Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Friday, November 19, 2010

Video of the Week -Horse in Car

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The video was taken by the Potter family of Osage City, Kansas as the family drove north on I-75 between Osage City and Topeka around 2:15 p.m. The Potters were going to Walmart.


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Friday, March 05, 2010

The Week in Review - Olympics Closing Ceremony to Chilean Earthquake to Health Care to Hollywood

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Last Sunday I was sitting and watching my television as the Olympic Closing Ceremony was just getting started in Vancouver, Canada. After a pretty decent presentation by Russia on the next Olympics, we returned to a cornball Canadian Series of mini documentaries with the most bizarre themes, speeches, strange creatures and three legged Olympic flames.



Think about it. Two weeks earlier one of the highlights of the opening ceremony was when one leg of the flame platform jammed in the floor and refused to rise, leaving the torch carriers, crowd, and zillions of TV watchers around the world waiting on baited breath to see how in the world the Canadians were going to get out of this mess. People held their breath while NBC and the Canadian Olympic people seemed to be doing nothing.



Seconds before the torches held by NHL legend Wayne Gretzky and others went out, and long after the millions viewing had started breathing again, someone decided to light the three legs that did show up and hope no one noticed the drama around the missing fourth leg and torch bearer with no torch to light.



That was two weeks earlier. Now as I sat watching the flying moose and massive beavers show up and listened to what those Canadians were saying and doing on the boob tube, I was certain I went through a time warp and was back in the crazy '60's. There was Star Treks' Mr. Priceline while you were going Back to the Future with Michael J. Fox of Family Ties.



Thank God Neil Young was there, all alone, just Neil and his guitar, and he played a wonderful version of Long May You Run and showed all those Olympic kids what real music and stories sound like. They loved him and it was the last recognizable thing I saw during the abbreviated closing ceremonies.

The time machine kicked into high gear and the stage or rink or whatever became an assemblage with the weirdest conglomeration of characters, reminding me a little of an afternoon with Timothy Leary. As we watched there seemed to be a Canadian cultural collision showing all the different aspects of Canadian settlers and civilizations and Hollywood actors while interruptions from NBC anchors and reporters further distracted me from figuring out what the Hell the Canadians were doing on that screen.

Then quite unexpectedly anchor Bob Costas pops on the screen, quite awkwardly I noted, saying that the closing ceremonies would be back. First there would be an hour of a new weekly TV series called The Ref, a quite stupid show I thought, and then local news. If you survived that show and news the Olympics Late Show would then broadcast a taped version of the closing that you were just watching.

What was this?

I wait four years to see this event and NBC pre-empts it with another mindless program about the flaws of Americans. Didn't NBC pay $800 million for the right to broadcast the Olympics then cut off the closing ceremonies just as it was getting interesting? This was just the beginning of the week.



So then came wave after wave of strange stories like follow up on the Chile earthquake that hit the night before the Olympic Closing debacle. Obama was talking about health care yet again. Hasn't Congress been trying to figure out what to do about health care for over a year? Don't tell me the president just noticed we had a problem with health care. Funny he still ignored the number one worry of the people, the economy and our national debt. Congress and the media seemed clueless as well.

During the week the Democrats were trying to figure out how to ignore the people and circumvent the legislative process on health care. There was the day long, great, Pacific tsunami watch which started after the tsunami had already hit Chile and wiped out villages killing hundreds. The multi-network watch ended when no one could tell the tsunami hit them beyond Chile. Hawaii reported a two foot rise in the water lever. Big deal. We get more than two feet change twice a day from the tides, every day, and we are just in the tributary backwaters of the Atlantic.



Then came the scandals, reality news instead of the old political innuendoes. A governor, congressman and another congressman from New York all got sucked into abuse of powers scandals, tax evasion, even alleged sexual misconduct. Those Democrats sure do know how to have fun, at our expense. Okay, Greece was collapsing, Toyota was in the midst of the worst recall in history, Ford was selling cars like mad. No one could figure out what Chrysler was doing. We did know Congress was still doing nothing. Kentucky men lost a second basketball game and Bebraska women remained unbeaten.



Three more people told me they now know how to play curling and asked me where was the nearest curling alley. I never knew they existed. There are 131 curling clubs in the USA but do they all have their own curling alleys? If there are 131 curling alleys then there is one curling alley for every 62 Wal-Mart stores in America. Good luck finding a curling alley to go shove a 46 pound rock they call a stone down some ice with two broom-carrying people sweeping up a storm as the rock slides down along it's way.

I have Scottish blood and curling was invented by the Scottish in the 1500's but I prefer to remember the scotch whiskey and those long haired cattle of Scotland. Besides, if you want your own curling game it costs $32,000 for just the 16 stones you need. That is for just two people in one game. I mean in America you can find a ball, bag and bowling shoes for about a hundred dollars.



I'm just glad this week ends with the most glorified awards ceremony of the year, the Academy Awards, to help us forget what we just lived through. There is nothing so soothing to a nation sinking in debt as statues of gold, glitz and glamour. I hope you had an interesting week as well and I share your concerns that given the climate in Washington, we hope next week can continue to divert our attention away from our nation's capitol, leaders and news media.



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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Sarah Palin Guaranteed Ongoing National Spotlight - Becomes Fox News Commentator

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On the first anniversary of Sarah Palin's shocking selection as vp candidate by John McLean last September 1 I wrote the following:

Coltons Point Times - September 1, 2009

The only thing worse for Obama and the liberal elitists than Palin hitting the international speaking circuit would be if Roger Ailes, the genius behind the Fox News rating machine, decides she deserves to host her own national TV show for the millions of Americans dissatisfied with the Obama gang and their efforts to hijack the American government.

Yesterday word leaked out and today it was confirmed that Sarah Palin would be joining the Fox News Network as a news commentator and would also host her own specials on issues stressing family and mainstream values. Way to go Roger and Sarah!!!

Finally, our trained journalist will have a forum she controls and pursue topics of interest to her and her millions of followers. You can bet it will be the springboard she needed to become an expert at all those things the liberal media said she didn't or doesn't know.



As for Roger Ailes taking my advice from 4 1/2 months ago, I'm glad he listened (just kidding). I happen to like Roger. When I was running congressional and senate campaigns he was the political advisor to my candidates. Later I worked with him and the late Greg Stevens, an Ailes associate, when I worked for the governor of New Jersey. Then I helped him out executing the largest single day newspaper buy in the nation at the time when I was in media in NYC.

Shortly after he joined Fox News and the Murdock News Corp as President of Fox News. Fox has blown away the competition ever since. One day recently the Fox News ratings equaled the combined ratings of MSNBC, CNN and all three major networks ABC, CBS and NBC. That is how successful Ailes has become. Late last summer I did a feature story about Roger and you can read more about his career with Mike Douglas, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh in that story.



Sarah Palin and her astounding ratings and growing popularity will be welcome additions to the Fox News machine and will give her an adequate forum to silence once and for all the unfair critics. It is going to be an interesting 2010.

Friday, December 11, 2009

What and Where in the World is the Coltons Point Times?

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It is a question I get occasionally and since there are so many new readers I want to address it. We are the only newspaper in the oldest continuously lived in chartered settlement in the colonial United States. Yes, older than Jamestown, older than Plymouth and older than St. Mary's City, places most people think of as the oldest. If you are not familiar with US history, the three places I mentioned all ceased to exist by the 1690's. That means we existed 142 years before our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence and went to war with England.


St. Clements Island just offshore from Coltons Point was the landing site for 321 colonists on two tiny ships, the Ark and the Dove, in 1634 and the area has been lived in ever since. It is also the first place in the world with religious freedom as the first English charter guaranteed religious toleration. We are also the site of the first landing of Roman Catholics, first Mass performed in the colonies, first Jesuit priests and the first colony to live peacefully with the Native Americans. If that isn't enough we are the site where the first relic from the True Cross of Jesus came to America and miracles were performed with it.


We are a quiet village of about 250 people on the Potomac River just before it reaches the Chesapeake Bay where the Potomac is seven miles wide. Though we are only 60 miles from Washington, DC there are no governments, no police, no traffic lights, no street lights, no sidewalks, no water, no sewer, no gas lines, no churches, no city hall, no fire department, no sirens, no bureaucrats of any kind and not much of anything in the way of commercial development. We value freedom and independence above all else. This year we celebrated our 375th anniversary although there was no ceremony.


None of that has anything to do with the Coltons Point Times (CPT) except I happen to live here. Before I found myself in Coltons Point about eight years ago I had lived in Iowa, Arizona, Nebraska, California, Washington, DC, Virginia, New Jersey and Kentucky. In addition I had worked several years in New York City and Nashville.


I've done so many things my resume defies belief including newspaper reporting, NYC advertising, politics (32 federal, state and local campaigns), working for presidents, governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, inventing green energy products in the 1970's (or before Gore), working for Democrats, Republicans and Independents, in computer security, writing (newspaper, books and songs), recording music and cancer research to name a few things.


Perhaps that is why the CPT seems to cover a lot of national and international issues. It may also explain why an online newspaper in one of the smallest villages in the USA has had over 110,000 readers this year. The last time I checked we had readers from 96 different nations, all 50 states and Washington, DC.


In the United States after Maryland our top 25 states by rank include California, Texas, New York, Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, Washington, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon, Tennessee, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Indiana.


International CPT readers by rank are the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Italy, India, Spain, Netherlands, Philippines, Romania, Brazil, Sweden, Poland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Turkey, Norway, Israel, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Malaysia and South Africa along with 71 other nations.


The top cities where we are read outside of Maryland include St. Catharine's, Ontario Canada #1, Mountain View, CA (Silicon Valley), Washington, DC, London, England, NYC, Alexandria, VA, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Houston, Bridgeport, CT, Nashville, Chicago and Paris, France.


Our mission is to tell the truth, be an independent voice, share interesting material with our readers and help keep you informed with the inside information on government, politics, science, health, housing, music and a whole bunch of other stuff. When the world stage gets boring we offer a little history and local color that may be of interest. We want to keep the news makers from politicians to news media, Wall Street to the Middle East honest and that has been a lot of work lately.


You may have noticed we are about the last newspaper on the internet to NOT allow those frustrating ads, banners, pop ups, video ads and all the other things created to track and annoy you. We do not require you to register because you have enough people already spying on you. I encourage you to check through our online archives as many stories are updated over time such as the House of Rothschild, Goldman Sachs and personalities like Obama.


Our national and international news distribution service reports that CPT articles hold the top three spots for most popular political stories of the year, four of the top ten political stories, seven of the top 20 political stories, and one CPT article on the Rothschilds and international finance is the 14th most viewed article of all time in all categories. They distribute hundreds of articles a day.


Reader comments are encouraged and responses will be given if needed. You can even ask me to email you privately in your comment and I will not post your email for the world to see. I have responded in numerous languages although the translations might be a little rough.


Since we do not accept advertising or do our own advertising people find us through searches for issues and images as we often have pretty entertaining photos and cartoons with our stories. You can set up an RSS news feed to your home page to get the latest headlines on articles I post.


Word of mouth is our strongest means of exposure and we would greatly appreciate it if you would tell your friends, family and associates about us and give them the site. Most search engines like Google can easily locate us by searching for the Coltons Point Times or you can click on: http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/ to directly connect.


We appreciate having you in our family and hope you check in for the latest news often. Thank you.

Jim Putnam, Publisher