The shadow
The shadow knows!
The Washington Commanders are being sued by The Native American Guardians Association, which has been trying to get the Commanders to change the name back to Redskins.
The lawsuit states:
“The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage. They should continue to honor that.”
Via NBC Montana.
The lawsuit states:
“The logo on the Redskin’s helmet is an actual person, it’s Chief White Calf. Every time they go out on that field, they were honoring Chief White Calf and they were battling on the football field with the same honor and integrity and courage. They should continue to honor that.”
Via NBC Montana.
nivek
As Above So Below
US stock market crashes as bloodbath in Japan triggers global recession panic
Stock markets around the globe have continued to plunge on Monday amid fears the US economy may be on track for a recession as Japan suffered its worst sell-off since 'Black Monday' in 1987.Experts at investment bank Goldman Sachs said they now believed there was a staggering 25 per cent chance of a recession in the US - up ten percent from their previous estimate of 15 per cent, while JP Morgan put the chances of a recession at 50 per cent.
US stock index futures tumbled on Monday, with those tied to the Nasdaq falling nearly 4 per cent, but traders are now ramping up bets that the Federal Reserve will announce an emergency interest rate cut in response to the global stock market crash and to avoid a huge recession.
The sell-off followed the release of a dismal unemployment report last week.
Employers added just 114,000 jobs last month, according to Labor Department data released Friday, far below the Dow Jones estimate of 185,000.
(More on the link)
.
The shadow
The shadow knows!
Okaloosa County to acquire SS United States for world’s largest artificial reef off Destin-Fort Walton Beach
Okaloosa County has signed an agreement to purchase the SS United States, the historic ocean liner that holds the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing, with plans to create the world’s largest artificial reef off the coast of Destin-Fort Walton Beach.
www.getthecoast.com
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
35+ years of owning firearms now and I think that charging parents, actually making them responsible for their own actions, is the one thing I have heard in all that time that makes sense. First Crumbley, now this one. Pay the price your stupidity has caused. Barn door stupidity at that I might add - meaning that's so ******g stupid you need to be locked behind one so as not to endanger the rest of us.
Personal responsibility is not 'in' right now but a dose of that just might avoid even one more of these mass shootings. If it saved your kid's life it would be worth it then, eh?
Political candidate commentary is not welcome from anyone as its highly inappropriate. Saying "it doesn't have to be this way" is an empty sound byte and adds absolutely nothing. If you have to run your mouth it should only be to give condolences, IMO.
You will not legislate this problem away as has been amply demonstrated for decades, there are simply too many firearms in circulation. I don't have the statistics to back this up but subjectively, considering the total number of firearms in the US and the total number of people who possess them them the rate at which they are used to commit crimes like this must be comparatively low next to vehicular manslaughter or fentanyl overdoses.
Personal responsibility is not 'in' right now but a dose of that just might avoid even one more of these mass shootings. If it saved your kid's life it would be worth it then, eh?
Is it just me, I know this is a common name but Colt ? Really ? What, did this guy name his cats Smith & Wesson too ?
Father of Georgia high school shooting suspect Colt Gray arrested
Personal responsibility is not 'in' right now but a dose of that just might avoid even one more of these mass shootings. If it saved your kid's life it would be worth it then, eh?
Political candidate commentary is not welcome from anyone as its highly inappropriate. Saying "it doesn't have to be this way" is an empty sound byte and adds absolutely nothing. If you have to run your mouth it should only be to give condolences, IMO.
You will not legislate this problem away as has been amply demonstrated for decades, there are simply too many firearms in circulation. I don't have the statistics to back this up but subjectively, considering the total number of firearms in the US and the total number of people who possess them them the rate at which they are used to commit crimes like this must be comparatively low next to vehicular manslaughter or fentanyl overdoses.
Personal responsibility is not 'in' right now but a dose of that just might avoid even one more of these mass shootings. If it saved your kid's life it would be worth it then, eh?
Is it just me, I know this is a common name but Colt ? Really ? What, did this guy name his cats Smith & Wesson too ?
Father of Georgia high school shooting suspect Colt Gray arrested
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
If he threw the kid the keys to the family car and he went out and killed someone the father would be responsible.
That horrific Sandy Hook shooting happened for exactly the same reason, the mother knowingly gave her mentally challenged (read: lunatic) son a lethal firearm. She was his first victim.
All my stuff is locked up and/or rendered inert. The only weapons that are function are antique and I hadn't noted anyone going nuts with muzzle loaders or bayonetting anyone. Yet. We seem to expect a government entity to step in where our common sense fails. Typical lately.
That horrific Sandy Hook shooting happened for exactly the same reason, the mother knowingly gave her mentally challenged (read: lunatic) son a lethal firearm. She was his first victim.
All my stuff is locked up and/or rendered inert. The only weapons that are function are antique and I hadn't noted anyone going nuts with muzzle loaders or bayonetting anyone. Yet. We seem to expect a government entity to step in where our common sense fails. Typical lately.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Nowhere in any of it will you find a modern semi auto firearm in 5.56 NATO capable of high capacity. Those were made to kill people and have few civilian purposes. If you need a 'varmint gun' or 'truck gun' which some legitimately do there are no lack of other choices available that are usually far less expensive. In my experience ARs and AKs here in the US are used primarily as dick extensions.
nivek
As Above So Below
Atlanta residents in Georgia biolab fire zone reveal huge smog of 'chlorine' filling sky: 'It's like the end of the world'
Residents of the Atlanta area have reported a strong smell of chlorine after a fire at a chemical plant caused a toxic reaction 25 miles away.The city of Conyers has been evacuated and a shelter in place order was extended on Monday for all of Rockdale County after a fire at BioLab sent a massive plume of dark smoke high into the sky.
While there have been no advisories for Atlanta, social media users in the area say the air smells like chlorine in Fulton County, which is about a 40-minute drive from Conyers.
Residents of the Atlanta area also say the air is filled with fog, with some reporting feeling discomfort in their eyes, noses and throats - prompting firefighters to use detectors to check the quality of air in various parts of the city.
'This cloud just settled all over South Gwinnett. It was literally clear 15 minutes ago,' said one local who shared a photo. 'Picture of my yard and that ain't normal fog. It smells like chlorine.'
A second X user said: 'very alarming scene pulling onto I-20 E this morning. widespread haze as far as the eye can see. i am now in little five points and you can only taste and smell chlorine. it’s thick and overwhelming. mask up. stay indoors.'
'Feels like end of world stuff going on,' said a third X user. 'The biochemical plant explosion in Conyers has blanketed a lot of Atlanta. I smell chlorine in air in John’s Creek and a lot of people wearing masks today.'
Another added: 'The Old Fourth Ward at Ponce City Market smells like an indoor pool.'
A shelter in place order was issued for Gwinnett County in the metro Atlanta area on Monday morning following reports of the smell and fog in the area.
Emergency management officials in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, said people with concerns about the haze or smell should stay indoors, close their windows and doors and turn off the air conditioning.
Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens said his office is aware of the reports of a toxic smell.
(More on the link)
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nivek
As Above So Below
Tragic final photo of grandparents perched on roof of flooded Asheville home before they were swept away with grandson
A tragic final photo has emerged of grandparents sitting on the roof of their North Carolina home surrounding by raging floodwaters as they waited for rescuers to arrive.The Drye's were pictured by their daughter Megan who along with her seven-year-old son, Micah, had clambered to the rooftop of their Asheville home as the house was slowly consumed by the storm waters.
The couple in their 70s can be seen dressed in regular clothes, wearing coat and a backpack with a couple of blankets for comfort.
'They are watching 18 wheelers and cars floating by. In addition, part of the house they're sitting on is in front of them. They've called 911 but they aren't the only ones needing rescue. This is definitely a moment when faith is all you have,' wrote Megan's sister Jessica Drye.
(More on the link)
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The shadow
The shadow knows!
Jets, Aaron Rodgers deny QB's role in Robert Saleh firing: ‘I resent any of those accusations’
Rodgers went on The Pat McAfee Show to discuss the big Jets decision this week.
sports.yahoo.com
The shadow
The shadow knows!
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-...antion-mistake-brain-dead-surgery-still-alive
TJ Hoover, left, in a recent picture with his sister, Donna Rhorer. In October 2021, Hoover was declared dead and on the brink of having his organs removed to be transplanted into other people. The surgery was halted in the operating room.
Hoover Rhorer Family
Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room.
She quickly realized something wasn’t right. Though the donor had been declared dead, he seemed to her very much alive.
“He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Miller told NPR in an interview. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”
The donor’s condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Ky., including the two doctors, who refused to participate in the organ retrieval, she says.
“The procuring surgeon, he was like, ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ ” Miller says. “It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.”
Miller says she overheard the case coordinator at the hospital for her employer, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), call her supervisor for advice.
“So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time. And she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to ‘find another doctor to do it’ – that, ‘We were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else,’ ” Miller says. “And she’s like, ‘There is no one else.’ She’s crying — the coordinator — because she’s getting yelled at.”
“I’ve dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplant. It’s very scary to me now that these things are allowed to happen and there’s not more in place to protect donors,” says Martin.
Martin was not assigned to the operating room that day, but she says she thought she might get drafted. So she started to review case notes from earlier in the day. She became alarmed when she read that the donor showed signs of life when doctors tried to examine his heart, she says.
“The donor had woken up during his procedure that morning for a cardiac catheterization. And he was thrashing around on the table,” Martin says.
Cardiac catheterization is performed on potential organ donors to evaluate whether the heart is healthy enough to go to a person in need of a new heart.
Martin says doctors sedated the patient when he woke up and plans to recover his organs proceeded.
KODA officials downplayed the incident afterwards, according to Martin. She was dismayed at that, she says.
“That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” Martin says. “That’s horrifying.”
Rhorer was at the hospital that day. She says she became concerned something wasn’t right when TJ appeared to open his eyes and look around as he was being wheeled from intensive care to the operating room.
“It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, ‘Hey, I’m still here,’ ” Rhorer told NPR in an interview.
But Rhorer says she and other family members were told what they saw was just a common reflex. TJ Hoover now lives with Rhorer, and she serves as his legal guardian.
TJ Hoover danced with his sister, Donna, on her wedding day in May 2023 — more than a year after he was mistakenly declared dead.
Hoover Rhorer family
The general outline of the incident was disclosed in September by a letter Nyckoletta Martin wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held a hearing investigating organ procurement organizations. She later provided additional details about the case to NPR.
“Several of us that were employees needed to go to therapy. It took its toll on a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which helps oversee organ procurement, said in a statement to NPR that the agency is “investigating these allegations.” And some people involved in the case told NPR they have answered questions from the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, though no federal official from that office
Baptist Health Richmond, the Kentucky hospital where that incident allegedly occurred, told NPR in a statement:
“The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed.”
“No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient,” according to the statement from Julie Bergin, president and chief operating officer for Network for Hope, which was formed when KODA merged with the LifeCenter Organ Donor Network. “KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”
Organ procurement system officials, transplant surgeons and others said that there are strict protocols in place to prevent unsafe organ retrieval from happening.
“Incidents like this are alarming. And we would want them to be properly reported and evaluated,” Dorrie Dils, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, told NPR in an interview. “And obviously we want to ensure that individuals are, in fact, dead when organ donation is proceeding. And we want the public to trust that that is indeed happening. The process is sacred.”
The accusations that emerged at the congressional hearing in September undermine trust in the organ donation system and have led to a drop in people signing up to be donors, according to an open letter released Oct. 3 by the organization.
“For over five years, our nation’s organ procurement organizations (OPOs) – the non-profit, community-based organizations that work with grieving families every day to save lives through transplantation – have been subject to malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donation and transplant in the U.S. is untrustworthy and broken,” the letter reads.
Others also fear such unnerving reports could undermine the organ transplant system.
“These are horrifying stories. I think they need to be followed up carefully,” says Dr. Robert Truog, a professor of medical ethics, anesthesia and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who works as a critical care physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“But I really would not want the public to believe that this is a serious problem. I believe that these are really one-offs that hopefully we’ll be able to get to the bottom of and prevent from ever happening again,” Truog says.
Some critics of the organ procurement system say they weren’t entirely surprised by the allegations. With more than 103,000 people on the waiting list for a transplant, organ procurement organizations are under enormous pressure to increase the number of organs obtained to save more lives. In addition, there is an ongoing debate about how patients are declared dead.
“I hope that a case like this really is extreme, but it does reveal some of those underlying issues that can arise when there are disagreements about the determination of death,” says Dr. Matthew DeCamp, an associate professor of Medicine and bioethicist at the University of Colorado.
But some wonder how rarely this happens.
“This doesn’t seem to be a one-off, a bad apple,” says Greg Segal, who runs Organize, an organ transplant system watchdog group. “I receive allegations like that with alarming regularity.”
Likewise, Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul who studies organ donation, cites similar accusations reported elsewhere.
“This is not a one-off,” Pope says. “It has been alleged to happen before.”
Dr. Robert Cannon, a transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, described a similar incident during the congressional hearing where Martin’s letter was disclosed. It happened at a hospital outside of Alabama.
“We actually were in the operating room. We had actually opened the patient and were in the process of sort of preparing their organs, at which point the ventilator triggered and so the anesthesiologist at the head of the table spoke up and said, ‘Hey, I think this patient might have just breathed,’” Cannon later told NPR in an interview. “If the patient breathes, that means they’re not brain dead.”
Nevertheless, a representative from the OPO wanted to proceed anyway, Cannon says. He refused.
“We were kind of shocked that an OPO person would have so little knowledge about what brain death means that they would say, ‘Oh, you should just go ahead.’ And we thought, ‘No. We’re not going to take any risk that we murder a patient.’ Because that’s what it would be if that patient was alive.”
Since TJ’s release from the hospital, his sister, Donna Rhorer, says her brother has problems remembering, walking and talking.
When she asks TJ about what happened, she says he says: “Why me?”
“I do feel angry,” says Rhorer.
“I feel betrayed by the fact that the people that were telling us he was brain dead and then he wakes up,” Rhorer says. “They are trying to play God. They’re almost, you know, picking and choosing — they’re going to take this person to save these people. And you kind of lose your faith in humanity a little bit.”
‘Horrifying’ mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say
TJ Hoover, left, in a recent picture with his sister, Donna Rhorer. In October 2021, Hoover was declared dead and on the brink of having his organs removed to be transplanted into other people. The surgery was halted in the operating room.
Hoover Rhorer Family
Natasha Miller says she was getting ready to do her job preserving donated organs for transplantation when the nurses wheeled the donor into the operating room.
She quickly realized something wasn’t right. Though the donor had been declared dead, he seemed to her very much alive.
“He was moving around — kind of thrashing. Like, moving, thrashing around on the bed,” Miller told NPR in an interview. “And then when we went over there, you could see he had tears coming down. He was crying visibly.”
The donor’s condition alarmed everyone in the operating room at Baptist Health hospital in Richmond, Ky., including the two doctors, who refused to participate in the organ retrieval, she says.
“The procuring surgeon, he was like, ‘I’m out of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it,’ ” Miller says. “It was very chaotic. Everyone was just very upset.”
Miller says she overheard the case coordinator at the hospital for her employer, Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA), call her supervisor for advice.
“So the coordinator calls the supervisor at the time. And she was saying that he was telling her that she needed to ‘find another doctor to do it’ – that, ‘We were going to do this case. She needs to find someone else,’ ” Miller says. “And she’s like, ‘There is no one else.’ She’s crying — the coordinator — because she’s getting yelled at.”
"Everybody's worst nightmare"
The organ retrieval was canceled. But some KODA workers say they later quit over the October 2021 incident, including another organ preservationist, Nyckoletta Martin.“I’ve dedicated my entire life to organ donation and transplant. It’s very scary to me now that these things are allowed to happen and there’s not more in place to protect donors,” says Martin.
Martin was not assigned to the operating room that day, but she says she thought she might get drafted. So she started to review case notes from earlier in the day. She became alarmed when she read that the donor showed signs of life when doctors tried to examine his heart, she says.
“The donor had woken up during his procedure that morning for a cardiac catheterization. And he was thrashing around on the table,” Martin says.
Cardiac catheterization is performed on potential organ donors to evaluate whether the heart is healthy enough to go to a person in need of a new heart.
Martin says doctors sedated the patient when he woke up and plans to recover his organs proceeded.
KODA officials downplayed the incident afterwards, according to Martin. She was dismayed at that, she says.
“That’s everybody’s worst nightmare, right? Being alive during surgery and knowing that someone is going to cut you open and take your body parts out?” Martin says. “That’s horrifying.”
The patient
Donna Rhorer of Richmond, Kentucky, told NPR that her 36-year-old brother, Anthony Thomas “TJ” Hoover II, was the patient involved in the case. He was rushed to the hospital because of a drug overdose, she says.Rhorer was at the hospital that day. She says she became concerned something wasn’t right when TJ appeared to open his eyes and look around as he was being wheeled from intensive care to the operating room.
“It was like it was his way of letting us know, you know, ‘Hey, I’m still here,’ ” Rhorer told NPR in an interview.
But Rhorer says she and other family members were told what they saw was just a common reflex. TJ Hoover now lives with Rhorer, and she serves as his legal guardian.
TJ Hoover danced with his sister, Donna, on her wedding day in May 2023 — more than a year after he was mistakenly declared dead.
Hoover Rhorer family
The general outline of the incident was disclosed in September by a letter Nyckoletta Martin wrote to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held a hearing investigating organ procurement organizations. She later provided additional details about the case to NPR.
“Several of us that were employees needed to go to therapy. It took its toll on a lot of people, especially me,” Martin told NPR.
Investigations underway
The Kentucky state attorney general’s office wrote in a statement to NPR that investigators are “reviewing” the allegations.The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which helps oversee organ procurement, said in a statement to NPR that the agency is “investigating these allegations.” And some people involved in the case told NPR they have answered questions from the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, though no federal official from that office
Baptist Health Richmond, the Kentucky hospital where that incident allegedly occurred, told NPR in a statement:
“The safety of our patients is always our highest priority. We work closely with our patients and their families to ensure our patients’ wishes for organ donation are followed.”
"Not been accurately represented"
KODA, the organ procurement organization, confirmed that Miller was assigned to the operating room for the case. But the organization told NPR in a statement that “this case has not been accurately represented.“No one at KODA has ever been pressured to collect organs from any living patient,” according to the statement from Julie Bergin, president and chief operating officer for Network for Hope, which was formed when KODA merged with the LifeCenter Organ Donor Network. “KODA does not recover organs from living patients. KODA has never pressured its team members to do so.”
Organ procurement system officials, transplant surgeons and others said that there are strict protocols in place to prevent unsafe organ retrieval from happening.
“Incidents like this are alarming. And we would want them to be properly reported and evaluated,” Dorrie Dils, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, told NPR in an interview. “And obviously we want to ensure that individuals are, in fact, dead when organ donation is proceeding. And we want the public to trust that that is indeed happening. The process is sacred.”
The accusations that emerged at the congressional hearing in September undermine trust in the organ donation system and have led to a drop in people signing up to be donors, according to an open letter released Oct. 3 by the organization.
“For over five years, our nation’s organ procurement organizations (OPOs) – the non-profit, community-based organizations that work with grieving families every day to save lives through transplantation – have been subject to malicious misinformation and defamatory attacks based on hearsay, creating a false narrative that donation and transplant in the U.S. is untrustworthy and broken,” the letter reads.
Others also fear such unnerving reports could undermine the organ transplant system.
“These are horrifying stories. I think they need to be followed up carefully,” says Dr. Robert Truog, a professor of medical ethics, anesthesia and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School who works as a critical care physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.
“But I really would not want the public to believe that this is a serious problem. I believe that these are really one-offs that hopefully we’ll be able to get to the bottom of and prevent from ever happening again,” Truog says.
Some critics of the organ procurement system say they weren’t entirely surprised by the allegations. With more than 103,000 people on the waiting list for a transplant, organ procurement organizations are under enormous pressure to increase the number of organs obtained to save more lives. In addition, there is an ongoing debate about how patients are declared dead.
“I hope that a case like this really is extreme, but it does reveal some of those underlying issues that can arise when there are disagreements about the determination of death,” says Dr. Matthew DeCamp, an associate professor of Medicine and bioethicist at the University of Colorado.
But some wonder how rarely this happens.
“This doesn’t seem to be a one-off, a bad apple,” says Greg Segal, who runs Organize, an organ transplant system watchdog group. “I receive allegations like that with alarming regularity.”
Likewise, Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul who studies organ donation, cites similar accusations reported elsewhere.
“This is not a one-off,” Pope says. “It has been alleged to happen before.”
Dr. Robert Cannon, a transplant surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, described a similar incident during the congressional hearing where Martin’s letter was disclosed. It happened at a hospital outside of Alabama.
“We actually were in the operating room. We had actually opened the patient and were in the process of sort of preparing their organs, at which point the ventilator triggered and so the anesthesiologist at the head of the table spoke up and said, ‘Hey, I think this patient might have just breathed,’” Cannon later told NPR in an interview. “If the patient breathes, that means they’re not brain dead.”
Nevertheless, a representative from the OPO wanted to proceed anyway, Cannon says. He refused.
“We were kind of shocked that an OPO person would have so little knowledge about what brain death means that they would say, ‘Oh, you should just go ahead.’ And we thought, ‘No. We’re not going to take any risk that we murder a patient.’ Because that’s what it would be if that patient was alive.”
Since TJ’s release from the hospital, his sister, Donna Rhorer, says her brother has problems remembering, walking and talking.
When she asks TJ about what happened, she says he says: “Why me?”
“I do feel angry,” says Rhorer.
“I feel betrayed by the fact that the people that were telling us he was brain dead and then he wakes up,” Rhorer says. “They are trying to play God. They’re almost, you know, picking and choosing — they’re going to take this person to save these people. And you kind of lose your faith in humanity a little bit.”
Todd Feinman
Dogs are angels that poop in your yard.
God awful. Does remind me of tye Monty Python skit, however.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
I literally just went to the DMV and had organ donation removed from my license because I had changed my mind and then I saw that. Brrrrrrrrrr hrrrrr hrrrr.
OK, another episode Pigfarmer's non-fictional story telling time.
We took my dear friend Rob in near the end of his life. Rob and I were always involved in shooting sports and I have no lack of guns. Thing is my wife (who is licensed and properly trained) asked me not to keep any loaded ones out and gave me some damned good reasons. I had my own - I don't leave functional firearms out where you can get them, period. They're all locked up or disabled for display.
We got all of Rob's guns out to his family, eventually, but he wanted to retain a 9mm pistol to keep with him. This did not sit well with my wife and I but he claimed to have been part of a fire rescue crew years earlier and heard someone burn to death in a fire. Thing is, the man had a brain tumor in his head the side of an egg and it was plainly obvious he was making it all up. It was big drawn out ridiculous dramatic episode. He was losing his ability to walk and worried about being trapped. In the end we just let him keep it.
Wouldn't you know it, just like that organ donor horror story, within a week there was a horrible fire at a nearby nursing home that killed several of it's residents - who were trapped and burned to death.
Todd Feinman
Dogs are angels that poop in your yard.
I'm glad you were there for your friend, Pigfarmer. And glad you are cautious about the guns. I had a friend accidentally shoot another friend, many years ago. I think they forgot there was still a bullet in the chamber, and apparently when it was handed from one to another it went off and killed my friend. Had to be a pallbearer. I feel equally sorry for the friend that is still alive, and very sorry for their families.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Indeed, very sorry to hear that.
At matches there are very serious rules about loading, unloading, handling yet there's a wood wall in front of one of the 50 yard ranges at my club that has quite a few holes in it from unloaded guns from people who, theoretically at least, know what they are doing.
I used to live in a remote apartment and kept a loaded 12 gauge handy. Today I feel no need and wouldn't be comfortable with a gun in a nightstand or behind one of those cheap quick access boxes.
pigfarmer
tall, thin, irritable
Cubans struggle with an extended power outage and a new tropical storm
Well, too bad for them. Perhaps some of their giving socialist brothers and sisters around the world will step in and help them out.
Well, too bad for them. Perhaps some of their giving socialist brothers and sisters around the world will step in and help them out.
nivek
As Above So Below
How I may have ruined the launch of Meghan's American Riviera Orchard, as I reveal the ten mistakes that have taken her from Duchess to D-list
Vanity Fair’s former editor Tina Brown has described the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to quit royal duties as a ‘disaster’ and accused Meghan of having ‘the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world’.That verdict might seem a little harsh, but Brown is a royal biographer and wise counsel who met Princess Diana for lunch just two months before her fatal accident in Paris.
As someone who has chronicled Prince Harry and Meghan’s moves since they relocated to California, I share some of Brown’s views. So here are ten of the fateful mistakes that I believe the former actress has made since ‘Megxit’:
_________
1) The Duke and Duchess of Sussex released the bombshell announcement that they were stepping down as working royals in January 2020 before they had held talks with Queen Elizabeth. And they had launched their flashy SussexRoyal website, having already applied to trademark 100 items including pencils and bookmarks six months earlier. This was grossly presumptuous and offensive to Harry’s grandmother, who deserved the respect she had earned through her decades on the throne. The late Queen duly banned them from using the ‘royal’ title.
2) Meghan apparently hoped that her interview with Oprah Winfrey, whom she had been courting since before she married Harry, would herald her entry to Hollywood. In fact, the explosive sofa chat in March 2021 may have helped end her chances of being embraced by America. Going on national television to attack the family she married into, when she was already estranged from most of her own, backfired horribly. And choosing to go ahead with the interview even though Prince Philip was seriously ill in hospital rubbed salt in royal wounds.
3) Choosing to name their daughter Lilibet, who was born three months later, was a crass decision. Lilibet was the pet name from childhood for Queen Elizabeth, used only by her closest family members. Harry and Meghan claimed that they chose it as a tribute, but a palace source told the BBC that the Queen had not been asked beforehand. This was disputed by the couple’s spokesman. Whatever the case, it came as little surprise that the Queen did not pose for a photograph with her great-granddaughter when she visited the Sussex family at Frogmore Cottage during their visit for her Platinum Jubilee celebrations a year later. She was reportedly so upset by Harry and Meghan’s Lilibet decision that she told aides ‘the only thing I own is my name. And now they’ve taken that’.
4) After the duke and duchess signed their $20million (£15.4million) deal with audio giant Spotify in December 2020, they both appeared on the pilot episode of their podcast, along with a string of famous guests, including Sir Elton John, James Corden and Tyler Perry. However, when their first podcast series, called Archetypes, was finally broadcast in August 2022, Harry was conspicuous by his absence. Meghan’s decision to present the series alone was a mistake. Spotify thought it was signing a power couple, not a whining former actress. The first series was also the last for Spotify, with one of its executives branding the Sussexes as ‘f***ing grifters’.
5) One of the most striking moments in the six-part 2022 Netflix docu-series Harry & Meghan was the over-elaborate curtsy which the duchess performed to show how she had greeted Queen Elizabeth at their first meeting. Meghan may have intended to demonstrate how keen she was to impress Harry’s grandmother, but it came across as mockery. And Harry’s uneasy grimace as he watched her performance lingers long in the memory.
6) One of the ways that Queen Elizabeth tried to make best use of Meghan’s talents was by inviting her to lead Commonwealth organisations, giving her an international role. Meghan was appointed as vice-president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, with Harry made president. And when they quit royal duties, the couple declared that they would continue ‘to honour our duty to the Commonwealth’. However, their Netflix series attacked the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth, with one contributor labelling the voluntary organisation of nation states ‘Empire 2.0’. As then Tory MP Sir Hugo Swire said at the time, this was ‘either deliberate mischief-making or astonishing ignorance’.
7) Appearances at scenes of tragedies are always a delicate matter for members of the Royal Family, but Meghan’s visit in 2022 to meet the parents of victims of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, ran the risk of being seen as a public relations exercise. Instead of waiting for a dignified amount of time to pass, the former actress rushed to the scene two days after the massacre, laying flowers in the full glare of cameras. The fact that her close aide Mandana Dayani recently cited the visit as an example of Meghan’s compassion made it sound like an attempt to burnish the duchess’s tarnished image.
8) Much thought goes into clothes worn by female members of the Royal Family when on duty, as Meghan has publicly acknowledged. So was her $7,629 (£5,891) outfit for a 2021 visit to underprivileged children at a school in Harlem, New York City, really appropriate? The duchess wore a $5,268 (£4,068) Loro Piana loose-fitting pyjama-style burgundy cashmere coat with matching $1,779 (£1,374) trousers and $581 (£449) Manolo Blahnik red stilettos. Public records show that 94 per cent of the children at the school qualified for free meals.
9) Everyone knows that Harry and Meghan despise the popular Press, but that hatred can lead them to make foolish decisions. I contacted Meghan’s office in March to inform them that I planned to run an item about her plans to launch a lifestyle company called American Riviera Orchard. Meghan was apparently so desperate for the news not to appear first in the Daily Mail that she immediately launched the Instagram page for her company, complete with a glitzy video. Eight months later, the company has still not started selling any goods and interest seems to be waning. A textbook example of how not to launch a business.
10) Nothing highlights the demise of the duke and duchess’s aspirations to be a ‘power couple’ than Meghan’s solo appearances on red carpets in Los Angeles. While her Hollywood agents might have advised her that she needs to be seen, her royal status is diminished each time that she competes for attention from the cameras with the massed ranks of American stars, sometimes in less-than-regal outfits.
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