Late Night Laugh: Honest Wedding Vows
June 9, 2008
No Wonder The French Are Idiots
June 9, 2008
Gauloise, the gift that keeps on giving.
Smoking linked to mid-life memory loss: study
Smoking apparently presents an increased risk for memory loss in people at mid-life, a new study released Monday found.
The study by Severine Sabia and colleagues of France’s Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale reviewed data from 10,308 London-based civil servants age 35 to 55 who took part in a study between 1985 and 1988.
The researchers said that they found strong links between smoking and cognitive and memory problems later in life.
“First, smoking in middle age is associated with memory deficit and decline in reasoning abilities,” they wrote in a report in the June 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine
“Second, long-term ex-smokers are less likely to have cognitive deficits in memory, vocabulary and verbal fluency.
“Third, giving up smoking in midlife is accompanied by improvement in other health behaviors.
“Fourth, our results … suggest that the association between smoking and cognition, even in late midlife, could be underestimated because of higher risk of death and non-participation in cognitive tests among smokers.”
The authors stressed that “the results are important because individuals with cognitive impairment in midlife may progress to dementia at a faster rate.”
“During the past 20 years, public health messages about smoking have led to changes in smoking behavior,” they wrote.
“Public health messages on smoking should continue to target smokers of all ages.”
We can only hope Barack Obama really does quit smoking.
As a maudit Anglais, SC&A approved this story.
A Security van was sent on a 120 mile round to move a prisoner 200 to avoid breaching his human rights.
Mark Bailey, 35, was taken to a Crown Court but after a brief hearing sent immediately to the magistrates’ court across the road.
Police said Bailey could not be walked across the street in handcuffs because it would breach his human rights – so a van was scrambled from 60 miles away for the 30 second journey.
Campaigners and MPs branded the decision “a shocking waste of money” and said it was “no wonder” Britain’s criminal justice system was in such a state of chaos.
Bailey appeared from custody before Northampton Crown Court Tuesday morning charged with stealing cable from a railway line.
A judge decided it was better dealt with by magistrates and Bailey was ordered to appear the same day. However, by this time the prison van had gone.
Police refused to walk him across Victoria Road, which separates the buildings, so a van was called from Cambridge, 57 miles away, to pick him up and drop him off.
He finally arrived at the magistrates’ court two hours and 40 minutes after the van was called. Charged with theft and going equipped, Bailey, from Northampton, was remanded in custody.
A spokeswoman for Northamptonshire police said it would “not be appropriate” to walk a prisoner down a public street.
She said: “Once a person is in the courts system, they are no longer in police custody and police are not responsible for their transportation.
“It would not be appropriate for prisoners to walk in a public area while in custody for many reasons, including public safety issues, as well as the safety and human rights of the prisoner.
“Until someone has been convicted of an offence they are innocent in the eyes of the law and it would therefore be inappropriate for them to be escorted across a busy main road in handcuffs.”Brian Binley, Conservative MP for Northampton South, said: “I’ve never heard such nonsense. Why we should have to suffer such ludicrous incompetence, and pay for it, is beyond me.
“In my view, Bailey should have been escorted across the road but if they were worried about him absconding, they could have put him in a squad car – the police station is just around the corner.”
Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, added: “This is absurd and a total waste of money.
“No wonder our prisons are in such a state of chaos, if they can’t even manage to escort a prisoner 200 yards between buildings.“If anyone had shown a bit of initiative this could have been sorted out in five minutes, but instead taxpayers had to foot the bill for this wasteful trek.”
A barrister at the court – who wishes to remain anonymous – said: “The transport of prisoners to court is ludicrous and a joke.”
A spokesman for Global Solutions Limited, responsible for the movement and security of prisoners, said: “It was an unplanned movement and the van had gone to do other things. It is not a taxi service and has a range of duties to make best use of taxpayers’ money.
“It is more efficient doing it this way than having a load of vehicles sitting around outside court just in case.” He said he did not know whether the van came from Cambridge.
My daughter sent this Eva Cassidy recording, unknowing it was already familiar to me. She said it was so beautiful, it made her cry, ‘deep inside.’ She remarked this kind of music ‘comes from Heaven.’
I listened again and understood.
While ‘past performance is no guarantee of future results,’ it is a pretty good indicator of how people and organizations deal with and handle challenges.
This past weekend, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs exposed a series of disturbing and troubling posts found on the Obama website (a few examples can be found here, here, here and here).
The Obama campaign responded appropriately and removed the offensive material. The problem is, they only removed the material after LGF and others ‘busted’ them. To be clear, no one is suggesting that Obama and his campaign be blamed for the offensive material posted by others. Still, how is it possible that some of the most vile and disgusting posts were allowed to remain on that website for months?
There does seem to be an emerging pattern.
Obama supporter, confidante and business associate Tony Rezko is convicted of multiple felonies (including Middle East money laundering ties) and the Senator is ’saddened’ because ‘that’s not the Tony Rezko I knew.’
Obama pastor and spiritual advisor Jeremiah Wright spouted racist and bigoted leaning from his church pulpit for over two decades. After first defending Wright, Obama decides he must quit the church when more video tapes of Wright’s vitriol surface. Obama is once more a wounded victim- ‘The Reverand Wright in those videos is not the man I knew.’
It is likely that the Obama campaign webmaster who allowed the racist and bigoted postings will be fired, because ‘He wasn’t the webmaster I knew.’
Obama has a pattern of throwing supporters under the bus after their misdeeds or failures have been found out.
Obama is a product of the Chicago Democrat machine. He is a Chicago Democrat machine creation and his career has been guided and approved by the Chicago Democrat machine (they even made sure he ran unopposed is some early elections- and they made sure there was enough Chicagoland patronage to be handed out to ensure his electoral victories) . For some, he may really be a Messiah-like figure. Like most Democrats in Chicago, he can count on resurrecting the dead on voting day and padding the ballot boxes with their votes (recall that Al Gore wanted Richard Daley of Chicago to oversee the Florida 2000 vote count. Seriously).
No word yet in whether or not Obama can turn water into wine.
*UPDATE* Apparently, the great Messiah is fronting for a Chicago power broker. Richard Fernandez author of Belmont Club blog offers some real insight into that reality. Here’s one of many observations:
“Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords.”
Obama casting himself as a ‘new kind of politician’ is like redefining a whore as a ‘marital counsellor.’
Leave it to Ace to come up with the meat of the dead voter resurrection. Given the experience Democrats have with dead voters it is probably safe to say those dead voters voted for Ned Lamont (another Zombie).
