...From "News of the Weird":
Universal Health Care (for Prisoners): A judge in Wilmington, N.C., had to officially "release" accused murderer Shirley Spaulding in May, as a ploy, to get the state to start picking up her medical bills. Brunswick County was running out of money because it has paid nearly $400,000 to treat her respiratory illness while she awaits her death-penalty trial.
(Fortunately, she was too sick to depart custody.)
[Raleigh News and Observer-AP, 5-19-04]
...Gotta LOVE it, eh???
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I was amused to hear of an exhibit dedicated solely to Route 22, a road that's near-and-dear to your's truly. Now, I've never seen or heard of an exhibit dedicated to a road before (OK - maybe Route 66, out in the California desert - remember the song, sung in the 40's by Nat King Cole??? I digress!)... not that I've really been looking very hard, but I was attracted to the prospect, so I thought I'd share... Here's a link to the article.
Yeah, I live on route 22.
..... OK, I don't really live on the road, per-se (as the picture on the left may imply... By the way - I've entitled this picture "Highway Buddha"... pretty appropriate, eh? - enaways....), we happen to own a house located on the west side of it (you guessed it, behind me). Route 22 used to run about 30 feet to the west of where it now passes by my house - I still pull pieces of it out of my lawn each spring, relics pushed back up to the earth's surface by winter's frost heaves.
The Exhibit is located in Troy, New York, at The Arts Center of the Capitol Region, and the images were created by New York City -based photographer Bengamin Swett (go ahead, click his name, you can see samples of the Route 22 exhibit online).
I believe that the thing I find most interesting about someone being passionate enough about a road, 
to build an exhibit dedicated to it, is that I to, am a tad obsessed with it.
Look to the right... that rusty thing lying on the side of the road (Route 22) isn't a coat hanger, it's the ramains of one of the road flairs used to block traffic when my daughter got hit by a car and nearly died - right in front of our house, a little over 3 years ago.
I just took this picture today, by the way - those wires are still hanging out there, after all of this time... kind of creepy, since we get a whole lot of snow around here during the winter. There's still 2 of 'em out there, and they really should've disappeared a long time ago. I gotta tell you, I ain't gonna move them, they're a reminder... and, quite frankly, I'm a bit superstitous about this one!
I'm not going to get all morbid on you here, ohhh, no... far from it, I learned something very special about where I live, the people around me, and this road. My daughter was very, very lucky that spring day (what am I saying, we were ALL very, very lucky that day!), because even though she suffered a spinal cord injury, broken bones, serious internal trauma... the product of a car traveling at highway speeds hitting her, by some miracles, volunteer first aid workers that knew their stuff, very great doctors, seriously powerful medicine... and finally and most importantly, a wonderful community that pulled-together when they saw a family in crisis, she has enjoyed a nearly full recovery!
...Oh, So sorry about that horrible run-on (and on!) sentence, above!
By the way, gotta tell you, Alyssa was NOT happy about me taking that first picture up at the top of this musing... not happy at all!!!
Yup - I'm a really lucky guy... I live in a very special place, around very special people - right here, on Route 22.
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Well, I'm sure you've heard by now - the 9-11 committee has come down with their verdict - they see no evidence of any collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq. Geee, what a surprise!! What seems like common knowledge in my world, seems to have come as a complete surprise to our illustrious leader of our free world...
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship 
between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda".
Hey, wow... what a power-statement; that line just made a believer out of me, "W" - what eloquence, what deep truths - why can't the bipartizen, independent 9-11 committee see it all the way you do???
Now, just to add a little bit more of that now VERY expensive flammable petroleum product to the fire, "W" goes on to deny "accusations" that his administration made any attempts to link 9-11 and al Qaeda to Iraq.
How could have I misunderstood him to the extent that I did? I know in my world - I thought "W" was actually doing a pretty decent job in the war on terror - until he lost his focus, desperately (and I feel unsuccessfully) tried to tie the 9-11 attacks to Iraq, then bombed the hell out of them.
It was at about this time that "W" really started to scare me... but apparently, I once again misunderstood what he was saying - his very justification for the war in Iraq...
"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda," Bush said. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."
Holy-moley - wasn't that "W"'s cornerstone justification for the Iraq war!?!
OK - maybe I'm being a bit hard on "W", after all, the commission did say there was indeed some contact between Iraqis and al Qaeda members, but the panel concluded that Iraq never responded to a bin Laden request for help, and said there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship." between the two.
So, who are you going to believe - The Commission, or Bush????
Ya know, this smacks of yet another example of Bush applying some more of his revisionist history in an attempt to muddle the facts. Remember last July, when he made some boneheaded statement, to the effect that Saddam wasn't cooperating with the intensified UN inspection teams, and that's why the bombs began to fall?
wait... ew,ew,ewww - I found the text of his words, here they are...
"Last July (7/14/03), Bush revised the history of the run-up to the Iraq war, claiming that Saddam Hussein refused to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq in late 2002: "Did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was Absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
In truth, Iraq did allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country in November 2002; and the Iraqis were cooperating, to an extent, but the inspectors were withdrawn when war became imminent in March 2003.
It was NPR reporter Mara Liasson (7/17/03) who called it "revisionist history", and what an appropriate term for his comments at the time! It felt to me that, just when the UN was finally getting some backbone with regard to the Iraqi WMD matter (and to give him credit - that's because of Bushs' prodding the UN into some real action), is when Bush decides to alienate 90-percent of the civilized world and go into Iraq with guns-a-blazin'.
Call me paranoid - but I believe that "W" came to realize that the UN was actually beginning to be effective in their inspections, and also realized that even if they did have WMD's, chances were pretty good that the Iraqis wouldn't be able to get to them, and to use them (because of the UN's intensified inspections), and (I believe, in this particular paranoid vision, that) he had this takover planned well before 9-11, and saw his very justification for bringing this war on begin to fade - so he jumped into action, while he still could.
Paranoid, eh???
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