UK Prime Minister Hit By PC

British Prime Minister David Cameron got into a bit of hot water over his choice of words in describing the people who are trying to illegally enter his country by stowing themselves onto vehicles going through the Eurotunnel (a.k.a. Chunnel) from France.  As reported by the Australian site ABC, here is his offending remark:

"I accept that you've got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life," he said.

By referring to these illegal immigrants as a "swarm", he drew rebukes from his fellow U.K. politicians, such as:

Acting Labour Party leader Harriet Harman said Mr Cameron should remember he was talking about people, not insects.

In a way, I can see her point, since only people, not insects, are capable of understanding and therefore disobeying laws.  Perhaps "mob" would be a more appropriate term.  Read the full story.

The source of this story is not affiliated with the American Broadcasting Company, known by its acronym "ABC", but is instead the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Maryland Boy Receives Two New Hands

When he was just 2 years old, Maryland resident Zion Harvey underwent a quadruple amputation in which doctors had to remove his hands and his legs below the knee, because of an infection.  Now at age 8, he has become the first child in the world to receive a double hand transplant.  A medical team of 40 people, including 12 surgeons, took nearly 11 hours to perform the operation.

Read more at Yahoo News, ABC News, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post.

A Tripp Down Memory Lane

During the late 1990s, Linda Tripp was a civil servant who worked in the West Wing of the White House, where she got to know a young co-worker named Monica Lewinsky and eventually exposed her affair with President Bill Clinton.  Now 65, a grandmother of 7, and with her husband the owner of a successful German Christmas store in Virginia, Tripp has broken her long silence by having an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.  An excerpt:

It was the scandal that saw Bill Clinton impeached and which threatened to bring down his presidency. For many, it continues to define it to this day.

But according to the woman who outed Monica Lewinsky as the president's mistress, the real story was never about Monica. It was about 'subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice… a true abuse of power.' And it was about Hillary.

Because, according to Linda Tripp, it was Hillary who manipulated and stage managed the story, converting herself from a lackluster First Lady with unimpressive approval ratings to admirable First Victim - the blindsided wife standing by her man. 

Tripp has a lot to say about her former co-worker's ex-boyfriend's wife, and it's not pretty.  Read the full story.

LaGuardia Airport To Be Completely Overhauled

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced a $4 billion plan to rebuild LaGuardia Airport, the smallest of the three major airports serving the area of New York City.  The announcement came at a luncheon with Vice President Joe Biden was in attendance.  Biden had previously likened the airport to a "third world" facility.  The reconstruction of LaGuardia is part of a larger plan under which John F. Kennedy International Airport, Stewart Airport and Republic Airport on Long Island will receive improvements.

This plan reminds me of something that happened near where I live about 25 years ago.  One morning, a friend of mine drove past a gas station, which had a sign that said "Closed For Remodeling". That afternoon, when drove past the same place, the gas station had been completely demolished.  A new gas station was then built where the old one had been.  LaGuardia Airport appears headed to a similar fate.

Read more at CNBC, The Verge and ABC News.

Monday Links

As the workweek starts, here's some things going on:

From MyFoxChicago, orders for durable goods increased by 3.4% in June.

From Reuters, 4-Teva will drop their bid to buy Mylan and instead will acquire Allergan.

From The Washington Post, physicist Stephen Hawking has signed up for his first AMA on Reddit.

From Yahoo News, an attack on a police station in northern India leaves 10 people dead.

From Market Watch, Disney's Ant-Man beats out Sony's Pixels at the box office.

From The World Post, the "far-right" mayor of Ozd, Hungary cracks down in the local Roma.

From KTVN, on Reno city call, the LGBT flag temporarily replaces the American flag.  (via The Daily Caller)

Wired presents a woman who, you might say, lives up to the site's name.

From Fox News, President Obama (D) responds to comments by former Governor Mike Huckabee (R).

From WFMZ, the U.S. State Department issues a report on human trafficking.

From the New York Daily News, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves a new cholesterol-lowering drug.

From ABC News, a campground in central California is evacuated because of a wildfire.

From Pioneer News, scientists in Switzerland and Germany solve the mystery of "hair ice".

From The Independent, police in Cleveland pepper spray a crowd of people at a Black Lives Matter gathering in order to remove an intoxicated 14-year-old.

From the New York Post, a Virginia man is taken into custody after a fatal stabbing at a church service in Maryland.

From The Tablet and the "better late than never" department, the German Protestant Church apologizes for the destruction of Catholic religious images during the Reformation.

From USA Today, stocks and oil prices fall after a plunge in the Chinese stock market.

And from The Christian Science Monitor, photos and video of Pluto.

A Few Random Musings #5

It's about time for another Random Musings post, especially since recent events have given me plenty to think about.
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I cannot help but think that in a sane world, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner would be pitied, and Rachel Dolezal would be laughed at and then ignored.

George Zimmerman, the noted "white Hispanic", may have had a black Peruvian great grandfather.  If so, it would make him both blacker than Rachel Dolezal and more Native American than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), and no more white than President Obama.  These would all be strange distinctions for someone held up as an example of white racism against blacks.

As a traditional Christian, it's not so much that I oppose "gay marriage", but that I find the very concept nonsensical, since the traditional definition of marriage has included the element of being based on a heterosexual relationship.

Music Break - Songs From My Younger Days

Here are some songs I enjoyed back when I was a Littlefoot.  I guess you could call most of these "bubble gum", but I still like them anyway.

One of the first songs I ever heard on the radio was Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen.  Snoopy, in case anyone out there doesn't know, is a cartoon dog in the comic strip Peanuts and a series of TV movies inspired thereby.  With his vivid imagination, Snoopy creates several alter-egos, including the World War I Flying Ace, who faces his nemesis the Red Baron in aerial combat.  The Baron is inspired by the real-life Manfred von Richtofen, the German ace who shot down 80 Allied pilots in the First World War.  In these fantasy sequences, Snoopy's doghouse becomes the Flying Ace's sopwith camel.  In the TV special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, we see Snoopy flying off to fight the Red Baron, only to be shot down and stranded behind enemy lines.  These dogfights, if you'll pardon the pun, appear to be the inspiration for the song.  There are many YouTube videos which include the song, but I found one that combines the song with footage from the TV movie, thus showing how the movie would have incorporated the song, and then finishes with some live footage of The Royal Guardsmen.

Man Shoots People In Louisiana Theater

Around 8:00 p.m. this evening, an armed man opened fire in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.  There are reports of one victim being killed, and the shooter killing himself.  Six or eight others are reported as injured.  The gunman has been described as an "older white man".

This incident is tragically similar to what happened three years ago in a theater in Colorado.  The man responsible for that shooting spree has recently been convicted.

Read more at KATC, KLFY and The Advertiser.  Since this story has recently broken, its details will probably not be fully known for a while.

UPDATE:  The shooter has been identified as John Russel Houser, 59, of Phenix City, Alabama.  A second victim is reported to have died.

NASA Discovers Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Sun-Like Star

NASA scientists have discovered a planet so similar to Earth that it's being called Earth's "older, bigger cousin" and even "Earth 2.0".  The planet, designated Kepler-452b, orbits a star that is slightly larger than our sun, and in the same spectral class, at a distance 5% greater than the distance between Earth and the sun, with an orbital period of 385 (Earth) days.  Kepler-452b is classified as a "Super Earth" because its radius is 1.6 times that of Earth.  NASA believes that the planet is rocky, which would give it a surface gravity of about twice that of Earth, and that the planet and its star are 6 billion years old, and thus 1.5 billion years older than our solar system.  The Kepler 452 system is located about 1400 lightyears away.

Read more at BBC News, the Daily Mail, NBC News and Yahoo Tech.

Marine Veteran To Run 160 Miles

In Washington, Marine Corps veteran Bridget Guerrero is running 160 miles to honor fallen servicewomen.  From Runner's World:

Bridget Guerrero, 47, is no stranger to serving others. Beginning on Thursday, July 23, the Marine Corps veteran will run 160 miles to honor the 160 servicewomen who have lost their lives since September 11, 2001. Her plan is to cover 40 miles a day to finish on July 26.

Guerrero, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 13 years as well as the Department of Homeland Security, is running on behalf of Valor Run, a nonprofit organization that honors U.S. military women through running. The organization was founded by U.S. Navy Captain Nancy Lacore, a former classmate of Guerrero's, who served in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012.

According to RW, Guerrero ran her first marathon at age 15.  Like the Energizer Bunny, she keeps going and going and going.  Read the full story, and also look at the picture.  Her T-shirt says "Valor knows no gender."  Neither does this blog's "Badass" label.