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Anti-smoking authoritarian follower changes classical Christmas poem: No smoking for Santa

Suzanne Cassidy
Lancaster Online
Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Image

Santa Claus clenches pipe in his teeth in the 1901 McLoughlin Bros. edition of "A Visit From St. Nicholas."
''Twas the Night Before Christmas' gets a patch

Santa, dear Santa, don't say ho-ho-ho. Just say no-no-no.

To smoking, that is.

That is the plea of a Canadian entrepreneur, who has self-published an abridged version of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," the poem also known as "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and "The Night Before Christmas."

First published anonymously in 1823, the poem is generally attributed to New York scholar Clement Clarke Moore (though at least one academic believes it was written by a distant relative of Moore's wife).

Generations of children have grown up reading this poem on Christmas Eve. It has inspired many of the ideas we hold about Santa, a "right jolly old elf" who drives a reindeer-powered sleigh full of toys and enters homes via chimneys to deliver those toys on Christmas Eve.

With its vivid rendering of Santa - his roselike cheeks, cherrylike nose, and a belly that shakes, when he laughs, "like a bowl full of jelly" - the poem is pure joy in verse form.

Alas, not everyone sees it that way.

Comment: Pamela McColl clearly exhibits the traits of an authoritarian follower. For information about the benefits of tobacco, please read:
Nicotine - The Zombie Antidote
Let's All Light Up!
First They Came for the Smokers... And I said Nothing Because I Was Not a Smoker
Study finds smoking wards off Parkinson's disease
Nicotine helps Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Patients
Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers
Scientists Identify Brain Regions Where Nicotine Improves Attention, Other Cognitive Skills
Can Smoking be GOOD for SOME People?

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Bizarro Earth

Police kill suspects in separate shooting incidents in Alabama


CBC News
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:37 UTC
3 wounded in hospital shooting; 2nd shooting east of Birmingham.

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© Joe Songer/Associated Press
St. Vincent's Hospital in Birmingham, Ala. was the location of a shooting on Saturday.
Police in Alabama killed two suspects Saturday following separate shooting incidents 120 kilometres apart that left three other people dead and several injured, including two officers.

Authorities said Jason Letts, 38, of Jemison opened fire early Saturday morning at a hospital in Birmingham, wounding a police officer and two employees before being shot and killed by another officer.

Police were sent to St. Vincent's Hospital around 4 a.m. to check on a report of an armed man inside the facility. Two officers who arrived separately converged on the suspect on the hospital's fifth floor.

A handful of cardiac patients and several staff members were on the fifth floor, hospital spokeswoman Liz Moore told reporters during a news conference. She said the hospital is secure and stable, and patient care was not interrupted.

Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper said in a statement, "In light of the recent mass shooting in Connecticut, too many of these incidents end with unimaginable tragedy."
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Pistol

Another mall shooting: More than 50 shots fired at Fashion Island mall parking lot in Orange County; suspect held

Lauren Williams and Rosanna Xia
Los Angeles Times
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:29 UTC
Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove is suspected of firing a handgun in the mall parking lot in Newport Beach. No one was hit.

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California, Newport Beach - A gunman at Fashion Island in Newport Beach apparently fired more than 50 rounds in a parking lot at the busy shopping mall Saturday before he was apprehended by police, authorities said.

Marcos Gurrola, 42, of Garden Grove, was arrested in the parking lot near the Macy's department store shortly after allegedly firing the shots about 4:30 p.m., said Kathy Lowe, a spokeswoman for the Newport Beach Police Department. Officers on bike patrol apprehended Gurrola as he was standing by a white Honda.

Police searched the mall but did not find anyone who had been injured by the shots, which were apparently fired either into the air or at the ground.

More than 50 rounds from a handgun were recovered at the scene, said Deputy Chief David McGill. A handgun was also recovered at the scene, but police did not reveal any more details about the weapon. The state's landmark assault-weapons law, which went into effect in 2000, banned the use of handgun magazines with more than 19 bullets.
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Pistol

Connecticut shooting - Man in camouflage pants grabbed by police. Was suspected of being second shooter

Andrew Steele
America 20xy
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 23:00 UTC
A witness to the aftermath of the terrible school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut on December 14th described police cuffing a man in camouflage pants and a dark jacket who was walked past him, and who looked at gathered parents and told them that he wasn't responsible for the shooting. At the time the witness was interviewed by CBS News, the man he described was not far away. In fact, he was sitting in the front of a police car that was nearby.
Witness: I saw them walk a guy earlier with handcuffs...he walked by us and said he didn't do it.

Reporter: It was a grown man?

Witness: A grown man, yeah. He's sitting in the front of the police car over there now. So, I mean...

Reporter: He didn't have a gun?

Witness: No, I didn't see any gun...just had him handcuffed and he walked by us and looked into parents' eyes and said "I didn't do it".

Reporter: How was he dressed?

Witness: Camo pants with a dark jacket.
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Question

Nancy Lanza not a teacher?

Josh Marshall
Talking Point Memo
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Sandy Hook School
There have been a lot of factual errors in the chaotic rush to get details about today's shooting in Connecticut. But one fact that seemed established across the board was that victim Nancy Lanza, the mother of alleged shooter Adam Lanza, was a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School - specifically that it was her class that Adam Lanza massacred.

But this story just out in the Journal suggests that's not true.

Oddly, it's buried down at the bottom of the story, almost as an afterthought ...
A former school board official in Newtown called into question earlier reports that Nancy Lanza had been connected to Sandy Hook Elementary School, possibly as part of the teaching staff.

"No one has heard of her," said Lillian Bittman, who served on the local school board until 2011. "Teachers don't know her.
"It's mentioned so offhandedly. And this apparent fact was so widely reported that I'm still wondering if I'm misreading these two grafs. But it seems hard to read it any other way.
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Horse

The Hobbit movie is no fantasy for animals

Ingrid E Newkirk
The Independent
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Allegations of animal cruelty on the set of The Hobbit threaten to tarnish the film's reputation. So has director Peter Jackson done enough to answer them?

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"What do you fear, lady?" Aragorn asks in JRR Tolkien's The Return of the King. Éowyn replies, "A cage. To stay behind bars ...".

The animals, more than two dozen of them, didn't even get a cage: they lost their lives during production of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in freakish and no doubt preventable ways. A rep for Jackson acknowledged the lives lost but said that some died of natural causes. The deaths are worth remembering as the film is set to premiere in the UK, just two days after International Animal Rights Day is recognised around the world.

Unlike Frodo Baggins, animals don't aspire to do "great deeds" (although if you realise that the albatross was the first living being to circumnavigate the globe and that ants built boats out of leaves to cross mighty rivers before any human, they certainly can carry them out). They ask for far less: simply to be able to live their lives, seek out small pleasures and basic pursuits and go about their business without being captured and controlled, tormented and slaughtered.

In the production of The Hobbit, goats and sheep were reportedly corralled in crowded pens, kept on land full of burrows that caused them to lose their footing and exposed to a variety of other hazards from which they could not escape. Chickens, naturally timid birds, were left at the mercy of marauding dogs and were chased down and killed.
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Pistol

Rape victim Sara Reedy, accused of lying and jailed by U.S. police, wins $1.5 million payout

The Guardian
Raw Story
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:15 UTC
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Pittsburgh woman raped at gunpoint and charged with fabricating her story has won a settlement after a marathon legal battle, changing federal law along the way, reports Joanna Walters

Sara Reedy remembers clearly the start of her ordeal, and how surprisingly painful it was to have a gun jammed to her temple. Then her attacker demanded oral sex, saying he would shoot her if she refused. She was shaking, gagging.

"I had images of my family finding me dead," she told the Observer. "I closed my eyes and just tried to get it over with."

Reedy was 19 when the man entered the petrol station near Pittsburgh where she was working to pay her way through college and pulled a gun. He emptied the till of its $606.73 takings, assaulted her and fled into the night. But the detective who interviewed Reedy in hospital didn't believe her, and accused her of stealing the money herself and inventing the story as a cover-up. Although another local woman was attacked not long after in similar fashion, the police didn't join the dots.
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Yoda

Heroic teacher recounts hellish school shooting

Agence France-Presse
Raw Story
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:05 UTC
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The 15 first graders cowered in a dark, barricaded bathroom as gunfire boomed outside, shot after shot after shot killing their classmates and teachers.

Terrified as they were, their teacher played loving mother hen, even as she feared they - ages 6 and 7 - and she were next and would die any minute.

Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher Kaitlin Roig cried, sniffled and fidgeted as she recounted her harrowing and heartbreaking chapter of the Connecticut school shooting to ABC News.

When gunfire rang out, she gathered her kids together - their classroom had a big, exposed and thus dangerous window - and rushed them into the small bathroom.
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Footprints

Circumcision horror: Four-week-old baby dies after 'botched £100 home operation using scissors'

Natalie Evans
Mirror News
Sat, 15 Dec 2012 08:05 UTC
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© Steve Allen
Grace Adeleye was found guilty of manslaughter
Newborn Goodluck Caubergs died the day after Grace Adeleye carried out the procedure without anaesthetic and using only a pair of scissors, forceps and olive oil.

A nurse has been found guilty of the manslaughter of a four-week-old baby who bled to death after a botched home circumcision near Oldham.

Goodluck Caubergs died the day after Grace Adeleye carried out the procedure without anaesthetic and using only a pair of scissors, forceps and olive oil, a trial at Manchester Crown Court heard.

The 67-year-old is originally from Nigeria, as are the youngster's parents, where the circumcision of newborns is a tradition for Christian families, the jury heard.

Adeleye, who is also a midwife, was paid £100 for the operation as Goodluck's parents were not aware the procedure was available on the NHS.

The Royal Oldham Hospital was just a mile and a half from the family home in Chadderton, near Oldham, but by the time an ambulance was called the infant could not be saved, the court heard.

On Friday a jury of eight women and four men found Adeleye guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence by a majority verdict of 10 to 2 after deliberating for eight hours and 20 minutes.

Sentencing was adjourned to a date to be fixed for the preparation of pre-sentence reports.

Adeleye, of Sarnia Court, Salford, Greater Manchester, was granted bail with conditions.

The trial heard that the nurse botched the procedure by leaving a "ragged" wound which bled, and her post-operative care was also woefully inadequate.

Adrian Darbishire QC, opening the case for the prosecution, told the jury: "The allegation essentially here is that the care she provided in the course of that procedure was so bad that not only did it cause the death of that young baby wholly unnecessarily, but it amounted to gross negligence and a crime."

Comment: Circumcision - conditioning the adult by torturing the child

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Gear

China cracks down on "slay red dragon" doomsday cult

Sui-Lee Wee and Huang Yan
Reuters
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:04 UTC
Red Dragon
© Lucid Raven Productions
China has launched a crackdown on a cult it says is calling for a "decisive battle" to slay the "Red Dragon" Communist Party, and which has been spreading doomsday rumors, state media said on Friday.

In recent weeks, hundreds of members of the "Almighty God" group have clashed with police, sometimes outside government buildings, in central Henan, northern Shaanxi and southwestern Gansu provinces, according to photos on popular microblogs.

(The group) has "incited followers to launch a decisive battle with the 'Big Red Dragon', to make the 'Red Dragon' extinct and to establish the reign of the kingdom of the 'Almighty God'", the provincial Shaanxi Daily said on its website.

It added that the sect's followers have been distributing leaflets saying that the world will end in 2012.

China's Communist Party brooks no challenge to its rule and is obsessed with social stability.
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