A quiz for adults and children

This quiz has only four questions on it.

It sounds hard to believe, but children may score higher than adults on the same four-question quiz.

These quiz questions were sent to me by a friend through e-mail.

When I saw his e-mail message, I took the test, and I failed to answer a single question correctly.

I have now placed a curse on the man who sent me this quiz for making me feel so stupid.  One year from today,, one of his fingers will, overnight, become half of its' original size.  The same thing will happen to another finger a year later, and then a year after that.  Ten years from now, all of his fingers will be half as small as they are now.

After that, every year for the next ten years, the same thing will happen to all of his toes.

Question number one

How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

Answer number one

Open the refrigerator door, insert the giraffe, and close the door.

This question tests whether you accomplish simple tasks in a complicated manner.

Question number two

How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, "Open the door, insert the elephant, and close the door"?

Your answer is wrong.

Answer number two

Open the refrigerator door, remove the elephant, insert the giraffe, and close the door.

This question tests your ability to understand the consequences of your previous actions.

Question number three

The lion is hosting a conference of all the animals.  One animal does not attend.  Which one?

Answer number three

The elephant.

The elephant is in the refrigerator.  You just put him in there.  This question tests your memory.

Okay, even if you didn't get the first three quiz questions correct, there is one question left, so you still have one chance to resurrect your pride as an intelligent human being.

Question number four

There is a river that you must cross, but it used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat.  How do you get across it?

Answer number four

You jump into the river and swim across.

Haven't you been paying attention?  All the animals are at the conference that is hosted by the lion, except for the elephant that you put into the refrigerator.

A consulting firm gave this test to some of the smartest people that walked through their doors.  About 90% of the adults failed the test, but a majority of the preschoolers who took the same test got at least two out of the four questions correct.

This test, and the scores of the people who take it, proves conclusively that children are smarter than adults.

To all those who grieve the New Town dead

After my wife died, ten years ago, I started attending a church with a large membership.

After I started going to their worship services, I asked some of the members what they could offer to a grieving widower.  They told me that the church had a bereavement group that met one night every week.

I started going to it.  It was led by two women, both of whom were members of the church, and they had both lost a husband.  Every week, the attendees had a chance to talk a bit about their loss and how they were coping with it.  The two discussion leaders offered to everyone who came, regulars and first-timers, the same message: Christ will heal all your wounds.

Whether you are a Christian or not, though, there were two other things that I learned from the group, and these other two messages can help anyone who grieves for someone who has recently died.

• You are not alone.  This was reinforced every week by the simple practice of discussing losses with other people who were also experiencing a loss.  Some of these losses were spouses, some were grandparents who the attendees felt close to, and a few members had experienced the loss of a child.  The grieving process is very similar for all losses.  Someone we knew is not here any more, but we will see them again some day, if we follow God's rules.


• This other message must be considered a warning.  I say it so that you can prepare yourself for a possible disaster, even greater than the loss of your child or the adults who died that day.  If you experience a second loss within a short time after suffering one loss, it will take much longer for you to recover from the first loss.  This advice was given to me by the two women who led the church-sponsored bereavement group.
  
  Even if the second death is a distant relative or the loss of a pet, any second loss that happens soon after you experience one loss will weigh much more heavily on your emotions than the original loss, so expect that you will need much more time to finish the grieving process, and ask for even more help from family, friends, and professionals if you have a second loss soon after the first one occurs.

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Please know that a lot of people are praying for your emotional health and for the emotional health of your families.

Please know something else, as well. I say these words to you in the spirit of the Golden Rule, which says to treat others the way that you want to be treated.  The following words are words that I don't hear myself too often, but as a widower, I treasure them whenever someone says them to me, so I know how much they will mean to you.

You will see your loved ones again.  God loves you, and I do, too.

David

"Chocolate Ray" has been indicted

Ray Nagin, the ex-Mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted!

Background information on him

His racism

I call him "Chocolate Ray" because he called New Orleans a "chocolate city". Watch the video, uploaded April 25, 2011, and see for yourself.

When Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, which was built on below-sea-level ground, the buses that could have evacuated the city's residents out of danger were idle because Mayor Ray Nagan was having a party in his home when he should have been showing his leadership.

An in-depth investigation into Ray Nagin's "missing-in-action" style.


If these buses had been used to evacuate New Orleans residents out of the city, they would have avoided being killed and injured.  These buses are partially underwater because they weren't used.

 

January 2013

These are the first three paragraphs of a January 18, 2013 U.S.A. Today story

NEW ORLEANS – Ray Nagin, former New Orleans mayor and the public face of the battered city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, has been indicted by a grand jury on 21 federal corruption charges.

The indictment, released Friday, alleges Nagin awarded lucrative city contracts to contractors in exchange for more than $200,000 in kickbacks and first-class trips to Hawaii, Jamaica and Las Vegas.

Nagin, 56, served two four-year terms as mayor, from 2002 to 2010, and currently lives in Frisco, Tex., outside Dallas. If convicted on all charges, he faces more than 15 years in prison. Nagin becomes the first mayor in the city's 295-year history to be indicted under federal corruption charges.

In the original version of this page, there was a link to a video of his "chocolate city" speech, but on May 18, 2017, I added the original video on the right, to make it easier to see his racism for themselves.

"This city will be chocolate at the end of the day."
- Ray Nagin, Mayor of the City of New Orleans

Ray Nagin failed to do his job as a mayor during a city-wide crisis.

This March 20, 2006 page of the Lawrence Journal-World website includes this photo of New Orleans, flooded, with unused buses.  The city has decided to sell them on EBay.

February 2014

Ray Nagin is now a convicted criminal.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 12, 2014 Washington Post story.

Former New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin — who became the face of a desperate, drowning city during Hurricane Katrina — was convicted Wednesday on charges of accepting bribes from city contractors while in office.

Nagin, a Democrat, was found guilty by a federal jury on 20 of 21 criminal counts, including bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud. He was acquitted on one count of bribery.

September 2014

Ray Nagin is now an inmate of a Federal Prison in Texarkana, Texas.  Link to a story on the CNS News website dated September 8, 2014.

April 2015

These are the first three paragraphs of an April 15, 2015 Reuters story.

Attorneys for former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who is serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison for corruption, are seeking to have his 2014 conviction overturned because of what they say were flawed instructions given to the jury, court papers show.

Nagin, 58, was convicted on 20 counts including bribery, conspiracy and money laundering, all tied to payments he received for granting city contracts during the recovery effort in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

He was thrust into the national spotlight in 2005 when the storm's waters overwhelmed levees and flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, killing 1,500 people and causing some $80 billion in damage.

October 2016

These are the first three paragraphs of an October 5, 2016 Nola story.  All three of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's final hope for an early exit from federal prison was all but quashed after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up his appeal of his 2014 public corruption conviction.

At the start of its fall session Monday (Oct. 3), the high court denied Nagin's petition, letting stand the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal decision in January that called his arguments "meritless."

"His criminal case was effectively over when the 5th Circuit denied his appeal, but this means it's really, really over," Loyola University law professor Dane Ciolino said.

Nagin, 60, is two years into a 10-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him on 20 counts of bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. He is the first mayor of New Orleans charged, tried and convicted of public corruption.

April 2020

This is an April 28, 2020 WDSU story.  They are the NBC affiliate in New Orleans.  Their story includes a video of the on-air report.

NEW ORLEANS —

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been released from jail due to COVID-19 concerns.

His lawyer confirms that the 63-year old was released yesterday and from a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, and is now in Texas with his family.

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In recent weeks - due to the COVID-19 pandemic - the federal government has been strategically releasing non-violent inmates who have completed more than half their prison sentences.

Nagin was convicted in 2014 on 20 bribery, money laundering and tax evasion charges.

The Bureau of Prisons released this statement regarding Nagin's release:

"Ray Nagin transferred from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Texarkana to the supervision of the Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) Dallas Residential Reentry Management (RRM) Office. His projected date of release from the custody of the BOP is 03-16-2023."

He started serving his 10 year prison sentence in September of 2014 and was scheduled to be released in 2023.

This gun saved lives

January 3, 2013
Loganville, Georgia

A woman and her two children are alive today because she shot the man who broke into her home, while she and the children were there.

Police believe that the man intended to steal from the house belonging to Donnie and Melinda Herman, but they theorize that he heard the sounds of the two children while he was there and started looking for them.

When the man broke in, she called the 9-1-1 emergency number, using a cell phone.  They told her to hide in her house and to stay on the phone with them.

She was married, and after she had hid, with her two small children in the small attic of the house, the police told her to stay on the phone with them so that they would know what was happening.  After she and the children had hid, she asked the police to call her husband, which they did.

After her husband was told that a man had broken into his house, with his wife and their two children inside, he spoke on the phone with her, reassuring her while she and the children had hid inside a crawl space in the attic.

The police had already told a uniformed officer to go to the house, but he had not arrived when the burglar found the woman and two small children, hiding in the attic.  She had placed herself between the attic door and her children.  She had also armed herself with a handgun, which her husband had taught her how to use.

When the burglar opened the door to the small attic, he thought that he would find the people who had made the noises that he had heard downstairs.  He did not expect to see a woman ready to defend herself and two small children with a gun, but that's what he found.

Minutes earlier, while her husband had been talking with her on her cell phone, he had told her to defend herself from this intruder.  He reminded her that he had already taught her how to shoot, and he talked to her again after she fired the first shot.

"Shoot him again!" he said.

She shot six times.  Five of those shots hit the intruder.  She and her two children were not harmed by the man who might have killed her and two children if she had not been armed with that handgun.

The man, wounded by five bullets, was able to leave the house, but he was captured shortly afterwards by police and is now hospitalized and under arrest.

Melinda Herman is now glad that her husband taught her how to shoot.  So are the children.  She doesn't like to think about shooting anyone, but that makes her a better human being than the burglar, who might not have had any regrets if he had been able to rape a defenseless woman after killing two children.

Link to a similar story about the same crime, published January 4, 2013 on the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

This January 6, 2013 story on the website of a Fox News affiliate includes the photo on the right. This link and the link to the story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution were added 12/14/17.

Updates

These are the first three paragraphs of an April 2, 2013 news story on the website of WSB-TV, Atlanta.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.

WALTON COUNTY, Ga. —
A burglar shot multiple times during a home invasion will spend 10 years in prison for the crime.

Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh was the only reporter there when Paul Ali Slater pleaded guilty to burglary charges Tuesday morning. The judge sentenced him to 20 years, with 10 years to serve, and also banished Slater from Walton County.

Investigators said Slater broke into a Loganville home on Henderson Drive in January and pursued a woman and two children inside. Investigators said Slater broke through a bedroom door, a bathroom door and a closet door before he reached an attic crawl space where the woman was clutching a .38-calibur handgun.

A similar story, dated February 2017

This is a complete February 16, 2017 Bay News 9 story.

The St. Petersburg Police Department is investigating an early morning shooting at a home on 24th Avenue South.

• Woman shoots intruder at St. Pete home
• Middle-aged man expected to be okay

According to police, preliminary information indicates an intruder was shot at the residence around 6:15 a.m.

Police said a woman saw a man she didn't know coming into her home through a side window before she shot him.

The woman told police she warned the man that she was armed and shot the intruder when he did not retreat.

The man was transported to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg with a gunshot wound and is expected to be okay.

No other information has been released at this time.

The intruder was identified in an update to this story.  The update appears on the same web page.

Terrorists in the White House

Roger Cohen said in the New York Times on October 22, 2012 that the Muslim Brotherhood is very friendly with high-level officials in the American government.

David Ignatius said in The Investor's Business Daily on December 11, 2012 that President Obama was "The Muslim Brotherhood's best friend", even though many people who live in Egypt and other countries are protesting against the dictatorial policies and procedures of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi.

The investigative project on terrorism said it five days ago.  Their report was based on a December 22, 2012 article in Egypt's "Rose El-Youssef" online magazine.

• The original Rose El-Youssef article, written in Arabic
• An English-language translation

The TC-Palm, an online journal of news that affects Florida's Palm Beach area, said it a few hours ago.  They say very explicitly that President Obama is shipping American-made tanks and other weapons to this terrorist group, despite the fact that they say to their own people that they do not want the weapons.  There is a real worry that these weapons could be used to kill our own soldiers someday.

Al-Arabiya reported four days ago that two Egyptian lawyers complained that the Muslim Brotherhood took 10 billion Egyptian pounds (worth $1.5 billion U.S. dollars) from the U.S., with the "blessing" of President Obama.  The Egyptian Prosecutor-General ordered an immediate investigation.  I want an immediate investigation as to why this President is spending so much money on non-Americans when our debt is already perilously close to the statutory debt limit.

William Bigelow wrote on Brieitbart on August 6, 2012 that President Obama is not objecting to the installation of Sharia Law in this country, as advocated by Islamist activists.

The day after President Obama was re-elected, CBS reported this:

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood feels that the only foreign policy change Obama can bring is by “accepting the will of the Arab people.”

“We must rely on ourselves and on our resources and build our country,” Issam Al-Aryan, a top Muslim Brotherhood official, said, according to The Times of Israel.

“In the absence of direct American influence, Egypt can affect and lead the process of building a democratic and constitutional regime that will become a dream for African and the southern hemisphere.”

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood wants to make Shariah Law the main source of the country’s new constitution.

Terror group Hamas is calling for Obama not to be “biased” toward Israeli interests during his second term.

Muslims, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood and similarly violent organizations, are still visiting the White House in 2015.  Link to a story dated February 7, 2015 on the Breitbart website.

It looks to me like President Obama cares more about the Muslim Brotherhood than he does about his own American people, who believe in many faiths, whose ancestors came from many countries, and who have a wide variety of political, social, and economic beliefs.

American presidents have a Constitutional obligation to represent all of us, not just those who wish to create a country with Muslim fundamentalists controlling our policies.

It is too late to vote for a different candidate, but it is not too late to impeach him for his many crimes against the Constitution and against the American people, including his total disregard of the will of the American people.  There are already more than 40 possible Articles of Impeachment that I listed, and his crimes are continuing.

December 19, 2015 update.

This video was uploaded to YouTube on January 28, 2015.

The running time is 9 minutes and 20 seconds.  The featured speaker is introduced during the first minute and 30 seconds.  He spoke at the National Press Club.

This text accompanies the video. During a press conference on how to combat radical Islamic extremism, Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons (U.S. Navy, Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated that under the leadership of Barack Obama the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated all of the National Security Agencies of the United States.

Click here if you can't see the video.

19,000 documented cases of welfare abuse

The Boston Herald, one of the two largest newspapers in the Boston area, sent letters to 477,000 registered welfare recipients during the recent election season.  These letters asked them to vote.

19,000 of these letters were returned to the state because the recipient did not live at the address that was on the envelope.  In other words, the State of Massachusetts has 19,000 welfare recipients whose existence they can't verify.

Watch Fox News tonight.  In about three and a half hours, on the Greta Van Susteren show, she will have, as a guest, a reporter from the Boston Herald, who will give more details on this well-documented case (actually 19,000 cases) of welfare abuse.

Greta's biography.

$4.2 Billion was paid to illegal aliens in 2011

... according to the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury Department.

A report was issued by them on that subject.  It is dated July 7, 2011 (a year and a half ago).  Here is the link to the report.

The money was paid through the use of tax credits.  The following paragraphs were copied from the first page of the report:

Many individuals who are not authorized to work in the United States, and thus not eligible to obtain a Social Security Number (SSN) for employment, earn income in the United States.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides such individuals with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to facilitate their filing of tax returns.

Although the law prohibits aliens residing without authorization in the United States from receiving most Federal public benefits, an increasing number of these individuals are filing tax returns claiming the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), a refundable tax credit intended for working families.

The payment of Federal funds through this tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States without authorization, which contradicts Federal law and policy to remove such incentives.

If the U.S. Congress was serious about reducing our spending, they could start by preventing any illegal alien from receiving any of our scarce financial resources.

Even if Obama said that he would veto this legislation, Congress can and should override his veto.

Any political capital that he thinks he has as a result of his narrow election victory is now gone.  He spent it trying to have his way on the fiscal cliff issue.

**********

This issue is easy to understand.  Barak Obama is politically a Marxist and economically, a communist.  His wife Michelle didn't love America until 2008.

This man was appointed by President Obama to be at the head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.  Listen to him praise communism in his own words.

**********

What makes you think that our President, his wife, or any one of his top advisers would work very hard to keep this nation strong in any sense of the word, including our economic health and our military security?

IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.  NOW!

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June 26, 2017 update

These are the findings of the results of a report dated June 20, 2017 from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

TIGTA identified that IRS processes are not sufficient to identify all employment identity theft victims.  For example, 497,248 victims, who did not have a tax account in Processing Year 2015, were not identified even though identity thieves electronically filed tax returns with evidence that they used the victims’ Social Security Numbers (SSN) to gain employment.  For another 60,823 victims, who have a tax account, the IRS did not update their account with an employment identity theft marker.

In addition, IRS processes do not identify employment identity theft when processing paper tax returns.  TIGTA reviewed a statistically valid sample of 292 paper tax returns filed in Processing Year 2015 by individuals with an ITIN.  These tax return filers reported wages on 150 (51.4 percent) of the returns and attached a Form W-2, Wage and Income Statement, indicating they used someone’s SSN to gain employment.  As a result, TIGTA projects that the IRS did not identify 272,416 victims of employment identity theft for the 685,737 paper tax returns filed by ITIN holders reporting wages in Processing Year 2015.

TIGTA also identified that the IRS does not have processes to identify employment identity theft in the IRS’s Form W-2 perfection processes or to notify the Social Security Administration of the crime when both the victim’s name and SSN are used by an ITIN holder.

These are the recommendations of that Inspector General, because of what he and his agency found when they investigated.

TIGTA recommended that the IRS

1. develop a process to notify the parents and legal guardians of dependents whose SSNs were misused;
2. correct programming to ensure that the identity theft marker is placed on all victims’accounts for ITIN/SSN mismatches on electronically filed tax returns;
3. place the identity theft marker on the accounts of the 60,823 victims;
4. require ITIN paper tax return filers to attach Forms W-2 to their tax return;
5. develop procedures to identify employment identity theft on paper ITIN returns and add the identity theft marker on valid SSN owners’ tax accounts;
6. ensure that the identity theft marker is placed on taxpayers’ accounts when the Taxpayer Identification Number Perfection unit determines an ITIN holder, rather than the taxpayer, earned the income on Forms W-2; and
7. develop a process to notify the Social Security Administration when ITIN/SSN mismatches involve an ITIN holder using a victim’s SSN and full or partial name to commit employment identity theft.

IRS management did not agree with five of the recommendations.  As a result, actions are not being taken to assist 548,968 victims of employment identity theft.

These are the first two paragraphs of a June 22, 2017 Washington Times story about this report.  The linked page in the first paragraph, which was in their report, is simply a list of their news stories about the I.R.S.

Most illegal immigrants who pay taxes have stolen someone else’s legal identity, and the IRS doesn’t do a very good job of letting those American citizens and legal immigrants know they’re being impersonated, the tax agency’s inspector general said in a new report released Thursday.

The theft creates major problems for the American citizens and legal foreign workers whose identities are stolen, and who have to deal with explaining money they never earned.

August 4, 2017 update

These are the first three paragraphs of an August 3, 2017 Fox News story.  The link in the third paragraph was in their story.

Illegal immigrant families received nearly $1.3 billion in Los Angeles County welfare money during 2015 and 2016, nearly one-​quarter of the amount spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to data obtained by Fox News.

The data was obtained from the county Department of Public Social Services -- which is responsible for doling out the benefits -- and gives a snapshot of the financial costs associated with sanctuary and related policies.

The sanctuary county of Los Angeles is an illegal immigration epicenter, with the largest concentration of any county ​in the nation, according to a study from the Migration Policy Institute. ​ The county also allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.