Sunday, October 28, 2007

Legends

In 2007, US President George W. Shrub commented on the phantom press conference given by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As the California wildfires raged, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing. Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices. They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News, MSNBC and other outlets. Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the "commodities" being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.

Shrub described this disgraceful stage-managed event as the worst abuse of power since he had become the government. (Aids later qualified this statement as "entered the service of government").
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In 1976, Jeremy Thorn began "Are you...?" but was interrupted by the man's abrupt nod. "You're Bugenhagen?".
"Yes."
Thorn eyed him suspiciously. Bugenhagen was a seventeeth-century exorcist. "That was nine generations ago."
"But you.."
"I'm the last," he replied abruptly. "but by no means the least.".
Halloween
Hallowe'en Story
In 1976, Robert Neville lived the life of a recluse, trapped inside his fortified home. He studied the vampiris bacteria that had infected him in South America. Outside the survivors of the bombings tried to break in. "Come out Robert Neville" yelled his neighbour Ben Cortman, believing Neville was hoarding precious food inside.
In 2009, the Catholic Church was astonished by news that Pope Benedict had written a foreword to a controversial biography of Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

The ethnic Albanian nun, who dedicated her life to poor, sick and dying in India, died in 1997 aged 87. Mother Teresa was a globally beloved symbol of saintly devotion to the poor, who spent her last fifty years secretly struggling with doubts about her faith.

A research team led by Rev. Brian Kolodiechuk of the Missionaries of Charity Order had been examing secret letters for publication in a new biography, Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light. It appears that an unknown researcher had released the letters to the press after being shocked to read "How painful is thus unknown pain - I have no Faith".
If there be God- please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. ~ Secret Letter from Mother Theresa

In the biography's foreword, Pope Benedict write that even the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta "suffered from the silence of God" despite her immense charity and faith.
Mother Theresa
It is significant that the Pope mentioned Mother Teresa's torment about God's silence as not being unusual because there was some speculation that the letters could hurt the procedure to make her a saint. "All believers know about the silence of God," wrote the Pope. "Even Mother Teresa, with all her charity and force of faith, suffered from the silence of God," he stated. He said believers sometimes had to withstand the silence of God in order to understand the situation of people who do not believe. When the German-born pontiff visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz last year, he publicly asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died there. The full article is available at UK News
Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay
In 1962, Curtis LeMay's military government started the painful process of rebuilding the nation from the United States' “greatest defeat in [our] history". Writing later in his autobiography, “Bombs Away” wrote "I had blood upon my hands as I did this, but not because I preferred to bathe in blood. It was because I was part of a primitive world where men still had to kill in order to avoid being killed, or in order to avoid having their beloved Nation stricken and emasculated." Some of the blood upon his hands was John F Kennedy, some more was on the the carpet of the Oval Office where LeMay had shot the Commander in Chief the day before.

In 2008, on the eve of Election Day, Texan singer/songwriter and Independent US Presidential Candidate Richard S. “Kinky” Friedman shared his thoughts on the legalization of soft drugs. Friedman supported the decriminalization of marijuana, though he didn't advocate making its sale legal. "I'm not talking about like Amsterdam," he's noted, "We've got to clear some of the room out of the prisons so we can put the bad guys in there, like the paedophiles and the politicians". Kinky Friedman
Kinky Friedman
MacArthur
MacArthur
In 1956, with diplomacy failing to reverse Nassers’s decision to nationalise the Suez Canal, Britain and France embarked on preparations to regain control of the Canal, and together with Israel, launched a military operation in the Peninsula. US President Douglas MacArthur was fully supportive, it was about time some one else started to get “Brass Hat” and rescue the Third World from Communism.

In 1994, on this day Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the south lawn, killing US President Clinton who was one of among the men in dark suits standing there. Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.Clinton
Clinton

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