Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
"In the midst of a year full of virulent anti-Israel campus events, this Saturday Rutgers University may witness the most objectionable event yet. Saturday night January 29, in the Douglass Campus Center, a Rutgers student group, BAKA, will host an event titled "Never Again for Anyone" in collaboration with American Muslims for Palestine, The International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network, and The Middle East Children's Alliance. This program is designed to coincide with the United Nations' sanctioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day created to remember and honor the victims of the Holocaust. Instead, the focus will be on "the on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestine," comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
By invoking the Nazi genocide, this event both defames the Jewish state and trivializes the systematic murder of 11 million people in the Holocaust, including six million Jews. While Rutgers Hillel respects the right to free speech, the comparison of Israeli acts of self defense to the gas chambers of Auschwitz is morally repulsive and has no place on the campus of our State University."
Officer: Sami Jitan
"BAKA - Students United for Middle Eastern Justice is an officially recognized student organization at Rutgers University New Brunswick concerned with social, political, cultural, and human rights issues throughout the greater Middle East.
Our mission is to shed light on injustices currently taking place in the Middle East, as well as empower students to elucidate truths and eradicate such injustices. BAKA is dedicated to raising awareness through education by the means of guest speakers, forums for uncensored discussion, and various forms of artistic expression. We seek to provide a politically active voice for the diverse and marginalized Middle Eastern communities on campus.
However, we do not limit our leadership or membership to these communities; we view the struggles in the Middle East as issues of concern to all peoples, irrespective of race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. We seek to work with other groups, within and outside Rutgers, as a means of promoting our positive mission."
Ian Hunter and the Rant Band on Saturday at El Rey, a restored old movie theater in the Miracle Mile on L.A.'s Wilshire Boulevard. The set list included:
* Sea Diver
* Life After Death
* Cleveland Rocks
* Dancing on the Moon
* Shallow Crystals
* Irene Wilde
* Arms and Legs
* Flowers
* Soul of America
* Man Overboard
* Girl from the Office
* River of Tears
* Wash Us Away
* Michael Picasso
* 23a Swan Hill
* Sweet Jane
First encore:
* Somewhere (the song from "West Side Story")
* All the Way from Memphis
* Walkin' with a Mountain (with end of Rock n Roll Queen)
* Once Bitten Twice Shy
Second encore:
* Roll Away the Stone
* Saturday Gigs
* All the Young Dudes
The U.S. should hold out the annual $1.3 billion in military aid sent to Cairo as a means of influencing the outcome of the crisis. Yet, the Obama regime is sending mixed signals, as is its wont, to hedge its bets and indicative of how unclear its policy is in regards to Egypt. While straddling the fence, as if the $1.3 billion in aid is insignificant, Obama is missing a prime opportunity to positively influence the outcome.
All that military aid in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood would be a game changer. Obama invited the Muslim Brotherhood to his infamous “speech to the ummah” in June of 2009.
In addition, he is bearing the fruit of his inattention to Iraq and the possibility that fuel supplies could be transported unhindered, and the possibility of a free, democratic, and representative government in a Muslim-majority nation.
Lastly, in 2009, Obama's silence about the brutal, murderous repression of its people by the Iranian mullahcracy amount to his tacit support of that offensive, and spoke volumes. Obama became part of the problem, not part of the solution. He gave religious barbarism the free hand. In response, Iranian protesters had a direct message for America’s president: “You’re Either With Us or With Them.”
If an Islamist regime rises to the fore the Egyptian-Israeli accord will be be set back to square one. The outcome in Egypt has profound implications for the flow of oil and Middle Eastern relations.
On Super Bowl Sunday, an organization that sponsors debates between Christians and atheists will not be given the opportunity it planned to spark a nationwide discussion on Jesus Christ, for Fox Broadcasting Company has rejected its commercial featuring John 3:16.
Fox spokesman Louis D'Ermilio further issued a statement explaining, "As a matter of company policy, Fox Broadcasting Company does not accept advertising from religious organizations for the purpose of advancing particular beliefs or practices. The Fixed Point Foundation was provided with our guidelines prior to their submission of storyboards for our review. Upon examination, the advertising submitted clearly delivers a religious message and as a result has been rejected."
Fixed Point released a statement criticizing Fox's decision: "It seems one can advertise just about anything else. Few movie trailers are deemed too violent or beer commercials too sexual for prime time. But religious messages, particularly Christian ones, well, that's just too controversial."
Jon Jepson: I have a true or false question for you. In 1989, you helped Mick Jones of Foreigner on his only solo album, co-writing the single "Just Wanna Hold" with Mick, and one "M. Phillips". Rumour has it "M. Phillips" is a pseudonym for Mick Jagger, whose middle name is Phillip.
Ian Hunter: It's true. Mick Jones played Mick Jagger a riff and Jagger sang some falsetto over this main riff. Mick Jones then added a lot of stuff on it, and got in a total state of confusion with it, and lost his direction. I got it back on track, and sat behind the board while he was doing the vocals. Not a bad song. He's better at singing ballads than singing rock. It was okay. Report: Ian Hunter Live In S.F.
The Haskell's and other witnesses noted at the time that a mysterious figure intervened to allow the bomber to board the plane. Up to the present, the Haskell couple have consistently maintained on their blog that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
Cf. http://blogsmithconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/01/kurt-haskell-on-latest-muslim-terrorist.html and http://blogsmithconsulting.blogspot.com/2009/12/airplane-lies-of-this-administration.html
Within hours of the grisly New Year’s Eve discovery, state pathologists had ruled that the 66-year-old New Castle resident was a homicide victim, but until today authorities had been mum on the cause of his death -- an unusual posture in Delaware, where such information is usually released promptly.
Hal G. Brown, deputy director of the medical examiner’s office, said he did not know what medications or chemicals, if any, were in Wheeler’s system, but said the death certificate makes it clear that toxicology “didn’t play a role’’ in Wheeler’s death.
Finally, it should be noted that the secret State Department document expresses skepticism whether the revolutionaries truly have the support of significant numbers of Egyptians against Mubarak.
The Alliance of Youth Movements Summit began with a December 2008 summit in New York City to identify, convene, and engage 21st century movements online. The United States Department of State partnered with Facebook, Howcast, MTV, Google, YouTube, AT&T, JetBlue, Gen-Next, Access 360 Media, and Columbia Law School to launch a global network and protect the efforts of young people to mobilize. Speakers at the 2008 summit included actress Whoopi Goldberg, Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz, The Obama Campaign’s New Media Team, and then-current Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs of the United States James K. Glassman.
In March 2009 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced and endorsed the Second Alliance for Youth Movements Summit, held in Mexico City. Young delegates were described by Secretary Clinton as “the vanguard of a rising generation of citizen activists."
I oppose the involvement of the U.S. State Department and Obama's partisan political arm promoting Islamic youth movements. The leaked documents show the extent to which the U.S. was offering support to Islamic activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East. After Obama's regime came to power in late 2008, in a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year. The documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his Islamist campaign from officials in Washington. The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information.
The Egyptian youth leader further claimed in the secret document that several opposition forces -- including "the Wafd, Nasserite, Karama and Tagammu parties, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifaya, and Revolutionary Socialist movements -- have agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition" in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist transnational movement and the largest political opposition organization in many Arab states.
The Revolutionary Socialists are international communists.
The Wafd party is a nationalist group. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafd_Party and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wafd_Party.
The Nasserites are an Arab nationalist political ideology based on the thinking of the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. It was a major influence on pan-Arab politics in the 1950s and 1960s, and continues to have significant resonance throughout the Arab World to this day. It also metamorphosed into other nationalist movements during the 1970s. However, the scale of the Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967 severely damaged the standing of Nasser, and the ideology associated with him. Nasser himself died in 1970, and certain important tenets of Nasserism were revised or abandoned totally by his successor as Egyptian President, Anwar El-Sadat. Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasserites and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Democratic_Nasserist_Party.
Karama - is the Dignity Party (Hizb al-Karama) - a Nasserist offshoot led by journalist and MP Hamdeen Sabahi. Isn't granted full-license yet.
Tagammu is the National Progressive Unionist Party (in Arabic: Hizb al Tagammu' al Watani al Taqadomi al Wahdawi حزب التجمع الوطني التقدمي الوحدوي, commonly referred to as Tagammu) is a socialist political party in Egypt.
Kifaya (Egyptian Arabic: كفاية kefāya, IPA: [keˈfæːjæ], “enough”) is the unofficial moniker of the Egyptian Movement for Change (Arabic: الحركة المصرية من أجل التغيير el-Haraka el-Masreyya men agl el-Taghyeer), a grassroots coalition which draws it support from across Egypt’s political spectrum to oppose President Hosni Mubarak’s presidency and the possibility he may seek to transfer power directly to his son Gamal.
I think he’s done a horrible job and I think that will continue, I think he is a dishonest person, and nothing has changed… Some politicians are more honest than others. I don’t think that I have a very high regard for politicians, I have a high regard for businessmen and for people who work, and not for people who abuse the system continuously. And in comparison to other politicians, I think he came in on a platform as a president that would want to change the government in Washington, and actually he’s made it worse… We foreigners, we just laugh at someone like Mr. Obama. I was very critical of Mr. Bush, but at least he had one line and he stuck to that line, and at least he set out to do a thing and he was relatively straight on the thing that he did. He may have been wrong, but at least he didn’t change his mind continuously, and didn’t prostitute himself.”
Just last year, the Department of Homeland Security had in custody thousands of detainees from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. U.S. Border Patrol statistics indicate that there were 108,025 OTMs detained in 2006, compared to 165,178 in 2005 and 44,614 in 2004.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on 25 January 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that the most effective way to resolve a severe economic crisis is through the Private Sector - not big government:
"Simple and often populist solutions, in ninety cases out of one hundred, are wrong, or prove to be wrong, or perhaps even prove to be worst out of all the possible options. A vivid case in point is a tendency of trying to resolve economic problems through nationalization, including the nationalization of financial institutions.
"In the [recent era and] period of financial crisis, many states paused to think about that, and many states took that option, including states with well developed Liberal economies. Our economy is not developed well enough - I'm referring to the Russian economy - but we have exercised restraint, and we did not resort to that option. And I believe that we were right in doing that.
"I believe that, in most cases, crisis can be resolved through the efforts of private sectors, and, in the long term perspective, this is the most effective way of dealing with things."
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
"Only government can break the cycle that are crippling our economy. The federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle."
Early in his address, Obama said that he wanted the nation he leads to be a "light to the world." The last president who set such a mission for the nation he led, and in those exact words, was Woodrow Wilson.
Obama’s concept of the “American family” may well have had its origins in the first State of the State address New York Governor Mario Cuomo delivered in 1983. Cuomo proclaimed the state of New York as a “family.” He also talked about multiple partnerships, both public and private.
Margaret Thatcher coined a phrase Obama made his own in his second State of the Union address. Thatcher told her American audience that "no other nation has been built upon an idea." In a slightly revised form, Obama, in his second State of the Union address, all but repeated it, using additional words.
It’s a theme that Obama has toyed with on and off for some time, and it’s one that other pols—including Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney--have used for several years as well.
Reagan described “ordinary heroes,” after all, it was Reagan who began the practice of inviting citizens who had done extraordinary things to sit beside the first lady in the House gallery as the president recited their achievements. It was also Reagan who reminded his listeners that the greatness of America emerged not from the hand of government, but through the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people.
Obama said, "I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth." Leaving aside the faulty grammar (people change places with people, not with nations), the poaching from John F. Kennedy's immortal inaugural address was obvious. ("I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.") That Obama could utter almost identical words days after paying tribute to Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of the delivery of that famous speech and not making reference to it suggests a self-absorption rare even among presidents.
Most pointedly, the low point of Obama’s speech came when he brought back government re-organization from the ash heap of failed efforts of previous presidents who sought to save money without inflicting pain on a public that had grown accustomed to government largesse. This one, like all that talk about all those green energy jobs that lay before us, had fallen out of the presidential repertoire with retirement of Jimmy Carter. Obama might have had the decency to have Carter on hand to witness the moment. He will have another chance should he, when he delivers his budget, bring back that other Carter flop from yesteryear, “zero based budgeting.”
Even Obama’s feigned attempt at humor had an antecedent in the remarks of a predecessor who spun better yarns than this guy. Obama informed his listeners that salmon comes under the jurisdiction of one department when swimming in fresh water and under another when swimming in salt water. He rhetorically inquired what happened to the fish when “smoked.”
Franklin Roosevelt wrote to an adviser in which he complained that some bears were the property of the Interior Department, while others belonged the National Parks System. FDR, tongue in cheek, warned of a pending custody battle over cubs that emerged from illicit unions of bears crossing departmental jurisdictions.
The teleprompter rules; Obama reads whatever is on the screen. There is no thinking behind the words.
Animasher
is a site to make animations by using pictures from the gallery or you
can use your own pictures too. You can add music, some sound effects,
text or record your own voice for your animation. You can get a link or
publish your video on the site.
Ahead
is a similar site to Prezi. It’s a way to create a presentation that
transforms your layout into a zooming experience. You can add images,
audios, documents, links and videos. You can also embed your
presentations. The site itself is also created with Ahead.
AMap is a great and a fun way to display your live debates on a very simple visual format. It may help with critical thinking and developing arguments.
Bubbl.uslets you create a brainstorming sheet that can be embeddable to your website.
BookGlutton lets
you create virtual groups to meet up in the digital books and have
discussions on any chapter. You can also chat by leaving comments and
sharing them with each other.
Pastor Clenard H. Childress Jr., founder of the Black Genocide.org Web site, said he agreed with Santorum.
“Rick Santorum is absolutely right,” Childress, the Northeast regional director the Life Education and Resource Network in Montclair, N.J., told CNSNews.com.
“It’s very interesting that the ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ was referenced,” Childress said. “In that same letter, Martin Luther King references infanticide or child-killing as evil. So what Martin Luther King calls evil, Barack Obama and this administration calls good -- because all of their policies have more or less facilitated the growth or the intrusion of abortion in our community and our legislation a hundred fold.”
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt — Obama's choice to lead the new "President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" — is only about "big government and big business" and not thinking about the little guy. This is the message of Project 21 fellow Deneen Borelli. On the 1/25/11 edition of "Fox and Friends" on the Fox News Channel, Deneen presents a new commercial from the National Center for Public Policy Research's Free Enterprise Project and FreedomWorks that asks Immelt to resign his position with GE. This petition is available at www.bigbusinesswatch.org.
On the other hand, in 1654, twenty four unwelcome Jews arrived in Peter Stuyvesant's Dutch colony in New Amsterdam, and were eventually allowed to remain (p. 161, The Course of Modern Jewish History, Howard M. Sachar). The presence of a Jewish community pre-dated the founding of America but the claim that somehow Muslim presence means the existence of a Muslim community, or that Muslims are part and parcel of Revolutionary America is simply a fairy tale. Thereafter, both in New England and in the South a Jewish community existed, to the extent that Sachar can state: "On the eve of the Revolution, the American Jewish community was comparatively secure" (p. 162).
To wit, there is a credible scholarly account for one 19th Century figure.
Abd-Allah, Umar Faruq, A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russel Webb. Oxford University Press, 2006. 400 pages.
Prominent American Muslim scholar Shaykh Umar Abd-Allah examines the life of a late nineteenth-century American intellectual and diplomat who converted to Islam.
A key work produces evidence of Muslims among slaves which hardly is documentation of a thriving community. This is akin to claiming that since bananas exist in the United States they must be a native plant.
Austin, Allen, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York: Routledge: 1997. 194 pages.
An analysis of biographies of numerous West African Muslim slaves who lived in the American South between 1730 and 1860. These men and women, who were 15% of the slave population, were the first Muslims in the United States.
The Saudi government has donated millions of dollars to Middle East Centers at universities that receive Title VI funding.
The Harvard Middle Eastern Studies Center -- whose recommendations to the Massachusetts Board is one of them. As CBN News reported earlier this year, the Harvard Center received a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005. Georgetown University -- another title VI recipient--also received $20 million from the Prince that same year.
It's through these Title VI university centers -- all of them government-sanctioned and taxpayer supported--that Saudi-funded materials find their way into K-12 classrooms.
“In the eyes of all Chinese, this will not be seen as anything other than a big insult to the U.S.,” says Yang Jingduan, a Chinese psychiatrist now living in Philadelphia who was Deputy Director of science and technology development at the No. 4 Military Medical University in Xi'an in China. “It’s like insulting you in your face and you don’t know it, it’s humiliating.”
Yang sees Lang Lang choosing this tune as an expression of the deeply anti-American propaganda that is constant in China.
“This deeply anti-American chauvinism has been fanned by the CCP for years; Lang Lang is expressing the feelings of this generation of angry young people,” Yang said.
A well-known example of such feelings was seen on Sept. 11, 2001, when Chinese chat rooms were filled with young people celebrating this act of terror as an American defeat.
Scenes from the 1956 movie Triangle Hill/ShangGanLing
BattleTriangleHill.flv
Scenes from the 1956 movie 'Triangle Hill' (ShangGanLing), which is based on a real battle of Korean War, in 1952. Because the previous US strike, a CPV company posted on the Triangle Hill (the 7th Company of the 135th Reg., 45th Div., 15th Corps of the Chinese Peoples' Volunteers) was forced to give up surface positions and retreated into the bunkers. When US troops were proceeding towards the main hill, Zhongfa Zhang, commander of the company (charactor based on the real commander Jifa Zhang) organized machine guns to beat their flank. The Goryunov gunners had more protection in the battle, but the DP gunners were more exposed to the returning fire and suffered heavy casualties. The young CPV soldiers stood in line ---- silently but solidly, ready to replace and ready to give up their lives. Honor belongs to them.
When Nixon visited China, a photo was taken of him getting off the plane to greet Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. Nixon has a big smile and extends his hand out to Zhou. Zhou stands with a rigid face and holds his hand close to his body.
The photo was widely used in all of the Chinese media to help support the idea that Nixon’s visit was a victory for China. Chinese schoolchildren were told, “See how long Nixon’s arm is stretched out? That shows the United States is reaching out to us.”
Pork Chop Hill
Vintage movie trailer for Pork Chop Hill.
1953 Korean War - American GI's must retake a barren hill in Korea that has been overrun by Red Chinese troops. The ensuing battle becomes a meat grinder for American and Chinese alike.
This video takes you to the United Estates--a gated community in sunny Florida--to help you understand the impact of Congress decision to annually raise our nations debt limit without addressing the out-of-control spending that keeps us buried in debt.
Think you might have good ideas on how to balance the federal budget? Well, now’s your chance to solve it! With this budget simulation from The New York Times, you can peruse a menu of possibilities for cutting spending or raising taxes. As you select each item, the interactive feature shows how much money will be saved in both short-term and long-term forecasts.
The idea is pretty simple: read each issue along with its brief description underneath, and if you think, “yeah, let’s cut that,” check the box. When an item is selected, the gray boxes at the top (each representing $1 billion) will turn to blue. The goal is to cut enough spending and/or raise enough taxes to balance the federal budget by both 2015 and 2030.
Today, you’re in charge of the nation’s finances. Some of your options have more short-term savings and some have more long-term savings. When you have closed the budget gaps for both 2015 and 2030, you are done. Make your own plan, then share it online.
A recording of a recent Council On Foreign Relations symposium reveals attendees laughing while discussing ways to create panic and force the public to take the swine flu vaccine. There has been mass resistance that has arisen due to questions over it’s safety.
The recording dates from October 16 when the CFR held a Symposium in New York entitled Pandemic Influenza: Science, Economics, and Foreign Policy. The transcript reveals that Lone Simonsen, Research Professor and Research Director at the Department of Global Health, George Washington University, suggests creating an artificial scarcity in order to ramp up demand for the vaccine.
“I think what would work better would be to say that there was a shortage and people tend to buy more of something that’s in demand. (Laughter.) We saw that — there was one season where, really, people lined up all night to get a flu shot.”
Simonsen states the point, much to the amusement of the other attendees at the symposium.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan charged politicians with “dummy-ing down” state education standards under the No Child Left Behind Act to increase their chances of being re-elected.
“Historically in our country, I think particularly under the current law, No Child Left Behind, lots of states dummied down standards,” said Duncan at the National Action Network’s Martin Luther King, Jr. day prayer breakfast on Monday. “They reduced standards. Why? Wasn’t good for children; wasn’t good for education; wasn’t good for the country -- was good for politicians.”
“It made politicians look good,” he said. “You could dummy down your standards and tell the press and tell the public – if you could tell the public that more students in your state were quote/unquote meeting state standards, that helped you get re-elected. But it did a great disservice to young people.”
Imam Rauf has been replaced on the Victory mosque charade by Imam Abdullah Adhami.
Adhami, as Rauf, thinks Sharia Law should replace the American Constitution.
His hero is Siraj Wahhaj!
Who is this who Adhami refers to as his “beloved imam”?
Imam Wahhaj is an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was a character witness for the defense in the trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, “the blind sheik” who is now serving a life sentence for his role in plotting the 1993 WTC bombing.
Wahhaj has made it very clear in all of his sermons that he wants America destroyed and Islam to be built on its ashes.
Adhami is so enchanted with Wahhaj’s hate-filled screeds that he volunteered to design the Al-Taqwa mosque, from where Imam Wahhaj incites his followers with his wrath against the unbelievers.
In a candid moment while running for president, Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle, “under my plan…electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Last week, the Obama administration moved to make that a reality, using its rule by executive fiat to punish the coal industry. The action comes as Obama is halting offshore oil drilling and threatening one state alone with millions of dollars in lost revenue. His most recent action was “unprecedented,” could kill jobs during a recession, and comes as heating oil and gasoline prices are rising.
Obama’s latest environmentalist imbroglio is his declaration of war on the coal industry. Last week, the EPA revoked the mining permit of Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The EPA granted the permit in 2007. Since then, Arch Coal has complied with all of the agency’s terms and made millions of dollars of investments in the hard-hit Appalachian state.
The EPA reversed itself last week, revoking its validly granted permit and calling into question whether it would honor any of its prior obligations. Its pretext was the company’s use of mountaintop removal mining, which it called “destructive and unsustainable. However, it was known the mine would use this procedure when the EPA granted the permit four years ago.
The mine would have employed 250 people and harvested more than 40 million tons of coal, over 15 years.
West Virginia’s lawmakers are rightly incensed. Newly elected Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s statement read in part: “According to the EPA, it doesn’t matter if you did everything right, if you followed all of the rules. Why? They just change the rules.”
Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller told President Obama in a letter that his action “needlessly throws other permits into a sea of uncertainty at a time of great economic distress.”
Industry leaders echoed his concern. “Every road project, construction project or mine site that has received valid CWA 404 permits in the past is now in jeopardy of having that permit vetoed or revoked,” said Bryan Brown, executive director of the Foundation for American Coal Energy. The crippling handicap of uncertainty harms our economy, undermines confidence in the government, and keeps industry executives from making additional investments in energy exploration.
Obama Wants to Shed his Rules That Harm Americans Job Growth. Now he is learning about America and Economics 101. Pretty sharp guy he finally came around after harming job growth for so long. Still, there is no improvement yet so he may still cater to his moneyed masters.
Joseph Parker, pastor of two African-Methodist-Episcopal churches in Mississippi, says today's culture often overlooks the critical questions and issues related to life and the unborn. Instead, he says, people tend to avoid pushing their moral views on others or agree that it is up to a woman to decide what she should do with her body.
"Tragically, this kind of argument has become just a smokescreen that has kept too many from really seeing the true issue at hand," Parker laments. "The false claim has been that the abortion issue is about women's rights and reproductive freedom, but this is simply marketing hype and lies. In reality, it was racism and eugenics that drove the legalization of abortion."
What's the most-telling piece of evidence that proves
the abortion industry in the U.S. targets minorities and the poor?
More than 30 percent of abortions that take place in the U.S. involve the killing of black babies -- a truth clearly portrayed in a documentary called Maafa 21, which was produced by Life Dynamics. A group of black pastors will show that film today at its "Festival for Life" at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.
"One of the great needs in our society is to recognize that there's a huge need for us to take a stand for the civil rights of the unborn child [and] that the civil rights of the unborn need to be respected and protected," Parker concludes.
He goes on to point out that Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., describes standing up for the rights of the unborn as one of the most serious civil rights issues of our time. The Mississippi pastor recently spoke at a rally in Jackson, where he voiced his agreement with that statement.
WSJ's Jake Lee speaks to Heard on the Street Asia Editor Mohammed Hadi about Chinese President Hu Jintao's comments on currencies, balancing the Chinese economy and China's growing clout abroad.
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order;
Info World: Information Technology News, Computer Networking & Security;
Information Week: Business Innovation Powered by Technology:
Infostor: The Leading Source for Enterprise Storage Professionals;
Infrastructure Insite: Bringing IT Together;
Insurance Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Integrated Solutions: For Enterprise Content Management;
Intel Premier IT: Sharing Best Practices with the Information Technology Community;
Irwin, Robert, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents;
Jeffrey, Grant R., The Global-Warming Deception: How a Secret Elite Plans to Bankrupt America and Steal Your Freedom;
Jewkes, Yvonne, and Majid Yar, Handbook of Internet Crime;
Johnson, Chalmers, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire;
Journal, The: Transforming Education Through Technology;
Judd, Denis, The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600-1947;
Kagan, Donald, The Peloponnesian War;
Kansas, Dave, The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It: What You Need to Know About the Greatest Financial Crisis of Our Time--and How to Survive It;
Karsh, Efraim, Islamic Imperialism: A History;
Kasser, Rodolphe, The Gospel of Judas;
Katz, Solomon, The Decline of Rome and the Rise of Medieval Europe: (The Development of Western Civilization);
Keegan, John, Intelligence in War: The Value--and Limitations--of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy;
Kenis, Leo, et. al., The Transformation of the Christian Churches in Western Europe 1945-2000 (Kadoc Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 6);
Kepel, Gilles, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam;
Kiplinger's: Personal Finance;
Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism;
KM World: Content, Document, and Knowledge Management;
Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon: A Novel;
Kostova, Elizabeth, The Historian;
Kuttner, Robert, The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity;
Lake, Kirsopp, The Text of the New Testament, Sony Reader;
Laur, Timothy M., Encyclopedia of Modern US Military Weapons ;
Leffler, Melvyn P., and Jeffrey W. Legro, To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine;
Lendon, J. E., Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity;
Lenin, V. I., Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism;
Lennon, John J., There is Absolutely No Reason to Pay Too Much for College!;
Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror;
Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East;
Lifton, Robert J., Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America;
Limberis, Vasiliki M., Architects of Piety: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of the Martyrs;
Lipsett, B. Diane, Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Aseneth;
Livingston, Jessica, Founders At Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days;
Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean: Books XXXI-XLV of the History of Rome from its Foundation (Penguin Classics);
Louis J., Freeh, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror;
Mackay, Christopher S., Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History;
Majno, Guido, The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World;
Marcus, Greil,Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes;
Marshall-Cornwall, James, Napoleon as Military Commander;
Maughm, W. Somerset, Of Human Bondage;
McCluskey, Neal P., Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education;
McCullough, David, 1776;
McCullough, David, John Adams;
McCullough, David, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt;
McLynn, Frank, Marcus Aurelius: A Life;
McManus, John, Deadly Brotherhood, The: The American Combat Soldier in World War II ;
McMaster, H. R., Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam;
McNamara, Patrick, Science and the World's Religions Volume 1: Origins and Destinies (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution);
McNamara, Patrick, Science and the World's Religions Volume 2: Persons and Groups (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution);
McNamara, Patrick, Science and the World's Religions Volume 3: Religions and Controversies (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution);
Meacham, Jon, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House;
Mearsheimer, John J., and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy;
Meier, Christian, Caesar: A Biography;
Menzies, Gaven, 1421: The Year China Discovered America;
Perrett, Bryan, Cassell Military Classics: Iron Fist: Classic Armoured Warfare;
Perrottet, Tony, The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Olympic Games;
Peters, Ralph, New Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy;
Phillips, Kevin, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush;
Pick, Bernhard; Paralipomena; Remains of Gospels and Sayings of Christ (Sony Reader);
Pimlott, John, The Elite: The Special Forces of the World Volume 1;
Pitre, Brant, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper;
Plutarch's Lives, X: Agis and Cleomenes. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Philopoemen and Flamininus (Loeb Classical Library®);
Podhoretz, Norman, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism;
Posner, Gerald, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK;
Potter, Wendell, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans;
Pouesi, Daniel, Akua;
Premier IT Magazine: Sharing Best Practices with the Information Technology Community;
Price, Monroe E. & Daniel Dayan, eds., Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China;
Profit: The Executive's Guide to Oracle Applications;
Public CIO: Technology Leadership in the Public Sector;
Putnam, Robert D., Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community;
Quintus of Smyrna, The Fall of Troy;
Rawles, James Wesley, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse;
Red Herring: The Business of Technology;
Redmond Channel Partner: Driving Success in the Microsoft Partner Community;
Redmond Magazine: The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community;
Renan, Ernest, The life of Jesus (Sony eReader);
Richler, Mordecai (editor), Writers on World War II: An Anthology;
Roberts, Ian, The Energy Glut: Climate Change and the Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World;
Rocca, Samuel, The Army of Herod the Great;
Rodgers, Nigel, A Military History of Ancient Greece: An Authoritative Account of the Politics, Armies and Wars During the Golden Age of Ancient Greece, shown in over 200 color photographs, diagrams, maps and plans;
Rodoreda, Merce, Death in Spring: A Novel;
Romerstein, Herbert and Breindel, Eric,The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors;
Ross, Dennis, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World;
Roth, Jonathan P., Roman Warfare (Cambridge Introduction to Roman Civilization);
SC Magazine: For IT Security Professionals;
Scahill, Jeremy, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated];
Schama, Simon, A History of Britain, At the Edge of the World 3500 B.C. - 1603 A.D.;
Scheuer, Michael, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War On Terror;
Scheuer, Michael, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq;
Scheuer, Michael, Osama Bin Laden;
Scheuer, Michael, Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America;
Scholastic Instructor
Scholastic Parent & Child: The Joy of Family Living and Learning;
Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World As Will And Idea (Sony eReader);
Schug-Wille, Art of the Byzantine World;
Schulze, Hagen, Germany: A New History;
Schweizer, Peter, Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy---and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them;
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe;
Seagren, Eric, Secure Your Network for Free: Using Nmap, Wireshark, Snort, Nessus, and MRTG;
Security Technology & Design: The Security Executive's Resource for Systems Integration and Convergence;
Seibel, Peter, Coders at Work;
Sekunda N., & S. Northwood, Early Roman Armies;
Seneca: Naturales Quaestiones, Books II (Loeb Classical Library No. 450);
Sewall, Sarah, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual;
Sheppard, Ruth, Alexander the Great at War: His Army - His Battles - His Enemies;
Shinder, Jason, ed., The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later;
Sidebottom, Harry, Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction;
Sides, Hampton, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West;
Simkins, Michael, The Roman Army from Caesar to Trajan;
Sinchak, Steve, Hacking Windows Vista;
Smith, RJ, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown;
Software Development Times: The Industry Newspaper for Software Development Managers;
Software Test Performance;
Solomon, Norman, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death;
Song, Lolan, Innovation Together: Microsoft Research Asia Academic Research Collaboration;
Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, tr. Robert Fagles;
Sound & Vision: The Consumer Electronics Authority;
Southern, Pat, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History;
Sri, Edward, A Biblical Walk Through the Mass: Understanding What We Say and Do In The Liturgy;
Sri, Edward, Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II's Love and Responsibility;
Stair, John Bettridge, Old Samoa; Or, Flotsam and Jetsam From the Pacific Ocean;
Starr, Chester G., The Roman Empire, 27 B.C.-A.D. 476: A Study in Survival;
Starr, John Bryan, Understanding China: A Guide to China's Economy, History, and Political Culture;
Stauffer, John, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln;
Steyn, Mark, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War;
Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika;
Strategy + Business;
Streete, Gail, Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity;
Sullivan, James, The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (1) 100 BC-AD 200;
Sumner, Graham, Roman Military Clothing (2) AD 200-400;
Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11:
Swanston, Malcolm, Mapping History Battles and Campaigns;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels;
Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution;
Talley, Colin L., A History of Multiple Sclerosis;
Tawil, Camille, Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists;
Tech Briefs: Engineering Solutions for Design & Manufacturing;
Tech Net: The Microsoft Journal for IT Professionals;
Tech Partner: Gain a Competitive Edge Through Solutions Providers;
Technology & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders;
Tenet, George, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA During America's Time of Crisis;
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair;
Thompson, Derrick & William Martin, Have Guitars ... Will Travel: A Journey Through the Beat Music Scene in Northampton 1957-66;
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina;
Trento, Joseph J., The Secret History of the CIA;
Twain, Mark, The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today;
Ungar, Craig, House of Bush House of Saud;
Unterberger, Richie, The Unreleased Beatles Music & Film;
VAR Business: Strategic Insight for Technology Integrators:
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virtualization Review: Powering the New IT Generation;
Visual Studio: Enterprise Solutions for .Net Development;
VON Magazine: Voice, Video & Vision;
Wall Street Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Wallace, Robert, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda;
Wang, Wallace, Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won’t Tell You About the Internet;
Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization;
Warren, Robert Penn, All the King's Men;
Wasik, John F., Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream;
Weber, Karl, Editor, Lincoln: A President for the Ages;
Website Magazine: The Magazine for Website Success;
Weiner, Tim, Enemies: A History of the FBI;
Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA;
West, Bing, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq;
Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence;
Wilcox, Peter, Rome's Enemies (1) Germanics and Dacians;
Wise, Terence, Armies of the Carthaginian Wars 265 - 146 BC;
Wissner-Gross, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You To Know) 272 Secrets For Getting Your Kid Into the Top Schools;
Wissner-Gross, What High Schools Don't Tell You;
Wolf, Naomi, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries;
Wolf, Naomi, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot;
Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack;
Woodward, Bob, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House;
Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11;
Wright-Porto, Heather, Beginning Google Blogger;
Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus;
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power;
Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of this blogger. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited, before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but not hostile, libelous, or otherwise objectionable statements. Original writing only, please. Thank you.
A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.
Posts
