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Upcoming Presidential
Debate Schedule
by Barry Crimmins
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 |
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Good News
"Here's how it works. A lender goes to the website Kiva.org, which displays photos of prescreened people
and tells you what they need money for and how much they need. The
lenders make a choice and pay by credit card. Kiva then transfers the
money to a local partner, which makes the loan to the business. During
the period of the loan, the partner provides updates to the lender on
the business's progress and collects the repayment, which the lender
can withdraw from Kiva or reloan.
"I first learned about Kiva at my 2006 Clinton Global Initiative. On
March 27 2007, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof described
his own experience as a Kiva lender. He loaned $25 each to a TV repair
shop owner and a baker in Afghanistan. The baker had received $425 from
a total of seven American lenders, enough to open a second bakery. The
TV repairman had also opened a second shop. Between them they had
created six new jobs and, in the process, increased the chances that
Afghanistan can succeed in building a moderate Muslim democracy in the
face of the Taliban's efforts to undo it. "
- Bill
Clinton: Give
small, make a big difference -
"Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to
decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out
of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the
first new artificial life form on Earth.
"The announcement, which
is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the
annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California,
will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer
genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of
creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources
and techniques to combat global warming.
"Mr. Venter told the
Guardian he thought this landmark would be 'a very important
philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from
reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the
hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.'
"The Guardian can reveal
that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr. Venter, led by the
Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic
chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously
achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched
together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base
pairs of genetic code."
- Ed
Pilkington: "I
am creating artificial life," declares US gene pioneer. Scientist has
made synthetic chromosome. Breakthrough could combat global
warming -
"The OneVoice Movement, a youth-led mainstream nationalist movement
with parallel operations in Israel and the Palestinian Authority,
announced that it had exceeded its original goal of recruiting half a
million Palestinian and Israeli citizens as signatories of a mandate
demanding a two-state solution. The OneVoice Mandate calls on
Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert to start
immediate, uninterrupted negotiations until a comprehensive two-state
solution is reached.
"As of the latest audit on September 17, 2007, 536,443 Israeli and
Palestinian signatories (262,008 Israelis and 274,435 Palestinians)
have joined the movement. Having exceeded its goal of recruiting half a
million Palestinians and Israelis in roughly equal numbers four months
earlier than planned, OneVoice aims to get to One Million citizen
signatories by the end of 2007.
"The groundswell of Israeli and Palestinian citizens committing
themselves to the movement will gather on an unprecedented scale on
October 18th, 2007, when OneVoice will host the One Million Voices to
End the Conflict peoples summits. The summits will be held
simultaneously in Jericho and Tel Aviv, and linked via satellite to
international echo events in London, Washington D.C. and Ottawa.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to participate, showing their
solidarity in support of a two-state solution and demanding
accountability to the will of the people."
"We shall be greeted, I think, in Baghdad and Basra, with kites and boom boxes." - Fouad Ajami, Professor of Middle East Studies at John Hopkins University in an interview with the Washington Post on the likely outcome of an American invasion of Iraq. - Free Dinner for All
"I will bet you the best dinner in the Gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week." - Bill O'Reilly, speaking of the current war, on Fox News - Free
Music Flashback
 "I was at a Judy
Collins session in New York in 1968, and when she was finished, I
peeled off a few hundreds for the engineer so I could make a tape of my
new songs. Some you'll know; some you might not. The following fall we
made the first CSN album, and the tape has been lost to the wind for
almost 40 years. Somehow its found its way back, and these songs now
feel like great friends when they were really young."
- Stephen Stills
(listen to the whole thing for free at http://stephenstills.com/)
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Bad News
"The Defense Department (DOD) allegedly provided two fundamentalist
Christian organizations exclusive access to several military bases
around the country. This access became official sanction for these
groups to proselytize amid the ranks, despite the fact that such
activities were in violation of federal law.
"The evangelical
Christian groups have posted detailed instruction guides on their web
site that advises their members about tactics to use to win over
soldiers, or 'pre-Christians,' to evangelical Christianity when
visiting military installations around the country.
"Spokespeople for the
DOD and for the fundamentalist Christian organizations identified in
this report did not return numerous calls or reply to several emails
seeking comment.
"According to a
week-long investigation by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a
government watchdog organization, the evidence it has uncovered proves
the Pentagon has been engaged in a pattern of widespread evangelizing
in violation of Clause 3, Article VI of the Constitution, which forbids
a religion test for any position in the federal government, and the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights,
which says Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of
religion. Furthermore, individuals representing a specific denomination
may only offer spiritual guidance to soldiers and are prohibited from
using the 'machinery of the state' to proselytize or try to convert
members of the military."
- Jason
Leopold: Pentagon
Facilitating Christian Evangelism -
"Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the
'war on terror' is failing and instead fueling an increase in support
for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday.
"A report by the Oxford
Research Group (ORG) said a 'fundamental re-think is required' if the
global terrorist network is to be rendered ineffective.
"'If the al Qaeda
movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be
understood and systematically undercut,' said Paul Rogers, the report's
author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in
northern England.
"'Combined with
conventional policing and security measures, al Qaeda can be contained
and minimized but this will require a change in policy at every level.'"
"He described the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a 'disastrous mistake' which had helped
establish a 'most valued jihadist combat training zone' for al Qaeda
supporters."
-
Reuters: Report
Says War on Terror Is Fueling Al Qaeda -
"The State Department, which is facing growing criticism of its policy
on private security contractors, overlooked repeated warnings from U.S.
diplomats in the field that guards were endangering Iraqi civilians and
undermining U.S. efforts to win support from the population, according
to current and former U.S. officials.
"Ever since the
contractors were granted immunity from Iraqi courts in June 2004 by the
U.S.-led occupation authority, diplomats have cautioned that the
decision to do so was 'a bomb that could go off at any time,' said one
former U.S. official.
"But State Department
leadership, unable to field U.S. troops or in-house personnel to guard
its team, has clung to an approach that shielded the contractors from
criminal liability, in the hope of ensuring continued protection to
operate in the violent countryside."
- Paul Richter: State
Department Ignored Blackwater Warnings -
"If there is a
quagmire in Iraq, it was created more than a decade ago when the United
States instituted a flawed system governing the use of contractors to
perform governmental functions. Now, despite Iraqi fury at Blackwater
USA, some of whose employees are accused of fatally shooting Iraqis,
Washington is so reliant on the firm that it dare not order it from the
field...
"The estimated 180,000 US-funded contractors
now in Iraq (of which about 21,000 are Americans) outnumber the 160,000
US troops. All too
often this private army has been unmanageable and unaccountable, its
interests dangerously divergent from those of the U.S. and the Iraqi
governments.
- Dr.
Janine R. Wedel: The
Shadow Army -
"The U.S. Supreme Court
will hear a case Wednesday in which the Bush administration will seek
to overturn the death penalty of a convicted rapist-murderer at the
behest of the International Court of Justice.
"Jose Medellin
confessed in 1993 to participating in the rape and murder of two
Houston teenagers. Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were sodomized
and strangled with their shoe laces. Medellin bragged about keeping one
girl's Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir of the crime.
"Medellin and four
others were convicted of capital murder and sent to Texas' death row. A
juvenile court sentenced Medellin's younger brother, who was 14 at the
time, to 40 years in prison.
"The intervention in
the case by the Bush administration comes after the International Court
of Justice found Medellin was not informed of his right to contact the
Mexican Consulate for legal assistance.
"That, according to the
Hague, was a violation of a 1963 treaty known as the Vienna Convention.
"'We find ourselves in
an unusual position,' Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz told the Houston
Chronicle. 'Texas is not regularly litigating against the United
States. But sadly enough, the United States will appear alongside
Medellin at the argument.'
"Medellin v. Texas will
be argued Wednesday and could determine the fate of Medellin and 50
other Mexican killers on death rows in the United States, including
more than a dozen in Texas. All of them say they were not told of their
right to contact Mexico for legal help...
"Cruz, who will argue
the case for Texas, called Bush's unprecedented attempt to issue orders
to the judicial branch and the state courts in particular
'breathtaking.'
"'It is emphatically
not the province of the president to say what the law is,' he told the
Houston Chronicle. 'If this president's assertion of authority is
upheld in this case, it opens the door for enormous mischief from
presidents of either party. What might these presidents be inclined to
do if they had the power to flick state laws off the books?;"
- WorldNetDaily: THE
NEW WORLD DISORDER - Bush backs Mexico, rapist-murderer. International
court seeks to block death penalty in Texas. -
"Ohio's method of conducting elections with electronic voting machines
appears to have created a true privacy nightmare for state residents:
revealing who voted for which candidates. Two Ohio activists have
discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software
and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that
permit the reconstruction of an election's results--including allowing
voter names to be matched to their actual votes.
"Making a secret
ballot less secret, of course, could permit vote selling and allow
interest groups or family members to exert undue pressure on Ohio
residents to vote a certain way. It's an especially pointed concern in
Ohio, a traditional swing state in presidential elections that awarded
George Bush a narrow victory over John Kerry three years ago.
'Ohio law permits
anyone to walk into a county election office and obtain two crucial
documents: a list of voters in the order they voted, and a time-stamped
list of the actual votes. 'We simply take the two pieces of paper
together, merge them, and then we have which voter voted and in which
way,' said James Moyer, a longtime privacy activist and poll worker who
lives in Columbus, Ohio."- Declan McCullagh: E-voting
predicament: Not-so-secret ballots -
"Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to
American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11
speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the
enemy's system.
"The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an
American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had
intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of
Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address
marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001...
"But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped
off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet
communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as
Obelisk, was compromised...
"One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview
last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the
shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the
order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security
to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal
message America's intelligence community saw. 'We saw the whole thing
shut down because of this leak,' the official said. 'We lost an
important keyhole into the enemy.'"
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There's no fart joke in Isaiah. It's a metaphor having to do with childbirth, not gas, and my copy of Isaiah 26:18 reads: "Wee haue beene with childe, wee haue beene in paine, we haue as it were brought foorth winde, wee haue not wrought any deliuerence in the eatrth, neither haue the inahabitants of the world fallen."
Oh man, that's EASY:
Isaiah 1:13 ..."Your incense is detestable to me."
Lord, Thou who smelt it, dealt it.
Now we know why the Lord loosened his belt on the seventh day.
"Wherefore my bowels shall sound like an harp for Moab, and mine inward parts for Kirharesh."Yep, there are TWO fart jokes in the Book of Isaiah, three if you count "brought foorth winde." Who said God didn't have a sense of humor? He's clearly behind http://www.fartjoke.com/.
- Isaiah 16:11 (King James Version)
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Outside the Box
If the way Israel is treating the Palestinians is just as reprehensible as the way America treated the native Americans, then the solution should be the same. Let the Palestinians run casinos in the occupied territories. Turn the Gaza Strip into the Las Vegas of the Mediterranean. Make a deal with the mafia to supply slot machines and with Jerry Brockheimer to produce CSI: Haifa. Once the world sees some millionaire Palestinians, there won't be a cause for terrorists to rally behind. |
| Who recently said the Bush administration's handling of the war was “incompetent” and we're “living a nightmare with no end in sight?” | |
| A ) | Dennis Kucinich, to Seymour Hersh. |
| B ) | Sean Penn, to Rolling Stone. |
| C ) | Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez, Ret., to a gathering of military reporters and editors. |
| Hint: think “former top American commander in Iraq.” | |
'If it weren't for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn't get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.'
