Even Helen Keller could have seen it coming

BULLY BOY PRESS &   CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

KILLER BARRY O IS TAKING A DRONE TO THE SAFETY NET.

THE WASHINGTON POST EXPLAINS, "PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL RELEASE A BUDGET NEXT WEEK THAT PROPOSES SIGNIFICANT CUTS TO MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY."

THAT'S WHAT HAPPENING.  MANY MEMBERS OF THE KOOL-AID CULT TRY TO DEFLECT FROM WHAT'S HAPPENING SUCH AS, "ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS SAY PRESIDENT OBAMA WILLS END A NEW PROPOSAL TO CAPITOL HILL NEXT WEEK THAT INCLUDES CUTS TO SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE, AN ATTEMPT TO WIN OVER DEFICIT-FOCUSED REPUBLICANS."

HE CREATED THE SEQUESTRATION.  HE EARLIER CREATED THE DEFICIT COMMISSION.  THE KEY SHARED COMPONENT: ATTACKING THE SAFETY NET. 

 HEY, AMERICA, HOW DO YOU LIKE THE BITCH NOW?

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

 
Phys.org reports on finds a team of archaeologists from the University of Manchester are making in Iraq -- specifically in historical Ur. The team is lead by Dr. Jane Moon and Professor Stuart Campbell.  They began with satellite imagery before going to Ur where they've found a "complex at about 80 metres square -- roughly the size of a football pitch.  They believe the building goes back 4,000 years, going back to early Sumer and was "connected to the administration of Ur."   Ancient Digger explains:

Tell Khaiber, as the site is called, is playing host to one of the first major archaeological projects with extensive participation by foreign scientists since the hiatus caused by the political situation and hostilities of the Iraqi war. Consisting of an international mix of six British archaeologists representing four UK institutions and four Iraqi archaeologists from the State Board for Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, the team expects to uncover not just monumental buildings, but evidence that may shed new light on the environment and lifeways of the people who inhabited the site.


Archaeology Magazine adds, "The area has been closed to foreign scholars since the 1950s, when a military air base was constructed nearby."  Noted Iraqi archaeologist Donny George passed away March 11, 2011.  For many around the world, with Iraq either closed off due to Saddam Hussein or due to violence, George was the ambassador for the early historical civilization.  May 26, 2005, he was a guest on Neal Conan's Talk of the Nation (NPR) and discussed Iraq's historical importance.  Excerpt.


 

CONAN: Give us an example, if you would. Is there a piece that is of particular significance that--or at least significance to you?

 

Mr. GEORGE: Well, at the beginning, you see, we lost some very, very important masterpieces, like the Warka vase, like the mask of the lady from Warka, but these came back. But now one of the most important pieces that is still missing is the headless statue, half-natural-size, of the Sumerian King Natum(ph), which--we still don't have it. And, by the way, this piece is inscribed on the back shoulder, and it could be one of the rare examples, the first examples, of this mentioning the word 'king' in the history of mankind. So this is -- I mean, every single piece has its own significance.

 

CONAN: We're talking with Donny George, director of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. You mentioned Sumer; this was an early, maybe the earliest, human civilization...

 

Mr. GEORGE: That's right.

 

CONAN: ...speaking a language that appears to have no relation to any language anywhere else.

 

Mr. GEORGE: That's right. Yeah.

 

CONAN: This is a great mystery and--but these were the people who first invented the hydrographic civilization that we emerged from.

 

Mr. GEORGE: That's right. I mean, modern scholars believe that the Sumerians are the descendants of the first people coming to Mesopotamia. Those were the people coming from the Neolithic period. Those were the people who started the villages. Those were the people who actually, with the villages, started the animal domestication and agriculture and a lot of -- villages planning and, you know -- but then, in about 4,500 BC, we learn that these are Sumerians. We don't have the writing then, but in about 3,200 BC we started having the writing, the inscription that they themselves invented at the beginning. It was a kind of pictographic. And, you see, this is the greatness of the people: Out of nothing, they invent something, something very important, something that can exchange ideas and can accumulate ideas between generations and generations. That was the writing. Now we have it here.

Last month, Ur was the topic of the geo quiz on PRI's The World.  (What is the ancient capital of Mesopotamia?  Ur. Following the quiz, Marco Werman speaks with anthropologist Elizabeth Stone about Ur.)  AP reports of the newly discovered  complex that it would have existed "around the time Abraham would have lived there before leaving for Canaan, according to the Bible."  Last week, Jane Arraf (Christian Science Monitor) spoke with Dr. Jane Moon about the dig:

The last major excavation at Ur was performed by a British-American team led by Sir Charles Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and the 1930s. After the 1950s revolution, which toppled Iraq’s monarchy, a nearby military air base put the area off limits to foreign archaeologists for the next half century.
“What Wooley found were these tremendous monumental buildings, but it’s difficult to tell a coherent story about them because they were restored again and again and again, and what you see is neo-Babylonian, 7th century BC – very much later,” says Moon. “He wasn’t able to see what they were really used for and that’s where I’m hoping our modern methods might be able to say something.”
At Ur, Wooley also discovered a spectacular treasure trove that rivals King Tut’s tomb. At least 16 members of royalty were buried at Ur with elaborate gold jewelry, including a queen’s headdress made of gold leaves and studded with lapis lazuli. Other objects included a gold and lapis lyre, one of the first known musical instruments.
In the 1930s, the treasures were split between the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, which funded Wooley’s work, and the newly created Iraq museum.
Moon says it’s impossible to tell whether the new site might contain similar finds.
“Ultimately we’re not looking for objects we’re looking for information.… I guess it’s always a possibility. In archaeology you can always be surprised.”

For more on Wooley's historic dig, you can refer to the American Journal of Archaeology (see PDF link on the page for the article by Naomi F. Miller).  Moon's team is one of six foreign teams recently authorized to do excavations.



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