Protest after Lowes Pulls Ads from "All American Muslim": MyFoxDETROIT.com
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Protest after Lowes Pulls Ads from "All American Muslim": MyFoxDETROIT.com
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
ProjectVeritas.com investigation. NYT Consultant and NYU Journalism professors of the self-identified media "elite" discuss strategy to legitimize Obama, help Occupy Wall Street, NPR tax loophole, defeating Perry and Bachmann. Jay Rosen says, "We are the one percent."
A former Iraqi insurgent named Waad Ramadan Alwan has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. Alwan and co-conspirator Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested in Bowling Green, Ky., in May 2011 for allegedly providing assistance to Al Qaeda in Iraq and attempting to send weapons overseas.
Alwan pleaded guilty to 23 charges, including conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and attempting to provide material support to terrorists for showing an individual diagrams of IEDs and how they could be constructed.
He came to the U.S. in 2009.
The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe....
#1 A staggering 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.
#2 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.
#3 If the number of Americans that "wanted jobs" was the same today as it was back in 2007, the "official" unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11 percent.
#4 The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is now over 40 weeks.
#5 One recent survey found that 77 percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
#6 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
#7 Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
#8 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed back in December 2006. Today, that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
#9 A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.
#10 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.
#11 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#12 Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.
#13 One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
#14 The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2011 alone.
#15 According to a recent study conducted by the BlackRock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the United States is now 154 percent.
#16 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.
#17 The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.
#18 In Stockton, California home prices have declined 64 percent from where they were at when the housing market peaked.
#19 Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.
#20 If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6000.
#21 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.
#22 New home construction in the United States is on pace to set a brand new all-time record low in 2011.
#23 As I have written about previously, 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.
#24 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.
#25 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980. Today they account for approximately 16.3%.
#26 One study found that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#27 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.
#28 The United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#29 It is being projected that the U.S. trade deficit for 2011 will be 558.2 billion dollars.
#30 The retirement crisis in the United States just continues to get worse. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.
#31 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.
#32 According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.
#33 Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.
#34 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
#35 According to an analysis of Census Bureau data done by the Pew Research Center, the median net worth for households led by someone 65 years of age or older is 47 times greater than the median net worth for households led by someone under the age of 35.
#36 If you can believe it, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.
#37 A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.
#38 Child homelessness in the United States is now 33 percent higher than it was back in 2007.
#39 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.
#40 Sadly, child poverty is absolutely exploding all over America. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4% of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1% of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6% of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6% of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.
#41 Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
#42 In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just 11.7% of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for more than 18 percent of all income.
#43 A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.
#44 Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
#45 For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.
#46 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
#47 Amazingly, the U.S. government has now accumulated a total debt of 15 trillion dollars. When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.
#48 If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
#49 The U.S. national debt has been increasing by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day since the beginning of the Obama administration.
#50 During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.
As for the culprit, there is no surprise here - all central planning, all the time.
Of course the heart of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of incompetence. If the Federal Reserve system had never been created, the U.S. economy would be in far better shape. The federal government needs to shut down the Federal Reserve and start issuing currency that is not debt-based. That would be a very significant step toward restoring prosperity to America.
During 2011 we made a lot of progress in educating the American people about our economic problems, but we still have a long way to go.
Hopefully next year more Americans than ever will wake up, because 2012 is going to represent a huge turning point for this country.
Indeed it will - in it America will pick yet another president that it so rightfully deserves.
The statement by the "scholar" is a parody; and yet, the quotations are actually grounded in legitimate Islamist thought.
Shirk is worse than Killing
Since Jihad involves killing and shedding the blood of men, Allah indicated that these men are committing disbelief in Allah, associating with Him (in the worship) and hindering from His path, and this is a much greater evil and more disastrous than killing. Abu Malik commented about what Allah said:
﴿وَالْفِتْنَةُ أَشَدُّ مِنَ الْقَتْلِ﴾
(And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing.) Meaning what you (disbelievers) are committing is much worse than killing.'' Abu Al-`Aliyah, Mujahid, Sa`id bin Jubayr, `Ikrimah, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, Ad-Dahhak and Ar-Rabi` bin Anas said that what Allah said:
﴿وَالْفِتْنَةُ أَشَدُّ مِنَ الْقَتْلِ﴾
(And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing.) "Shirk (polytheism) is worse than killing.''
Islamic scholar: "Saying Merry Christmas is worse then fornication or killing someone"
Yes, as this Muslim "scholar" (unidentified) claims, saying 'Merry Christmas' is shirk (polytheism) and kufr, and he cites Ibn Qayyim as saying that shirk is worse than killing. He is probably referring here to Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, a famous student of Ibn Taymiyyah. Ibn Kathir, who was also a student of Ibn Taymiyyah, noted in his tafsir of Q 2:191, drawing upon hadiths, that "al-fitnah is worse than killing" means 'Shirk is worse than killing'
http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=233
Likewise, for verse 2:217, Ibn Kathir notes
"[...](...and Al-Fitnah is worse than killing.) means, trying to force the Muslims to revert from their religion and re-embrace Kufr after they had believed, is worse with Allah than killing.' Allah said:
(And they will never cease fighting you until they turn you back from your religion (Islamic Monotheism) if they can.)[...]"
http://www.qtafsir.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=196
Of course, it is not necessary to turn to hadiths to extract this interpretation, because the Quran itself repeatedly mentions disbelief--and polytheism is one of the main forms of disbelief--as the worst crime (6:21, 6:144, 6:157, 7:37, 10:17, 11:18-19, 18:15, 18:57, 29:68, 32:22, 39:32, 61:7).
Anything that tempts a Muslim toward polytheism, such as participating in other religions rituals, especially those specifically involving what Muslims and the Quran consider to be shirk and kufr, such as claiming Allah has a son, is fitnah that leads Muslims toward disbelief and therefore to destruction in hell-fire. In classical Islam, a Muslim man who sincerely utters "Merry Christmas," knowing what this means, has committed an act of apostasy, and he would have to repent, or else be punished with death.
Non-Muslim dhimmis are already condemned because of these sorts of transgressions, so they are subjugated under Islamic law.
Christian Bale roughed up by guards while trying to visit blind Chinese activist
http://bcove.me/2nkxzhua
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=5994
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=472&fld_id=474&doc_id=5992
Transcript:
"Engrave on the rifle butt the symbol of Fatah's Al-Asifa [unit]
He [Arafat] taught the whole world how to revolt. Yasser - symbol of freedom
Oh Elder, I swear by [your] uniform and your keffiya
Mahmoud Abbas is on the same path when it comes to [our] state and identity
We fired the rifle, we faced the storm
We responded to the cannon with a pistol
Using stones, we ignited a revolution and wrote [history], oh Fatah men
On the rifle butt, we have engraved [Fatah's] symbol
On the grip, we have engraved "Arafat"
On the top cover we have inscribed the history of the free
On the barrel -- the name of the homeland
The flash-suppressor ignited and burst
Here it is, oh rifle sight
The state is only a few meters away
Oh action-spring, receive and shoot [bullets] continuously
Change the magazine -- there are hundreds [of them]
Load it into the chamber
Oh AK-47, make sounds of joy and salute the Elder (Arafat)"
[PA TV (Fatah), broadcast repeatedly Nov. 2011]
CAIR claims it prevents them from dominating the dhimmis.
House Bill 2029 would ban Pennsylvania courts from considering any foreign legal code or system that isn't identical with the Constitution. Islamists say that it is specifically targeted against the practice of Sharia Law--a religious code for Muslims that has the power of law in some countries. Council on American-Islamic Relations Attorney Amara Chaudhry says this would block freedom of religious expression.
"This is not a new faith we are not a foreign faith and yes this dangerous, clearly stated discriminatory purpose on a publicly circulated document, you just don't get any more troubling than that," said Chaudhry.
Professor Khalid Blankinship of Temple University discriminated against Catholics by comparing Sharia to the Catholic teaching that divorce is not allowed.
"That would be like going into the Catholic Church and telling them that you can't marry people the way you want or saying you have to allow divorce of people even if the Pope ruled otherwise," said Blankinship. The professor should get his facts correct. This is not how Canon law works in the Church.
State Representative Rosemarie Swanger of Lebanon County, who authored the bill, says it is designed to preserve rights of liberty that do not exist in some foreign legal systems. She has said recognizing foreign laws could allow women to be treated as second-class citizens. In a letter she sent to colleagues, Swanger called Sharia law "inherently hostile to our constitutional liberties."
House Bill 2029: Prohibits the Application of Foreign Law in Pennsylvania Proceedings
Sponsors:
Representatives RoseMarie Swanger, Daryl Metcalfe, Scott Perry, Matthew Baker, Kerry Benninghoff, Paul Clymer, Jim Cox, Tom Creighton, Bryan Cutler, Gordon Denlinger, George Dunbar, John Evans, Matt Gabler, Richard Geist, Mauree Gingrich, Seth Grove, Susan Helm, Tim Hennessey, Rob Kauffman, Fred Keller, Jerry Knowles, John Maher, Carl Walker Metzgar, David Millard, Ron Miller, Dan Moul, Thomas Murt, T. Mark Mustio, Donna Oberlander, Michael Peifer, Jeffrey Pyle, Kathy Rapp, Brad Roae, Rick Saccone, Stan Saylor, Curt Schroder, Jerry Stern, Will Tallman, Marcy Toepel, Tarah Toohil, Dan Truitt, Mike Vereb, and Rosita Youngblood
Summary:
This bill would prohibit the application of foreign law to judicial or administrative proceedings in Pennsylvania except under certain circumstances.
Should American citizens be indefinitely detained without charge or trial? Why or why not?
Sen. Lindsey Graham on the NDAA, Indefinite Detention of American Citizens
“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”
Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. McCain speak on Detainees on Senate Floor - 11/29/11
McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the bill that American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely, “no matter who they are.”
Obama Will Sign NDAA 1031 Citizen Indefinite Detention Law in a Few Days
As Levin said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens.
“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved…and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial
WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
Even Al-Jazeera has noted this bill.
9/11 Commission Report
"Recommendation: At this time of increased and consolidated government authority, there should be a board within the executive branch to oversee adherence to the guidelines we recommend and the commitment the government makes to defend our civil liberties.
We must find ways of reconciling security with liberty, since the success of one helps protect the other. The choice between security and liberty is a false choice, as nothing is more likely to endanger America's liberties than the success of a terrorist attack at home. Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend" (p. 395).
Terrorist attack survivors outraged by White House guest
When Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki visited the White House this week, he brought his transportation minister, Hadi Farhan al-Amiri. During the rule of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Amiri served as a commander of the Badr Corps -- a group backed at the time by the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard), which has been linked to several attacks on western targets. FOX News has further information on the visit here.
Today at the White House press briefing, FOX News' Ed Henry asked White House press secretary Jay Carney about the visit and whether a background check was performed on him.
Carney said he would have to check on that and wouldn't provide further details. Transcript of the exchange available below.
Ed Henry, FOX News: When Prime Minister Maliki was here this week there have been reports that a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which U.S. officials say played a role in a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
He was here at the White House with Prime Minister Maliki because he's a transportation minister, yeah, transportation minister --
Jay Carney, WH: Who's report is that?
Henry: I believe the Washington Times has reported it. I think others have as well, but I think this is a Washington Times --
Carney: I have to take that question then, I'm not aware of it.
Henry: Can you just answer it later though, whether he was here and whether a background check had been done?
Carney: I'll check on it for you.
Henry: Okay, thanks.
University of Michigan's MABEL runs free for over 110 steps! In our opinion, this is the most realistic, human-like running achieved on a robot. It has a very satisfying feel to it. The robot just moves right. It is up in the air for more than a third of the duration of step. The height off the ground is right. Whereas other robots had their feet maybe one sixth of an inch off the ground, MABEL is 3 to 4 in inches in the air. The motion of the hip, which is like a bouncing ball, and the pitching of the torso give you the sensation of running. It all just makes you say, that is running.
Feedback algorithm for running was designed by Koushil Sreenath as part of his PhD dissertation. The detailed model used in the work was developed by Hae-won Park as part of his PhD dissertation.
For the feedback control aficionados, we used a nonlinear, compliant hybrid zero dynamics controller with active force control, running in real-time. How about that! MABEL weighs over 65 Kg, has a heavy torso (40 Kg), has point feet, and a cable-driven transmission system with compliance. This makes it a challenging machine to control. The Hybrid Zero Dynamics (HZD) framework was instrumental in our success.
The achieved peak speed is 3.06 m/s (6.8 mph), with an average speed of 1.95 m/s (4.4 mph). The obtained gait has flight phase that's almost 40% of the gait, with a ground clearance of 3-4 inches.
How did we do it?
The answer is not as simple as "we got one thing right". Our success arose from a combination of things, several of which are very technical, but if we had to focus on two primary things, it would be very good machine design and very good feedback algorithm design. Specifically, the coordination of those two aspects. The machine design determines the passive behaviors of the robot, or how it will move when all power is turned off; springs, masses, and so on will enable or limit what you can do with the feedback control. Therefore, the machine was designed with the intent to emulate some aspects of human biomechanics; we then created an extremely detailed mathematical model of the robot after it was built, and then designed our control algorithms around this very precise model. This approach is rare in robotics, and has not been accomplished in past bipedal running robots.
Machine design: The bipedal robot MABEL was designed in 2006-2007, and built in 2008. The novelty was to have a machine with a roughly human weight distribution and springs that act like tendons in the human body.
Human weight distribution means that most of the weight of the robot is concentrated in the torso (upper body), while the legs are relatively light, so they can be moved forward and backward quickly for fast locomotion.
The springs in the robot serve two purposes. The first purpose is that when the robot's legs strike the ground, the springs act as shock absorbers. Specifically, running has a flight phase, where both feet are off the ground, and a stance phase, where one leg is on the ground. When a 145 pound (65 Kg) robot like MABEL ends the flight phase by landing on a leg, the force is pretty large. The springs make the landing more gentle. In some sense, this is what the arch in your foot does for you, or a good pair of running shoes. The second purpose of the springs is to store energy. This is analogous to a pogo stick, where the robot bounces up and down on the springs, storing and releasing energy with each stride. This effect has been shown to be an important aspect of all animal running. MABEL seems to be the first robot with human-like morphology to get this right.
Feedback Control:
What is feedback? Most everyone has an intuitive notion of feedback, such as when a supervisor provides feedback on an employee's performance, or when your body regulates your temperature to a constant 98.6 F (37 C) despite varying levels of physical activity and outside temperature. Feedback means that the input signals that are regulating a system are adjusted as a function of measurements (observations) of the system.
MABEL has four electric motors, two for each leg, which provide power. Whether the robot is walking, running, or just standing, there is a feedback controller on a computer that measures all of the positions of the robot's joints and the angle of its body, and then determines the proper power commands to send to the motors.
The foundation for our feedback controller is the detailed mathematical model of the mechanism: we have used this model to determine the best relationship between the measured leg angle relative to the ground, and the motions of all other robot joints. Our feedback controller implements this specific relationship on the robot, using information from sensors to control the motors. The resulting motions, in conjunction with the springs and masses of the robot mechanism, determine the forces that the leg applies to the ground, realizing a running gait.
Who should be named Person of the Year?
Time’s “Person of the Year” is the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the past year for good or for ill.
Do you agree or disagree with their choice? Why?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Should Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler be allowed to recall a governor? Why or why not?
Wisconsin Election Officials to Accept Mickey Mouse, Hitler Signatures
[Madison, Wisc...] The Government Accountability Board needs over $600,000 to verify the anticipated 1.5 million recall petition signatures against the Governor and several State Senators.
However, the process it will be using, which was unanimously approved by the Board, will assume every signature is from a valid Wisconsin elector... even if their name is Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler.
Testifying at a meeting of Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board, GAB staff made several stunning admissions Tuesday. GAB representative stated, on the record, that all signatures that include a proper date and Wisconsin address are presumed valid, even those of Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler.
More than 540,000 signatures are required to trigger a recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The recall petitions will not be data entered by state staff. It falls on Walker, or other independent groups, to discover fraudulent signatures among the tens of thousands of recall forms submitted. If the signatures of Mickey Mouse, Adolf Hitler, etc are then discovered, they can be contested, but they are given the presumption of legitimacy by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.
part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxTcRzARLZk / H/T to Shoebot.com / All-American Muslim Imam (Husham Al- Husainy) was on Sean Hannity's radio show in 2007 saying U.S.A. an "oppressor nation" and will not condemn Hezbola and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
One of the features of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care reform bill colloquially known as Obamacare, is the creation of insurance exchanges that will offer heavily subsidized policies and coverage for people who cannot get insurance through their employers.
In projecting the program's costs, the Congressional Budget Office figures that about 7 percent of the workforce currently covered by employer-provided insurance will drop those policies and sign up for the subsidized insurance. That estimate - and hence, the cost structure of the program - has been challenged by sources such as McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, which reckons a far higher percentage of workers will opt out of their current job-based plans. In a survey of employers released in June, McKinsey found that 30 percent will "definitely or probably" drop their coverage as Obamacare kicks into high gear in 2014. Among "employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion rises to more than 50 percent," says the report. Why? It will be cheaper to pay fines than to provide coverage.
If those estimates are accurate, the cost savings ObamaCare supporters tout are a pipe dream.
Glenn Morton, the author of the new book Passing Obamacare, has worked for nearly two decades in the health-insurance business, most recently as a broker who helps employers find better deals among providers. In a discussion with Reason's Nick Gillespie, Morton adds another problem with recently released Obamacare rules: The mandate to reduce the percentage of insurance costs that go to administrative costs effectively means that insurance brokers' commissions will be either drastically cut or reduced altogether. If brokers' role in hunting for better coverage plans is eviscerated, argues Morton, companies will lose their main ally in the search for affordable and dependable coverage plans. The result, says Morton, will be that more and more companies will cease to offer insurance, thus driving even more people into the insurance exchanges and the cost of Obamacare up and up. CBO says the cost of giving subsidies to 16 million individuals over Obamacare's first decade will be $466 billion alone.
About 4.30 minutes. Shot by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, and Josh Swain. Edited by Anthony L. Fisher.
Go to http://reason.tv for downloadable versions of this video. And subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel for automatic notifications when new material goes live.
To read Reason's coverage of health care online, go to http://reason.com/topics/health-care
Ian Hunter - One More Time (Taken from "Por Vida - ...a tribute to the songs of Alejandro Escovedo, 2004)
Chris Dodd
MPAA Head Chris Dodd on Online Censorship Bill: China's the Model
The U.S. endowment of unconventional oil is more than 2 trillion barrels, with another 2.4 trillion in Canada and 2 trillion-plus in South America -- compared with conventional Middle Eastern and North African oil resources of 1.2 trillion. The problem was always how to unlock them economically.
But since the early 2000s, the energy industry has largely solved that problem. With the help of horizontal drilling and other innovations, shale gas production in the United States has skyrocketed from virtually nothing to 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply in less than a decade. By 2040, it could account for more than half of it. This tremendous change in volume has turned the conversation in the U.S. natural gas industry on its head; where Americans once fretted about meeting the country's natural gas needs, they now worry about finding potential buyers for the country's surplus.
Meanwhile, onshore oil production in the United States, condemned to predictions of inexorable decline by analysts for two decades, is about to stage an unexpected comeback. Oil production from shale rock, a technically complex process of squeezing hydrocarbons from sedimentary deposits, is just beginning.
The revolution-swept Middle East and North Africa, meanwhile, will soon be facing up to an inconvenient truth about their own fossil-fuel legacy: Changes of government in the region have historically led to long and steep declines in oil production. Libya's oil output has never recovered to the 3.5 million barrels a day it was producing when Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi overthrew King Idris in 1969; instead it has been stuck at under 2 million barrels a day for three decades and is now close to zero. Iran produced more than 6 million barrels a day in the times of the shah, but saw oil production fall precipitously below 2 million barrels a day in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It failed to recover significantly during the 1980s and has only crept back to 4 million in recent years. Iraq's production has also suffered during its many years of turmoil and now sits at 2.7 million barrels a day, lower than the 3.5 million it produced before Saddam Hussein came to power.
The Arab Spring stands to complicate matters even further: A 1979-style disruption in Middle Eastern oil exports is hardly out of the question, nor are work stoppages or strikes by oil workers caught up in the region's political zeitgeist.
Are the facts of history racist? Should history be revised according to political views?
The tape seems overly edited; every time the professor speaks the tape is edited. I wonder if it was cut to take his words out of context and to appear more negative than what he actually stated.
Professor Calls Student Complaints “Terroristic Act of Jihad”: MyFoxDFW.com
Professor Was Forced Out For His Beliefs
The professor is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in Dogmatics and Christian Ethics. He holds three earned masters degrees (ThM, MDiv, and MA) in theology, biblical languages, and apologetics, from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Biola University. He has a stellar academic record, including nominations to the National Honor Society and graduating with Highest Honors from Biola and he is a member of both the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society.
What is most disturbing about this story, apart from the obvious horror, is that not one news account reported what one witness said the shooter was screaming: "allahu akbar."
One of the witnesses states that the shooter was repeatedly shouting "allahu akbar" at minute 2:42. The LA Times does not mention the phrase in their coverage -- neither does Reuters, CBS news, The Hollywood Reporter, KFAI, or any of the other news reports.
From the Daily Kos to the largest selling newspaper in London — The Telegraph — and a Texas publication called The Dallas Voice, candidates are mocked.
The Daily Kos ends their photo slam of the candidates by stating:
"And yes, in case you suddenly started wondering—there are long-running persistent rumors that Rick Perry is gay."
The Perry photo was also featured on the cover of The Dallas Voice with the headline:
PIC OF THE DAY: Gov. Rick Perry deep throats corn dog at Iowa State Fair
The Postal Services created a stamp with a picture of Obama on it.
The Postal Service noticed that the stamp was not sticking to envelopes.
This enraged the President, who demanded a full investigation.
After a month of testing and $1.73 million in congressional spending, a special
Presidential commission presented the following findings:
1.The stamp is in perfect order.
2. There is nothing wrong with the glue.
3. People are spitting on the wrong side.
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What's Running is a great tool so that you can see what is running on your desktop.
Process Lasso lets you view your processor and its responsiveness.
Online Armor lets you view your firewall status.
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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.
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