1898 – Cornelius Vanderbilt
reporter, columnist, author, lecturer; great, great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon; died in 1974
1899 – Ellis Wilson
artist: Guggenheim Fellowship winner [1944]; The Open Market of Charleston, Haitian Funeral Procession; died Jan 1, 1977
1908 – Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens)
Emmy Award-winning actress: Our Miss Brooks [1953], Anatomy of a Murder, Grease, Stage Door, Tea for Two; died Nov 12, 1990
1914 – Vermont Royster
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, editor: The Wall Street Journal; columnist: Thinking Things Over; author: Journey through the Soviet Union, A Pride of Prejudices, My Own, My Country’s Time: A Journalist’s Journey; died July 22, 1996
1916 – Robert Shaw
conductor: Robert Shaw Chorale; music director of Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; died Jan 25, 1999
1923 – Percy Heath
jazz musician: bass: founder of Modern Jazz Quartet; group: The Heath Brothers
1923 – Al Lewis (Albert Meister)
actor: The Munsters, Car 54 Where are You?, My Grandpa is a Vampire, Married to the Mob; died Feb 3, 2006
1926 – Cloris Leachman
Academy Award-winning actress: The Last Picture Show [1971]; Emmy Award-winner: A Brand New Life [1972-73], The Mary Tyler Moore ShowCher [1974-75], Screen Actor’s Guild 50th Anniversary Celebration [1983-84]; Phyllis, Backstairs at the White House, The Facts of Life [1973-74],
1933 – Willie Nelson
singer: see Willie Nelson Day
1938 – Gary Collins
actor: Born Free, The Iron Horse, Roots, The Sixth Sense, The Wackiest Ship in the Army
1940 – Burt Young
actor: Excessive Force, A Family Matter, Rocky series, Once Upon a Time in America, Convoy, Chinatown, Cinderella Liberty, Roomies
1941 – Johnny Farina
musician: rhythm guitar: group: Santo & Johnny: Sleepwalk, Tear Drop
1943 – Bobby Vee (Robert Velline)
singer: Devil or Angel, Rubber Ball, Take Good Care of My Baby, Run to Him, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Come Back when You Grow Up
1944 – Jill Clayburgh
actress: An Unmarried Woman, Luna, Portnoy’s Complaint, Semi-Tough, The Silver Streak, Terminal Man, Firestorm: 72 Hours in Oakland, Honor Thy Father and Mother
1944 – Richard Shoff
singer: group: The Sandpipers: Guantanamera, Come Saturday Morning
1946 – Don Schollander
Olympic Hall of Famer: 1st swimmer to win 4 gold medals in one Olympics [1964], also won two gold in 1968; International Swimming Hall of Famer: set 8 world records in the 400-meter freestyle and 9 in the 200-meter in his career; Sullivan Award (U.S. outstanding athlete [1964]
1948 – Perry King
actor: A Cry in the Night, Kaleidoscope, The Lord’s of Flatbush, Mandingo, Search and Destroy, Switch
1953 – Merrill Osmond
singer: [w/Jessica Boucher]: You’re Here to Remember, I’m Here to Forget; group: The Osmonds: Anytime; brother of Alan, Donny, Jay, Marie, Wayne, Jimmy
1967 – Turbo B (Durron Butler)
rap singer: group: Snap
(CBS) The Smoking Gun Web site reports on a lawsuit against his jailers filed by Terry Nichols, the domestic terrorist who teamed up with Timothy McVeigh to murder 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
According to the court documents on the Smoking Gun Web site, Terry Nichols, 54, says the low-fiber prison diet has given him “chronic constipation, bleeding, hemorrhoids.”
This week, a federal judge rejected Nichols’s bid for a preliminary injunction against the Bureau of Prisons. A lawsuit filed last month by Nichols is pending.
To support his claim, Nichols solicited testimonials from other high-profile inmates including Eric Rudolph, whose bombs killed victims at abortion clinics and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Rudolph agrees with Nichols, saying “refined and highly processed” food served to killers like him causes “constipation, gas, and stomach cramps.”
A truck loaded with 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil tore the face off the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and also caused millions of dollars in damage to other structures in parts of downtown Oklahoma City.
For the rest of his life on Earth, this should be placed 2 inches out of his reach...
Timothy McVeigh and Nichols were convicted of the bomb plot, which prosecutors said was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.
McVeigh was convicted on federal murder charges and executed in 2001. Nichols is serving multiple life sentences on federal and state convictions.
B.S. Report–Even Terry Nichols has to know that he’ll receive exactly zero sympathy for any of his health difficulties…and I’m sure there are plenty of people hoping that he lasts another 50 years in jail, and somehow manages to do so without having even one unassisted bowel movement…
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian politician, who had bone-stretching surgery to become taller, has admitted to having the painful procedure done eight years later, saying she was self-conscious about her size.
Hajnal Ban, a local government representative in Queensland state, spoke to reporters about the procedure after local media linked her to “God Made Me Small, Surgery Made Me Tall,” a book she wrote under the pseudonym Sara Vornamen and which detailed her insecurities about her height.
“I wanted to be taller. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of it,” Ban, who was 154 cm (5 feet) before surgery but is now 162 cm (5 feet 3 inches), told Reuters. “I had an insecurity and the means to fix it.”
“This is no different to having breast augmentation or nose procedures,” she said.
In 2001, Ban, now aged 31, spent more than eight months in a Russian orthopedics clinic, where doctors broke both her legs in several places and inserted wire rings as part of the bone-lengthening procedure.
Tired of being taunted at school and called names such as ‘midget’, Ban said she traveled to Russia for the procedure because it is not performed in Australia.
“It basically required one year from the time I had my operation to the time I could walk out in heels again,” she said.
Limb lengthening procedures are usually used to help people born with deformities rather than for cosmetic reasons.
Bizarrely going under the pseudonym Sara Vornamen for years, Queensland state politicianHajnal Ban disguised herself in a wig and glasses to hide her identity in order to sell the internationally recognized book about self shame and embarking on a hard knocks career as a female lawyer and politician.
Unhappy about being taunted at school about her height, local government Councillor Hajnal Ban thought “shortism” was adversely influencing her future career prospects.
Deciding enough was enough, Hajnal Ban decided to do something about the perceivedculture of anti-short around her. Hajnal Ban booked herself a flight to Russia for risky and every expensive bone breaking height altering surgery. (Read more.)
B.S. Report–She did that so she could be 5’3″ tall instead of 5′ tall? Seems pretty drastic.
I understand the clinic has a crowning achievement when they performed their surgery on an averaged-sized Chinese man who dreamed of being tall and someday playing in the NBA. The surgery turned out to be a smashing success. Here’s the before and after pictures:
10 years ago, he was a normal 5'8" sized unassuming Chinese teenager...but then he had the surgery.
Today he looks drastically different and stands 7’6″ tall!
And he owes all his success to those bone-stretching Russian doctors!
When the Obama administration crashes and burns, with approval ratings that fall through the floor, political scientists can trace its demise to its first hundred days. While Americans are careful not to consign a presidency they desperately need to succeed to the dustbin of history, the fact is that this president has moved — on issue after issue — in precisely the opposite direction of what the people want him to do.
Right now, Obama’s ratings must be pleasing to his eye. Voters like him and his wife immensely and approve of his activism in the face of the economic crisis. While polls show big doubts about what he is doing, the overwhelming sense is to let him have his way and pray that it works.
But beneath this superficial support, Obama’s specific policies run afoul of the very deeply felt convictions of American voters. For example, the most recent Rasmussen Poll asked voters if they wanted an economic system of complete free enterprise or preferred more government involvement in managing the economy. By 77-19, they voted against a government role, up seven points from last month.
And in the Fox News poll — the very same survey that gave Obama a 62 percent approval rating and reported that 68 percent of voters are “satisfied” with his first hundred days — voters, by 50-38, supported a smaller government that offered fewer services over a larger government that provided more. (Read more.)
B.S. Report–I would hope that most people would favor a smaller government role in virtually every aspect of their lives but we’ve seen other polls recently that look far different.
Just last month there was a poll that said Americans favor capitalism over socialism by an unsettlingly narrow 52-48 percentage. Like most polls, you need to dig much deeper to see how the poll question is worded and how well it reflects a cross-section of the American electorate.
I would question the sanity of any individual who thinks that what America needs is a larger role for government in the lives of Americans. Yet, nearly half of America is still willing to allow President Obama to grab power in areas that was never intended by the nations Founders to be in the governmental realm–but was reserved to individual citizens.
Former Senator, TV star and presidential candidate Fred Thompson gives President Barack Obama a failing grade for his performance in his first 100 days in office.
In an exclusive Newsmax interview, the Tennessee Republican declared: “In the most important areas that affect our country, that is our economy and national security, I’d give him an F in both categories.”
“Domestically he is leading us down the road to economic disaster . . . We’re going to be facing trillion-dollar deficits every year for as far as the eye can see. We cannot sustain that. He’s taken a tough situation and made it a whole lot worse.”
Thompson also told Newsmax that because of Obama administration’s policies that “cater” to the left wing, the dollar will ultimately be endangered, Americans will face runaway inflation and the dilution of their savings, and a minority of Americans will be left to shoulder the tax burden for a majority who pay no taxes.
On the national security front, Obama “has given signs of weakness in his resolve to defend our country,” Thompson said.
“He takes lectures from foreign dictators. He does things that harm our national security, that harm our CIA, that will divide our country as we’ve never been divided before.”
Summing up, Thompson said: “That’s a very bad record, and unfortunately we’re just seeing the beginning of it.
B.S. Report–If Fred Thompson had started his presidential campaign at the outset, and spoken this forcefully, than maybe we wouldn’t have a President Obama…but I doubt it. Obama won on charm and charisma, not depth or his policies. And if there’s one thing Fred Thompson doesn’t have–it’s charisma.
The Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals in Washington denied a government motion to reconsider the dismissal of all charges against the highest ranking Marine Corps officer involved in the so-called “Haditha Massacre.” But Lt. Col. Jeffery Chessani’s legal battles may not be over yet.
On March 17, a three-judge panel of the highest military court dealt government prosecutors a setback when the judges upheld a lower court decision dismissing charges against Chessani. After waiting 30 days, the government appealed the decision, asking that the entire nine-member court reconsider the case. That same court rejected the government’s second appeal without comment late Tuesday.
A majority of the nine military judges would have had to agree to review the case again, said Brian Rooney, one of the civilian defense lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center representing Chessani.
The career Marine, now 45, was commanding Third Battalion, 1st Marines on Nov. 19, 2005, when al-Qaida-led insurgents ambushed an infantry squad under his command was ambushed at Haditha, Iraq. The IED assault led to the deaths of 24 Iraqis and a Marin.
Thirteen months later, eight Marines — four officers and four enlisted men who were ambushed — were charged with war crimes. Except for Chessani and the staff sergeant leading the infantry squad, all of the Marines have been exonerated.
B.S.–Remember what despicable John Murtha had to say:
Richard Thompson, chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, “This case has turned into a government vendetta against a patriotic Marine combat officer who loyally served his nation for over 20 years.”
Chessani is accused of dereliction of duty for failing to inform his chain of command about the civilian deaths and orders violations for allegedly failing to make adequate combat journal entries that reflected what happened.
The criminal case stemmed from a fierce house-to-house, room-by-room combat action that four of his Marines took after being ambushed. Their lightning counterattack killed nine insurgents and 15 civilians. The ambush was the start of a day-long battle that broke the back of insurgent resistance in Haditha, a city known for its huge dam and extensive oil pumping facilities.
Every officer in Chessani’s chain of command, including a reviewing general, commended him for his actions until the publication of a magazine article months later charging the Marines with committing a massacre. Claims of a massacre were later proved to be untrue.
The government now has 60 days to appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. If the government loses at that level, it can seek a U.S. Supreme Court review. After all the appeals are over, the government can attempt to bring a new case against Chessani with a new convening authority (a new general overseeing the case if that new general so desires), Rooney explained.
B.S. Report–How many times must a guy prove his innocence before the government will get off his back? You can bet if this were a terrorist that was being defended the ACLU would be clamoring about a “witch hunt” and a misuse of government authority.
War is a messy business and you have to have a set of rules and disciplines that are followed. But absent of compelling evidence that the Marine, Jeffery Chessani willfully committed some atrocity–shouldn’t he be given the benefit of the doubt that he acted honorably? Isn’t that what the Navy-Marine Corp Court has determined–twice?
The government has spent a ton of money trying to prosecute this Marine and they’ve come up empty. There was no “Haditha massacre.” Did the Marine make mistakes that led to some civilian deaths–probably.
But if that’s the standard that we use to prosecute soldiers for war crimes than Chessani would find himself in the cell next to Eisenhower and Patton and every other general or military commander who had to make real-time war decisions that ultimately led to the loss of life; both civilian and military. One need only look to the D-Day Invasion to see how many lives were lost in a matter of hours, and how many preventable errors in judgement were made.
These guys do an impossible job every single day–unless there is clear evidence of wrongdoing they deserve to be praised, not prosecuted.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — It was an unlikely pairing, the old man and the boy.
Chester Ross, 65, a textiles and fashion entrepreneur, had long since raised his two daughters and had three grandchildren of his own. David Loughran, a timid 7-year-old longing for someone to play ball with, was an only child being raised by his divorced mother.
But Ross reluctantly gave in to a friend’s urging and agreed to meet the youngster. As a social worker told Mary Loughran that day in 1979 how the Big Brothers Big Sisters youth-mentoring program could benefit her son, Ross turned to David:
“Why don’t we get out of here, just us men, go to the diner or something?”
‘We had Cokes, I think, and for an hour we talked,” Ross recalled.
“The conversation never stopped. He was 7 and I was 65, and we got along so well. And we did it for 30 years.”
On Thursday, both men are being honored by Family Services of Westchester, N.Y., which runs the local program. The average Big Brother commitment is about three years, says program director Thomas Mitchell.
Chester Ross, left, smiles at Colby Ross Loughran as his father, David Loughran, holds him. Ross was 65 in 1979 when he became a "Big Brother" to David Loughran and began a relationship that would span 30 years. Ross put Loughran through college, guided his career and got to be best man, at age 90, at Loughran's wedding. In April 2009, both men are being honored by Family Services of Westchester, which runs the program locally. (AP Photo/Family Services of Westchester)
“When it becomes a lifelong relationship, that’s the ultimate goal,” he said.
Before he met David, Ross wanted nothing to do with being a Big Brother.
“I’d never heard of Big Brothers,” he said. “This is not for me. I’m 65 years old,” he told his friend. “Forget about it!”
David, “a little bit taken aback” by Ross’ age, thought he’d be getting a ball-playing Big Brother in his 20s.
Almost every Wednesday night, they chatted on the phone. Almost every Sunday they had their special visits. Sometimes they’d have lunch. Or go to Shea Stadium. Or even Broadway shows.
David, who saw his own father maybe once a year, worried that Ross would move on, too. Not renew his Big Brother commitment. Ross got wind of the youngster’s fears.
“Never mind about that,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about that, ever.” (Read more.)
President Obama called his $800 billion “pork” bill a “stimulus” bill. By that standard, shouldn’t he call “swine flu,” which basically means “Pork Flu” (which, by the way, doesn’t necessarily come from pigs), “Stimulus Flu?”
"Hmmm, you've got a point. I like the way that sounds...Alright, "Stimulus Flu" it is!"
HOUSTON (AP) — A Mexico City toddler who traveled to the Texas with family to visit relatives is the first confirmed death in the U.S. from swine flu.
The boy, who was nearly 2 years old, arrived in the border city of Brownsville with “underlying health issues” on April 4 and developed flu symptoms four days later, the Texas Department of State Health Services said. He was taken to a Brownsville hospital April 13 and transferred to the following day to a hospital in Houston, where he died Monday night.
Swine flu is not a "food-borne" virus...you can't catch it from eating pork. Enjoy!
The cause of death was pneumonia caused by the flu virus, Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos said. Texas Children’s Hospital, where the boy died, said in a statement he was suffering from “acute respiratory illness.” The hospital planned a news conference later Wednesday.
Officials did not specify what underlying health issues the boy had before arriving in the U.S.
State health officials declined to identify the boy or his family, citing privacy concerns, medical confidentiality and “the absence of an obvious health threat from the boy to the public at large.”
State health officials said the boy would not have been infectious when he flew from Mexico City to Matamoras, across the border from Brownsville. None of his close contacts have developed symptoms.
Health officials in Brownsville are trying to trace his family’s trip to find out how long they were in the area, who they visited and how many people were in the group, Cascos said.
The boy’s family members “are healthy and well,” Houston’s health director, Dr. David Persse, said at a Wednesday news conference.
The toddler was about 2 years old. Houston officials said he was 23 months old, but state officials said he was 22 months old and could not immediately explain the discrepancy.
The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the death earlier Wednesday.
Children, especially those younger than age 5, are particularly vulnerable to flu and its complications, and every year children die from seasonal flu.
According to the CDC, more than 20,000 children younger than age 5 are hospitalized every year because of seasonal flu. In the 2007-08 flu season, the CDC received reports that 86 children nationwide died from flu complications.
As of April 18, CDC had received reports of 55 seasonal flu-related deaths in children during the current seasonal flu season.
Swine flu is suspected of killing more than 150 people and sickening more than 2,400 in Mexico. U.S. health officials have confirmed 91 cases in 10 states.
B.S. Report–Are you wearing a face mask? Are you refraining from eating pork? Have you felt a little achy lately and gone to the doctor to have yourself checked out?
If any of this describes you–and you don’t have “swine flu” than I’m sorry to tell you that you have bought into the latest media hype and hysteria. Yes, when it comes to media crazes, I’m almost always skeptical. I may have to eat crow if this flu turns into the pandemic that the media talking-heads keep warning us about.
But it’s my nature not to believe such things. If swine flu becomes a large epidemic in the United States and begins killing tens of thousands of people I will be the first to apologize and eat crow–that is, if I’m not one of the victims of swine flu.
Please, first understand that this is the flu…and the flu kills, on average, 36,000 Americans every single year. We have one death so far in the U.S., and that isn’t even a home-grown case. My guess is, that this “epidemic” will pass even before President Obama has a chance to enact some national plan to eliminate swine flu.
By the way, swine flu is not contracted from eating pork products. Those who market those products are complaining that we shouldn’t call it swine flu because it gives the impression that you can catch it from eating pork. They say that their businesses are suffering because of this misconception. And Mexico doesn’t particularly want it known as the “Mexican Flu” either.
"Hey, don't blame us pigs for your flu...we don't have it!"
THE B.S. REPORT 