General Custer Rides Again Via McDonald"s Happy Meals

McDonald's has begun selling Happy Meals complete with a toy of General Custer. Why are Indian activists disturbed by this idea?

Those wonderful people at McDonald's must have completely lost every fiber of sensitivity when they began selling Happy Meals, in the Dakotas, with, of all things, a gift, a toy, a Custer toy. The accompanying card read, " Ever heard of Custer's last stand? It was named after George Armstrong Custer who lead his troops into the battle at Little Big Horn."

Belva Morrison, Indian child welfare specialist for the Lakota Law Project, said, "It is insensitive for local merchants to hand out these dolls where there is a large Indian population. They should have thought twice about promoting these figurines. I don't believe we're overreacting. I think we are not tolerating things like this anymore. They're targeting young kids whose minds are easily impressed."

So what's the big deal? It seems that ole "Golden Hair" Custer went on an Indian killing raid with his Cavalry in Indian Territory ( Oklahoma) , killing Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Cherokee back in 1868. ( I hate dates, too, but stay with me on this.) Eight years later, Custer and 700 men of his 7th cavalry were wiped completely out by the Lakota at a place called "Little Big Horn" at Montana, just a rock's throw from South Dakota.

Make no mistake the Lakota (Sioux) had a complete history of what happened in Oklahoma at the Battle of Washita, but they also knew full well that Custer was responsible for the discovering of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota that led to the theft of over $120,000,000 of that precious asset on sacred land that has never been returned.

So one can imagine the disturbing sight of having a child reach into to his/her Happy Meal only to find a figurine that would anger any Native American parent who wasn't asleep in history class or listened intently to his family oral history

At last report customers in the Rapid City area were told there were no more Custer dolls in the Happy Meals. Sadly, the PR folks at Mickey D's didn't have the corporate sense or historic knowledge to correct such a huge mistake

A Reason for More Bleach in The Gene Pool: The Darwin Awards

It’s that time again folks. The Darwin Awards are finally out. The annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year’s winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.

This year’s winner was a real rocket scientist…… HONEST!

Read on…… And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY.

And the nominees were:

Semifinalist #1
A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Semifinalist #2
Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.

Semifinalist #3
A 22-year-old Reston , VA , man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle.. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park , jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. ‘The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,’ Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was ‘Major trauma..’

Semifinalist #4
A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend - no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate - was hospitalized.

Semifinalist #5
Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, anagement evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ”bright” by his peers.

Now, the winner of this year’s Darwin Award (awarded, as always, posthumously):
The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra ‘push’ for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!
The facts, as best as could be determined, are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-15 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event.

However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver’s remains were not recoverable..

However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.
Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

You couldn’t make this stuff up, could you?

Remember, these people are breeding and, God help us, voting.

Source: Rob Polanski

Police with Backbone and Teachers with Brains Fighting a Corporate Giant

The sale of the automaker Chrysler Group to an Italian car maker, Fiat, has been put on hold. Teachers and police officers in Indiana filed an emergency petition in the U.S. Supreme Court to block the sale.

The Indiana State Police Pension Fund and the Indiana Teacher Retirement Fund filed the petition this morning suing on the grounds that "the terms of the sale favor unsecured stockholders at the expense of secured stockholders and alleged that the use of Trouble Asset Relief Program Fund (TARP) to finance the bankruptcy is unconstitutional".

In an ideal case where the police chose not to be financially bullied and where teachers put their collective brains to work to stop an otherwise collapse of their retirement fund, we have a David versus Goliath smackdown with supremes serving as the referee.

The outcome? You guessed it! The police with all their muscle and the teachers with all that esoteric logic won't have a prayer. One need only a short perusal of the recent court's history to grasp an understanding that corporations reign huge in the eyes of the mighty robed jurists. One shouldn't be surprised if the court just stuck out its sinewy finger to those teachers and police officers and boldly said, "Stare Decisis!" (a sort of we-heard-this-before-and-we-don't-want-to-hear-it-again).

If that weren't enough, the talking heads in the media will probably eviscerate both groups because they had the temerity to stand up to Wall Street and the federal government over a highly questionable if not illegal sale.

The average Joe or Jane on the street or at the water cooler is probably just a little torqued about the suit as well because they didn't have anyone in their corner to champion for them when the financial crisis placed their retirement accounts in jeopardy.

Brains and backbone. I am proud of them.

Stop thinking Swine Flu and Think Death By Pie

I learned years ago that amazing things can happen when no one cares about who gets the credit. So here goes. I don't care who gets the credit on saving someone from a serious illness or possible death, but it's my hope that you will send this article (edited, bastardized, or modified...as long as the facts get out there) to anyone who can read.

Go straight to the freezer and pull out all your pot pies, kiss them goodbye and toss them out.
Why? Salmonella. In just one outbreak in 2007 the Banquet brand of pies sickened an estimated 15,000 people in 41 states.

If you can say greed and profit and globalization then you have a pretty good start in understanding the whole scenario. It seems that the giant food corps are in a constant search to find even cheaper ingredients to put into their foods. ConAgra the maker of Banquet pot pies ( over 100,000,000 each year) places 25 ingredients from all over the world and with subcontractors who don't report their sources.

Testing? Yes sure, but only after the 2007 scare. Funny thing is, however, that even if a pie is contaminated they can't determine which ingredient is the bad one. The mighty giants admit that they are so global that they can't determine who supplying the ingredients.

Truly Amazing the food giants also admit that they can no longer ensure the safety of their products. But that's not the half of it! This same industry has found a way to shift the blame onto the customers. Here's how they do it: Look at that pie (before you toss it) and notice the precise instructions or "kill steps" that you must take in order to keep from getting sick. The diagram is right there on the back of the package. A simple four step diagram telling us to make sure the pie is heated to an internal temperature of 165 degrees "in several spots"with a food thermometer of course. That's it... fail to follow the directions and expose yourself and others to illness. A sort of "By God, it's your fault for being so stupid with directions".
Before we let the biggee corps off the hook, perhaps we should look at the New York Times response to the instructions. They followed the directions in detail on many brands of pot pies only to discover that none achieved the magic level of 165 degrees. "Some spots in the pie heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt" wrote reporter Michael Moss.

There you have the reasons for tossing those pies in order to avoid death. Now you can see why even the faulty instructions by the condescending conglomerates can lead to your illness. Now you can see why greed and "undetermined ingredients" can lead to an outbreak. And now you see how the blame game works in a corporatocracy because in the end it was your fault.

Source: Oklahoma Observer