Strong Solar Flare Activity May Cause Rare Moonburn Events across Globe

A space scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued a warning in association with the current solar flare activity on the sun’s surface. Edmund P. Rank, a scientist at NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory claims that within the next 24 to 48 hours, the solar flare activity on the sun could actually create a situation where the moon glows brighter.

Dr. Rank cautions those who wish to witness the brighter moon on Thursday night, especially those living quite close to the equator, wear long pants and sleeves and cover their heads with a hat so as to limit exposure from not only the brightness of the moon, but a particularly strong stream of hot charged particles that can move outward from the sun and cause a rare skin condition known as ‘moonburn.’

“We are not joking about this people,” said Dr. Rank. “Moonburn is as rare as they come but when all the pieces line up as perfectly as these do, i.e. extremely strong solar flare activity which sends x-rays and charged particles toward earth, coupled with Coronal Mass Ejections or CME’s which are the hot charged particles that hurtle toward earth’s atmosphere, you get not only a great show, but a great show and tell.”

Dr. Rank claims that people living in Northern Ireland will have the best chance of experiencing the aurora borealis associated with the heightened flare activity. But again, he cautions “Don’t go outdoors and simply look up at the moon without the proper clothing and headgear or you will be sorry the next day.”

Because the event is short-lived, Dr. Rank believes there is really no threat of an increased risk of skin cancer. “However,” he notes, “if you do live in the northern part of the hemisphere and happen to stay out too long on Thursday evening to catch a glimpse of the heightened Aurora Borealis, you may wind up with some very red cheeks.”

Dr. Rank said that the last time this kind of event happened was in 2003, and after admiring the view of the moon in nothing more than a t-shirt and cargo shorts, he did get quite red. “In fact,” he said, “when I showed up for work a few days later, just about everyone wanted to know where I went on my tropical vacation.”

Palin Has No Intention of Running for President in 2012

A disgruntled former aid to Sarah Palin claims that he has first-hand knowledge that Palin has absolutely no intention of actually running for President in 2012. He claims that she’s playing the Tea Partiers like a fine-tuned fiddle.

“The truth is,” says Ben Thair, “if the GOP made an announcement today they were going to forego the formalities and just hand the nomination to Sarah, she’d run so fast she’d leave track marks.”

Thair worked under Sarah Palin in the days when she governed the State of Alaska and continued as the assistant to her chief assistant well into the days when she was chosen to be John McCain’s running mate. “I can tell you the precise moment I knew that Sarah Palin wasn’t going to seriously run for any government office,” Thair said.

“It’s when they took her shopping for the first time and she and her kids had the run of the store. All that money flowing through her hands made her realize that just the mention of running for office can get you more money than actually holding that office, depending, of course, on who you are.”

Thair was asked, then, why he thinks Palin is being so cagey about whether or not she will be seeking the nomination in 2012. He answered with a question of his own. “How much money do you think all those Tea Party followers would throw at Sarah whether it’s a contribution to her PAC fund or buying one of her books if they thought she was just in it for the money and had absolutely no intention of running for President?”

“Personally,” Thair concluded, “I’d love to see the GOP give Sarah the presidential nod as their number one candidate. We’d see whether she was willing to give up her millions in endorsements for a paltry $400,000 annual government salary. I’d lay odds she’d run alright, run like hell.”

O’Reilly and Obama Agree that Glenn Beck is Nuts

President Obama sat down with Fox News Show host Bill O’Reilly in a rare and candid interview that touched on everything from the unrest in Egypt and how it should be handled, the economy and how to achieve a more stable union, and Obama’s thoughts on the 2012 elections. But it was Glenn Beck that really brought the two men together in a meeting of the minds.

In hyping the interview, Bill O claimed that this would be the most watched interview of any in the history of mankind due to the fact that it preceded the Super Bowl and, of course, it was a Fox host interviewing President Obama and not Keith Olbermann, who, O’Reilly couldn’t resist adding “is still unemployed as far as I know, seeing as he never took me up on my offer to be my shoeshine boy.”

In reality, however, early leaks that O’Reilly and Obama would be dissing Glenn Beck on national television and coming to a consensus over his waning mental state seems to have been the big draw all along. Word travels fast especially when Bill O is responsible for self-promotion. Little hints were dropped all during the week preceding the interview. If you were lucky, you’d catch little nuggets like “Be sure to watch Sunday before the game when President Obama and I will sit down and discuss, among other things, the state of Glenn Beck’s mind,” making a play on discussion about the state of the union.

Once the interview was complete and O’Reilly was interviewed himself by reporters, he stated “I admit it. I’m a ratings whore. If it weren’t for the discussion about Glenn Beck’s deteriorating grasp of reality, we may have gotten people to tune in, but after about 5 minutes of discussing Egypt and the economy, they’d be switching over to the pre-game shows and not given us a second look.

“Once again,” claims O’Reilly, “I gotta give props to Glenn Beck. He is the real draw here.” And then he added, “Like it or not.”

‘Nouveau Homeless’ Emerge as Travel to Super Bowl Sacked by Mother Nature

Thousands of Steelers and Packers fans found it almost impossible to get to Arlington, Texas for the Super Bowl game to be played on Sunday. Some are telling travel hell stories straight from the play books of the comedy film “Planes, Trains and Automobiles. One weary traveler stranded at Columbus International Airport Friday night was overheard telling his wife, “We'd have more luck playing pickup sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak.” Sam Whetsack, an investment banker, and his wife Mildred had planned on arriving in Dallas a couple of days before the game when they found out their Friday morning flight routed through Chicago had been cancelled.

The Whetsacks were only one couple in a sea of thousands whose only chance of making it to Dallas might be hitching a ride with a rental van full of Mexican migrant workers making their way to the tomato picking fields in Arizona. Melissa Sizedee, a college student traveling with her sorority sisters to the game was sitting on the floor at Chicago OHare on a beach towel she’d grabbed out of her bag. Sizedee was visibly shaken by the whole ordeal.

“Now I know what it is like to be homeless and living on the streets. If it weren’t for the hope of finally getting to Dallas and my nice warm room at the Hilton, I’d turn around and ask mummy and daddy to come pick me up—could someone pleeeeze go get me another double espresso con panna?”

All over the country, the rich travelers were feeling the inconvenience of not getting exactly what they wanted when they wanted it. Dick Hedley, traveling with his wife and three children, was extremely vocal about the perceived lack of service he experienced in trying to get from New York to Dallas. Hedley had been stranded in the airport for more than an hour when he demanded the airline put him up in a hotel and pay for all meals until his flight left. The ticket agent explained to him that it was only a two-hour delay, at which Mr. Hedley replied, “Well, add another hour to that, and we may as well consider ourselves homeless.”

In fact, the word homelessness was bandied about quite frequently by the well-off travelers as they tried to find a suitable word to depict the inconvenience they were witnessing first hand trying to get the to the years’s hottest sporting event. Overheard were statements like “Hey, Marie, take a picture of me sitting on the floor like a beggar,” and  “Johnnie, if we don’t get something to eat pretty soon, I may have to start rummaging in the garbage bins, ha ha.” One traveler, when told he would have a three-hour wait at LaGuardia asked the one airline worker “well, do you think you could hook me up then with a large cardboard box to sleep in while I wait?”

That just goes to show that someone has been paying attention these past few years on all those reports about the homeless. Finally, someone gets it. All it takes is a bit of inconvenience to bring the message home.

Medical Marijuana to be Grown in White House Garden this Year

It is the first week of February, and for Michelle Obama, this means it is time to start planning the White House organic garden. While the garden will again contain a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as a few ornamental flowers, a new addition is sure to create the most controversy ever.

The White House organic garden will include several varieties of medical marijuana. The District of Columbia, like many states, has enacted medical marijuana laws allowing the cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes. A special gardener with a marijuana growing license has been appointed to oversee this particular plot of the garden.

Tommy Chong, no relation to Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong fame, is a Japanese gardener who is well versed in the various types of cannabis and their medicinal properties. Marijuana will comprise only a small part of the “medicinal herb” portion of the White House garden this year, which will also include various sage plants, lemon verbena, St. Johnswort, Valerian, Feverfew, Eyebright, and others.

A spokesperson for the garden project claims that this will be a first for the White House. “Marijuana has gotten a bad rap for decades,” said Mary Bridges, no relation to Jeff Bridges, notorious for his vocal backing of the legalization of marijuana. “Cultivating medical marijuana in the White House garden will send a clear message to America that this administration will do whatever it takes, including growing Maui Waui, (a particularly potent Hawaiian variety of the plant) to assure better health for our citizens.”

Asked if this means that the medical marijuana grown in the White House garden will be distributed and sold to local dispensaries in the area, Ms. Bridges replied “Oh heavens no. While growing medical marijuana is allowed, we have not yet approved the opening of any dispensaries in our area.

Anticipating the next question, Ms. Bridges explained “No, the Obamas are in excellent health and will not be using the marijuana themselves for any health issues.”  

Steps to Remedy Sophomoric Behavior Expected at SOTU Address

Whoever came up with the term “date night” to describe the seating arrangements anticipated at the President’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday night has a good handle on just how juvenile the behavior of some of our lawmakers has become. When it comes down to actually having to physically require Democrats to sit with Republicans and vice versa to give the appearance of bi-partisanship, we are in deep, deep trouble.

The fact that it took the shooting of a colleague to make legislators appear to act like adults is telling. But before we get all proud of ourselves as Americans and think that our representatives are finally going to act like adults on their own, consider what exactly has to be done to accomplish a bi-partisan seating arrangement on Tuesday.

Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) will be required to sit in the front row, center seat of the chamber so that President Obama can keep his eye on him. Remember, Wilson was the senator who yelled out “You lie!” at Obama in 2009 when he was addressing a joint session of Congress to discuss health care reform. While he has promised to behave, seating planners are taking no chances with this rabble rouser and he’ll be joined on either side by Democratic senators as yet to be named.

The American Public Health Association (APHA) has recently disseminated a pamphlet entitled “You Can’t Catch Cooties from a Democrat” to all the Republican lawmakers prior their attendance at the State of the Union Address. The pamphlet was prepared to quell long-standing beliefs Republicans have had that they could very well catch cooties while being forced to stand near or sit next to a Democrat in any public setting. This pamphlet will come in extremely handy for the handling of Joe Wilson.

Special row monitors will be on hand at the end of each row of seating to monitor the passing of notes by disgruntled senators. The necessity of this action came to light immediately following last year’s State of the Union Address when a crumpled up piece of paper was found on the House chamber floor. The note read thusly “Glad we’re sitting way over here, cause I hear you can catch cooties from them Democrats, ha ha.” The note also contained a crude drawing of President Obama with what appeared to be little bugs crawling on his suit.

John Boehner was asked if he felt these measures were necessary to get legislators to act like ladies and gentlemen and not resort to the childish reactions witnessed at last year’s address. Boehner replied simply, “They started it.”

As Sarah Palin Lays Low, Her Doppleganger Continues to Rile the Masses

The controversy surrounding the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords has kept Sarah Palin in the spotlight, causing her to question whether or not public life is the path she wants to continue to pursue.  Just kidding.

However, the real Sarah Palin is showing signs of becoming weary of all the bad press she is getting and has therefore stepped back into the shadows for a bit until all the hubbub dies down.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a good hold on her evil twin, the Sarah Palin Doppleganger, who seems not to be affected by all the bad press and, in fact, appears to be going out of her way to create more controversy.

In fact, just a few days ago, Sarah Palin (the evil one) announced how honored she was to be chosen as the keynote speaker at the Safari Club International Gun Convention to be held January 29 in Reno, Nevada. And to show her appreciation, Ms. Palin, through her sponsor, a large guns and ammunition retailer, has promised to hand out replicas of the famous “Crosshairs Map” to the first 100 gun enthusiasts who register for the event.

We asked the Doppleganger what was in store for the future and she just smiled and said, “anything to keep those masses riled up, I’m game, but not in a safari sense.”