How to obtain the Camel Cash catalog

I don’t smoke but my Dad used to.  He saved the coupons.  I noticed that Camel Cash certificates are expiring and wrote a post about it a few weeks ago. Now a lot of people are finding out that Camel Cash will no longer be redeemable after March 31, and are trying to figure out where to get the catalog.  Many of them have come here.

It took quite a lot of searching, but I can tell you that you can call 800 226-3522 but it won’t do you much good, cause they don’t have any paper catalogs left.

The website to go to is camelsmokes.com, or http://www.smokerswelcome.com/CAM/dtclogin.jsp?brand=CAM

where you will have to register which involves giving a lot of personal information. If you say you are not a smoker at present, you will not be able to register.

Good luck, you smokers, in more ways than one.

Tuesday (or Wednesday) at the Rapture

The Rapture Index dropped a net 1 to 156

Changes this week: Oil supply/price went up one, but was offset by decreases in volcanos (-1) and earthquakes (-1).

Still bothersome: Dems control US Congress, and those darn satanic attacks on farm animals haven’t yet abated.  I don’t know which is worse

Category of the week:

. 8: Oil Supply/Price

    	Oil remains an economic and a political issue.

    	We fought The War in the Gulf because of petroleum’s

	strategic importance. The final battle of Armageddon

	 may also involve a dispute over oil.

hmm…Armageddon.

You know, back when I was a boy, I don’t remember Jesus trying to scare the piss out of us. And I don’t remember anything about Middle East oil. Did I miss something? Was the Bible wrong then, or is it wrong now?

.

Countdown to US attack on Iran: x minus 31 days: Bush dialing for dollars

Why do things happen when they do?

Why, on Thursday nights, do your kids suddenly seem to want your advice or decide to conform to your suggestions?

I’ll leave that questions for the moment, although some of you already know the answer.

Let’s consider why several current events are happening at this time:

Dick Cheney and his “aid and comfort” allegations are 10,000 miles away from Washington DC.

In seemingly unrelated yet apparently massive capitulation to common sense and reality, various members of the military, Defense Department, CIA and Bush cabinet said some things that seem to counter the Bush line on Iraq and Iran, and should warm the cockles of my heart:

CIA chief Mike McConnell admitted that Iraq looked like civil war, that Iran couldn’t get nuclear weapons for 5-8 years. He also said that he couldn’t prove that the penetator IEDs were made in Iran (though he did come up with a new charge, that Iraqis were trained to use the IED’s by Iranians ). Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace said CATEGORICALLY that the military was not planning to attack Iran. And perhaps most amazing of all, Condi Rice announced that the US was going to attend a “neighbors’ meeting” (including Syria and Iran) in Baghdad next month.

Blow me down.

or not.

Back to the way our kids operate. All of these earthshaking announcements came in the setting of Bush sending his minions up to Capitol Hill to beg for money.

Does that ring a bell?

Pace, Rice and Gates were actually on Capital Hill to ask for more money–about $100 Billion to fund the Iraq and Afghan campaigns through the end of 2007. The “supplemental” request is on top of the $70 billion Congress allocated to those wars late last year.

Now, I suspect that, in order to get the money to fund his many nefarious schemes, George Bush would promise (in very parsed words) to perform gay marriages in Golden Gate Park.

Are we clear?

Money talks, bullshit walks.

The scuttlebut (and the evidence) in Washington is that Bush fears nothing, reads nothing, will listen to nothing, will be checked by nothing short of the power of the purse, exerted by Congress. And we are seeing the proof.

Given the slender margins by which the Democrats control the congress, PASSING or even debating bills to stop Bush is impossible, not to mention the inevitable veto. What must be done, and can be done, on the other hand, is NOT to pass a bill: the appropriations bill.

Dems should not be afraid to go all the way to shutting down the government to get what is needed to stop Bush. Two thirds of Americans are in favor of getting out of Iraq. If the Dems fail to accomplish this and fail to prevent an attack on Iran, their public support will wane, as people throw up their hands at the whole process.

This is a showdown of the greatest magnitude, for the Democratic Party, the American people, our system of government, and for the Mideast and much of the future of the world.

California embryonic stem cell research upheld by court

The colossal waste of money, time and lives perpetrated by self-styled “pro-lifers” may finally be over, and the will and good sense of the people may finally be served.

The appeals court’s decision upheld an earlier lower court ruling in favor of the $3 billion stem cell research agency, which was created when Proposition 71 was approved by voters in 2004. The legal battle has stymied the state’s stem cell research initiative, proposed in response to the Bush administration’s restrictive stem cell research policies.

The agency has so far been unable to issue bonds to raise the $3 billion it is authorized to allocate to stem cell research. The state government and private donors have in the meantime loaned the agency more than $200 million to move forward while the court battle continues.

The CIRM last week awarded its first embryonic stem cell research grants, with a total of $45 million awarded to 20 institutions in California, and the institute hopes to approve a second set of grants for $80 million on March 16.
link

Every year that this research is delayed means another year before its benefits are available to the public, and many thousands of more deaths. Maybe yours; or your child’s, or your mom’s.

In related news, Stanford University has received a huge grant from Lorry I. Lokey, the founder of the Business Line news service, to support stem cell research.

Bravo !!

UPDATED: Reporting in to Byron York: outrage not sighted; back to you….

Byron York at NRO wants to know where the outrage is, regarding the apparent attempt to assassinate Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan.

I am also wondering about that; I went out into my neighborhood and looked around, asked a few people, and so far, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of it. I’ll keep looking. I understand President Bush is kind of searching around his office for it, also.

Outrage is in kind of short supply these days, Byron, especially amongst your people. And a lot of it is being used…you might contact these people, and I understand these folks might have some….

back to you……

Oh, and by the way, Patrick Fitzgerald wanted me to ask: was Mr. Cheney hanging out in Afghanistan because they don’t have an extradition treaty with the US? (call me…..)

UPDATE: Dick Cheney was sent halfway around the world to get out of the spotlight during the CIA leak case trial and during congressional budget hearings. Since he is a warmonger, he went around warmongering, and continued to in essence call anyone who questions his policies a traitor. He had no business going into a dangerous war zone, and in fact took copious and unusual precautions because he knew it was dangerous. The explosion occurred a mile away from where he was.

By his many actions, Dick Cheney has exposed not just himself but all Americans, soldiers and civilians alike, to great hazard when they travel abroad, and possibly even at home. He has participated in the decisions to make assassination an integral part of American foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands of human beings have died because of Mr. Cheney’s actions and millions have been displaced. By his misuse of our finite resources, he has made for lost opportunities to save lives instead of end them, and Mr. Cheney’s connections with Halliburton, which received massive amounts of those resources, are well known. America’s reputation has been dragged through the mud, and its position in the Middle East and the world may never recover. Unlike most others who have been involved in this greatest human tragedy since Vietnam, Cheney is totally unrepentant.

Furthermore, by his own actions, he has removed himself from the traditional position of vice-president, and attempted to become something else.

I condemn anyone trying to blow anyone else up. Mr. Cheney should think about the doctrine of personal responsibility for his actions. The role he has assumed under the guise of vice-president makes for the deafening lack of outrage, imho.

But I could be wrong. Check with the rest of America, Byron. Let me know what you find out.

If we had a smart president, he’d be lookin’ into this…

link
There are very few animals, possibly none, on the earth more important to us than these little guys.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Animals, schmanimals, right, George?

The cuts are part of the agency’s five-year plan for a 20 percent reduction in the work force nationally. The Fish & Wildlife Service, which oversees a system that consists of 544 refuges covering 96 million acres, has been working on smaller budgets in recent years.

countdown to US attack on Iran: X minus 32 days: Thanks for the oil, Shiites, see ya later.

link
link

The Iraqi cabinet has apparently come to an agreement on a National Oil Law, which sets the terms on which the national wealth of Iraq will be plundered. Multinational corporations (British and US headquartered, of course) will actually sit on the Oil Board and decide who gets the contracts (excuse me, but I have to utter the expression “duh” at this moment).

As far as the Iraqis are concerned, mark it zero, Dude.

Now, I am no expert in oil matters, and unlike my usual practice, I will not pretend to be. But what is clear is that this issue of the oil law is of primary importance to the US, as reflected in the fact that this was the only real area of agreement between Bush and the Iraq Study Group. And of course, Dick Cheney is WAY on board with this:

By 2010 we will need [a further] 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies.
—Dick Cheney, CEO of Halliburton, 1999

In essence, we are now seeing the transition from GRABBING the Iraqi oil, to KEEPING the Iraqi oil (and maybe grabbing the Iranian oil as well). Now that the purple fingered Iraqi Shiites (a rather motley bunch, and increasingly either nationalistic or tied to Iran) have handed over control of the oil, Bush and Cheney are most happy to rid themselves of the Shiites and resume partying with their old authoritarian and oil-rich pals, the Saudis and the other oil rich Sunni kingdoms of the Gulf region. The Shiite leaders in the Iraqi government are already starting to fall to mysterious illness and assassinations, and those outside the formal government have been forced into hiding.
Whatever government security forces can be scrounged up are being used to attempt to beat insurgents (who happen to be largely Sunni) into at least leaving Baghdad temporarily, so that the US can declare victory or at least show “progress,” and thus defeat Congressional proposals to defund the occupation of Iraq.

At the moment, the US is looking for a strongman in the mold of Saddam to take over Iraq. Once they have selected a likely candidate, and the oil law has been approved by the parliament, probably in May, the present Iraqi government will “fall.”

In the meantime, the major Shiite power in the region, Iran, must be silenced and neutralized. In the event that the current US “pressure” fails to convince the Iranians that they should roll over for the US, it seems quite certain that a massive air and naval attack will level whatever infrastructure they might have that his not protected by at least 20 feet of reinforced concrete.

Before May.

You do the math.

Previous countdown posts:
x-40
x-39
x-38
x-37
x-36
x-35
x-34
x-33

USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike force to “operate in Western Pacific after leaving Sasebo”

According to this report the whereabouts of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and its strike force will probably be unknown after it leaves Sasebo, Japan, on Feb. 28::

The aircraft carrier will operate in the western Pacific on standby after leaving Sasebo, reports said.

The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Mustin, which is equipped with the most advanced Aegis missile guidance system, will also make a call at southern Japan’s Nagasaki Port in early March.

Anonymous sources: Iran responsible for American foot odor

also for

…tooth decay, body odor, obesity, sloth, ignorance, vanity, masturbation, snoring, bad breath, dirty fingernails, truancy, masturbation, hail, traffic jams, and insensitive husbands

and that’s just today’s list.

I would give a link but that would make it less anonymous. sorry.

More Bush/Cheney anti-Iranian propaganda: domestic terror threats

For the news media to report this crap as coming from an anonymous source is completely irresponsible. Were the subject not so serious it would laughable.
March 5, 2007 issue of Newsweek:-

Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter.