What if they gave an ant-war rally and no one came?
Unemployment Rate Falls, Payrolls Grow
The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 4.4 percent in October as employers added 92,000 new jobs - flashing a picture of a strong labor market…
http://newsmax.com/money/signup.cfm?goto=/money/archives/articles/2006/11/3/091800.cfm&PROMO_CODE=0&s=lh
What if they gave an ant-war rally and no one came?
No-Show Protestors Cost Chicago $10,000+
The Chicago Police Department was ready to protect and serve during an anti-war protest scheduled to take place (last) Saturday afternoon. But the Illinois Anti-War Coalition cancelled the protest without letting the cops know, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for officers who ended up doing nothing.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=4705822
Babysitting grandma pulls gun on robber (GA)
October 30, 2006 …a grandmother was able to turn the tables on a man with a gun...with her 13-month-old grandbaby in her arms!
…68-year-old Janis Butler…wasn't in the mood to put up with a thief…
"And then he put the pistol--cocked the pistol and put it in the child's face," Janis told News 12. "Then he put it in my face and said he wanted the money."
Janis told him to go ahead and take the money while she got the baby to calm down.
But when he went for the money, she went for something else.
""I said, 'The money's under the desk; let me get this baby calm.' And he went to get the money out from under the counter," Janis said. "And then I pulled out my .38 revolver and cocked it, and I was going to shoot...but I happened to think that it will devastate the baby, because she was already crying and hollering and carrying on."
…Without managing to grab a cent, he hit the door running, and Janis called 911…
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/4521796.html
Attorney Offers Evidence of Anti-Christian Bias at Univ. of Wisconsin
October 31, 2006 (AgapePress) - "Pagans, yes. Christians, no." That's how a constitutional attorney is describing the attitude permeating the public university system in Wisconsin.
Just in time for Halloween, a Pagan Student Alliance club has been formed at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. The group has already been recognized by the student government. Meanwhile, at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is currently banned from campus because it requires its leaders to be Christians.
David French is director of the Center for Academic Freedom at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which is suing UW-Superior on behalf of InterVarsity. French says the idea that Christian student groups do not have constitutional rights but pagan student groups do, is a "ridiculous and laughable double standard."
...The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire recently had a policy barring resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dorm rooms...
"The strange thing ... is it seems as if universities are saying no matter how far outside of the mainstream you're going to go, whether it's a pagan club or it's a 9/11 conspiracy theorist professor, we're not going to go so far as to allow orthodox or traditional Christianity, despite the fact that that's within the mainstream of American thought and American history," he states...
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/312006c.asp
Good News in Iraq Attracts the Bad Guys, General Says
November 02, 2006- Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, on Thursday suggested there's a reason why Americans don't hear as much good news as bad news from Iraq.
Caldwell told Cybercast News Service, ""Every time we get ready to talk about a good-news story [about a specific area where U.S. troops are operating], we go through a deliberative process, asking ourselves, 'Are we putting the Iraqi citizens at risk?'
He said the U.S. doesn't want to give the enemy more targets. "We know that as soon as we announce [good news], the insurgents will immediately...target that, in order to discount it." He said the enemy is doing what it can to prove that Iraq is in turmoil and that security isn't good...
...During Thursday's press conference, Caldwell was asked to comment on press coverage of the war - specifically, a segment that aired on the 'Today' show on October 28, in which NBC reporter Richard Engel asked a US soldier if he worried about dying.
Engel also asked soldiers if they worried about their women back home being faithful to them while they were away...
...In a recent profile of Engel in the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz quoted the NBC reporter as saying, "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist." (This guy should be taken out of Iraq and tried for treason since he is purposefully trying to demoralize our troops.)
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200611/INT20061102b.html
US air strike kills Al Qaeda kingpin: military
Khaleej Times ^ 2 November 2006 AFP
BAGHDAD - American forces killed an Al Qaeda chieftain in the lawless western Iraqi city of Ramadi by destroying his car with a laser guided bomb, the US military said on Thursday.
“Rafa Abdul Salam Hamud Al Ithawi, also known as Abu Taha, was the emir of Shamiyyah,” it said. “He frequently harboured foreign fighters who entered Iraq illegally in order to assault innocent Iraqis and coalition forces.”
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/November/focusoniraq_November11.xml§ion=focusoniraq
US forces kill 13 in raid on insurgents in Iraq (foreign fighters)
November 3, 2006 US troops killed 13 suspected insurgents (foreign fighters) in a raid south of Baghdad early Friday, the military said….
…The building was surrounded and stormed after those inside did not respond to demands to surrender, the military said in a statement e-mailed to media. Five people were killed inside the building, including one man wearing a vest rigged with explosives, while eight other men who fled were gunned down by troops on the ground and planes or helicopters circling above, the report said.
Several of those killed appeared to have been foreign fighters from outside Iraq, the report said. The report did not say if there were any American casualties in the raid…
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378318176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The great mystery on how to have world peace has been solved!
Cleric: Criticizing Islam Threatens Peace
11/1/06 SELCAN HACAOGLU
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A leading Turkish cleric called criticism of Islam a serious threat to world peace, speaking Wednesday as Turkey prepared for a controversial visit by Pope Benedict XVI later in the month...
...Ali Bardakoglu, head of the country's religious affairs, said "it was saddening" to see Islam being criticized while the religion's contribution to civilization is ignored. (Which would be what?)
"This attitude, which fuels division and lack of mutual trust, is seriously threatening world peace," Bardakoglu told a conference in Istanbul attended by several African Muslim leaders...
http://home.bellsouth.net/s/editorial.dll?pnum=1&bfromind=2214&eeid=5067273&_sitecat=1505&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=2&ck=&ch=ne&rg=blsadstrgt
I guess the mainstream news missed this...
THE ENEMY FAILS IN IRAQ'S BLOODY RAMADAN, THE FORCES OF CHAOS LOSE
by Amir Taheri New York Post October 29, 2006http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/20213
Islamic Scholar Warns U.S. of 'Two-Faced' Muslims June 20, 2002 WASHINGTON – A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement is warning the West against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam.
"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," Bassam Tibi said Tuesday in an interview with United Press International.
Syrian-born Tibi, who …teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty in these exchanges.
Peace: "First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam – or 'House of Islam' – to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.
"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought…
…In an article in the prestigious Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, Tibi gave anecdotal evidence of how daunting a task this dialogue with Islam can be:
“The bishop of Hildesheim in Germany paid an imam a courtesy visit in his mosque. The imam handed the Catholic prelate a Koran, which he joyfully accepted. But when the bishop tried to present the imam with a Bible, the Muslim cleric just stared at him in horror and refused to even touch Christianity's holy book.”
"The bishop was irritated because he perceived this behavior as a gross discourtesy," wrote Tibi, "but the imam had only acted according to his faith. For if an imam gives a bishop a Koran, he considers this a Da'Wa, or call to Islam."
This, explained Tibi, must be borne in mind when one engages in a dialogue with Muslim "scholars," for it corresponds to a verse in the Koran: "And say ... to those who are unlearned: 'Do ye submit yourselves?'" (Surah 3:20).
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/19/144341.shtml
Konsistant Kerry
‘You know,” intoned Sen. John Kerry to the student crowd at Pasadena City College, “education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” John Kerry October 30, 2006
Here are his similar thoughts 35 years ago on his opposition to an all volunteer Army:
Kerry's '72 Army comments mirror latest (at least he is consistent on one thing)During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."
Kerry said, 'A volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown'...
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061102/D8L4QH580.html
Climate Non-Conformity
November 2, 2006
Two scientific events of note occurred this week, but only one got any media coverage. Therein lies a story about modern politics and scientific priorities.
The report that received the headlines was Monday's 700-page jeremiad out of London on fighting climate change. Commissioned by the British government and overseen by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the report made the intentionally shocking prediction that global warming could eliminate from 5% to 20% of world economic output "forever." Meanwhile, doing the supposedly virtuous thing and trying to forestall this catastrophe would cost merely an estimated 1% of world GDP. Thus we must act urgently and with new taxes and policies that go well beyond anything in the failed Kyoto Protocol.
The other event was a meeting at the United Nations organized by economist Bjørn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center. Ambassadors from 24 countries--including Australia, China, India and the U.S.--mulled which problems to address if the world suddenly found an extra $50 billion lying around. Mr. Lomborg's point is that, in a world with scarce resources, you need priorities. The consensus was that communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition and hunger, and education were all higher priorities than climate change.
We invited Mr. Lomborg to address the Stern report, and he takes apart its analysis brick-by-brick here( http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182 ). To our reading, there isn't much left of this politicized edifice. But we'd stress a couple of points ourselves...
...the Stern report barely mentions the potential benefits from warming in the world's cold-weather regions. Al Gore and others warn about the damage from coastal flooding and changing weather patterns, among other horror scenarios. But the world is large and its climate diverse, and a longer growing season in Siberia or Canada is at least one possible benefit of warming. The Stern report also dismisses any chance of moderate warming (meaning temperatures in 2100 only two to three degrees Celsius higher than in 1900), even though many climate models say this is in fact the most likely outcome.
Unlike the Stern report and its patrons, those of us who take a skeptical approach to these doomsday climate scenarios aren't trying to end the discussion. The Earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and this may be partly attributable to human behavior. But everything else--from how much warmer, to the extent of mankind's contribution, to the cost of doing something about it--remains very much in dispute...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009181
Scientists Grow Human Liver from Cord Blood (Not Embryo) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=413551&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=NEWS&ct=5
Scientists (Not Actors) Counter Emotion With Facts: http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/treatments.htm
Senator Kennedy Offered to Help Soviets Thwart U.S. Policies, KGB Papers Show
November 02, 2006
While Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked in close concert with high level Kremlin officials to alter the direction of U.S. policy, according to documents made available through a KGB defector.
Details concerning Kennedy's correspondence with KGB agents are included in the writings of the late Vasiliy Mitrokhin who defected to Britain in 1992. The Mitrokhin papers highlight a meeting that took place at the behest of Kennedy between former Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) and KGB agents in Moscow on March 5, 1980...
...Noted Cold War author and researcher Herbert Romerstein told Cybercast News Service Mitrokhin was a "highly credible source" with vast knowledge of the now-closed KGB archives…
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200611/POL20061102b.html
AARP's Tax Trap
November 1, 2006
Social Security was supposed to be a killer issue for Democrats... But suddenly the tables are turning on several Democratic candidates because of their endorsement of the tax-increase agenda of the ...AARP.
The liberal entitlement lobby has asked candidates around the country to fill out a questionnaire asking, "Will you support a balanced Social Security plan to continue the program's guaranteed benefits for future generations?" That may sound innocuous, but here's how AARP defines its balanced plan on its Web site... "AARP believes that a bipartisan plan that balances additional contributions from high income workers with modest adjustments in future benefits can maintain guaranteed Social Security benefits for future generations."
...in Washington "additional contributions" means a tax increase...
Thus if you make, say, $100,000 a year...tough luck; the folks at AARP think you're rich. They supported the elimination of the income cap for Medicare's portion of the payroll tax (2.9%) as part of the Clinton 1993 tax increase, and now they want to do it for the other 12.4%. A worker earning $150,000 would pay roughly $6,900 more each year in "additional contributions"...
...for a handful of Democrats in hotly contested House seats... it's become a political liability. That's because their GOP opponents refused to take the AARP pledge and are making an issue of this Democratic support for raising taxes on middle- and upper-income wage earners...
Democrat Melissa Bean -- who is trying to hold her seat in an affluent district near Chicago -- now claims she never supported the tax increase... And AARP is helping her disavow her pledge...
the AARP "balanced" plan -- requires either raising taxes or cutting the future benefits of young workers, or both. That is, AARP would make today's lousy Social Security deal for young workers even worse...
(Excerpt) Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116234321029209590.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
A Sterile Worldview: Vanishing Russia
October 25, 2006
According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, Russia “has lost the equivalent of a city of 700,000 people every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.” …snip…
If demographic trends hold steady, Russia’s population, which stands at 142 million today, will drop to 52 million by 2080. At that point, according to Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the upper house of the Dumas, the Russian parliament, “there will no longer be a great Russia . . . it will be torn apart piece by piece, and finally cease to exist.”
…snip…
Even more disturbing than the numbers are the reasons behind them: that is, “one of the world’s fastest-growing AIDS epidemics . . . alcohol and drug abuse . . . [and] suicide” are among the leading causes of Russia’s shrinking population.
What’s more, last year there were 100,000 more abortions than births in Russia. And many women who want children can’t have them: “[A]n estimated 10 million Russians of reproductive age are sterile because of botched abortions or poor health.”
As Scripps-Howard columnist Terry Mattingly puts it, “we have suicide, AIDS, substance abuse, rampant abortion, and a loss of hope in the future . . . in a nation that, in the past century, saw the rise of an atheistic regime that tried to stamp out the practice of faith . . . Do you think there might be a religion element in here somewhere?”
Well, not according to the Los Angeles Times or the Russian government. …snip…
… The real problem is a loss of faith. Life has always been tough in Russia, and Russians are famously fatalistic. But, as writers such as Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn told us, Christianity helped Russians to see their suffering as redemptive and not to lose hope. …snip
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ChuckColson/2006/10/25/a_sterile_worldview
David Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove
The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 4.4 percent in October as employers added 92,000 new jobs - flashing a picture of a strong labor market…
http://newsmax.com/money/signup.cfm?goto=/money/archives/articles/2006/11/3/091800.cfm&PROMO_CODE=0&s=lh
What if they gave an ant-war rally and no one came?
No-Show Protestors Cost Chicago $10,000+
The Chicago Police Department was ready to protect and serve during an anti-war protest scheduled to take place (last) Saturday afternoon. But the Illinois Anti-War Coalition cancelled the protest without letting the cops know, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for officers who ended up doing nothing.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=4705822
Babysitting grandma pulls gun on robber (GA)
October 30, 2006 …a grandmother was able to turn the tables on a man with a gun...with her 13-month-old grandbaby in her arms!
…68-year-old Janis Butler…wasn't in the mood to put up with a thief…
"And then he put the pistol--cocked the pistol and put it in the child's face," Janis told News 12. "Then he put it in my face and said he wanted the money."
Janis told him to go ahead and take the money while she got the baby to calm down.
But when he went for the money, she went for something else.
""I said, 'The money's under the desk; let me get this baby calm.' And he went to get the money out from under the counter," Janis said. "And then I pulled out my .38 revolver and cocked it, and I was going to shoot...but I happened to think that it will devastate the baby, because she was already crying and hollering and carrying on."
…Without managing to grab a cent, he hit the door running, and Janis called 911…
http://www.wrdw.com/home/headlines/4521796.html
Attorney Offers Evidence of Anti-Christian Bias at Univ. of Wisconsin
October 31, 2006 (AgapePress) - "Pagans, yes. Christians, no." That's how a constitutional attorney is describing the attitude permeating the public university system in Wisconsin.
Just in time for Halloween, a Pagan Student Alliance club has been formed at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. The group has already been recognized by the student government. Meanwhile, at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is currently banned from campus because it requires its leaders to be Christians.
David French is director of the Center for Academic Freedom at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which is suing UW-Superior on behalf of InterVarsity. French says the idea that Christian student groups do not have constitutional rights but pagan student groups do, is a "ridiculous and laughable double standard."
...The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire recently had a policy barring resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dorm rooms...
"The strange thing ... is it seems as if universities are saying no matter how far outside of the mainstream you're going to go, whether it's a pagan club or it's a 9/11 conspiracy theorist professor, we're not going to go so far as to allow orthodox or traditional Christianity, despite the fact that that's within the mainstream of American thought and American history," he states...
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/312006c.asp
Good News in Iraq Attracts the Bad Guys, General Says
November 02, 2006- Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, on Thursday suggested there's a reason why Americans don't hear as much good news as bad news from Iraq.
Caldwell told Cybercast News Service, ""Every time we get ready to talk about a good-news story [about a specific area where U.S. troops are operating], we go through a deliberative process, asking ourselves, 'Are we putting the Iraqi citizens at risk?'
He said the U.S. doesn't want to give the enemy more targets. "We know that as soon as we announce [good news], the insurgents will immediately...target that, in order to discount it." He said the enemy is doing what it can to prove that Iraq is in turmoil and that security isn't good...
...During Thursday's press conference, Caldwell was asked to comment on press coverage of the war - specifically, a segment that aired on the 'Today' show on October 28, in which NBC reporter Richard Engel asked a US soldier if he worried about dying.
Engel also asked soldiers if they worried about their women back home being faithful to them while they were away...
...In a recent profile of Engel in the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz quoted the NBC reporter as saying, "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist." (This guy should be taken out of Iraq and tried for treason since he is purposefully trying to demoralize our troops.)
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200611/INT20061102b.html
US air strike kills Al Qaeda kingpin: military
Khaleej Times ^ 2 November 2006 AFP
BAGHDAD - American forces killed an Al Qaeda chieftain in the lawless western Iraqi city of Ramadi by destroying his car with a laser guided bomb, the US military said on Thursday.
“Rafa Abdul Salam Hamud Al Ithawi, also known as Abu Taha, was the emir of Shamiyyah,” it said. “He frequently harboured foreign fighters who entered Iraq illegally in order to assault innocent Iraqis and coalition forces.”
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/November/focusoniraq_November11.xml§ion=focusoniraq
US forces kill 13 in raid on insurgents in Iraq (foreign fighters)
November 3, 2006 US troops killed 13 suspected insurgents (foreign fighters) in a raid south of Baghdad early Friday, the military said….
…The building was surrounded and stormed after those inside did not respond to demands to surrender, the military said in a statement e-mailed to media. Five people were killed inside the building, including one man wearing a vest rigged with explosives, while eight other men who fled were gunned down by troops on the ground and planes or helicopters circling above, the report said.
Several of those killed appeared to have been foreign fighters from outside Iraq, the report said. The report did not say if there were any American casualties in the raid…
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378318176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The great mystery on how to have world peace has been solved!
Cleric: Criticizing Islam Threatens Peace
11/1/06 SELCAN HACAOGLU
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A leading Turkish cleric called criticism of Islam a serious threat to world peace, speaking Wednesday as Turkey prepared for a controversial visit by Pope Benedict XVI later in the month...
...Ali Bardakoglu, head of the country's religious affairs, said "it was saddening" to see Islam being criticized while the religion's contribution to civilization is ignored. (Which would be what?)
"This attitude, which fuels division and lack of mutual trust, is seriously threatening world peace," Bardakoglu told a conference in Istanbul attended by several African Muslim leaders...
http://home.bellsouth.net/s/editorial.dll?pnum=1&bfromind=2214&eeid=5067273&_sitecat=1505&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=2&ck=&ch=ne&rg=blsadstrgt
I guess the mainstream news missed this...
THE ENEMY FAILS IN IRAQ'S BLOODY RAMADAN, THE FORCES OF CHAOS LOSE
by Amir Taheri New York Post October 29, 2006http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/20213
Islamic Scholar Warns U.S. of 'Two-Faced' Muslims June 20, 2002 WASHINGTON – A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement is warning the West against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam.
"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," Bassam Tibi said Tuesday in an interview with United Press International.
Syrian-born Tibi, who …teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty in these exchanges.
Peace: "First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam – or 'House of Islam' – to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.
"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought…
…In an article in the prestigious Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, Tibi gave anecdotal evidence of how daunting a task this dialogue with Islam can be:
“The bishop of Hildesheim in Germany paid an imam a courtesy visit in his mosque. The imam handed the Catholic prelate a Koran, which he joyfully accepted. But when the bishop tried to present the imam with a Bible, the Muslim cleric just stared at him in horror and refused to even touch Christianity's holy book.”
"The bishop was irritated because he perceived this behavior as a gross discourtesy," wrote Tibi, "but the imam had only acted according to his faith. For if an imam gives a bishop a Koran, he considers this a Da'Wa, or call to Islam."
This, explained Tibi, must be borne in mind when one engages in a dialogue with Muslim "scholars," for it corresponds to a verse in the Koran: "And say ... to those who are unlearned: 'Do ye submit yourselves?'" (Surah 3:20).
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/19/144341.shtml
Konsistant Kerry
‘You know,” intoned Sen. John Kerry to the student crowd at Pasadena City College, “education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” John Kerry October 30, 2006
Here are his similar thoughts 35 years ago on his opposition to an all volunteer Army:
Kerry's '72 Army comments mirror latest (at least he is consistent on one thing)During a Vietnam-era run for Congress three decades ago, John Kerry said he opposed a volunteer Army because it would be dominated by the underprivileged, be less accountable and be more prone to "the perpetuation of war crimes."
Kerry said, 'A volunteer army would be an army of the poor and the black and the brown'...
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061102/D8L4QH580.html
Climate Non-Conformity
November 2, 2006
Two scientific events of note occurred this week, but only one got any media coverage. Therein lies a story about modern politics and scientific priorities.
The report that received the headlines was Monday's 700-page jeremiad out of London on fighting climate change. Commissioned by the British government and overseen by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the report made the intentionally shocking prediction that global warming could eliminate from 5% to 20% of world economic output "forever." Meanwhile, doing the supposedly virtuous thing and trying to forestall this catastrophe would cost merely an estimated 1% of world GDP. Thus we must act urgently and with new taxes and policies that go well beyond anything in the failed Kyoto Protocol.
The other event was a meeting at the United Nations organized by economist Bjørn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center. Ambassadors from 24 countries--including Australia, China, India and the U.S.--mulled which problems to address if the world suddenly found an extra $50 billion lying around. Mr. Lomborg's point is that, in a world with scarce resources, you need priorities. The consensus was that communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition and hunger, and education were all higher priorities than climate change.
We invited Mr. Lomborg to address the Stern report, and he takes apart its analysis brick-by-brick here( http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182 ). To our reading, there isn't much left of this politicized edifice. But we'd stress a couple of points ourselves...
...the Stern report barely mentions the potential benefits from warming in the world's cold-weather regions. Al Gore and others warn about the damage from coastal flooding and changing weather patterns, among other horror scenarios. But the world is large and its climate diverse, and a longer growing season in Siberia or Canada is at least one possible benefit of warming. The Stern report also dismisses any chance of moderate warming (meaning temperatures in 2100 only two to three degrees Celsius higher than in 1900), even though many climate models say this is in fact the most likely outcome.
Unlike the Stern report and its patrons, those of us who take a skeptical approach to these doomsday climate scenarios aren't trying to end the discussion. The Earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and this may be partly attributable to human behavior. But everything else--from how much warmer, to the extent of mankind's contribution, to the cost of doing something about it--remains very much in dispute...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009181
Scientists Grow Human Liver from Cord Blood (Not Embryo) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=413551&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=NEWS&ct=5
Scientists (Not Actors) Counter Emotion With Facts: http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/treatments.htm
Senator Kennedy Offered to Help Soviets Thwart U.S. Policies, KGB Papers Show
November 02, 2006
While Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked in close concert with high level Kremlin officials to alter the direction of U.S. policy, according to documents made available through a KGB defector.
Details concerning Kennedy's correspondence with KGB agents are included in the writings of the late Vasiliy Mitrokhin who defected to Britain in 1992. The Mitrokhin papers highlight a meeting that took place at the behest of Kennedy between former Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) and KGB agents in Moscow on March 5, 1980...
...Noted Cold War author and researcher Herbert Romerstein told Cybercast News Service Mitrokhin was a "highly credible source" with vast knowledge of the now-closed KGB archives…
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200611/POL20061102b.html
AARP's Tax Trap
November 1, 2006
Social Security was supposed to be a killer issue for Democrats... But suddenly the tables are turning on several Democratic candidates because of their endorsement of the tax-increase agenda of the ...AARP.
The liberal entitlement lobby has asked candidates around the country to fill out a questionnaire asking, "Will you support a balanced Social Security plan to continue the program's guaranteed benefits for future generations?" That may sound innocuous, but here's how AARP defines its balanced plan on its Web site... "AARP believes that a bipartisan plan that balances additional contributions from high income workers with modest adjustments in future benefits can maintain guaranteed Social Security benefits for future generations."
...in Washington "additional contributions" means a tax increase...
Thus if you make, say, $100,000 a year...tough luck; the folks at AARP think you're rich. They supported the elimination of the income cap for Medicare's portion of the payroll tax (2.9%) as part of the Clinton 1993 tax increase, and now they want to do it for the other 12.4%. A worker earning $150,000 would pay roughly $6,900 more each year in "additional contributions"...
...for a handful of Democrats in hotly contested House seats... it's become a political liability. That's because their GOP opponents refused to take the AARP pledge and are making an issue of this Democratic support for raising taxes on middle- and upper-income wage earners...
Democrat Melissa Bean -- who is trying to hold her seat in an affluent district near Chicago -- now claims she never supported the tax increase... And AARP is helping her disavow her pledge...
the AARP "balanced" plan -- requires either raising taxes or cutting the future benefits of young workers, or both. That is, AARP would make today's lousy Social Security deal for young workers even worse...
(Excerpt) Read more at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116234321029209590.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
A Sterile Worldview: Vanishing Russia
October 25, 2006
According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, Russia “has lost the equivalent of a city of 700,000 people every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.” …snip…
If demographic trends hold steady, Russia’s population, which stands at 142 million today, will drop to 52 million by 2080. At that point, according to Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the upper house of the Dumas, the Russian parliament, “there will no longer be a great Russia . . . it will be torn apart piece by piece, and finally cease to exist.”
…snip…
Even more disturbing than the numbers are the reasons behind them: that is, “one of the world’s fastest-growing AIDS epidemics . . . alcohol and drug abuse . . . [and] suicide” are among the leading causes of Russia’s shrinking population.
What’s more, last year there were 100,000 more abortions than births in Russia. And many women who want children can’t have them: “[A]n estimated 10 million Russians of reproductive age are sterile because of botched abortions or poor health.”
As Scripps-Howard columnist Terry Mattingly puts it, “we have suicide, AIDS, substance abuse, rampant abortion, and a loss of hope in the future . . . in a nation that, in the past century, saw the rise of an atheistic regime that tried to stamp out the practice of faith . . . Do you think there might be a religion element in here somewhere?”
Well, not according to the Los Angeles Times or the Russian government. …snip…
… The real problem is a loss of faith. Life has always been tough in Russia, and Russians are famously fatalistic. But, as writers such as Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn told us, Christianity helped Russians to see their suffering as redemptive and not to lose hope. …snip
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ChuckColson/2006/10/25/a_sterile_worldview
David Bennett <><
http://www.freewill-predestination.com
http://www.knology.net/~lonesomedove
posted by David Bennett | 5:20 PM
<< Home