The year following the Tucson-area shooting hasn't been easy for the Salzgebers, for whom the nightmare is all too fresh. Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic

By Dennis Wagner - Jan. 3, 2012 09:52 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com

Roger Salzgeber was not hit by bullets in the mass murder near Tucson a year ago, but he was wounded nevertheless.

"Some days are better than others," says the 63-year-old retiree, who was among those who held down the shooter until police arrived. "I decided to just move on as best I can. But it's not going well. This is just really, really emotional for me."

Salzgeber says he is haunted by anxiety, anger and cynicism since he and his wife, Faith, survived the Jan. 8 attack outside a supermarket. Six people were killed and 13 wounded at a meet-and-greet gathering for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who is still recovering from brain injuries caused by a 9mm slug.

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When the shooting started that Saturday morning, the Salzgebers were fourth and fifth in line. They dove to the ground and somehow avoided being shot. Twelve months later, they cannot escape memories of the mayhem or a sense of survivor incredulity.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2011/12/14/20111214tucson-shootings-couple-who-escaped-bullets-cant-escape-horrible-memories.html#ixzz1iXAk0jS0

(Note to Mods: I think the upcoming 1 year mark from the shooting qualifies as "really big news." )

There are some pretty bad accounts of several Republican Senators behavior in regards to listening to them on gun control.

1/3/12
Island Trails' 2011 Video Summary
By Kaleo Lancaster,

2011 was good fun! Within our crew, there weren't any major injury(s) like last year. Our crew had a couple close calls, but nobody wen make. (Excuse my pidgin.)

There were a bunch of trails discovered, and lots cleared. And there was certainly a big and obvious surge of new people around the island setting aside their "rubbah slippahs" for some good 'ole hiking shoes. Not that it's a bad thing. Getting sweaty and dirty in the mountains is a hell of a good time when you're with your buddies. But with more people on the trails, mountain rescues were noticeably frequent and all over the news. At one point I remember there being over forty rescues in one month, all hiking related: poor HFD.

With all drama aside, 2011 was definitely the year of exploration for us. From our backpack trek on an outer island, to a gluch with not a single human footprint, to a ridge that only goats trample on, to a spot on a local TV show, and to some pictures featured in Hawaii Magazine, I'd say we covered a lot ground, literally and figuratively speaking.



http://kaleolancaster.blogspot.com/2012/01/island-trails-2011-video-summary.html

More Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/islandtrails

Kaleo Lancaster and company do some really amazing "hiking" - start on the easy trails and don't look down.

By Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner - 1/3/2012


By J.D. Crowe, Mobile Register - 1/3/2012


By Jimmy Margulies, The Record of Hackensack, NJ - 1/3/2012


By Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant - 1/3/2012


By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune - 1/3/2012


By Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com - 1/3/2012


By Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com - 1/3/2012


By Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com - 1/3/2012


By John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri - 1/3/2012


By Randy Bish, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - 1/3/2012


By Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons - 1/3/2012 - "Headed for Extinction"


By Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen - 1/3/2012


By Osama Hajjaj, Abu Mahjoob Creative Productions - 1/3/2012


By Stuart Carlson, January 03, 2012


By Drew Sheneman, January 03, 2012 - "I'm glad the caucuses are almost, keep getting campaign operatives stuck in my grain chute"


By Tom Toles, January 03, 2012



By Jeff Danziger, January 02, 2012


By Jim Morin, January 04, 2012

Note: All previous editions can be found in my journal.

By Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com - 1/2/2012


By Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com - 1/2/2012


By Steve Greenberg, VCReporter, Ventura. CA - 1/2/2012


By Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com - 1/2/2012


By Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com - 1/2/2012


By Wolverton, Cagle Cartoons - 1/1/2012


By Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons - 12/31/2011


By Pat Oliphant, December 30, 2011


By Tom Toles, January 02, 2012


By Tom Toles, January 01, 2012


By Matt Wuerker, January 02, 2012


By Ted Rall, January 02, 2012


By Jim Morin, January 01, 2012



By Jeff Danziger, January 01, 2012

Note: All previous editions can be found in my journal.

President Barack Obama, left, walks with his daughter Malia as his daughter Sasha carries a family member while leaving the East-West Center after visiting an exhibit about the President's mother's anthropological work in Honolulu Sunday, Dec. 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

By Star-Advertiser staff

POSTED: 12:12 p.m. HST, Jan 01, 2012
LAST UPDATED: 10:01 p.m. HST, Jan 01, 2012

President Barack Obama and his wife and friends dined at Nobu's Waikiki tonight on the eve of the first family's departure.

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Earlier, Obama spent New Year’s Day remembering his family’s history.

In the late morning, Obama took his wife and daughters to visit the grave of his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

The Obamas then headed to the East-West Center, which is featuring a display on the anthropological work of the president’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. The exhibition includes photographs taken during Dunham’s years of field research in Indonesia, as well as her personal art and artifact collection.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/136507903.html?id=136507903

The little girl is his niece Savita Ng (4?), her sister Suhaila Ng is 7 now I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Soetoro-Ng



She's grown

Francesco Petrarch: "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux," The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. E. Cassirer et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 36-46.

To Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro, of the Order of Saint Augustine, Professor of Theology, about his own troubles.

Today I ascended the highest mountain in this region, which, not without cause, they call the Windy Peak. Nothing but the desire to see its conspicuous height was the reason for this undertaking. For many years I have been intending to make this expedition. You know that since my early childhood, as fate tossed around human affairs, I have been tossed around in these parts, and this mountain, visible far and wide from everywhere, is always in your view. So I was at last seized by the impulse to accomplish what I had always wanted to do. It happened while I was reading Roman history again in Livy that I hit upon the passage where Philip, the king of Macedon - the Philip who waged war against the Roman people - "ascends Mount Haemus in Thessaly, since he believed the rumor that you can see two seas from its top: the Adriatic and the Black Sea." Whether he was right or wrong I cannot make out because the mountain is far from our region, and the disagreement among authors renders the matter uncertain. I do not intend to consult all of them: the cosmographer Pomponius Mela does not hesitate to report the fact as true; Livy supposes the rumor to be false. I would not leave it long in doubt if that mountain were as easy to explore as the one here. At any rate, I had better let it go, in order to come back to the mountain I mentioned at first. It seemed to me that a young man who holds no public office might be excused for doing what an old king is not blamed for.

I now began to think over whom to choose as a companion. It will sound strange to you that hardly a single one of all my friends seemed to me suitable in every respect, so rare a thing is absolute congeniality in every attitude and habit even among dear friends. One was too sluggish, the other too vivacious; one too slow, the other too quick; this one too gloomy of temper, that one too gay. One was duller, the other brighter than I should have liked. This man's taciturnity, that man's flippancy; the heavy weight and obesity of the next, the thinness and weakness of still another were reasons to deter me. The cool lack of curiosity of one, like another's too eager interest, dissuaded me from choosing either. All such qualities, however difficult they are to bear, can be borne at home: loving friendship is able to endure everything; it refuses no burden. But on a journey they become intolerable. Thus my delicate mind, craving honest entertainment, looked about carefully, weighing every detail with no offense to friendship. Tacitly it rejected whatever it could foresee would become troublesome on the projected excursion. What do you think I did? At last I applied for help at home and revealed my plan to my only brother, who is younger than I and whom you know well enough. He could hear of nothing he would have liked better and was happy to fill the place of friend as well as brother.

We left home on the appointed day and arrived at Malaucène at night. This is a place at the northern foot of the mountain.

We spent a day there and began our ascent this morning, each of us accompanied by a single servant. From the start we encountered a good deal of trouble, for the mountain is a steep and almost inaccessible pile of rocky material. However, what the Poet says is appropriate: "Ruthless striving overcomes everything." [Vergil: Georgica i. 145-46; Macrobius, Saturnalia v. 6.]

http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/ren-pet-ventoux.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Petrarca

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: December 27, 2011

TULSA, Okla. — Oklahoma has always had a troubled relationship with her native son Woody Guthrie. The communist sympathies of America’s balladeer infuriated local detractors. In 1999 a wealthy donor’s objections forced the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City to cancel a planned exhibition on Guthrie organized by the Smithsonian Institution. It wasn’t until 2006, nearly four decades after his death, that the Oklahoma Hall of Fame got around to adding him to its ranks.

But as places from California to the New York island get ready to celebrate the centennial of Guthrie’s birth, in 2012, Oklahoma is finally ready to welcome him home. The George Kaiser Family Foundation in Tulsa plans to announce this week that it is buying the Guthrie archives from his children and building an exhibition and study center to honor his legacy.

“Oklahoma was like his mother,” said his daughter Nora Guthrie, throwing back her tangle of gray curls as she reached out in an embrace. “Now he’s back in his mother’s arms.”

The archive includes the astonishing creative output of Guthrie during his 55 years. There are scores of notebooks and diaries written in his precise handwriting and illustrated with cartoons, watercolors, stickers and clippings; hundreds of letters; 581 artworks; a half-dozen scrapbooks; unpublished short stories, novels and essays; as well as the lyrics to the 3,000 or more songs he scribbled on scraps of paper, gift wrap, napkins, paper bags and place mats. Much of the material has rarely or never been seen in public, including the lyrics to most of the songs. Guthrie could not write musical notation, so the melodies have been lost.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/arts/music/woody-guthrie-gets-a-belated-honor-in-oklahoma.html?_r=1

&context=C3db0865ADOEgsToPDskKkaQz1FP9zfD7qClMSAvzp

Warning: The ending is crude.
Thanks MineralMan for introducing to me to: http://www.xtranormal.com/

By Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner - 12/30/2011


By Jimmy Margulies, The Record of Hackensack, NJ - 12/30/2011


By Milt Priggee, www.miltpriggee.com - 12/30/2011


By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune - 12/30/2011 - "Goodbye 2011"


By John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune - 12/30/2011 - I learned something new, Father Time has a scythe.


By Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com - 12/30/2011


By Rob Tornoe, The Press of Atlantic City - 12/30/2011


By Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons - 12/30/2011


By Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com - 12/29/2011


By Olle Johansson, Sweden - 12/30/2011


By Jeremy Nell, The New Age, South Africa - 12/30/2011


By Chan Lowe, December 30, 2011


By Jim Morin, 12/28/11


By Jim Morin, 12/30/11




By Jeff Danziger, December 26, 2011 - His cartoons are lagging in availability.


By Ted Rall, December 30, 2011


By Drew Sheneman, December 29, 2011


By Tom Toles, December 30, 2011

If you missed any days, all previous posts can be found in my journal. Party safe, party hard, try to laugh, it's been a long year. -Happy New Year!

December 29, 2011, 9:10 PM EST
By Peter Robison and John Crewdson

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- A toaster that burns the National Rifle Association’s logo onto bread fetched $650 at an auction last month, just one reflection of the money-making power in the gun group’s brand.

The NRA, which began as a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching marksmanship, enters the 2012 election season as a lobbying, merchandising and marketing machine that brings in more than $200 million a year and intends to help unseat the incumbent president. From 2004 to 2010, the group’s revenue from fundraising -- including gifts from gun makers who benefit from its political activism -- grew twice as fast as its income from members’ dues, according to NRA tax returns.

More than 50 firearms-related companies have given at least $14.8 million to the Fairfax, Virginia-based group, according to the NRA’s own list for a donor program that began in 2005. That same year, NRA lobbyists helped win passage of a federal law that limited liability claims against gun makers. Former NRA President Sandy Froman wrote that it “saved the American gun industry from bankruptcy.”

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That didn’t stop NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre from citing what he called “a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country” during a September speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. LaPierre said the NRA would work to defeat Obama in 2012.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-29/nra-raises-200-million-as-gun-lobby-toasters-burn-logo-on-bread.html

Do you agree or disagree with NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre's allegation against President Obama?