Thai King, Bruised and Hungry Planet,Puerto Rico Immigrant No More

Niall Fergusen
Marwan Bishara
Mike McConnell

"The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing." - Mike McConnell

"I think this is an issue of integrity regardless of which end of the political spectrum that I stand on. I was raised in a family to know right from wrong and politics, whether or not you fall in the middle, the left or the right its an issue of integrity, no matter what your opinion is, and I say that with the utmost conviction." - Miss Arizona

One of the more stable Asian countries will erupt into chaos soon. No, it's not from the recent protests or the recovery of over one billion dollars from the corrupt hands of its ex-prime minister. The King of Thailand has been in the hospital for over the last five months, and the poor old man is going to die soon.

The reverence that people have for the King, who is considered as the head of buddhism, acts as a stabilizing force when factions and emotions get out of hand. In the past, if he made a critical remark about your political movement or your military action in public, it was enough to disband the movement and cool down a bad situation. I liked him because he was born in Boston, Massachusetts and wore glasses. If you got into an argument with a cab driver and tore up the money he demanded and threw it at the driver, you could be put in jail for defacing the image of the King. A true story...

He does have sons, but they are not held in such high esteem, more like arrogant, strutting peacocks. So I don't know who will keep a cool heart for such an emotional country, the whole region could become destabilized from the outcome. King Bhumibol Adulyadej is 82, and the world's current longest serving monarch.

We're having an intense year, weather-wise. The Haitian earthquake was bad, devastation made worse by the length of the quake and bad construction methods. Really intense snow storms have pummeled the East Coast, leaving over 200 thousand without electricity, and horrible storms have raged across Western Europe, killing at least 50. Another set of earthquakes, one in Japan and the other centered in Chile, this one hundreds of times stronger in magnitude than the one in Haiti. And to top it off, a huge iceberg ran into the Mertz ice shelf in Antartica, creating another iceberg over 950 square miles to break off the glacier. The two dueling icebergs could affect the way that colder water sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and further complicate weather patterns over the entire planet. The iceberg contains about 30 percent of the world's water consumption.

I'm not going to get into the silly arguments over whether global warming is natural or man-made, the fact is that changes are occurring. For someone to open their door and look at the snow outside, then declare that there is no such thing, only proves that person is an idiot and needs to pick up a book or three... Hundreds of earthquakes happen every day, most occur where there is little population density, and in faults under the ocean. They are the result of the motion of tectonic plates moving in response to the earth's rate of rotation. And it isn't a smooth rotation, there is a wobble, which is thought to affect the magnetic poles, which occasionally shift.

Another fact is that there are hundreds of lightening strikes per day all over the earth, and scientists still cannot explain why it happens. Sure, we know that there is an accumulation of positive electrical energy that builds up in clouds, and that the earth acts as a negative ground, and that lightening will strike, but we cannot tell you the exact mechanism that triggers the lightening strike. But, I digress...

We are already taxing the amount of food and relief that are being provided to the countries hit by the earthquakes, and with our shortened attention spans, its doubtful that we can accommodate both long term assistance past the next six months. The UN food program has already had to cut back allotments to places like Yemen, which is undergoing a drought along with the Mid East and Northern Africa. I hate to project doom and gloom, but a few more of these major natural disasters will have us choosing who will live and who will have to die. We see it now in the Haitian disaster, where we could only provide food for 2 million people when the original reports said there were three million people in need. Either the calculations were incorrect, the figures were later revised downwards to cover-up, or I sorely need new reading glasses. I sincerely hope that my memory is at error, I can accept that fact more easily than I can accept cold calculations and lack of compassion among those whose job it is to care...


I guess we're all Puerto Ricans now, right John? As of this weekend, Puerto Rico has invalidated all of its birth certificates. If you were born there before this weekend you will have to apply for a new one. The application fee is waived for those over 62, or who are veterans.

At first, I thought that this was another weird twist on the birther theory, and next they were going to say that Barack Obama was actually born in Puerto Rico with a fake certificate, until I realized that: "People born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, are U.S. citizens at birth. Anyone using a stolen Puerto Rico birth certificate could enter and move about the U.S. more easily, which could also pose security problems.
Puerto Rico's legislature passed the law after raids last March broke up a criminal ring that had stolen thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several different schools in Puerto Rico. As much as 40 percent of the identity fraud in the U.S. involves birth certificates from Puerto Rico, Kenneth McClintock Hernandez, the commonwealth secretary of state, said he was told by the State Department."

"It's a problem that's been growing, and as the need in the black market for birth certificates with Hispanic-sounding names grew, the black-market value of Puerto Rican birth certificates has gone into the $5,000 to $10,000 range,"

Now I want to present Tom Tancredo with his very own Puerto Rican birth certificate, I'm sure I can pick one up on e-bay now, or at Orly Taitz's web site...