Strom Thurmond Calls For Construction Of Transcontinental Railroad
August 19, 1997 Issue 32•03

WASHINGTON, DC—Citing the need for cheaper and faster shipping to the Western Territories, the need to unite the Republic after the long and bitter War Between The States, and the recent discovery of gold in the California region, U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) urged Congress Monday to support funding for the construction of a transcontinental railroad.
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U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) said that as the 20th century approaches, the U.S. must be a leader in the field of steam-powered locomotive technology.
"My friends, we stand at the threshold of the Age Of Steam—a glorious new age for the Republic," Thurmond said. "And the mighty steam locomotive is the new Steam Age's most powerful expression. I propose that the Union grant me the sum of 50 thousands of dollars, that I may work in concert with our beloved Captains of Industry to forge an iron road of rails across the untamed, unexplored wilderness of the Western Territories."
According to Thurmond, the proposed Great Western Trans-Continental Steam Rail-Road would stretch from already-established tracks in St. Louis to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, ending "near the white settlement at Sacramento Town."
Once operational, Thurmond told members of Congress, the railroad would move upwards of 24 tons of cargo a day at speeds approaching 30 miles an hour. "My claims may seem preposterous, but mighty steam is more than ample for this endeavor," Thurmond said. "A locomotive may someday leave New York at Thanksgiving and arrive at the Pacific Sea by Christmas-tide. Gentlemen of the press, take note: Such progress is more rapid than even the vaunted clipper ships of the East India Trading Company!"
Despite the enormous scale of the transcontinental railroad, Thurmond said that it could be built at a remarkably low cost, primarily through the use of cheap foreign labor. "Seeing as that slavery has recently fallen from favor," he said, "I propose the importation of the Chinee, through relations with a procurer of labor in the Orient."
The senator went on to point out that the Chinaman has the naturally industrious and servile nature of the ant, is as clever with tools as the common monkey, and will eat nearly anything he can find.
Reaction to the Thurmond proposal on Capitol Hill was overwhelmingly negative, with a majority of legislators—both Republican and Democrat—dismissing it before even hearing its details. Stung by the lukewarm reaction among his colleagues, an angry Thurmond lashed back Tuesday.
"I hear my Whig detractors mutter, 'Preposterous!' and, 'Who shall build this foul rail-road, and where?'" Thurmond said. "Well it is no mere Opium-dream, and I propose to build it in the great Western Desert, which will be ideal once the Great Canyon is filled in and its hellish mesas and cacti are destroyed by dynamite. The region is home to no one, save the Red Indian, and these heathen savages may be either exterminated or relocated to less valuable land, such as the so-called oil-fields of Oklahoma, where noisome substances bubble out of the Earth."
When questioned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about the necessity of the railroad, considering the existence of a fully functional Federal Interstate Highway System, Thurmond alerted the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms to the presence of a woman on the congressional floor and ordered her immediate removal.
"There is an individual of the female persuasion in the Senatorial chamber—with the facial cast of a Jewess, no less!" Thurmond said. "Guards, seize her!"

Weird

Obama's Edge in the Coverage Race
TOOLBOX
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503100.html


By Deborah HowellSunday, August 17, 2008; Page B06
Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain -- and therefore there's more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn't look good.
In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages. Fifteen stories featured both candidates and were about polls or issues such as terrorism, Social Security and the candidates' agreement on what should be done in Afghanistan.
This dovetails with Obama's dominance in photos, which I pointed out two weeks ago. At that time, it was 122 for Obama and 78 for McCain. Two weeks later, it's 143 to 100, almost the same gap, because editors have run almost the same number of photos -- 21 of Obama and 22 of McCain -- since they realized the disparity. McCain is almost even with Obama in Page 1 photos -- 10 to 9.
This is not just a Post phenomenon. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been monitoring campaign coverage at an assortment of large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, five news Web sites, three major cable news networks, and public radio and other radio outlets. Its latest report, for the week of Aug. 4-10, shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.

How McCain Won Saddleback
In an unusual setting, his experience overwhelmed Obama.
By Byron York

Lake Forest, Calif. — It’s fair to say that in the hours before John McCain appeared with Barack Obama at the “Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency,” here at Pastor Rick Warren’s famed southern California mega-church, there were at least a few McCain insiders who were a bit nervous about their candidate’s prospects. Obama can be remarkably polished in this sort of situation. Unlike other Democrats, he’s not afraid to hang out with evangelicals. McCain, on the other hand, can at times be cranky and take pleasure in irritating his base. Could he come out ahead in this one?Team McCain needn’t have worried. This was not your usual political TV show. Warren — Pastor Rick, around here — asked big questions, about big subjects; he wasn’t concerned about what appeared on the front page of that morning’s Washington Post. And his simple, direct, big questions brought out something we don’t usually see in a presidential face-off; in this forum, as opposed to a read-the-prompter speech, or even a debate focused on the issues of the moment, the candidates were forced to call on everything they had — the things they have done and learned throughout their lives. And the fact is, John McCain has lived a much bigger life than Barack Obama. That’s not a slam at Obama; McCain has lived a much bigger life than most people. But it still made Obama look small in comparison. McCain was the clear winner of the night.The idea was for Warren to question Obama for an hour — they tossed a coin to see who would go first — and then ask the same questions of McCain, who was not allowed to hear what Obama had answered before him. Not a few people in the press thought it was a bad idea. Asking each man the same questions meant Warren couldn’t tailor his queries to each man; sure, he could ask Obama about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but what sense would it make to ask McCain, too? It seemed like a recipe for nothing much at all.
But Pastor Rick hasn’t built a huge church and sold more than 25 million copies of The Purpose-Driven Life for nothing. By the time Warren finished questioning Obama, people were eager to hear how McCain would handle the same subjects. In a debate, candidates are often asked the same question, but the second guy has always heard what the first guy said and tailors his answer accordingly. At Saddleback, there was something much different — and more revealing — going on.The contrast was striking throughout each man’s one-hour time on stage. When Warren asked Obama, “What’s the most gut-wrenching decision you’ve ever had to make?” Obama answered that opposing the war in Iraq was “as tough a decision that I’ve had to make, not only because there were political consequences but also because Saddam Hussein was a bad person and there was no doubt he meant America ill.” But Obama was a state senator in Illinois when Congress authorized the president to use force in Iraq. He didn’t have to make a decision on the war. That fact was a recurring issue in the Democratic primaries, when candidates Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd, and John Edwards argued that they, as senators, had to make a choice Obama didn’t have to make. And now he says it’s his toughest call. When McCain got the question, he was able to tell an old story with a sense of gravity and poignancy that he seldom shows in public. He described his time as a prisoner of war, when he was offered a chance for early release because his father was a top naval officer. “I was in rather bad physical shape,” McCain told Warren, but “we had a code of conduct that said you only leave by order of capture.” So McCain refused to go. He made the telling even more forceful when he added that, “in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m very happy I didn’t know the war was going to last for another three years or so.” In one moment, he showed a sense of pride and a hint of regret, too; he came across as a man who did the right thing but not without the temptation to take an easy out. In any event, the message was very clear: John McCain has had to make bigger, more momentous decisions in his life than has Barack Obama.
McCain bested Obama again when Warren asked for an example of a time in which he “went against party loyalty and maybe even against your own best interest for the good of America.”“Well, I’ll give you an example that in fact I worked with John McCain on,” Obama said, “and that was the issue of campaign ethics reform and finance reform.” But it turned out that was an issue on which Obama had briefly allied with McCain and then jumped back to the Democratic mother ship, causing McCain to write Obama an angry note about the abandonment of what had been a principled position. As far as bucking your party goes, it wasn’t very big stuff. When McCain got the question, everyone in the room thought he would bring up campaign-finance reform, the issue on which he has alienated the Republican base for years. But he didn’t. “Climate change, out-of-control spending, torture,” he said. “The list goes on.” McCain’s prime example, though, was his story of opposing Ronald Reagan’s decision to send a contingent of Marines to Lebanon as a peacekeeping force. “My knowledge and my background told me that a few hundred Marines in a situation like that could not successfully carry out any kind of peacekeeping mission, and I thought they were going into harm’s way,” McCain said. But he deeply admired Reagan, and wanted to be loyal to the party; it was a difficult decision. McCain answered the whole question without touching on campaign finance; he had so much more life experience to draw on that he could swamp Obama without using everything he had. And on it went. On questions like the nature of evil and causes worth dying for, McCain’s depth stood out. And that was true even when he admitted wrongdoing. Early on in the questioning, Warren asked each man, “What…would be the greatest moral failure in your life, and what would be the greatest moral failure of America?” Obama answered that he drank and “experimented” with drugs as a teenager, which he attributed to his own selfishness. McCain, on the other hand, said, “The failure of my first marriage. It’s my greatest moral failure.” McCain’s actions in that matter are nothing to brag about, but what came from it onstage at Saddleback was the sense that he was willing to dig deeper and take a greater risk in his answer than had Obama. McCain knew that critics on the left, looking for a way to change the subject from the John Edwards affair, had been pointing to the end of McCain’s first marriage. But McCain took the subject straight on. “He could have avoided that altogether or come up with some other answer,” Chip Pickering, the Mississippi Republican representative, told me later in the “Messaging Room.” (There’s no “Spin Room” at Saddleback; just a “Messaging Room.”) “But he very quickly, cleanly, and clearly confessed his failure.” Still, I said to Pickering, adultery doesn’t sit well with evangelicals, and that’s what McCain was talking about, wasn’t it? “The clarity of confessing his failure — there will be respect in the evangelical community for doing so,” Pickering answered.
Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama. “Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer. An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.” “Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on. Obama had nothing to win on the question; if anything, he seemed wary of saying something that might anger his pro-choice base. But McCain had a lot at stake with this group, and his answer seemed to settle the concerns of social conservatives who have been rattled by reports that he might be considering a pro-choice running mate. While many evangelicals have softened on the issue of gay marriage, they wanted to hear a solid, clear statement from McCain on abortion. “Abortion and marriage are still pivotal issues…but I think that abortion is probably more pivotal than marriage,” Marlys Popma, the Iowa social conservative who is now McCain’s national coordinator for evangelical issues, told me after the forum. “Abortion is still very, very solid with this group, even the younger ones [who are more liberal on marriage]. Life is a real delineating factor.” To further press the case on abortion, McCain had brought along New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, one of the most forceful pro-life voices in Congress. After the forum, I asked Smith whether Obama had helped himself at all with pro-lifers. Just the opposite, Smith said. “I thought Sen. Obama’s statement in quoting Matthew 25, which is my favorite scripture since I was in high school — ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do likewise to me’ — when as a matter of record he voted against [a ban on partial-birth abortion ]…well, I find it discouraging and disingenuous for him to talk about the least of our brethren.”As far as the crowd is concerned, it was clear that McCain was the favorite. That was hardly a surprise; at a small gathering I attended a few years ago, someone asked Warren how many of his parishioners voted for John Kerry. He thought for a moment and said 15 percent. So the conservative Saddleback crowd, while happy to see Obama in their midst, was not going to be on his side. What they wanted was proof that John McCain was on theirs, and that’s what they got.—

Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.

Phelps' daily diet, from the London Times:

• Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelette. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
• Lunch: One pound of pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on white bread, plus 1,000 calories of energy drinks.
• Dinner: One pound of pasta, an entire pizza and even more energy drinks.
Estimated calories: 12,000. Gaseous index: High. All that's missing are the little chocolate donuts of champions.

Young swimmers throughout the nation are now jumping up from their computer screens and heading to Denny's. It won't be long before all members of the U.S. Junior National team look like this. America, the most buoyant team in the 2016 Olympics.

Bigfoot Evidence To Be Unraveled
By Anna Boyd 16:53, August 14th 2008

Two American hunters may have unraveled the mystery around Bigfoot, the legendary forest creature, which had fed hundreds of American stories along the way. They claim they discovered the body of the mythical ape-man in a remote forest in northern Georgia.
Bigfoot also known as Sasquatch, Chiye, Yeti, Yeren and Yowie is considered the Holy Grail for cryptozoologists. The creature is sometimes described as a large, hairy bipedal hominoid without knowing for sure whether it existed or not. Some experts consider its existence as a combination of folklore and hoaxes.
But with the announcement of the two hunters the legend might be more than real. Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer said on the Web site SearchingForBigfoot.com that they discovered the body of Bigfoot. Moreover, they plan to present “DNA evidence and photo evidence of the creature” at a press conference in Palo Alto, California, later today. They also insisted they put the body in a freezer in order to keep it “fresh.”
The hunters go even further and claim the body is 7 feet, 7 inches tall, weighs more than 500 pounds and “looks like it is part human and part ape-like.” It has reddish hair and blackish-gray eyes and a footprint that measures 26-and three quarter inches long and five and three-quarter inches across.
The story doesn’t end here, as fellow Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi, who has been looking for the legendary beast for 35 years has already confirmed the news, saying the find is absolutely genuine.
“They showed me the body. They took me to the area where they found it - -- it took a day and a half to get there. I got to be honest, when I first saw it I hated to see it in that state it was in. I wanted to capture one so the world could see it walking. I guess this is the next best thing for the time being,” said Biscardi.
Anyone would say wow…but there is more. Biscardi said the hunters have video footage captured on the same day the creature was discovered. They apparently show at least three more Bigfoot creatures walking the way humans do. In fact, he is very convinced of the fact that once the photo and DNA proofs are revealed during the conference everyone will see that Bigfoot is not only a legend.
“We’ll release the DNA analysis, and we’ll have the body right next to the two boys…then you can see it’s real, that it’s not all bull…t.”
Of course, many experts are sceptical about the subject of the press conference.
How is this story going to end? Well, this is just a matter of time. Just be there and hold your breath…

First he said he didn't know her.
Then he said (up until 2 weeks ago) he didn't have an affair with her.
Claims he told his wife about it back in 2006.
Hunter received over a hundred grand for producing videos she doesn't know anything about making.
He was "Just talking with her" for 5 hours in a hotel room.
She now has a 3 million dollar house in Santa Barbara -- not a mansion considering the location, but a fairly nice piece of property.
The man who claims to be the the baby daddy, one Andrew Young, formerly of Edwards' staff, now has a 4 million dollar home in Santa Barbara.
There will be no paternity tests.
I haven't heard such convoluted horseshit since Nixon was in the White House.