AND SARAH PALIN SAID

ARTICLE

1955

The year was 1955 THE TOUGH Days !!!!

Did  you hear the post office is   thinking about charging 7 cents   just to mail a letter?

                                                             

                                                                 

If they  raise the minimum wage   to  $1.00, nobody will be able to   hire outside help at the store. 

                                                                     

When I first started  driving, who  would have thought gas would  someday cost 25 cents a  gallon? 

Guess we'd be better off leaving   the car in the garage.  

                                                                      

Did you see where some  baseball   player just signed a contract for  $50,000 a year just to play ball?  

It wouldn't surprise   me if someday  they'll be making  more than   the president.

I never thought I'd see the day   all our kitchen appliances would be electric.   

They're even making electric typewriters now. 

                                                                     

It's  too bad things are so tough   nowadays.  

I see where a few married women are having  to work to make ends  meet. 

                                                                     

It won't be long before young  couples are  going to have to hire  someone to watch their  kids so  they can both  work.                                                                       

                                                                     

I'm afraid the Volkswagen car   is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.                                                                         
                                                                      

                                                                     

Thank goodness I won't live to see   the day when the Government  takes   half our income in taxes. 

I   sometimes   wonder if we are  electing the best people to   government. 
                                                                      

                                                                     

The fast food restaurant is  convenient for a quick meal, but I seriously doubt they will ever catch on. 

                                                                     

There is no sense going on short trips any more for a weekend.  

It costs nearly   $2.00 a night to stay  in a  hotel.

                                                                      

No one can afford to be sick anymore.   

At $15.00 a day in the hospital, it's too rich for my blood. 
                                                                      

                                                                     

If they think I'll pay 30 cents for a haircut, forget it.                                                                        
                                                                      

                                                                     

Know any friends   who would get a   kick   out of  this?

                              

Be   sure   to  send it to your kids and grandkids, too!

HOW LONG DOES SEX TAKE?

How long DOES sex normally last? Study finds it can range from 33 seconds to 44 minutes - but the average is 5 minutes 

• Dr Brendan Zietsch is a psychologist from the University of Queensland 
• Reviewed available evidence on how long penetration lasts during sex
• Found condom use or whether a man is circumcised makes no difference
• Studies show intercourse is shorter for older men - contrary to their claims

By DR BRENDAN ZIETSCH FOR THE CONVERSATION

PUBLISHED: 05:58 EST, 4 April 2016 | UPDATED: 09:20 EST, 4 April 2016

WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY? 

The best study we have estimating the average time to ejaculation in the general population involved 500 couples from around the world timing themselves having sex over a four-week period – using a stopwatch.

That is as practically awkward as it sounds: participants pressed 'start' at penile penetration and 'stop' at ejaculation. 

You may note this could affect the mood somewhat, and might perhaps not exactly reflect the natural flow of things. 

But science is rarely perfect, and this is the best we've got.

So what did the researchers find? 

The most striking result is that there was a huge amount of variation. 

The average time for each couple (that is, averaged across all the times they had sex) ranged from 33 seconds to 44 minutes. 

That's an 80-fold difference.

So it's clear there's no one 'normal' amount of time to have sex. 

The average (median, technically) across all couples, though, was 5.4 minutes. 

This means that if you line up the 500 couples from shortest sex to longest sex, the middle couple goes for an average of 5.4 minutes each time they do it.

There were some interesting secondary results, too. 

For example, condom use didn't seem to affect the time, and neither did men's being circumcised or not.

This challenges some conventional wisdom regarding penile sensitivity and its relationship to staying power in the sack.

It didn't much matter which country the couples came from either – unless they came from Turkey, in which case their sex tended to be significantly shorter (3.7 minutes) than couples from other countries (Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States). 

Another surprising finding was that the older the couple, the shorter the sex, contrary to the prevailing wisdom (probably peddled by older men).

As an evolutionary researcher, all this talk of how long sex lasts make me wonder: 'Why does it last any time at all?'

All sex really needs to achieve, it seems, is to put sperm into the vagina. 

Why all the thrusting and bumping? Instead of sliding the penis in and out many hundreds of times per sexual session, why not just put it in once, ejaculate, and then go have a lemonade and get on with the rest of the day?

Before you say, 'because it's fun to go in and out', remember evolution doesn't care about fun per se – it generally only 'designs' things to be enjoyable if they helped our ancestors pass on their genes to future generations. 

For example, even though we like eating food, we don't chew each mouthful of it for five minutes just to make the enjoyment last longer.

YOU SHOULD JUST READ THE ARTICLE HERE: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3522596/How-long-DOES-sex-normally-Study-finds-range-33-seconds-44-minutes-average-5-minutes.html#ixzz44ycBUgXl

5 CARIBBEAN VACATIONS TO THINK ABOUT

THE CHINESE LOVE HOT DOGS!

BEIJING 

Animal rights activists are seeking to shut down an annual summer dog meat festival in southern China blamed for harming the country’s international reputation as well as fueling extreme cruelty to canines and unhygienic food handling practices.

Activists from a coalition of groups said Monday that they will continue press for the festival to be banned as well as legislation outlawing the slaughtering of dogs and cats and the consumption of their meat.

While an estimated 10 million-20 million dogs are killed for their meat each year in China, the June 20 event in the city of Yulin has come to symbolize the cruelty and lack of hygiene associated with the largely unregulated industry.

Yu Hongmei, director of the VShine Animal Protection Association, said China needs to follow the example of the vast majority of developed nations that have banned eating dog and cat.

“China needs to progress with the times,” Yu said. “Preventing cruelty to animals is the sign of a mature, civilized society.”

Restaurant owners say eating dog meat is traditional during the summer, while opponents say the festival that began in 2010 has no cultural value and was merely invented to drum up business. Since 2014, the local government has sought to disassociate itself from the event, forbidding its employees from attending and limiting its size by shutting down some dog markets and slaughter houses.

Still, as many as 10,000 dogs, many of them stolen pets still wearing their collars, are slaughtered for the festival held deep inside the poor, largely rural Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Some are trucked in hundreds of miles stuffed six or seven to a crate or small metal cage without food or water. Slaughtering takes place in front of the animals, usually with a club to induce the pain and fear that restaurant owners claim makes their adrenaline-rich meat tastier.

“Psychologically and mentally, they have already died many times,” said Peter J. Li, Humane Society International’s China policy specialist.

FULL ARTICLE AND VIDEO

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/world/article69840817.html#storylink=cpy

GLOBAL FINANCIAL SCANDAL

The scandal erupted on Sunday when media groups began revealing the results of a year-long investigation into a trove of 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in creating offshore shell companies in the tax haven of Panama.

Among those accused are close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson as well as Barcelona striker Lionel Messi.

“We have opened an investigation for money laundering in relation to the law firm” Mossack Fonseca, a judicial source at the National Court, Spain´s top criminal court, told AFP after the release of the documents which named Messi and Oscar-winning Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar among others with offshore holdings.

The footballer’s family immediately came to his defence, saying “that Lionel Messi has not carried out any of the acts attributed to him, and accusations he created a… tax evasion plot, including a network of money-laundering, are false and insulting,” it said in a statement.

Messi has been charged with tax fraud in a separate case that is due to go to trial in May.

Australia said it had launched a probe into 800 wealthy Mossack Fonseca clients. Prosecutors in France and tax authorities in the Netherlands also announced investigations in those countries.

The trove of documents, known as the Panama Papers, was anonymously leaked to German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with more than 100 media groups by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), with more information expected to be released over the coming days and weeks.

The first revelations elicited a chorus of denials, including from the Kremlin, which suggested a US plot after the ICIJ said that banks, companies and close associates of Putin had “secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies”.

“Putin, Russia, our country, our stability and the upcoming elections are the main target, specifically to destabilise the situation,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, adding the reports were likely the work of journalists who were “former officials from the (US) Department of State, the CIA and other special services.”

Offshore financial dealings are not illegal in themselves but may be used to hide assets from tax authorities, launder the proceeds of criminal activities or conceal misappropriated or politically inconvenient wealth.

Freed from Boko Haram’s rape camps but their nightmare continues

Halima, 15, holds Hauwa, the baby of her friend Hamsatu, 25, who is sewing a prayer cap in their tent in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Both women were abducted, held captive and forced into marriage by Boko Haram. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — For months, they were kept in tiny thatched huts in the middle of the forest, waiting with dread each evening for their rapists to return. During the almost intolerable violence, the young women’s minds drifted to escape or death. The victims were as young as 8.

At the heart of Boko Haram’s self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria was asavage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination. Those who resisted were often shot.

Now, many of the women are suddenly free — rescued in a series of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the victims.

Heartbreaking story and video here: They were freed from Boko Haram’s rape camps. But their nightmare isn’t over.