While all of you fight the non-issue of football players and the US Flag, I want to welcome a new flag with one more star for Puerto Rico. Donald Trump does not know Puerto Ricans are even US Citizens. Look at the disrespect he tweeted today:
This morning, Trump used Twitter to criticize San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz for her “poor leadership ability”, in other words, attacking/blaming the messenger, and of course insulting half the United States citizens, Democrats. Donald Trump: "I did not tell the Mayor of San Juan to be nasty to you. Leave me out of it."
Listen to Cruz from 2:25 on this video or 4:00.
When people say something about football players, you say something more relevant: 51 stars.
The pretty boy accepted a guilty plea on Federal charges and will serve 60 whole days in jail. Too bad. Federal prisoners are well-behaved---white collar criminals don't have to worry about dropping the soap in the shower.
They couldn't get Al Capone except on tax evasion. Seems like the same was true for Erik, the Education lobbyist while he was the Education lawmaker.
Carlos Hernandez, Hialeah Mayor was supposed to go on this questionable Las Vegas trip but no one knows where he went instead. Of course, I have my thoughts on the matter. His calendar blocked out the whole week to go to Vegas, but he wasn't there. Could it be he is having an affair? Only his wife Nancy knows where he was and I guess we will keep it between them because the misuse of funds is more our business, isn't it, not a rumored affair?
How this ever got dismissed is beyond me.
Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez
The article was in the Miami Herald this week - by Francisco Alvarado:
Two years ago, Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez signed off on spending $7,621 from a $10,000 corporate grant for feeding poor children. Instead, the money went to pay for airline tickets and posh hotel accommodations for himself, his chief of staff, a police detective and four other city employees to attend a parks and recreation conference in Las Vegas.
News of Mayor Hernandez’s curious city spending surfaced in documents filed in a recently closed joint public corruption investigation by Miami-Dade’s State Attorney’s Office and Commission on Ethics and Public Trust.
Another strange finding: Hernandez never traveled to Las Vegas to attend the annual conference of the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) from Sept. 13-17, 2015, and his whereabouts for seven days remain a mystery.
This is the entire ethics report, scroll within the report to see what dirtbags we have in Hialeah:
As Francisco pointed out, the whole damn investigation that cost a bundle led to nothing -- a back page article in the Miami Herald:
Miami-Dade Ethics Commission Executive Director Joe Centorino, a former chief of the state attorney’s public corruption unit, defended his agency’s work.
“I think the inconsistent statements by the chief of staff are pretty well laid out in our report,” Centorino said. “Yet prosecutions for perjury are very rare because it is difficult to prove. Of course, the decision to pursue it as a criminal matter is made by the state attorney.” (Rundle failure again)
A Week Missing From Carlos Hernandez's Schedule. What was he doing? Was he with his wife Nancy at a better hotel? What gives.
At least Donald Trump is honest on ONE THING, the reason for tax cuts: Votes. The mantra by Republicans is that it stimulates the economy. However the cuts go overwhelmingly to the rich who really don't need them. The cuts handcuff the government. Yesterday's Tweet:
Democracy in the US is marked by allegorical catastrophe. Hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes equally apply.
The illigitimate election of Donald Trump in 2016 was organized to a great extent by Russia operatives who exceeded by leaps and bounds the capacity of US law and intelligence services to protect against intrusions by hostile foreign powers.
In the run-up to the November presidential election, there were plenty of warning signs and alerts -- President Obama was torn by his own responses, acutely sensitive how putting his foot on the gas would be seized by his Republican opponents as interference. His warnings and media reports were largely overwhelmed by successful attacks against Hillary Clinton and her emails; attacks we now understand wove Trump campaign messaging into Russia sourced social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. Intentional or not, coordinated or not, are questions being investigated by the Mueller team.
As a political matter, there is enough in the public record to justify House impeachment hearings, now. Screeching calls by the right-wing media machinery would have happened long ago had this been a Democratic president.
Irrespective of political persuasion, Americans should learn how social media BOTS influence what is emerging as the great world war of our time: the Information War.
The NDN offers a well-written, easily digestible explanation how the Information War works. Anyone who uses social media -- whether Facebook, Twitter, Google or other platforms -- is already enlisted as a foot soldier.
It is a crying shame that the United States was literally asleep at the switch, as a hostile foreign power -- Russia -- dug its nails into a highly vulnerable political process (and one in which elected officials responsible for fair and democratic elections were themselves complicit, aiding and abetting the invaders).
Although Congressional hearings are taking up these questions now, based on media reports it is already evident that the complexity and internal clock-spring of vast networks like Facebook and Twitter elude the capacity of Congress to unravel, in order to fix what is clearly damaged.
Congress should proceed on two tracks now: 1) to determine if there is provable collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, including Trump and his associates, and 2) to recruit a top-level independent commission to review and recommend changes to both social media networks and US elections, in order to stop hostile foreign nations like Russia from meddling in domestic elections.
It is hard being positive, these days, engulfed by troubling news, but one we predicted a year ago that is coming to pass deserves special attention: Gov. Rick Scott, running for US Senate, and the crummy Everglades bill he grudgingly signed, after Senate President Joe Negron made a deal with Big Sugar. Now that all the wolves are wearing sheep's clothing: what about that new law? Here is the most reliable "take", by Bullsugar.org
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Right now billions of gallons of fertilizer, sewage, and legacy pollution from Lake Okeechobee are spewing into the St. Lucie River, carrying a new threat of toxic algae. Water managers may say Irma left them no choice, but of course that’s a half-truth, at best.
First, even as water levels rose, SFWMD back-pumped cyanobacteria-fueling runoff from sugar fields into the lake instead of asking the industry to hold it, increasing the risk of exposing riverside communities to toxins linked to cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver and heart failure. So given a choice between protecting sugarcane and protecting people, the district rolled the dice on cancer.
Second, the district has given no indication it’s making real progress on the one initiative that can offer a better choice than discharging lakewater to the rivers: the EAA reservoir. The entire project, despite the heroic efforts of Joe Negron, Bullsugar supporters, and countless others, appears to be on track to fail.
That’s because to work, the reservoir needs to be dynamic--constantly filling and emptying, filtering water on its way south the way the River of Grass did before we dammed it. It needs land to flow through, and every qualified engineer knows the current plan doesn’t have enough.
Exactly how much more land does the project need? Honestly, we don’t know. No one does.
To find that out, water managers need to model the system and work out the requirements to get the greatest possible inflow to reduce discharges and the greatest possible outflow to deliver clean water to the Everglades and Florida Bay. The project can’t begin without that model, and there’s no sign of it from SFWMD--despite being required by state law.
The good news is when we find out how much more land we need, we have options--even if the sugar industry refuses to sell more. The public already owns thousands of acres near the proposed reservoir, much of which is now being used to clean runoff from sugarcane fields. As soon as SFWMD releases its modeling, we can start work on returning that land to public service. But we need that model.
Lake Okeechobee isstill overfull with weeks to go before the end of hurricane season. Even if the reservoir project started tomorrow, the corps and the district could face the same choices next year and the year after. That’s why the project shouldstart tomorrow, beginning with the modeling and finding out how much more land it needs to work. Because there has to be a better option than cancer. Peter Girard Bullsugar.org http://www.bullsugar.org/P.S. Bullsugar supporters helped turn a scientific solution into state law this year. If you can, please click here to make a donation to help us turn that law into a workable plan for a clean water future.
Kim and Donald have a lot in common. So much so, if Kim weren't Korean, I would think he were separated by birth from Donald Trump, your President.
They both have really bad hair. Their hair will go down in history as legendary.
They both have the exact same body type, overweight. They both have small hands. They both resort to name calling as the first line of defense.
Both men have incredibly pretty wives but Kim's wife has sort of disappeared:
Ri Sol Ju
Both men are cavalier about using nuclear weapons, although Trump has too many Generals hovering around him so he can't actually launch any...yet.
Did you ever meet someone and right away you don't like them and then you realize, it is because they are just like you. I think that is the case here. One is as crazy as the other. Meanwhile, the world is worried with unpredictable Trump at the helm, even North Koreans:
BERN, Switzerland — North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime.
The outreach began before the current eruption of threats between the two leaders but probably will become more urgent as Trump and Kim have descended into name-calling that, many analysts worry, sharply increases the chances of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings.
“Their number-one concern is Trump. They can’t figure him out,” said one person with direct knowledge of North Korea’s approach of experts on Asia with Republican connections.
This October, a massive heat wave is gripping most of the continental United States. From Puerto Rico, images pour in of a culture under attack by climate change impacts. And it is broiling in San Juan, too.
Whatever you think about two Category 4 hurricanes hitting PR in the span of a couple of weeks, think how difficult it is for an island -- and its US citizens dependent on modern industrial systems for food, water, and the essential components of an economy -- to recover from this climate change catastrophe.
The impact of sea level rise around the coastal United States is going to put tens of million of Americans on the move. Many if not most will be unable to pay for the move.
All the more infuriating that one political party -- the GOP -- controlling Congress and the White House has pushed US agencies and policies in FULL THROTTLE REVERSE, away from rational governance in the face of the biggest test of our nation's national security. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is so paranoid walking point for Trump's climate change/regulatory destruction program, he's walking around with an 18 person security detail.
It is long past time for voters to muck out the GOP stable. We can't waste another minute in denial.
This is a great example of how your government responds to information requests: IT DOESN'T!! Read it please, pass it around. This one was about them changing the quota policy for Donald Trump so he could hire foreign workers at his resorts....If I do the work you can at least do the reading. In other words, no reading and I slack off. I can tell if you read it and you will be seeing this every friggin' day till you read it.
I think there is abuse and hanky panky going on with H2B program. I don’t know who is to blame the dept. of homeland security or the department of labor. Why did you increase the number. Really your explanation does not hold water with a thinking American. It seems like you were persuaded by the president’s organization. If this is true, at least admit that the request came from the white house because it is too much of a coincidence that you increased the number the same month that The Trump Organization made the request.
I live in Florida. I am sure that there are plenty of workers here to fill these jobs.I want to make a formal complaint and see what the Trump Organization did to fill these jobs locally and what the organization has done to change the rules at your department. In other words, I want the Trump file.
Unempoyment is 3.9% in Palm Beach County and that is NOT seasonally adjusted. Why don’t they hire the local people? Are they just looking for pretty people? Are Americans not clean enough, pretty enough, smart enough? White Enough? Why was there a need for foreign workers? Where are these foreign workers from? I really want to know what country they are from.
Something is very wrong at the Department of Labor, that the pages are missing from your website--- where are they? Why can’t the President fill these jobs in Florida with US Workers? Why do you need to increase the Visas for these incredible pedestrian jobs? I would fill them for him because I know a lot of people in need of work. Where is the proof he has tried here? I would like his application.
Where is your database? I want a copy of your database that is now missing. I also want the PDF on Trump Models that is also now missing. Foia requests. On Thursday, the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, said it wanted to hire 15 housekeepers for $10.33 an hour; 20 cooks for $13.34 an hour; and 35 servers for $11.88 an hour. The Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, was asking for six cooks to hire for $13.34 per hour. These requests are published in a database updated by the Department of Labor.
And don’t go reporting me to Trump goons I do not want to be harassed and hacked and I am certainly not a threat to homeland security.
I really just want them to be consistent, If their mantra is "America First" then let them follow that, and if they don’t, I want to know why.
Thank you (America First!),
--------------------------
I just got my response to the above email (or should I say NON RESPONSE from the Dept. of Labor. )All of this information is on their website. I DID NOT GET WHAT I ASKED FOR. WHERE IS THE DATA BASE I ASKED FOR? WHERE IS THE FILE I ASKED FOR? ALL OF YOU WRITE TO THEM AND ASK FOR THE DATA BASE AND THE DONALD TRUMP FILE.
Newly elected State Senator Annette Taddeo (Dem) beat Jose Felix Diaz (Rep) 50.95% to 47.21%. Annette trounced Jose on election day with 7,269 votes to his 4,878. He beat her in the absentee ballots but she got more than twice the votes during early voting.....2,834 to 1,376. Annette Taddeo ended up with 22,649 votes and Jose Felix Diaz got 20,895.
There are 333,706 registered voters in District 40 and 49,025 votes were cast. The voter turnout was 14.69%. This is very important. We picked up a Democratic seat in the State Senate.
As candidate and then president, Donald Trump has drawn controversy for his rhetoric on race issues. Here are three examples.
Last summer, when Donald Trump’s comments about Mexicans and Muslims led to widespread accusations that he harbored racist attitudes, the candidate pushed back. “I am the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered,” he said.
As evidence, Trump cited an endorsement he’d received from a weekly newspaper published in Ohio by Don King, the legendary African-American boxing promoter.
“Now, Don King knows racism probably better than anybody,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “He’s not endorsing a racist, okay?”
But how would Trump persuade those who believed he was a racist that wasn’t the case? “I’m not concerned,” he replied. “Actually, I’m not concerned because I don’t think people believe it.”
From his first public controversy in the 1970s, when the federal government sued Trump and his father over discriminatory rental practices in their New York real estate empire, to the opening salvo in his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said that Mexicans entering the United States were criminals and “rapists,” Trump has regularly fanned the flames of racial controversies.
I think there is abuse and hanky panky going on with H2B program. I don’t know who is to blame the dept. of homeland security or the department of labor. Why did you increase the number. Really your explanation does not hold water with a thinking American. It seems like you were persuaded by the president’s organization. If this is true, at least admit that the request came from the white house because it is too much of a coincidence that you increased the number the same month that The Trump Organization made the request.
I live in Florida. I am sure that there are plenty of workers here to fill these jobs. I want to make a formal complaint and see what the Trump Organization did to fill these jobs locally and what the organization has done to change the rules at your department. In other words, I want the Trump file.
Unempoyment is 3.9% in Palm Beach County and that is NOT seasonally adjusted. Why don’t they hire the local people? Are they just looking for pretty people? Are Americans not clean enough, pretty enough, smart enough? White Enough? Why was there a need for foreign workers? Where are these foreign workers from? I really want to know what country they are from.
Something is very wrong at the Department of Labor, that the pages are missing from your website--- where are they? Why can’t the President fill these jobs in Florida with US Workers? Why do you need to increase the Visas for these incredible pedestrian jobs? I would fill them for him because I know a lot of people in need of work. Where is the proof he has tried here? I would like his application.
Where is your database? I want a copy of your database that is now missing. I also want the PDF on Trump Models that is also now missing. Foia requests. On Thursday, the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, said it wanted to hire 15 housekeepers for $10.33 an hour; 20 cooks for $13.34 an hour; and 35 servers for $11.88 an hour. The Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, was asking for six cooks to hire for $13.34 per hour. These requests are published in a database updated by the Department of Labor.
And don’t go reporting me to Trump goons I do not want to be harassed and hacked and I am certainly not a threat to homeland security.
I really just want them to be consistent, If their mantra is "America First" then let them follow that, and if they don’t, I want to know why.
Thank you (America First!),
--------------------------
I just got my response to the above email (or should I say NON RESPONSE from the Dept. of Labor. )All of this information is on their website. I DID NOT GET WHAT I ASKED FOR. WHERE IS THE DATA BASE I ASKED FOR? WHERE IS THE FILE I ASKED FOR? ALL OF YOU WRITE TO THEM AND ASK FOR THE DATA BASE AND THE DONALD TRUMP FILE.
One only has to go to the very poorly run Welcome Center at the facility. It is ugly and old too. Yes you might run into Tibor Hollo there as I did, but then he gets to go ahead of you so he is long gone before you are. They actually changed my sign-in time there to let their friend go ahead of me. I hope it was worth it lady because it got your hospital this blog. What a bunch of cheaters.
I have been going to Mount Sinai Miami Beach since 1992 and now I just can't take it anymore. The Breast Center is good, Dr. Rosen is good (ran into Roy Black in his waiting room), and a few others. But this facility has gone downhill so far it would be hard for there to be a comeback. I stayed in the hospital once and they put me in with a screaming crazy woman who accused me of stealing her phone charger. Just what you need, more stress in a hospital.
I already switched a few of my doctors to Baptist.
Jay Phillip Parker CEO of Douglas Elliman, President of Mount Sinai Medical Center Foundation. I hope they put up a big plaque for him in the hallway near the cafeteria.
I am switching all of my doctors (except my GYN) to the far superior Baptist and U. of M. Facilities. They are nicer to their patients, they care. They smile. My husband loves Doctors hospital. He just had a rotator cuff operation. That facility is not as depressing as the aging Mount Sinai. And when you give money to Mount Sinai you get a useless plaque in the hall. They don't do much good with the money.
Try complaining to someone at Mount Sinai Miami Beach, no one will listen. There is no one to complain to. Maybe this Blog with almost 8,000,000 hits can make some noise for the voiceless that have suffered some indignity at Mount Sinai Miami Beach.
If you like the place, do tell why in comments. But my opinion is Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach SUCKS.
No plaque for you Mr. Steven D. Sonenreich CEO Of Mount Sinai Medical Center. Spend the Day in your Damn Welcome Center.
Russia/Putin's goal is simple: to sow dissent, chaos and suspicion -- supporting Alt-R themes, Donald Trump, and the kinds of conspiracy/homophobic/racist sentiments that propelled a fringe minority into the center of the Republican Party. My GOP friends, don't shake your heads: this happened.
The Russia/Putin disinformation network, as Hamilton 68 points out, doesn't need to create original content to be effective: it uses bots, hackers, and thousands of boiler room employees to weaponize extremist points of view that could originate on Fox & Friends, on Limbaugh, on Breitbart, InfoWars, from Steve Bannon to Roger Stone to President Trump himself.
The return on Putin's investment in social media disinformation campaigns -- merging with stolen US and allies' voter databases -- is at least equal to Al Qada's boxcutters that brought the World Trade Towers down.
The demoralization of the nation, under the most reckless and chaotic president in US history, is more than Putin could ever have hoped for, when he discovered the barn doors of Facebook and Twitter had been left wide open for infiltration. He didn't even need a key. Rupert Murdoch, Limbaugh, Fox et al. did the work for him. It didn't happen all at once, of course. It took time: stretching back to Jimmy Carter, the first president to cast shade on the fossil fuel industry, and Ronald Reagan who dismantled the Fairness Doctrine.
Both political parties should be stung to the point of reform, but the chances seem bleak indeed so long as the GOP control Congress and the executive branch and are hell-bent on protecting Citizens United; the Supreme Court decision that fundamentally deformed US elections.
Hopefully, voters will take care to redress the deep fractures in our political life in 2018 and interim elections, too.
How to Read This Dashboard/ Hamilton 68
The charts and graphs here display hashtags, topics and URLs promoted by Russia-linked influence networks on Twitter. Content is not necessarily produced or created by Russian government operatives, although that is sometimes the case. Instead, the network often opportunistically amplifies content created by third parties not directly linked to Russia. Common themes for amplification include content attacking the U.S. and Europe, conspiracy theories and disinformation. Russian influence operations also frequently promote extremism and divisive politics in Western countries. Just because the Russia-aligned network monitored here tweets something, that doesn’t mean everyone who tweets the same content is aligned with Russia. For a detailed discussion of this dashboard’s methodology, click here.
This is an example of spam left in our comments. There is a dead giveaway in it:
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Not one REAL reader has ever said in the 10 years we have had this blog, nor in the 81,000 comments we have published: "Useful Information". But almost every spammer says they find "usefulinformation" here. Lying scum. Since when do we provide useful information?
“I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won’t be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions. “I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it. The bill’s authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I. “I hope that in the months ahead, we can join with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to arrive at a compromise solution that is acceptable to most of us, and serves the interests of Americans as best we can.”
John McCain's Prognosis: Because they keep returning, glioblastomas are almost never cured, and
the prognosis is poor. With treatment, the median survival — which means
half of patients live longer than this, and half die sooner — is 12 to
18 months.
Senator John McCain had the integrity to say this when running against Senator Obama:
John McCain is a decent man. McCain spent more than 5 years as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam.
Donald Trump said of John McCain being a war hero: 'I like people who weren't captured.' Only a hateful man would say this. John McCain's Account of his Captivity in Viet Nam:
...the guards, who were all in the room—about 10 of them—really laid into me. They bounced me from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes. Then I was taken to a small room. For punishment they would almost always take you to another room where you didn't have a mosquito net or a bed or any clothes. For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked.
The date was Oct. 26, 1967. I was on my 23rd mission, flying right over the heart of Hanoi in a dive at about 4,500 feet, when a Russian missile the size of a telephone pole came up—the sky was full of them—and blew the right wing off my Skyhawk dive bomber. It went into an inverted, almost straight-down spin.
I pulled the ejection handle, and was knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection—the air speed was about 500 knots. I didn't realize it at the moment, but I had broken my right leg around the knee, my right arm in three places, and my left arm. I regained consciousness just before I landed by parachute in a lake right in the corner of Hanoi, one they called the Western Lake. My helmet and my oxygen mask had been blown off.
I hit the water and sank to the bottom. I think the lake is about 15 feet deep, maybe 20. I kicked off the bottom. I did not feel any pain at the time, and was able to rise to the surface. I took a breath of air and started sinking again. Of course, I was wearing 50 pounds, at least, of equipment and gear. I went down and managed to kick up to the surface once more. I couldn't understand why I couldn't use my right leg or my arm. I was in a dazed condition. I went up to the top again and sank back down. This time I couldn't get back to the surface. I was wearing an inflatable life-preserver-type thing that looked like water wings. I reached down with my mouth and got the toggle between my teeth and inflated the preserver and finally floated to the top.
Some North Vietnamese swam out and pulled me to the side of the lake and immediately started stripping me, which is their standard procedure. Of course, this being in the center of town, a huge crowd of people gathered, and they were all hollering and screaming and cursing and spitting and kicking at me.
When they had most of my clothes off, I felt a twinge in my right knee. I sat up and looked at it, and my right foot was resting next to my left knee, just in a 90-degree position. I said, "My God--my leg!" That seemed to enrage them —I don't know why. One of them slammed a rifle butt down on my shoulder, and smashed it pretty badly. Another stuck a bayonet in my foot. The mob was really getting up-tight.
About this time, a guy came up and started yelling at the crowd to leave me alone. A woman came over and propped me up and held a cup of tea to my lips, and some photographers took some pictures. This quieted the crowd down quite a bit. Pretty soon, they put me on a stretcher, lifted it onto a truck, and took me to Hanoi's main prison. I was taken into a cell and put on the floor. I was still on the stretcher, dressed only in my skivvies, with a blanket over me.
For the next three or four days, I lapsed from conscious to unconsciousness. During this time, I was taken out to interrogation—which we called a "quiz"—several times. That's when I was hit with all sorts of war-criminal charges. This started on the first day. I refused to give them anything except my name, rank, serial number and date of birth. They beat me around a little bit. I was in such bad shape that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious. They kept saying, "You will not receive any medical treatment until you talk."
I didn't believe this. I thought that if I just held out, that they'd take me to the hospital. I was fed small amounts of food by the guard and also allowed to drink some water. I was able to hold the water down, but I kept vomiting the food.
They wanted military rather than political information at this time. Every time they asked me something, I'd just give my name, rank and serial number and date of birth.
I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us—a man dying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.
When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." He left and came back with a doctor, a guy that we called "Zorba," who was completely incompetent. He squatted down, took my pulse. He did not speak English, but shook his head and jabbered to "The Bug." I asked, "Are you going to take me to the hospital?" "The Bug" replied, "It's too late." I said, "If you take me to the hospital, I'll get well."
"Zorba" took my pulse again, and repeated, "It's too late." They got up and left, and I lapsed into unconsciousness.
Sometime later, "The Bug" came rushing into the room, shouting, "Your father is a big admiral; now we take you to the hospital."
I tell the story to make this point: There were hardly any amputees among the prisoners who came back because the North Vietnamese just would not give medical treatment to someone who was badly injured—they weren't going to waste their time. For one thing, in the transition from the kind of life we lead in America to the filth and dirt and infection, it would be very difficult for a guy to live anyway. In fact, my treatment in the hospital almost killed me.
Fayard and Harold Nicholas: The Nicholas Brothers.
From Wiki:
One of their signature moves was to leapfrog down a long, broad flight of stairs, while completing each step with a split. Its most famous performance formed the finale of the movie Stormy Weather.[3] In that routine, the Nicholas Brothers leapt exuberantly across the orchestra's music stands and danced on the top of a grand piano in a call and response act with the pianist, to the tune of Jumpin' Jive.[3] Fred Astaire once told the brothers that this dance number was the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen.[3]
In another signature move, they would rise from a split without using their hands.[3] Gregory Hines declared that if their biography were ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one now could emulate them.[3] Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.
