J's Cafe Nette

Archive for May, 2007

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This morning I checked my email and had 100 messages, two of which were legitimate and the rest all spam. Fortunately, I have a good spam filter and just glance at them to see if I see a name I recognize then select all and delete.

Now comes this story of a 27 year old man in Seattle, who is one of the ten largest spammers, being caught.

SEATTLE — A 27-year-old man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.

Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised “zombie” computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.

“He’s one of the top 10 spammers in the world,” said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company’s Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. “He’s a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day.”

A federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Soloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon to all charges after a judge determined that — even with four bank accounts seized by the government — he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer.

He has been living in a ritzy apartment and drives an expensive Mercedes convertible, said prosecutor Kathryn Warma. Prosecutors are seeking to have him forfeit $773,000 they say he made from his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp.

A public defender who represented him for Wednesday’s hearing declined to comment.

Pay for a lawyer on your own, dime, fella. You’ll get better representation and you won’t need that money for a long time to come.

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OK, I looked for this article in the NY Times and Washington Post but the only place I could find it was here, which is actually a NY Post story on the Fox web site. I quit reading the NY Post a while back because they changed formats and seemed to be more local and gossipy than real news, but this short blurb is interesting.

A group of 9/11 responders has contracted blood cancers at an unusually young age, and top doctors suspect the disease was triggered by an unprecedented “synergistic mix” of toxins at the World Trade Center site.

The WTC Medical Monitoring Program is now studying a group of Ground Zero workers, including cops, construction workers and volunteers, suffering from cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

“The kind of thing that worries us is that we have a handful of cases of multiple myeloma in very young individuals … a condition that almost always presents late in life,” said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the program at Mount Sinai Hospital.

“That’s the kind of odd, unusual and troubling finding that we’re seeing already,” she says in an interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, which comes out today.

9/11 is going to continue to make people ill and claim lives for a long time to come.

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I’ve been following the story of the man with drug resistant tuberculosis for the past few days and it is a very troubling story.

The man wanted to get married in Greece, saw his doctor for something and was told he had TB. He says he was advised not to go on the trip but not told he couldn’t go on the trip.

After he had been on a couple of planes, sitting around dozens of people, he was finally tracked down in Italy by the CDC, who told him he had a very deadly form of TB and to go to the US Embassy or an Italian hospital for treatment and isolation while the CDC worked on getting him back to the States.

He decided on his own if he followed those instructions he would die, so he headed to Prague and hopped a flight to Montreal then drove back into the United States and turned himself in in New York.

Did I mention he was told his passport had been flagged and he was on a no-fly list?

Now everyone is going crazy trying to locate all the passengers he might have infected so they can get a skin test to see if they have TB. His wife doesn’t, and he claims he wasn’t coughing on the flights.

How did this happen? If this guy, who had his passport flagged and was on a no-fly list could so easily re-enter this country or enter any other country, how easy would it be for anyone who has a mind to inject himself with the bubonic plague, ebola virus, superflu or any other disease that could potentially kill millions in a pandemic to get into this or any other country?

Homeland Security doesn’t seem to be living up to its title. It doesn’t just mean watch out for people in turbans praying loudly in an airport anymore. Those are the easy catches.

The other bad thing about this incident? Even though he was doing all of this against the CDC instructions to not do it he never broke a law and has not been arrested. He is in a hospital with federally enforced isolation now, but they’re still looking for those he came in contact with and could have exposed to a deadly form of TB.

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Last night I went to Google.com and saw a heading for maps. I clicked on it and put in my address. Not only did I find directions to my house if anyone wanted them, but I found an aerial shot of the entire neighborhood. If I zoomed in I could see my own house.

I saw my neighbor’s car in the driveway of his house, I could see my house and even my five year old grandson pointed out the outside storage buildings we have in our yard and his sand box!

I did the same for my children’s homes and saw them in great detail also, down to the playhouse in the back yard.

I then clicked over to Drudge to see what his headlines were and his headline was Google being able to see license plates and people on the street. I clicked on the link to see a guy standing outside a strip joint and could easily read the neon sign on the window of the establishment.

I had had a friend email a link to me several months ago with an aerial shot of my house, asking if that was my house.

Somehow I feel we are living in the age of Big Brother and I don’t like the feeling.

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So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion; respect others in their view, and
demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its
purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the
day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of
salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely
place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.”When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of
living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in
yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not
like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when
their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their
lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a
hero going home.”

TECUMSEH

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If the Congressional Black Caucus is disappointed, that’s to bad.

Democratic presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd will not participate in a Democratic debate co-sponsored by Fox News Channel this fall, joining their three top rivals in bypassing the event.

Their decisions, acknowledged by campaign aides Wednesday, is sure to disappoint the Congressional Black Caucus, whose political education and leadership institute is Fox’s partner in the debate.

But Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, and Dodd, a senator from Connecticut, have been under pressure to shun the debate from liberal groups who say Fox is biased against Democrats.

The debate exodus began two months ago when John Edwards became the first candidate to announce that he would not attend the Sept. 23 debate in Detroit. A week later, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama announced they also would not participate.

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Is it time?

Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five “surge” brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.

The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator.

He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:

“When are we going to get out of here?”

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I wanted to take this time to talk about something I’m seeing as a disturbing trend.

We have had some great discussions with Andrew and John about Christianity. I have told them what I believe and have tried my best to answer the questions they have of me. They have both been very polite in their questions and responses.

What is disturbing to me is finding people who do not accept God with the faith I accept Him trying to dissuade me from my belief.

It’s almost as though they (and I use a generic ‘they’ because I don’t know if Andrew is a believer or not) are evangelicals of the opposite kind I am. They are trying to convert me and any other born-again Christian into forsaking our faith.

Jesus told us this time would come, but I guess I never thought I would have to deal with it and in such a public forum.

He also told us some would try to deceive the very elect into not believing in Him. There are some who proclaim their Christian faith who can be persuaded otherwise if shown enough to make them doubt. In these cases I question whether they were saved to begin with or they wouldn’t reject the message of the Gospel.

I have no doubt in my faith, and in fact, feel my discussions with Andrew and John have made it stronger.

How can I explain the remission of my daughter-in-law’s cancer without any treatment, when 15 tumors were found on her body in February and when she went for a scan a few weeks ago before going for treatment they had disappeared except for two which are too small to treat, if not by the Grace and intervention of the Great Physician Himself? No treatment was done in the meantime, but prayers were going up every day by hundreds of people.

How can I explain a lifetime search for my biological father that, when God was ready and my father was no longer drinking, happened to just drop in my lap one day the Tuesday before I was taking a trip to Florida, a destination that was but 3 hours from where my father lived?

How can I explain the bond of love my father and I had for each other from the time we first met, when we embraced each other as though we were long-lost friends?

How do I explain how his wife, who was so hostile to me my father and I had to meet at a Waffle House, suddenly came around and now, even three years after his death we stay in touch and she tells me she loves me and means it?

I had prayed to meet my father when I was a teen, but since it didn’t happen I had forgotten about it and forty years later contact information for him just dropped in my lap.

I can only explain these things as answers to prayers to the Only God. There is no other and He is a jealous God. He is the only God and there never was nor never will be another.

How else do I explain the miracle of my salvation and the peace I have in my heart that if I were to drop dead at this very moment all would be fine, and I just know there is a literal Heaven and a literal hell?

I have the faith of a child and I have never tried to be too cerebral about my faith. I can remember as a child I would try to imagine what things were like before God spoke “let there be light” and it was so.

I don’t care if someone is another Einstein, he or she can never reason out God; it has to be done by simple faith.

I’m not stupid but I’m no genius either, and for that I see I am blessed in that my questions were resolved long ago or I have decided what questions I still have can wait until I see Him face to face and can ask if I still think it’s important and He’ll explain it and I’ll understand it.

So, to the Andrews and Johns out there, I am more than happy to share my faith with you and read anything reasonable you have to offer, but I am resolute in my faith and I will be praying even harder for God’s protection from any attempts to ‘convert’ me to not believing in Him.

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According to Politico, Fred Thompson intends to announce his candidacy for President of the United States during the July 4 holiday.

Fred Dalton Thompson is planning to enter the presidential race over the Fourth of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations, Thompson advisers told The Politico.

But the advisers said Thompson dropped all pretenses on Tuesday afternoon during a conference call with more than 100 potential donors, each of whom was urged to raise about $50,000.

Thompson’s formal announcement is planned for Nashville. Organizers say the red pickup truck that was a hallmark of Thompson’s first Senate race will begin showing up in Iowa and New Hampshire as an emblem of what they consider his folksy, populist appeal.

A testing-the-waters committee is to be formed June 4 so Thompson can start raising money, and staffers will go on the payroll in early June, the organizers said. A policy team has been formed, but remains under wraps.

The supporters on Tuesday’s call make up a group the campaign is calling “First Day Founders.” When launched, the campaign will have offices in Nashville and Northern Virginia, the advisers say.

Campaign officials said they have every indication Thompson will declare his candidacy, but cautioned that he could still decide not to run or to postpone the announcement. Mark Corallo, the campaign spokesman, said: “He is seriously considering getting in and doing everything he has to do to come to a final decision.”

I put the question mark in the heading because it’s not a sure thing until he actually announces.

The Weekly Standard is writing about the Tuesday phone call and about the testing the waters committee.

FRED THOMPSON IS RUNNING for the Republican presidential nomination. In a conference call Monday, Thompson addressed a group of more than 100 supporters and fundraisers whom the campaign has dubbed First Day Founders. He told them that he would be setting up an organization that will allow him to begin raising money and recruiting staff.

In official campaign finance parlance, the move represents a shift from “giving serious consideration” to a presidential bid, as Thompson said he would do back in March, as a non-candidate, to a “testing the waters” period where one is, in effect, a candidate-in-waiting with a campaign-in-preparation. Thompson advisers point out that the new testing-the-waters entity is not quite a campaign committee, though it will officially begin accepting contributions on June 4. On that day–the First Day, as it were–the campaign will take in donations that it can then tout as an impressive one-day haul. A corollary benefit will be that news reports about Thompson’s non-entry entry will run on June 5, when the declared candidates will meet in New Hampshire for their third debate. (Thompson won’t be required to disclose his donors and the amounts they give to the Federal Election Commission until September.)

No one thinks Thompson would have set up this entity if he had not decided to run, and there were apparently no serious qualifications or hesitations expressed on the conference call yesterday. The testing-the-waters committee allows Thompson to recruit and hire staff, which he intends to do. And he now has an entity
that can collect campaign cash. For nearly four months, would-be Thompson supporters have been frozen in place, unable to contribute to Thompson even as they have been hounded by other campaigns.

Good news for conservatives if it comes about. We’ve been searching for the candidate who isn’t changing positions all the time to satisfy polls, but who sticks by his principles. Let’s hope we’ve found him and he does decide to run.

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MSNBC is reporting Valerie Plame really was covert when Robert Novak published her name.

We now know that because Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has an attachment to his memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

The nature of Plame’s CIA employment never came up in Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Why didn’t it, since that was the basis of the investigation conducted by Fitzgerald anyway?

Why was the so-called lie more important to Fitzgerald than the actual crime of outing a covert CIA agent?

We know now it was Richard Armitage who leaked the information to Robert Novak, by Armitage’s own admission and by Novak’s.

Armitage claims he didn’t know she was covert, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. At least that’s what I was taught in school.

The unclassified summary of Plame’s employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”

[...]

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, “engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business.” The report says, “she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times.” When overseas Plame traveled undercover, “sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.”

From an editorial in Investors Business Daily we read this item in the next to last paragraph:

The Washington Times’ Bill Gertz has reported that U.S. officials said her identity was first disclosed to Russia by a Moscow spy in the mid-1990s. She returned to the U.S. in 1994 because the CIA suspected her cover was blown by turncoat Aldrich Ames.

Interesting. So, that leads me to this Washington Times Gertz piece dated 7/22/04, according to the archives date in the URL.

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

So, in the 90s it is suspected Aldrich Ames outed her to the Russians and somebody in the CIA itself later outed her to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana, as in Cuba, as in Castro rules there, and the Cubans got their hands on the information somehow and read it!

Gertz’s article goes on to say:

However, officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame’s cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.

“The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone’s cover,” one official said. “In this case, the CIA failed to do that.”

A second official, however, said the compromises before the news column were not publicized and thus should not affect the investigation of the Plame matter.

So, the justification by at least one official is since she wasn’t outed in the US where she should be safe anyway, it should be irrelevant that Russia and Cuba knew her status because they didn’t announce it. Clear?

To summarize, we now supposedly have a real crime committed by Richard Armitage, who wasn’t charged, and Scooter Libby is going to the big house for not remembering which reporter he talked to when.

In the meantime, since the 90s her identity has most likely been known to the Russians and at some point the CIA itself put her name to paper and sent it to Cuba where the Cubans got their grubby little paws on it and knew too.

So, was she outed by Armitage? She wasn’t by Libby. Was she outed by Ames? It appears so. Was she outed by the CIA to Cuba? It looks like it.

I admit to not being the most intelligent person in the blogosphere, but even I can’t buy this story. Somebody please help me.

Others blogging this story: Captains Quarters who says:

So now we have confirmation that Plame did get her cover blown. I suppose the only reason that Fitzgerald didn’t bother to indict Richard Armitage for the crime was that it would have meant explaining how the CIA tried to hide its NOC asset in plain sight.

Macsmind, who isn’t buying the story she was covert at all.

Follow the links and read what others are saying on this topic.

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Many people who consider themselves Pro-Life automatically assume that their natural political alignment is with the Republicans. Many Republicans candidates apply the Pro-Life tag to themselves, and hope voters don’t look too close. Conservative Pro-Lifers also automatically assume that Democrats are the pro-abortion party. But as recent history tells us, it’s all part of The Republican Big Lie.

Christian Democrats are not pro-abortion

First of all, it would be rare indeed to find anyone who is actually pro-abortion. Virtually everyone in American society has been sensitized to the moral trauma that is abortion. As a birth control solution, it cannot be morally supported.

But Americans, by and large, also oppose allowing the government the power to decide such personal issues as how many children they should have. It was in this context of coming up with a solution to a difficult issue that the US Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973. It is safe to say that Roe v. Wade decided nothing, and instead provoked a violent outcry among many Christians that continues to this day. This is the quandary that many Christian Democrats find themselves in. Christian Democrats want to see a solution to the abortion issue.

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Now this is something to worry about. The Al Qaeda are a bunch of idiots compared to these people.

Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a “powder keg.”

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a “preliminary” test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons.

“As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems,” Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. “So in terms of defense and security, Russians can look calmly to the country’s future.”

Not Good

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Is it true? I don’t know. Does it have any importance? I don’t know that either.
It’s just an interesting story I found in the New Yorker.

The West Wing of the White House tends to have a funereal stillness, even in the best of times, which these are not. The President’s aides walk the narrow corridors with pensive expressions and vigilantly modulated voices. By contrast, Karl Rove’s office has an almost party atmosphere. Rove, the President’s chief political adviser—the “architect,” Bush has called him, of his 2004 victory over John Kerry—has been a man of constant troubles: Valerie Plame troubles, U.S. Attorney-firing troubles, and, most of all, collapse-of-the-Republican Party troubles. Yet his voice is suffused with bonhomie, his jokes are bad and frequent, his enthusiasm is communicable; he resembles an oversized leprechaun, although one with unconcealed resentments and a receding hairline.“Hey, what’s Snow doing here?” Rove said one recent afternoon. “Must be important, if he’s visiting us.” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, stood in Rove’s outer office, bent over in conversation with one of several assistants. “Uh-oh, here’s the big gun,” Rove said as Peter Wehner, the White House director of strategic initiatives, came into the office. Wehner, an evangelical Christian, is known in Washington for a relentless stream of e-mails that praise George W. Bush’s allies (“The Remarkable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair,” “The Remarkable Joseph Lieberman”); that glean from the Internet any cheerful news from Iraq; and that provide links to articles by writers like the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami and the untiring neoconservative Norman Podhoretz.As we talked, Rove would bounce up from his chair, twice making a show of going to the dictionary to look up words. (One was “sanguinity,” as in “I’m very sanguine” about the Republican Party’s future.) He is a bookish man who plays the part of the anti-intellectual, which fits an Administration whose culture discourages displays of esoteric knowledge and, its critics say, of useful knowledge as well.

When Rove came to Washington, after the 2000 election, he envisioned creating an enduring Republican majority—the permanent mobilization of the Party’s broad, socially conservative base. Part of his strategy was to cast as threats, in alarming terms, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and other bogeymen of the right. It is Rove’s cleverness, combined with his joie de combat, that made him insufferable to Democrats.

Now, though, the Democrats are gloating—and happy to point out that little more than thirty per cent of the public approves of Bush’s job performance. Andrew Sullivan, a disaffected conservative, has joked on his blog that Rove seems to be getting his permanent majority—except that it’s a Democratic one. The Republican reversal has certainly come with great speed—as fortunes in Washington have tended to do since the Vietnam era. In the midterm election, Republicans lost control of Congress, and the House G.O.P. caucus is beleaguered by scandals and by accusations that its members have benefitted from crude pork-barrel politics. The tenets of neoconservatism that have animated Bush’s foreign policy—that America has a responsibility to spread the ideals of democracy, and that force can justifiably be used to aid this secular missionary work—are held in low esteem. The call to change the world which infused Bush’s second Inaugural speech has faded.

Whole story

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For the video go here.

This traitor, Adam Gadahn, tells us if we don’t leave all Islamic lands, free all Muslims from U.S. prisons and end support for Israel we will see worse than 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq or Virginia Tech.

What a wonderful religion of peace he represents.

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Here is something to think about. 

 Where do you stand? 

 Personally I think it’s a nonstarter.

“God either exists or He doesn’t. Based on the testimony, both general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scriptures/Bible), it is safe to assume that God does in fact exist. It is abundantly fair to conceive, that there is at least 50% chance that the Christian Creator God does in fact exist. Therefore, since we stand to gain eternity, and thus infinity, the wise and safe choice is to live as though God does exist. If we are right, we gain everything, and lose nothing. If we are wrong, we lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose to live a Godless life.” (Pascal Wager)

What’s the number one fear most people have? The FEAR OF DYING! Okay, but if God doesn’t exist, and we all just drift into nothingness when we take our last breath, what are we so afraid of? Socrates said “If death be but a dreamless sleep, what have mortals to fear?” Obviously there’s something after this life, if there weren’t, then we wouldn’t be so afraid of the possibility of spending eternity in heaven or hell.

Before we can begin to believe that God exist, we must have faith that He does. Don’t get it twisted, any really Christian will tell you that at some point in their Christian walk, they’ve doubted the reasoning behind there belief in God, but consider this, faith that has never doubted is of little value, but doubt and faith are inseparable. Faith requires that you believe in something that you’re not sure is there. Example, if I tell you that if you send me your mailing address, then I’ll send you $1,000 in the mail, and you do indeed send me your address, then you have faith that I’ll keep my word. Yes, there may come a point when you’ll doubt what I said is true, but you still send me your address anyhow because you want the cash just in cause I’m telling you the truth. My analogy may suck, but it’s almost the same with the decision to believe that God exist. It’s better to believe than not to believe. Cause in the event that you don’t believe, and you find out that the “thing” you didn’t believe in truly existed, and then you’ve lost. If you believe and that “thing” doesn’t exist, you’ve lost nothing.

Here

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I couldn’t stop laughing while posting this.

                                                         

Poland’s conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.

Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children’s show promoted homosexuality.

She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.

Story

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Although this should have been done long ago, I’m proud of you Mr. president.

President Bush on Tuesday ordered U.S. sanctions tightened against Sudan’s government for its refusal to stop the violence in the Darfur region.

In brief remarks, Bush followed through on a threat made six weeks ago to pursue tougher action against a government that he said was complicit in the bombing and rape of innocent civilians.

Bush directed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consult with Britain and other allies on pursuing new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Sudan.

He urged Sudan’s president to let international peacekeepers into Darfur.

Bush imposed unilateral punitive action against 31 companies and four individuals.

Violence has devastated Darfur since 2003.

Fighting by government-backed militias and rebel groups in the Darfur region of western Sudan has killed more than 200,000 people and driven about 2 million from their homes.

Story

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There is no excuse for this. These people should be caught and punished severely.

Vandals burned dozens of small American flags that decorated veterans’ graves for Memorial Day and replaced many of them with hand-drawn swastikas, authorities said Monday.

Forty-six flag standards were found empty and another 33 flags were in charred tatters Sunday in the cemetery, authorities said. Swastikas drawn on paper appeared where 14 of the flags had been.

Members of the American Legion on this island off Washington’s northwest coast replaced the burned flags with new ones Sunday afternoon.

The vandals struck again on Memorial Day after a guard left at dawn, the San Juan County sheriff’s office said. This time, the vandals left 33 of the hand-drawn swastikas.

Story

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When Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was first published in the early 70s I read the book. As a human being it broke my heart, but as an Indian human being it tore my heart to read what happened to the American Indians during the settling of the West.

Over the week-end HBO showed a movie by the title of the book that went into the time leading up to Wounded Knee and when Chief Sitting Bull finally went to a reservation to live so his people would no longer suffer.

It actually tells the story through the eyes of one Sioux man, whose Indian name was changed to Charles Eastman.

You can read the Captain’s review here and, along with the Captain, I urge you to watch this movie while it is running if you have HBO .

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The US and Iranian ambassadors to Iraq met for four hours yesterday in the Green Zone, talking about ways to make Iraq safer.

The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze yesterday with a four-hour meeting on Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi said in an interview that the two sides would meet again in less than a month. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Washington would decide only after the Iraqi government issued an invitation.

“We don’t have a formal invitation to respond to just yet, so it doesn’t make sense to respond to what we don’t have,” Mr. Crocker told reporters after the meeting.

Don’t get your hopes up because Iran dismisses US charges they have armed insurgents to fight against the US and Iraqi people in Iraq.

The American envoy called the meeting “businesslike” and said at “the level of policy and principle, the Iranian position as articulated by the Iranian ambassador was very close to our own.”

However, he said: “What we would obviously like to see and the Iraqis would clearly like to see is an action by Iran on the ground to bring what it’s actually doing in line with its stated policy.”

Speaking later at a press conference in the Iranian Embassy, Mr. Kazemi said: “We don’t take the American accusations seriously.”

Mr. Crocker declined to detail what Mr. Kazemi had said in the session, but the Iranian diplomat formerly a top official in the elite Revolutionary Guards Quds Force said he had offered to train and equip the Iraqi army and police to create “a new military and security structure” for Iraq.

Mr. Kazemi said U.S. efforts to rebuild those forces were inadequate to handle the chaos in Iraq, for which he said Washington bore sole responsibility. He said he also had offered to provide what assistance Iran could in rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which he said had been “demolished by the American invaders.”

The icebreaking session, according to both sides, did not veer into other difficult issues that encumber the U.S.-Iranian relationship primarily Iran’s nuclear program and the more than a quarter-century history of diplomatic estrangement.

But the issues at hand portend a bruising set of talks should the two sides have follow-up meetings.

I imagine this meeting and immediate future meetings, if they are held, will show both sides carefully circling the other to see if they can get a read on the situation.

I’m not so sure having Iran train the military and police would be in the best interests of anyone, since they are suspected of training the Shiite death squads and inflitrating the current Iraqi military and police forces.

According to the report President al-Maliki spoke briefly to the two ambassadors:

He told both sides that Iraqis wanted a stable country free of foreign forces and regional interference. Iraq should not be turned into a base for terrorist groups, he said, adding that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were only there to help rebuild the army, police and infrastructure.

The United States had no plans to stage a strike against Iran from Iraq, he said.

This is at least a first step. Perhaps it would be better if a predominantly Sunni country, say Egypt, were to try to help the two sides broker a peace agreement.

It’s going to take Shiites and Sunnis of good faith to broker any kind of peace agreement in Iraq.

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People in Venezuela are rioting because Dictator President Hugo Chavez has taken the last free television station with nationwide coverage off the air and replaced it with State television.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan police fired tear gas and plastic bullets Monday into a crowd of thousands protesting a decision by President Hugo Chavez that forced a television station critical of his leftist government off the air.

Police fired toward the crowd of up to 5,000 protesters from a raised highway, and protesters fled amid clouds of tear gas. They later regrouped in Caracas’ Plaza Brion chanting “freedom!” Some tossed rocks and bottles at police, prompting authorities to scatter demonstrators by firing more gas.

It was the largest of several protests that broke out across Caracas hours after Radio Caracas Television ceased broadcasting at midnight Sunday and was replaced with a new state-funded channel. Chavez had refused to renew RCTV’s broadcast license, accusing it of “subversive” activities and of backing a 2002 coup against him.

At least three protesters and one police officer were injured in skirmishes. Some protesters were seen in television footage hurling spent tear gas canisters back at police.

Office workers poured out of buildings to join student protesters, while organizers called for the demonstration to remain peaceful. RCTV talk show host Miguel Angel Rodriguez led the crowd in chants of, “They will not silence us!”

I guess people will put up with some repression as long as you don’t take away their favorite television programs.

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China’s former drug regulator has been sentenced to death for taking bribes and allowing substandard medicines to be approved, causing the deaths of at least 10 people and the contamination of pet foods and toothpaste whose ingredients or products have been exported by China.

BEIJING (AP) – China’s former top drug regulator was sentenced to death Tuesday in an unusually harsh punishment for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.
Seeking to address broadening concerns over food, the government also announced plans for its first recall system for unsafe products.

The developments are among the most dramatic steps Beijing has publicly taken to address domestic and international alarm over shoddy and unsafe Chinese goods—from pet food ingredients and toothpaste mixed with industrial chemicals to tainted antibiotics.

Beijing’s No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court convicted Zheng Xiaoyu of taking bribes in cash and gifts worth more than $832,000 while he was director of the State Food and Drug Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Those bribes allowed eight companies to get around drug approval standards, it said.

Zheng’s acts “greatly undermined … the efficiency of China’s drug monitoring and supervision, endangered public life and health and had a very negative social impact,” Xinhua said, citing the court.

The punishment was appropriate given the “huge amount of bribes involved and the great damage inflicted on the country and the public,” Xinhua said.

In one instance, an antibiotic approved by Zheng’s agency killed at least 10 patients last year before it was taken off the market.

Under Chinese law, a death sentence meted out by an intermediate court automatically will be reviewed by a higher court and ultimately has to be approved by the state supreme court.

The sentence was unusually heavy even for China, which is believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined—and likely indicates the leadership’s determination to deal with the recent scares involving unsafe food and drugs.

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I just read this short story on CNN.com and it has touched me in a very personal way.

Amid the sounds of mortar and machine-gun fire, a father and son both serving in Iraq were reunited in Baghdad after spending more than a decade apart.

Army Master Sgt. William McGraw and his son, Pfc. Logan McGraw, 21, met last week at Baghdad’s Camp Victory in a two-day reunion arranged by the military, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

“Logan, I am your father,” were William McGraw’s first words.

The two last saw each other when Logan McGraw was 8 years old. They met only once before that, more than seven years earlier as his parents were getting divorced. As a child, he moved around with his mother, a Kentucky-based sergeant.

“I have a chance to finally know my son. I’m excited about starting over again,” said William McGraw, 45. “But reality sets in; we know this is a war zone and there are soldiers missing and people dying.”

In Baghdad, they embraced and bantered about sports and family life, including the younger McGraw’s 2-year-old son Douyniall.

“It took a little bit longer than I hoped for,” Logan McGraw said of the reunion. “But at the end, it came down to having a relationship later down the road and finally being able to communicate with each other.”

Logan McGraw’s unit was set to return to Taji, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Baghdad. He was deployed in April. William McGraw had been in Iraq for 24 months and was scheduled to redeploy to Atlanta this week.

I have a similar story and that’s why this touches me so deeply. I pray Logan stays alive and gets out of Iraq in order to get to know the father he has never had the chance to know until now.

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Cindy Sheehan, the mother whose son Casey’s death in Iraq caused her to be a peace activist, has given up her public fight against the war. See here and here.

She says her son’s death was in vain, she has lost her marriage, her health and her savings for her cause and now she is being criticized by some on the far left for criticizing Democrats for the same actions for which she criticized Republicans.

In a lot of ways I feel Cindy Sheehan was a victim of her own making. No, she didn’t cause the death of her son, which is what she says brought her to the public eye, but she allowed others to benefit their cause by her own grief.

Now that she has forsaken the Democratic party she has been called unsavory names at Democratic Underground, a site that is so far to the left it’s ready to drop off the face of the earth, but it was a place that praised her and glorified her before she turned against the democrats.

“I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a ‘tool’ of the Democratic Party.” Sheehan wrote. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. “

She has been quite a celebrity for the far left for the past two years, but is now giving it all up, including selling Camp Casey in Crawford, TX, to go back home to her other children and try to patch up relationships that have been strained due to her so-called “fame”.

Maybe now she can actually take the time to grieve over the loss of her son in a way that will be cathartic for her, and she will be able to re-start her relationship with her other children whose needs have come second to the anti-war movement for the past two years.

As as conservative Republican who believes her son will have died in vain only if we leave without bringing about a peace that is elusive at best, I feel no ill feelings toward her. I wish her Godspeed and the peace she so desperately seeks for herself.

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The story behind Taps

It all began in 1862 during the Civil War, when Union Army Captain Robert Ellicombe was with his men near Harrison’s Landing in Virginia. The Confederate Army was on the other side of the narrow strip of land.

During the night, Captain Ellicombe heard the moan of a soldier who lay mortally wounded on the field. Not knowing if it was a Union or Confederate soldier, the captain decided to risk his life and bring the stricken man back for medical attention. Crawling on his stomach through the gunfire, the captain reached the stricken soldier and began pulling him towards his encampment.

When the captain finally reached his own lines, he discovered it was actually a confederate soldier, but the soldier was dead. The captain lit a lantern. Suddenly, he caught his breath and went numb with shock. In the dim light, he saw the face of the soldier. It was his son. The boy had been studying music in the south when the war broke out. Without telling his father, he enlisted in the Confederate Army.

The following morning, heart broken, the father asked for permission of his superiors to give his son a full military burial despite his enemy status. His request was granted. The captain had asked if he could have a group of Army band members play a funeral dirge for the son at the funeral. That request was turned down since the soldier was a Confederate.

Out of respect for the father, they did say they could give him only one musician. The captain chose a bugler to play a series of musical notes he had found on a piece of paper in the pocket of his dead son’s uniform.

This wish was granted. This music was the haunting melody we now know as “Taps” that is used at all military funerals.
(This article is from the American Legion Newsletter.)

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Some of the world’s biggest gas peddlers are encouraging their workers to pump the pedal.Exxon Mobil, BP and ConocoPhillips are among the Houston-area employers trying to make it easier for employees to bike to work.Workers already have enough excuses: potholes, impatient drivers and the Houston heat.

But some businesses are easing the commute for those who decide the exercise and reduced emissions make biking worthwhile. They’re giving them locker rooms, shower areas and safe places to park their bikes.

“I figure I save $3 a day every time I commute,” said Dave Ivy, a projects manager at Exxon Mobil, who’s been biking 14 miles from his home in Katy to Exxon Mobil offices in Westlake three to four times a week for the last few years.

“I enjoy the exercise, and I save on gasoline.”

Story

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There is no disrespect shown here so don’t go off on a tangent calling me anti American.
This is just another story from Iraq. Maybe we should listen to the troops. Even when they disagree with the policy of the administration.

BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. David Safstrom does not regret his previous tours in Iraq, not even a difficult second stint when two comrades were killed while trying to capture insurgents.“In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place,” he said. “There was no sectarian violence, Saddam was gone, we were tracking down the bad guys. It felt awesome.”But now on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber’s body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

Story

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How could one not admire a man like Michael Yon. He has sacrificed so much to send to us real time information and photographs from Iraq. His tribute to Memorial Day was touching and yet fact filled (the good and the bad) as always.

Memorial Day weekend is upon us. I am out here in Anbar Province with Task Force 2-7 Infantry. The area around Hit (pronounced “heat”) is so quiet previous units likely would not recognize the still. There was a small IED incident this morning, and the explosion was a direct hit, but the bomb was so small that mechanics had the vehicle back in shape by late afternoon. Calm truly has fallen on this city.

Dishes are appearing on rooftops and people are communicating more freely. During today’s prayers, one mosque announced that divorce is bad and that parents should take care of their children. One mosque cried about Christians and Jews, while yet another announced that Al-Jazeera is lying and people should not watch it.

While we remember those who have paid the ultimate price in their sacrifice for this country, may we also take a moment to thank those who have or are currently serving. May the Lord continue to watch over and protect not only our military members but all those like Michael Yon who are giving of themselves.

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Endangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5,000 of the world’s rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China.

The pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong. Most were alive, though the cargo also contained 21 bear paws wrapped in newspaper.According to conservation groups, the haul was discovered on one of the world’s most lucrative and destructive smuggling routes: from the threatened jungles of south-east Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China.The animals were found when local fishermen noticed a strange smell emanating from the vessel, which did not have any registration plates, on Tuesday, the Guangzhou Daily reported.

When coastguard officials boarded the 25-metre craft, it was reportedly deserted and stripped of identification papers. They found more than 200 crates full of animals, many so dehydrated in the tropical sun that they were close to death.The animals – which weighed 13 tonnes – were taken to port, doused with water and sent to an animal welfare centre. “We have received some animals,” said an office worker at the Guangdong Wild Animal Protection Centre. “We are waiting to hear from the authorities what we should do with them.”

According to the local media, the cargo included 31 pangolins, 44 leatherback turtles, 2,720 monitor lizards, 1,130 Brazilian turtles as well as the bear paws. Photographs showed other animals, including an Asian giant turtle.

All of these south-east Asian species are critically endangered, banned from international trade and yet openly sold in restaurants and markets in China’s southern province of Guangdong, which is famous for its exotic cuisine.

Story

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