Please don't push these divers that hard. Their capacity to help is limited.

If the debris is at depth it isn't divers that need to be in the water. They can only go to a very shallow depth and even at their deepest ability they are only allowed to be at those depths for a short period of time. It takes time to descend and then return to the surface without getting decompression sickness. 

I do not think this is a good idea.

7 April 2014 Last updated at 11:23 BST 

Navy divers (click here) have been searching for parts of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in the area where a signal was picked up.

The Ocean Shield ship picked up the signal twice, once for more than two hours, said Angus Houston, the retired air chief marshal leading the search.

He called it the "most promising lead" so far.

The plane, carrying 239 people, was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March when it disappeared. 

Pictures courtesy Australian Defence Force....

There is no immunity to decompression illness. This is from DAN, Divers Alert Network. DAN is highly valued as a resource and advocate. They offer insurance and all sorts of services to divers. DAN has been around a long time.

Who Gets DCI? (click here)

Decompression illness affects scuba divers, aviators, astronauts and compressed-air workers. It occurs in approximately 1,000 U.S. scuba divers each year. Moreover, DCI hits randomly. The main risk factor for DCI is a reduction in ambient pressure, but there are other risk factors that will increase the chance of DCI occurring. These known risk factors are deep / long dives, cold water, hard exercise at depth, and rapid ascents.

Rapid ascents are closely linked to the risk of AGE. Other factors thought to increase the risk of DCI but for which evidence is not conclusive are obesity, dehydration, hard exercise immediately after surfacing, and pulmonary disease. In addition, there seem to be individual risk factors that have not yet been identified. This is why some divers seem to get DCI more frequently than others although they are following the same dive profile.

Since DCI is a random event, almost any dive profile can result in DCI, no matter how safe it seems. The reason is that the risk factors, both known and unknown, can influence the probability of DCI in myriad ways. Because of this, evaluation of a diver for possible decompression illness must be made on a case-by-case basis by evaluating the diver's signs and symptoms and not just based on the dive profile....

Senator Paul is correct. There is a ton of evidence. The mainstream press doesn't want to admit it, but, it exists.

No bid contracts. The stockholders of Halliburton dropped the lawsuit against Cheney for cooking the books. Halliburton was paid for any and all contracts regardless of the shoddy work that even killed our soldiers.

I think Cheney is feeling the heat. There is more and more dialogue about his role in illegal spying on the Senate and his role in corruption while in the White House. It is about time someone started pointing to this rather than being ostriches. If this level of corruption is allowed to exist it will be repeated.

This is not the first time Thomas Friedman has taken this opinion.

By Jeff Spross
March 4, 2013 at 3:05 pm

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (click here) has a new piece out today on a report that investigates the web of interconnections between climate change and global insecurity, particularly in the Arab Spring.

“The Arab Spring and Climate Change” is a product of cooperative efforts between the Center for American Progress (CAP), the Stimson Center, and the Center for Climate and Security. The report “doesn’t claim that climate change caused the recent wave of Arab revolutions,” Friedman writes. “But, taken together, the essays make a strong case that the interplay between climate change, food prices (particularly wheat) and politics is a hidden stressor that helped to fuel the revolutions and will continue to make consolidating them into stable democracies much more difficult.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter, one of the report’s lead authors, used the preface of the report to lay out the idea of a “stressor” as a useful framework for thinking about these issues. Borrowed from criminal science concepts, a stressor is a “sudden change in circumstances or environment” that interacts with a complicated web of other factors (often a psychological profile, in criminal science’s case) to create sudden, unforeseen, and volatile change. In this instance, climate shifts such as drought our heat waves act as stressors on everything from crop production to food security, water security, the migration of peoples, the stability of governmental and non-governmental networks, and the informal associations and interactions of both local and more widespread communities....

That girl has a rough time keeping her clothes on.

George is a very bright little guy. He looks at everything and everyone. He is very aware of his surroundings. He even has Prince William carrying his Teddy Bear, too.

Makes a person wonder who is really king.

Go get 'em. Jessie !

I demand he be transferred to a prison near his family!

Jessie, this was fate. No doubt in my mind. I want daily transparency to the former Congressman's activity and treatment.

By MICHAEL SNEED AND LYNN SWEET 
 Staff Reporters  
April 5, 2014 4:32PM
Updated: April 6, 2014 6:31PM

...The 49-year-old (click here) former Chicago congressman had been advising other inmates in North Carolina about their rights in prison, according to the source, who said a guard took exception to that....

There is no justice in North Carolina until a case gets to the Fourth Circuit in Virginia. That is how corrupt the system is in that state. The corruption is systemic. I have no doubt they are afraid of prison riots. Some would say it is long overdue. But, inmates would die. The guards just wait for the first opportunity to carry out sentences the juries wouldn't.

It is a compelling thing in North Carolina when the naive actually are made aware they are being victims to a social and systemic corruption. The inmates in North Carolina are often men and women with incomplete educations and lived lives of futile existence. They live with 'honor' as a value system. That carries a heavy weight in North Carolina's society. It also calls up crime in order to live up to that honor, too.

There is also drugs in North Carolina. There are drug economies there. There isn't anything else. North Carolina had a high number of arrests in the FBI sting years ago. In Wilmington, North Carolina anyone can walk into a bar and find 'the code' to access drugs in the back room refrig. No lie. Port City. Amazing. 

Imagine being an inmate and facing a guard living by the 'honor value system.' It is hideous. The difference in many instances to being in prison and being on the outside is what side of 'the tracks' one lived on. So to speak.

I can only imagine how appalled the Congressman was when he realized the reality of these people.  

The prison culture in North Carolina is generational in families.

Thursday, August 22, 2013
RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal judge (click here) was scheduled to hear arguments Thursday about dismissing a lawsuit that accuses guards at North Carolina’s maximum security prison of sadistically beating inmates, resulting in broken bones and wheelchair confinement.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle planned to consider whether there is enough evidence already presented in court documents to go ahead with the lawsuit on behalf of eight inmates at Central Prison in Raleigh.

The inmates accuse 19 correctional officers of taking handcuffed and shackled inmates from solitary confinement cells where they were placed for disciplinary reasons to blind spots out of view of security cameras, then severely beating them. Former prison administrators Gerald Branker and Kenneth Lassister are accused in the lawsuit of failing in their duties for not developing policies on investigating inmate abuse complaints and to preserve video tapes that might contain evidence from being erased....

The demonstrators better not kill anyone.

By Associated Press 
Published: April 6

...In Donetsk, (click here) 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of the Russian border, a large group of people, including many in masks carrying sticks and stones, surged into the provincial government building and smashed windows....

The entire idea Donetsk was taking over buildings is a joke. They already had control of the area. This is the Ukraine government attempting to bring balance back to a region occupied by an illegal militia.

Thank you to the New York Times.

Those deported have to have a chance of redress of their deportation. The gentleman in the White House has to put this provision in his Executive Order.

They have become accustomed to the USA and bump their heads against it's limits no different than citizens do from time to time.

By GINGER THOMPSON and SARAH COHEN

APRIL 6, 2014

 

...With the Obama administration (click here) deporting illegal immigrants at a record pace, the president has said the government is going after “criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they’re trying to figure out how to feed their families.”

But a New York Times analysis of internal government records shows that since President Obama took office, two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all. Twenty percent — or about 394,000 — of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show....

I loved Mickey Rooney. He was great. Hollywood turned a page today.

Mickey Rooney, pictured in 1998, was a Hollywood survivor. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times / November 17, 1998)

By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times Film Critic

April 7, 2014, 4:00 a.m.

...But Rooney (click here) was more than just any star. In the final innocent prewar years of 1939, 1940 and 1941, he was the country's biggest box-office attraction, period, end of story. And the actor reached that pinnacle not by being a dashing action hero lead or a glamorous romantic lead, but by playing a teenage boy, a character one contemporary critic called "the perfect composite of everybody's kid brother." Nothing says more than that about how America's popular culture movie tastes have changed in the interim....

Mickey Rooney (click here) was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents' vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film....

He was a vital person in the USA until his waning days.
  
by: Linda Trischitta 
March 3rd, 2011
3:53 PM

It is perhaps (click here) one of the most terrifying aspects of old age: friends have died, family may live far away and you’re living an isolated life. That is, except for the one person you rely on for help, who is taking advantage of your dependence upon him or her....

This unrest in the Ukraine was planned for a long time. The Ukraine government has it's hands full trying to deprogram the brainwashing.

This is the eastern most province in the Ukraine, so it is no surprise. This is a good opportunity for the Ukraine government to establish a presence there that is benevolent and on the side of the people. 

The problems the people have is not about being Russian. Ethnically they may already be Russian. They are transposing their real economic problems onto the idea the Ukraine government is run by thugs and criminals.

The Ukraine government is there for all the people, not just 'certain' people. This method of fomenting hate has to be stopped. The people, under Yanukovych were brainwashed to believe some people are better than others. That is common when wealth is sequestered in corners of a society while others are struggling. There is no magic to being wealthy or an oligarch. Money is power and how it is used by those that possess it reveals their intent. 

The impoverishment and isolation of 'certain' people is a common strategy to justify political domination of an economy. We face it all the time in the USA and to consider this is the Ukraine and it's debt problem escalates with every clash between the government and it's people only adding to the countries problems. It is important for the current Ukraine President to speak to the people. All the people. The nation is best when it stands as a nation and not divided into segments of ethnic standing. 

The current Ukraine President has to change the dialogue that allows for justification of "Russian speaking people." They can speak Russian all they want. No one is throwing them into prison for speaking Russian. There has been no effort by the Ukraine government to victimize or kill. They are not confronting the protesters with violence so much as a presence to bring back 'peace' so they can get on with their lives without fear. 

This is all prejudice. Ethnic and religious bigotry. No population of any country should pledge their souls to such hatred. When people are full of such bigotry they are under the influence of unreasonable odds to succeed. The Ukraine has to succeed as a country, not a piece of a country. 

The history of the country proves it's strength and capability. There is every reason to expect that character strength to continue to be proud of the country they build together. Pandering to Russia in hopes their circumstances change immediately is giving up and admitting they aren't capable of a future that is autonomous and strong. That doesn't sound like the Ukrainian people. The Ukraine has always lead the region, why is it different now? 

7 April 2014 Last updated at 06:49 ET

The Luhansk (click here) security building's weapons arsenal has been raided, police say.

On Sunday, protesters broke into regional government buildings in Donetsk and Kharkiv.

At an emergency cabinet meeting, interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blamed Russia for the seizures....

It is my opinion this chronic divisive strategy by Russia will create small states and nations that will be unsuccessful economically. History tells us so. There is nothing wrong with calling upon the LESSONS of history to prove to those that want separation from the Ukraine it is unproductive and ultimately leads to greater hatred, victimization and clashes for land justified by ethnic and religious hatred. This happened before in this region. Yugoslavia is history. It is proven that when peoples divide into smaller and smaller nation-states they fail and turn to hatred to wage war and genocide in the fight for gaining land mass.

The oligarchs will be surprised should Russia occupy their region. There is history there, too. The Russian Oligarchs are no more. Russia is a friend to oligarchs so long as it has control and will allow pandering right up to the point where the oligarch and it's control no longer serves Russia. 

Wealth is a funny thing. Wealth is more opportunity than one realizes. If I had enough liquid capital to build a small business and hire people it would make me happier than I am today. However, the liquid capital depends on the ability to obtain it. So, while oligarchs are wealthy, they had the opportunity while others did not. That doesn't make them better, smarter or ethnically preferable. It makes them people that were in the right place at the right time and took advantage of their circumstances.

The Ukraine people are better than this. They need to remember who they are as a nation, not a divided population brainwashed to facilitate the ability of Russia to conquer. 

"Morning Papers - It's Origins" (click here)

The Rooster

"Okeydoke"

"Good Night, Moon"

First Quarter

48% Full

7.2 day old Moon

Added by Stephanie Tapley
April 5, 2014

...It may be presumed (click here) that the new moon (first quarter) phases may be better for cultivating the soil since this is supposedly when the moon’s gravitational pull on the earth is the strongest. With such a strong force as this being directed toward the earth, this could help draw moisture upward to the area where the seedlings are planted, causing the planted seeds to germinate properly and quickly....