after Animal Planet, tipped off to the Weavers through a psychic, showed up last week and their story appeared on local television news.

"We never told anybody," said Deborah. "Now this has turned into a media circus. We have people milling around and asking, Can we come in and see your ghosts?' "

"People will think that we're nuts," added Thomas.

The noises and apparitions started about the time their niece moved into the house. Then the dogs started staring and making noises at empty corners or swatting in the air or along the floor as if something were there."

via cleveland.com

IMO, surrendering to the 'fear of ridicule' seems like a much worse problem than having unwanted spirits in one's home.

"Tales of ghosts and supernatural beings haunt the dreams of children and inspire peculiar horror films and books, but what if you found yourself trapped in the middle of your own ghost story? What if your home had been the scene of a terrifying fire 100 years ago or if your basement had been used for violent and deadly experiments? What if you discovered unexplainable bloody handprints on the walls around your baby's crib? And, what if you didn't know these things had happened, but the animals around you did? Welcome to the eerie world of THE HAUNTED (wt), Animal Planet's original 10-part series.

Premiering Friday, November 22, at 10 PM ET/PT, THE HAUNTED (wt) takes an intimate look at stories of people whose animals act as mediaries to the afterworld. Often the subjects of the most intense paranormal hauntings, animals are commonly believed to be more sensitive to spirits than people. Think of them as canaries in the paranormal coalmines. But when spirits afflict pets, the animals aren't the only victims. Owners also fall prey to paranormal activity and often will stop at nothing to rid their homes and pets of paranormal spirits ..."

Full story via thefutoncritic.com

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"Now it's official - football really has become a religion. Catholic priests in the Ukraine yesterday (Sunday) blessed this icon showing Jesus as a football player with the Virgin Mary in a strong supporting role.

The icon is being credited with helping the former Soviet state to beat England 1-0 on Saturday to find its way to the World Cup finals next year ..."

Full story via austriantimes.at

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"Archaeologists have found a cellar in the university town of Pécs in southern Hungary, which they believe to have belonged to Wallachian Duke Vlad III, more commonly known as ”Dracula.” Tamás Fedeles, tutor of medieval and early modern history at Pécs University said his research showed that Vlad III Tepes alias ”Dracula,” lived in a two-story town house on what is now the city’s central square. Fedeles says the Duke of Wallachia (modern-day southern Rumania) owned the house in the 1460s and this is confirmed by a 1489 document that refers to it as ”Drakulya House.” The document contains a detailed description of the house and from this, Fedeles says the cellar most likely belonged to ”Drakulya”.

Olivér Gábor, a local archaeologist, agrees. He says this cellar was one of the most impressive medieval cellars found to date. In his opinion, further excavations could turn up interesting finds. However, authorities plan to fill in the site of the newly discovered cellar. This is partly due to the views of the official archaeologist of the Cultural Heritage Protection Service, who expressed the view that the excavations did not unearth any items that might point to an individual owner.

Zoltán Kárpáti also disagreed with the position of the house referred to in the medieval document. He did concede, however, that the cellar could have been that of the ”Dracula House” of the document. Based on Kárpáti’s statement, city official Péter Merza said Pécs was not obliged to open the find to the public. He added that the space would have to be filled in such a way that it could be reopened at a later date ..."

Full story via digitaljournal.com

Vlad probably never imagined that his cellar had the potential to become a tourist attraction, but I bet he knew a whole lot about the human fascination with Evil.

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"When children leave Cox Farms and other pumpkin patches across the nation this fall, they may go home with a gourd instead of the traditional orange pumpkin. That's because Cox Farms, which hosts one of the Washington area's largest fall festivals this month, is looking at a pumpkin shortage. Cox Farms marketing manager Bob Richard said a rainy spring in some parts of the country has led to a dearth of the little pumpkins that children carry home from the patch. Those pumpkins are free with the $15 admission price. Cox Farms grows some of its own pumpkins, then orders the rest from local brokers to round out the supply.

"It has been a weird weather situation," Mr. Richard said. "Usually we have no trouble at all getting brokers to bring us pumpkins. But Pennsylvania farmers are seeing yields down 50 to 70 percent. We have as many as we need to get through Columbus Day weekend, our busiest time, but we are concerned about what will happen next week. Gourds may be great for Mom and Dad, but not such a good souvenir for kids."

In Maryland, Todd Butler, manager of Butler's Orchard in Germantown, said his supply of small pumpkins may be down, but there should be enough to get through the fall. Butler's grows about 20 acres of pumpkins then brings in the rest from suppliers.

"Every year is different," he said. "We had a lot of damp weather this year."

The wet summer also has significantly affected the pumpkin supply in New England. A particularly rainy growing season in June and July caused some seedlings to wash away, some farmers say. Others say their crop is delayed, meaning pumpkins might not be big enough or orange enough by Halloween. Dayton, Maine, grower Edward LeBlanc told the Associated Press that his 30 acres likely would have a subpar yield in 2009.

"If you saw our field, you'd say it looks beautiful," Mr. LeBlanc said. "You would say, 'Wow, look at all the pumpkins.' But we'd be saying, 'Wow, look at all the pumpkins that aren't going to quite make it,' or 'Look at all the pumpkins that aren't going to be large enough size to sell'."

Some New England growers lost their entire crops, but others fared much better. Maine's harvest is expected to be off by about 50 percent, said Lauchlin Titus, president of the Maine Vegetable and Small Fruit Growers Association. Nationwide, 92,955 acres were devoted to growing pumpkins in 2007, compared with 25,985 acres in 1982, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Another fall symbol, the pumpkin pie, may take a hit by Thanksgiving. Last year's weak harvest in Illinois, which leads the nation's pumpkin industry, has led to a shortage of canned pumpkin ..."

Full story via washingtontimes.com

Sounds like a great year for purveyors of ceramic punkins and folks who love sweet potato pie.

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Nostradamus treated plague victims with pills he made from rose petals. He instructed patients to keep the pills under their tongues at all times and also claimed the rose remedy helped fight bad breath and tooth decay.

In addition to astrology and medicine, Nostradamus knew his way around a kitchen. In 1555, he published a book of recipes for cosmetics, perfumes and fruit preservatives.

Nostradamus predicted the world will end in 3797.

While living in Salon-de-Provence in the 1550s, Nostradamus invested heavily in an ambitious canal project designed by engineer Adam de Craponne to bring an irrigation system to the arid region. The canal was a success and still stands today.

In late 1561, Nostradamus was arrested and briefly detained for failing to obtain proper permission from the authorities to publish his 1562 almanac.

According to legend, Nostradamus once encountered a young Franciscan monk herding pigs in Italy. To the surprise of onlookers, Nostradamus respectfully addressed the lowly monk as "Your Holiness." In 1585, years after Nostradamus died, that monk, Felice Peretti, became Pope Sixtus V.

Legend holds that Nostradamus was buried with a document containing the secrets to his prophecies. In 1700, officials in Salon-de-Provence decided to relocate his coffin to a more optimal location. In the process, they decided to look inside. No document was located; however, a medallion inscribed with "1700" was reportedly found around Nostradamus' skeleton, leading people to believe the prophet had correctly predicted the year his coffin would be opened.

Although Nostradamus died in the middle of 1566, his 1567 almanac was published because he had the foresight to prepare it before his death.

The house in Salon-de-Provence where Nostradamus lived with his second wife and their children still stands today and is open to the public as a museum. Every summer, the town holds a festival honoring its world-famous former resident.

According to the New York Times, in the days following the 9/11 attacks, the top search term on Google was "Nostradamus."

via history.com

I wonder what Nostradamus perfume smelled like.

Click here to watch full size.

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"Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the end of the world. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he said.

A significant time period for the Mayans does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Mayans say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, internet doomsday rumours and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayans and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

Still, things are only likely to get worse for Mr Pixtun. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House. At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" website, says people are scared.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Ms Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Mr Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas. But hysteria surrounding 2012 does have some grains of archaeological basis. One of them is Monument Six. Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost did not survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation. However, erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible ..."

Full story via telegraph.co.uk

One never knows ...

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"The Senate Finance Committee's version of health care reform is being hailed as a model of bipartisan moderation. One Republican may even vote for it. And it's undeniably an improvement over the bill approved early by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, or the one making its way ever so slowly through the House. But that's a low bar. In reality, the Finance Committee bill still represents a radical government takeover of the U.S. health care system.

Let's start with the price tag. According to the report just released by the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will cost roughly $829 billion over the next 10 years. And, significantly, it is even projected to reduce the budget deficit over 10 years by $81 billion. Of course, both those numbers are misleading. The $829 billion cost is for the next 10 years, 2010-2019, but the most expensive provisions of the bill don't take effect until July of 2013. The cost over the bill's first 10 years of actual operation is closer to $1.3 trillion.

In addition, the bill assumes that Congress will implement a 21% reduction in Medicare payments that is already scheduled under current law. The only problem is that Congress has been supposed to make those reductions since 2003 — and never has. There is no reason to believe it will do so this time either.

Most importantly, the bill does not achieve its deficit reduction by controlling spending or reducing health care costs. In fact, by the end of the 10-year budget window, the cost of the program is expected to be growing at 8% per year. But revenue from the bill's new taxes would be growing between 10% and 15% per year.

In particular, the bill imposes a 40% excise tax on health insurance plans that offer benefits in excess of $8,000 for an individual plan and $21,000 for a family plan. Insurers would almost certainly pass this tax on to consumers via higher premiums. As inflation pushed insurance premiums higher in coming years, more and more middle-class families would find themselves caught up in the tax — providing the government with more revenue.

The overall tax increases in the bill are more than double the amount of deficit reduction. This isn't a health care efficiency bill or a cost-containment bill. It is a tax-and-spend bill, pure and simple. And, when not raising taxes, the bill simply pushes costs on to others. For example, the bill would push $35 billion in Medicaid costs off onto already cash-strapped state governments. Other costs would be offloaded onto businesses and individuals ..."

Full story via investors.com

Looks like getting health care in America is gonna become even more of a survival horror game than it already is.

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