yo yo yo search it!

Saturday, November 05, 2005


it was a friend's last day of work friday. i started a scarf for her at the beginning of the week. when i went to finish it on thursday, it had come off of the needles (i don't know how) and i had to start all over! i finished it. it was VERY long but very skinny. i used different yarns for a dressier type scarf

my dobbie socks


my friend jean sent me a package a little while ago. lovely ginger cookies AND a wonderful pair of woolen dobbie (you'll know if you read harry potter, i'm told) socks! i love them so much

you go grrrl!

War protesters sue for right to bare breasts

Mendocino County women who have been baring their breasts at various venues to protest the war in Iraq are in Sacramento federal court seeking an order prohibiting the California Highway Patrol from arresting them during a planned noon demonstration Monday at the Capitol, the (registration-restricted) Sacramento Bee reported Friday afternoon.
#
The women's group, Breasts Not Bombs, is suing CHP Commissioner Mike Brown and two of his officers over a warning that if the women demonstrate while topless, they will be arrested and charged with indecent exposure and disorderly conduct.
The group claims it also was warned by the CHP that if its members are convicted of indecent exposure they may have to register as sex offenders. It also claims the CHP said its admonition did not apply to male members of the group, who are free to go topless during the demonstration.
A court declaration of Sherry Glaser, a member of the group and its spokeswoman, says the planned political protest "focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on various initiatives (on Tuesday's ballot) we oppose that Governor Schwarzenegger supports."

it's a shame

a harmless essay on homosexuality cannot be published in a high school newspaper. katie (the author of the essay) and i agree. we don't think homosexuality is a choice (who in their right mind would choose to be abused, hated, discriminated against, misunderstood, denied rights and benefits and on and on and on)

Principal Stops School Paper from Publishing Article on Homosexuality
Published: November 04, 2005 1:44 PM ET
ORANGE PARK, FL (AP) A high school principal has withheld published copies of a student newspaper to eliminate an opinion column written by a student about homosexuality. Katie Thompson, a 17-year-old senior, wrote the column "Homosexuality is not a Choice," for the Oct. 10 edition of the student newspaper at Ridgeview High School. Ridgeview is located inClay County, about 12 miles south of Jacksonville.Thompson, who is bisexual, said her teacher approved the 300-word essay, but Principal Toni McCabe objected and claimed the subject was "too mature for a high school audience."Telephone calls Friday to McCabe, Clay County School Superintendent David Owens, school spokeswoman Darlene Mahla, all five School Board members and Thompson's home were not immediatelyreturned.According to an e-mail sent by Mahla to School Board members, the school principal was able to intercept the newspaper, Panther Prints, before it went to students."A member of the school's newspaper staff wrote an article that was placed in the opinion section of the newspaper about her sexuality as a lesbian and her Christian views," said the e-mail obtained by The Florida Times-Union.The newspaper also obtained a copy of Thompson's column, which reads in part:"Homosexuals do not choose to be the way they are. It is a biological stimulation of the brain. ... Some individuals think that they, with their extreme religious beliefs, can turn homosexuals to a heterosexual status. Those people, along with other homophobes in our country, set up counseling groups for homosexuals to try to change them."Thompson said she was called to McCabe's office and told the newspaper would not be circulated because of her article...........

extrava danza and osama

i thought this rather amusing. personally, i cannot watch the tony danza show for longer than three moments. i was with my sister yesterday and she had tyra on. i cannot watch her either. BEAUTIFUL woman, but not much upstairs. don't even get me started on dr phil and oprah

Pro-Marriage? Then God Hates You
I am somewhat obsessed with The Tony Danza Show. The show is amazing. Mr. Danza is a truly unique soul. Recently, after mentioning a charity he was involved in, for either soldiers, children, or both, and right before launching into Extrava-Danza (his daily quiz game), Tony tossed off a throwaway line. He does it all the time. With his trademarked charm (I know you can't trademark charm, but Tony's laws are based on his own Danza-tution), he went—"We really gotta get that Osama guy."
"We really gotta get that Osama guy."
Tony's right. We do. For those not in the know (if you haven't heard of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or The Hold Steady—that's you), this "Osama guy" that Tony Danza is talking about is Osama bin Laden. Who is he? He's only America's numero uno enemy-o! What'd he do? Is he a bullshit artist? Yes! But it's way bigger than that! He's not at the tippy-top of America's shit list for just trash-talking. I won't go into it, but let me just give you an idea of how bad this guy is—if you google "
Osama country music"—you will find a lot of songs and flash games that take this motherfucker on. You will find a parody of Rick Nelson's Garden Patry called Osama Party. (Sample lyrics: I went to Osma's party to find out about his friends/ A chance to show the world who we are up against. Chorus: But it's all right now/ We learned our lesson well/ You see, we can't let Sadaam go unless he kills himself.) U.S. intelligence couldn't make a connection between Osama and Sadaam, but parody songwriter Rudy Ramirez had no problem. The trick—poetic license. It would be much simpler for investigators if they replaced investigation with poetic license to solve crimes.)
Still, thanks to the relentlessness of celebrities like Tony Danza to "get that Osama guy," it keeps a fire underneath President Bush (the first openly gay president in over 25 years—25 dog years—so only about 3 1/2 human—which means W. is the first openly gay president since himself! I just double-called the President gay—once directly and once using roundabout logic!) ...........................

Friday, November 04, 2005

i wanted to share this story

( Brian struggles to get out of bed the day after his tracheotomy at Walter Reed. The damage to his throat was caused by tubes that had been inserted after his rescue in Iraq. The scar on his left thigh shows where doctors attempted a vein transplant to save his other leg.(Bradley E. Clift)October 30, 2005)


it's a long one. it was in our sunday paper. brian grew up a couple of towns over in east hartford. i never knew him but i'd like to have a beverage and a butt with him now.

Pieces Of Brian A Year In The Life Of A Stubborn, Stoic, Solitary Marine Who Gave More Than His Limbs To The War



October 30, 2005
By JIM FARRELL, Photographs By BRADLEY E. CLIFT
He says he never, ever wonders who was responsible for digging that hole in that field on the outskirts of Fallujah and packing it with scraps of metal and explosives and rocks and anything else that could destroy vehicles and shred skin.He says he never, ever wonders who detonated the bomb that erupted with a boom and a flash and sprayed the shrapnel that tore through the night.........................

another dick

'Boston Globe' First with Full Probe on Alito's 'Vanguard' Conflict

By E&P Staff Published: November 03, 2005 3:50 PM ET
NEW YORK For two days, media outlets have briefly reported that new U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., ruled in a 2002 case in favor of the Vanguard mutual fund company at a time when he owned more than $390,000 in Vanguard funds. The Boston Globe today published the first in-depth look at the matter. Among other things, Globe reporters Sarah Schweitzer and Michael Kranish revealed that court records show that Alito later complained about an effort to remove him from the case -- despite an earlier promise to recuse himself from cases involving the company.It's a local story for the Globe, as the case involves a nearby Jamaica Plain woman still fighting to win back assets of her late husband's individual retirement accounts, which had been frozen by Vanguard after a court judgment in favor of a former business partner of her husband.Her lawyer, John G. S. Flym, a retired Northeastern University law professor, said in an interview with the Globe that Alito's ''lack of integrity is so flagrant" in the case that he should be disqualified as a Supreme Court nominee.His cient, Shanee Maharaj, 50, discovered Alito's ownership of Vanguard shares in 2002 when she requested his financial disclosure forms after he ruled against her appeal. ''I just started seeing Vanguard after Vanguard, and I almost fell to the floor," she told the reporters at the home she shares with a friend. She lost her own home during the lengthy prolonged litigation. ''I just couldn't believe that it could be so blatant."The Globe reports:"In 1990, when Alito was seeking US Senate approval for his nomination to be a circuit judge, he said in written answers to a questionnaire that he would disqualify himself from ''any cases involving the Vanguard companies.'......

startling!

Vatican: Faithful Should Listen to Science


By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
November 3, 2005, 7:46 PM EST
VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason. Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States. The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe. "The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said. ..........

all the news that is fit to print

hey, blogs are where i get most of MY news.


The New Web Slingers
Politcal bloggers scoop the mainstream media on Plamegate
By TIM DICKINSON
Clearly, it was the wrong moment to declare war on the blogosphere. Barely a week before the New York Times went public with its baffling account of ex-star reporter Judith Miller's unholy entanglement with vice-presidential aide "Scooter" Libby, the paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, proclaimed that Weblogs do nothing more than "recycle and chew on the news." Pride, as ever, goeth before the fall.
Caught flat-footed on the CIA-leak story, the Times saw its lunch handed to it by the new blogging elite. Leading the charge were the upstart gumshoes of RawStory.com, the pundits of the Huffington Post and a rear guard of Internet editorialists, all taking the Gray Lady to task for failing to practice the very "journalism of verification" that Keller claimed set the Times apart.
Bloggers now routinely break the major stories of the day. And their reports are getting sucked into the twenty-four-hour news cycle. "They're looking for scraps, rumors," says MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann. "They'll spend hours that I don't have to go digging." According to John Byrne, the twenty-four-year-old whiz behind the Raw Story, "Bloggers go where the mainstream media fears to tread."
Here is a roundup of the bloggers who've led the media pack on Plamegate.
The Raw Story"Drudge makes shit up. We make every effort not to make shit up," says RawStory.com's Byrne. An Oberlin grad who launched Raw Story to escape the drudgery of freelancing for The Boston Globe, Byrne took a job at his father's medical office to support his blog ambition. Having founded two alternative pubs in college, Byrne runs his site on a tight budget: "We spend $250 a month -- it's incredibly cheap."
Hoping to establish a counterweight to the conservatism of the Drudge Report, Byrne started Raw Story in February 2004. The site is now breaking news the old-fashioned way -- with paid reporters. The investment has yielded a pack of Plamegate exclusives: Raw Story was first to report that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was seeking to indict Libby for obstruction of justice and that Fitzgerald had "flipped" two vice-presidential aides to cooperate.
"People talk to us because we're not the mainstream," Byrne says. "Sources who haven't been treated well by, say, The Washington Post -- they come to us." Readers, too, are tuning in, at up to 500,000 a day...........

cake-prolonging the magic


cd of the day


it's not their newest but i think it's their best

here are the words to my second favorite song on the cd: satan is my motor

I've got wheels,
Of polished steel,
I've got tires that drive,
The road,
I've got seats that selflessly,
Hold my friends,
And a trunk that can carry,
The heaviest of loads,
I've got a mind that can steer me,
To your house,
And a heart that can bring you,
Red flowers,
My intentions are good,
And earnest, and true,
But under my hood,
Is internal combustion power,
And Satan is my motor,
Hear my motor power,
Satan is my motor, motor,
Hear my motor power,
Satan is the only one,
Who seems to understand,
I've got brakes,
I'm wide awake,
I can stop this car,
At anytime,
At the very last second,
I can change directions,
Turn completely around,
If I feel so inclined,
I've got a mind that can steer me,
To your house,
And a heart that can bring you,
Red flowers,
My intentions are good,
And earnest, and true,
But under my hood,
Is internal combustion power,
And Satan is my motor,
Hear my motor power,
Satan is my motor, motor,
Hear my motor power,
Satan is the only one,
Who seems to understand,
Satan is my motor,
Satan is my motor,
Satan is my motor,
Satan is my motor,
Satan is my motor,
Satan is my motor,
Hear my motor power,
Satan is the only one,
Who seems to understand...

(oh mexico is my favorite song on this cd)

Thursday, November 03, 2005

maybe it was only because they were giants fans

or maybe they WERE profiled (hey, if they were in a sensitive area, why wasn't it marked as such????)



FBI: Muslims detained at stadium weren't profiled
President Bush was in the stadium that night
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey (AP) -- Five Muslim football fans were detained and questioned during a game at Giants Stadium because they were congregating near an air duct on a night former President Bush was in the stadium, the FBI said Wednesday.
Some of the Muslims said they did not know they were in a sensitive area, and they complained that they were subjected to racial profiling while they were praying, as their faith requires five times a day.
"I'm as American as apple pie and I'm sitting there and now I'm made to feel like I'm an outsider, for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed," said Sami Shaban, a 27-year-old Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway.
At a news conference Wednesday, Shaban said he and four friends had just gotten to the September 19 New York Giants-New Orleans Saints game when they left their seats to pray. Around halftime, 10 security officers and three state troopers approached the men and told them to come with them, Shaban said.
The men were questioned and then were not allowed to return to their seats, but were instead assigned to seats in another section, Shaban said. Three guards stood near them, and escorted them to their cars when they left the stadium, he said.........

a coincidence?

you tell me? i do have to keep reminding myself i believe in karma. what goes around comes around. i have to remind myself not to think ill thoughts of others. even if they are the most evil vile creatures on this goddess' earth

Rumsfeld's growing stake in Tamiflu
Defense Secretary, ex-chairman of flu treatment rights holder, sees portfolio value growing. October 31, 2005: 10:55 AM EST By Nelson D. Schwartz, Fortune senior writer
NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it's proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that's now the most-sought after drug in the world.
Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)'s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $47. That's made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.
Rumsfeld isn't the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead's board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.
Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
"I don't know of any biotech company that's so politically well-connected," says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco.....

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Utah judge with 3 wives fights for job
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- A judge will ask the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to let him stay on the bench after a commission that oversees judges ordered him dismissed because he has three wives.
Those pursuing the case against Judge Walter Steed say his plural marriage creates a conflict: After taking an oath to uphold the law, he shouldn't be breaking it.
"You can't have it both ways," said Colin Winchester, the executive director of the state's Judicial Conduct Commission.
The commission issued an order seeking Steed's removal from the bench in February, after a 14-month investigation determined Steed was a polygamist and as such had violated Utah's bigamy law.
Bigamy is a third-degree felony in Utah punishable by up to five years in prison, but Steed's attorney, Rod Parker, said Utah's attorney general and the Washington County prosecutor have declined to prosecute his client.
Steed has served for 25 years in the southern border town of Hildale, handing down rulings in drunken driving and domestic violence cases. Parker contends the bigamy statute is only enforced in rare cases, such as when someone has been duped into marrying someone who already has a wife.
"There is no allegation that it's affecting his performance on the bench," Parker said. "It really is truly only about his private conduct."
The complaint against Steed was filed with the commission in November 2003 by Tapestry Against Polygamy, an advocacy group founded by ex-polygamous women who organized to help others leave the handful of secretive religious colonies that adhere to the practice..............

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

ANOTHER i don't believe in hell

BUT if there is one, the people responsible for this WILL BURN


Indonesian Christians Terrified After Children Beheaded

POSTED: 7:16 am EST November 1, 2005

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Indonesian troops were on high alert Monday, bracing for a new cycle of sectarian violence in a province where machete-wielding assailants beheaded three Christian schoolgirls and seriously wounded a fourth.

Religious leaders called on their followers to remain calm and to refrain from revenge attacks, reminding them that investigators have yet to determine who was behind Saturday's grisly murders in Central Sulawesi province.

Suspicion has fallen, however, on Islamic militants responsible for a series of attacks on Christians since a peace deal in 2002 ended a bloody conflict that killed as many as 1,000 people from both communities.

National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Aryanto Budihardjo said there were no key suspects in the killings, and that only six people have been questioned so far -- among them the wounded teenager who was being kept under close watch at a police hospital.

He blamed the attacks on "terrorists" seeking to destabilize the province "just as relations between Muslim and Christian communities were improving," and said the perpetrators should not be allowed to plunge the region back into violence.

The attack, which occurred days before the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, has dominated national TV reports and been splashed across the front pages of newspapers.

Many people fear Muslims, flocking to outdoor markets and shops to prepare for the celebration marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, could be the target of Christian retaliatory acts.

Preparing for the worst, the government deployed more than 1,500 soldiers and police armed with assault rifles across Central Sulawesi Monday, the large majority of them in the predominantly Muslim town of Poso.

Muslim leaders condemned the weekend killings, but cautioned Monday it was too early to lay blame.

"Until authorities arrest the killers and disclose the motive, it's too early to say this attack was religiously motivated," said Syafi'i Ma'arif, leader of Indonesia's second-largest nonpolitical Muslim group Muhammadiyah...........

ANOTHER wtf??????????

Rumsfeld hints at more troops in Iraq






WASHINGTON (AP) -- Coming off one of the deadliest months for American troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld indicated that the number of U.S. forces in Iraq could rise temporarily as Iraqis prepare to vote in mid-December parliamentary elections.
"We have had a pattern of increasing the number of coalition forces during periods when there was an expectation that the insurgents and terrorists would like to try to disrupt the political process," Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters.
Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they expect insurgents to expand their attacks as the elections approach, but would not say exactly how they plan to protect U.S. soldiers from the growing number of roadside bombs.
"We'll decide what we're going to do about December as we go along, but it would not be a surprise to me that the commanders would want to have some sort of an overlap there" between arriving and departing units, Rumsfeld said.
U.S. troop levels rose to a peak of 161,000 before the October 15 election on the new constitution, but dipped to 158,000 as of Tuesday. There were 159,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for the January elections.
Rumsfeld also defended the government's decision not to permit United Nations human rights investigators to meet with terror suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay. Three U.N. experts were given permission to visit the facilities in Cuba but said they won't go if they could not interview prisoners............




why aren't we JUST SAYING NO?

how blind and stupid are they?

they (the democrats) finally changed into a new fresh pair of frilly panties and are ready to roll! i sure as shite hope it ain't too late!!!

frist is turning it back on democrats??????? (well the dems are NOT innocent by any means but they are NOT the ones who lied to get us into this goddess forsaken war or committed treason by outing a covert cia operative). what the hell are they protecting? i just don't get it. ALL of the evidence is before them. they choose to pretend everything is just and everything is fine. i have TWO words for them:

HONOR
MORALS


Senate Emerges From Closed Session on Iraq

By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 1, 6:52 PM ET
WASHINGTON -Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that President Bush used in the run-up to the war in Iraq and accusing Republicans of ignoring the issue.
"They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Democratic leader Harry Reid said.
Taken by surprise, Republicans derided the move as a political stunt.
"
The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," said Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas," the Republican leader said.
Democrats sought assurances that Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas would complete the second phase of an investigation of the administration's prewar intelligence.
After about two hours, senators returned to open session having appointed a six-member task force — three members from each party — to review the committee's progress and report back to their respective leaders by Nov. 14.
Roberts' committee produced a 511-page report in 2004 on flaws of an Iraq intelligence estimate assembled by the country's top analysts in October 2002, and he promised a second phase would look at issues that couldn't be finished in the first year of work.
The committee worked on the second phase of the review, Roberts said, but it has not been finished. He blamed Democrats for the delays and said his staff had informed their Democratic counterparts on Monday that the committee hoped to work on and complete the second phase next week.
"Now we have this ... stunt 24 hours after their staff was informed that we were moving to closure next week," a clearly angry Roberts told reporters. "If that's not politics, I'm not standing here."
In mid-afternoon Tuesday, Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. The public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.........

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

you GO mom and dad

don't let them take your babies (for an illegal and unjust war)

Military Faces Parental CounterattackHigh School Recruitment, a Longtime Tradition, Raises Worries in Wartime
By Lori ArataniWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, November 1, 2005; B01
For as long as Principal Alan Goodwin can recall, military recruiters -- in their crisp, carefully pressed uniforms -- have stopped by Walt Whitman High School to chat with students about the benefits of a career in the armed forces. They set up tables, greeted students with a firm handshake and passed out glossy brochures.
But a visit this fall to the Bethesda school by recruiters had parents firing off frantic missives on the school listserv. They demanded to know exactly what recruiters were doing on campus and why the parents had not been told in advance. Goodwin was puzzled.
Recruiters "have been allowed on campus for as long as I can remember," Goodwin said. "But maybe people are more sensitive about it now because of the war."
In past years, parents at Whitman and other high schools across the country may have paid scant attention to calls from military recruiters, but as the war in Iraq continues and the number of casualties grows, parents seem to be growing increasingly sensitive.
Now many parents -- aided by such anti-recruiting groups as the San Francisco-based Leave My Child Alone -- are demanding that school boards make it easier for families to prevent military recruiters from contacting their sons and daughters. They are mounting e-mail and letter-writing campaigns telling families they can block school systems from releasing student information to military recruiters. Even such national educational groups as the PTA are getting involved in the effort to get the word out..............

oh no (that he's leaving) but me me me me me i'll take the job!


Epstein quits as Red Sox general manager 31-year-old turns down three-year deal worth $1.5 million annually
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:30 a.m. ET Nov. 1, 2005
BOSTON - At 31, boy wonder Theo Epstein was ready to step out on his own.
The Red Sox general manager walked away from his hometown team on Monday, stunning Boston and the baseball world just one year after helping the franchise win its first World Series championship since 1918.
“I gave my entire heart and soul to the organization,” Epstein said in a statement. “During the process leading up to today’s decision, I came to the conclusion that I can no longer do so. In the end, my choice is the right one not only for me but for the Red Sox.”
Epstein will continue working for a few days to assist in the transition and prepare for the offseason. The Boston Herald, which first reported the news on its Web site, said the Yale graduate has told associates that he might leave baseball, or at least take a year off.
The Dodgers, Phillies and Devil Rays have GM openings, but none has a $120 million payroll to match the one Epstein was given in Boston. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Dodgers had no comment on Epstein, though owner Frank McCourt, a Boston native, could be interested.
And who will the Red Sox get to replace Epstein? The Boston Globe reported that Padres GM Kevin Towers, a favorite of Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, is the early favorite..................
Once the youngest GM in baseball history and still the youngest to assemble a World Series champion, Epstein was reportedly offered about $1.5 million a year for a three-year extension. That was quadruple his previous salary but still short of the $2.5 million the Red Sox offered Oakland’s Billy Beane in 2002 before hiring Epstein.

from tom paine - a who's who of the campaign to invade iraq

didn't we know this already?


eating cabbage and broccoli and more fruits and vegatables and not smoking will help prevent cancer? (although the study on the polish women was quite interesting). by the way cabbage and brussel sprouts are the ONLY vegetables i don't like.

Smearing skin with broccoli can help reduce risk of cancer
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 01 November 2005

Eating cabbage, cooking meat with garlic and smearing your skin with extract of broccoli can all help reduce the risk of cancer, scientists have found.
A series of studies presented yesterday to the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research add to the burgeoning evidence that changing your diet may be among the most effective ways of prolonging your life. Up to a third of cancers are thought to be associated with diet. Experts say eating more fruit and vegetables is the second most effective way to cut the risk of cancer, after not smoking.
In the latest studies, researchers from the University of New Mexico investigated the rapid rise in breast cancer among Polish women who emigrated to the US. The risk of breast cancer was three times higher among Polish women living in America than in their counterparts at home, suggesting a strong environmental factor.
Dorothy Rybaczyk-Pathak and colleagues evaluated the diet of Polish immigrants living in the Chicago and Detroit areas. They found that those who ate raw or short-cooked cabbage three times a week had a significantly reduced risk of breast cancer compared with those who ate less than one serving a week.
In Poland, women eat 30lb of cabbage and sauerkraut a year, compared with 10lb a year for US women. Those who ate most cabbage during adolescence had the lowest rates of cancer. If cabbage is not to your taste, you could try rubbing an extract from it on your skin. Scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found it halved the rate of skin cancer in mice. Cabbage is a member of the brassica family which includes broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. These vegetables contain glucosinolates which are broken down by chewing or cutting into sulphoraphane, which has been shown in previous studies to have anti-cancer properties..........

one more step in the correct direction

Muslim women launch international 'gender jihad' Giles Tremlett in Barcelona
Monday October 31, 2005 The Guardian
Marching under the banner of a new "gender jihad", Islamic feminists from around the world this weekend launched what they hope will become a global movement to liberate Muslim women.
The meeting, which drew women from as far apart as Malaysia, Mali, Egypt and Iran, set itself the task of squaring Islam with feminism. That meant not just combating 14 centuries of sexism in the Muslim world, participants said, but also dealing with the animosity to Islam of many western or secular feminists. They insisted that many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Qur'an.


Gender jihad is the struggle against male chauvinistic, homophobic or sexist readings of the Islamic sacred texts," said Abdennur Prado, one of the meeting's Spanish organisers.
Those readings had been provided by Muslim scholars who, over the centuries, have been almost exclusively male. "Male chauvinism is the destruction of Islam as a well-balanced way of life," Mr Prado said.........

once again mindin' everybody's bid-nez BUT OUR OWN

US steps up planning for a Cuba without Castro
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times
Updated: 12:42 a.m. ET Nov. 1, 2005
US planning for Cuba's "transition" after the demise of Fidel Castro has entered a new stage, with a special office for reconstruction inside the US State Department preparing for the "day after", when Washington will try to back a democratic government in Havana.
The inter-agency effort, which also involves the Defense Department, recognises that the Cuba transition may not go peacefully and that the US may have to launch a nation-building exercise.
Caleb McCarry, the Cuba transition co-ordinator, is working on the project within the Office for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which was established by the Bush administration to prevent and prepare for post-conflict situations.
Every six months, the National Intelligence Council revises a secret watchlist of 25 countries in which instability could require US intervention. The reconstruction office, headed by Carlos Pascual - a Cuba-born former ambassador - was focused on Sudan, Haiti, Congo and Nepal. In a controversial move, Cuba was added to the list...............

Monday, October 31, 2005

have a most wonderful samhain!



samhain

samhain

movie of the day - northfork -


i would have NEVER thought to see this movie if i hadn't seen the preview on another disk i was watching.

it is called
northfork . no, it's not about a ranch in dallas. it's a tale of a small montana town in 1955. a big power company, with help from the local higher ups is planning on flooding the plain where the town lays (for their new power plant) and opening the dam that they have built. they are now evacuating the last few remaining citizens who refuse to leave for one reason or another. that task falls to six men the power company hired. they all drive the same cars (each in pairs) and dress the same; black suits, ties and a hat. if they evacuate 65 households each, they get an acre and a half of new lake-front property when the project is completed.

there is a little boy who is ill in the story as well. his adoptive parents bring him back to the priest they got him from, saying he is too ill for them to bring on their journey (out of northfork). the priest knows the boy is dying but does his best to care for him.

the story involves death and life and angels and ghosts and outhouses and odd townsfolk and art work and mythical creatures and symbalism like you wouldn't believe. i thoroughly enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it to all. it is a mystic surreal piece of art

Sunday, October 30, 2005

ed and his lost love



i was watching the history channel yesterday. i came across a show entitled weird u.s.. the two hosts, mark and mark, were visiting a place called the coral castle. it was built by a man named ed as a tribute to his lost love. he supposedly built it using HAND TOOLS only. there are hunks of coral weighing several tons. no one is quite sure how he did it, but it exists so he did. there is a polaris telescope, a heart shaped table, a sundial and a moon pool among many other things. if i'm ever in florida, i will stop by. i'm fascinated

my blood is boiling

what the HELL are we fighting for? freedom? whose? i thought WE WERE free? theirs? did they ASK US over? i must have missed the part where they did. WE have to make sacrifices? what has HE (our fearless leader) sacrificed? his twins? are they on the front lines? hell, i don't even think they own a pair of fatigues. get 'em suited up and over there and i may just change my mind (or not)

Bush urges patience as support for war shrinks
Says 'best way to honor' the Iraq war dead is to complete mission


Sunday, October 30, 2005; Posted: 7:07 a.m. EST (12:07 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the American death toll above 2,000, President Bush said Saturday the war in Iraq has required "great sacrifice," but that progress is being made and the United States must remain steadfast.
In his third speech on Iraq this week, Bush sought to shore up flagging support for a war that began March 20, 2003.
"The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and win the war on terror," the president said in his weekly radio address.
"We will train Iraqi security forces and help a newly elected government meet the needs of the Iraqi people. In doing so, we will lay the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren."
Public support for Bush's handling of Iraq is at its lowest point, 37 percent, roughly where it has been since early August, according to AP-Ipsos polling.

'Saddened' by indictment
After a tense week, Bush is spending the weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. Before leaving the White House on Friday, he paused to express support for I. Lewis Libby, who resigned Friday as the vice president's chief of staff after being indicted on perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements charges in a two-year investigation of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.
"We're all saddened by today's news," Bush said, adding that the U.S. justice system assumes that the accused are innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial..............

we have to be astute enough

to see through the bs in ads. all i can think of is the swift boat veterans against kerry. the man WENT to viet nam (unlike our fearless leader). how DARE they say he wasn't a hero. how dare anyone believe them. at any rate, more of the same just with different players

Hitler in Virginia
by MAX BLUMENTHAL
[posted online on October 26, 2005]
Nearly two weeks after Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore ran two of the most controversial commercials in recent political history, his media consultant would not stand by their truthfulness. "I'd love to belabor that with you," Scott Howell told me when I asked him about the accuracy of his advertisements. "I just don't have the--I can't stand to talk to somebody in the media and be wrong." He then described his ads as "tasteful."
Howell's circumspection was a startling inversion of his public persona. Notorious for his audacious, hyperemotional attack ads, he describes himself as "Little Lee Atwater" after the late fabled Republican negative campaign consultant who was his and Karl Rove's mentor.
Howell has played a critical but unheralded role in securing the Republican Party's recent domination of national politics. He was instrumental in shifting the Senate to the Republicans in 2002 by a one-member margin. In the Georgia senatorial race, he crafted the commercial for the draft-dodging Republican candidate Saxby Chambliss to vanquish Senator Max Cleland, a decorated war hero who lost three limbs in Vietnam, morphing Cleland's image with those of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Two years later Howell's spots contributed to the defeat of both then-Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and Oklahoma Democratic senatorial candidate Brad Carson. Howell's ads on behalf of Daschle's opponent, John Thune, highlighted Thune's opposition to gay marriage. To undermine Carson, Howell created an image of welfare checks being passed to anonymous brown hands. Howell also set the stage for President George W. Bush's re-election victory with the ad called "Safer, Stronger," which appropriated the iconic image of firefighters emerging from the wreckage of Ground Zero with a flag-draped body, a production that used actors and was condemned as phony by the president of the International Association of Firefighters.
Howell cut his teeth in the rough-and-tumble environment of South Carolina politics. Fresh out of college in 1984, he lost a disputed election for a seat in the state legislature. Soon after, he was hired by Lee Atwater, the Palmetto State's hell-raising consultant, who engineered the re-election of Senator Strom Thurmond and oversaw Ronald Reagan's 1984 Southern Strategy. Howell learned the dark arts through close observation of Atwater's dismantling of 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's career through a series of ads linking Dukakis to Willie Horton, a black murderer who escaped from a Massachusetts furlough program to commit a rape. In 1992 Atwater recommended Howell to another protégé, Texas boy wonder Karl Rove, who hired him as his firm's political director. Howell opened his own consulting company in Dallas the following year, and the Democratic body count began rising.
On his path to becoming one of the GOP's premier admen, the 46-year-old Howell has earned his share of detractors, from immigrant rights advocates to family members of 9/11 victims, one of whom called his "Safer, Stronger" spot "a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people." But for Howell such criticism comes with the territory.
"I'm not nearly as callous as they try to make me," he said. "You know how it is: They hate me because we beat 'em. I guess you could say it's a badge of honor in my business." ...........

lets stop our constitution from being shredded NOW

Culture of Collusion
[from the November 14, 2005 issue]
What started as a common cold for selected Republican officeholders has turned into raging influenza for our democracy. The Democrats are already counting Congressional seats to be gained from the litany of GOP scandals, but we think they misunderstand the nature of this contagion.
Yes, we too would like to see the Democrats regain majorities in Congress and hope that becomes possible. But they--and the media as well--are partly responsible for the sorry state of affairs. Democratic leaders vent predictably over Tom DeLay's alleged money-laundering and the disgraceful response to Hurricane Katrina yet remain subdued on the far larger transgressions associated with the war in Iraq. Republicans wrap themselves in "moral issues" while ignoring the Constitution-shredding immorality of lying to the country and Congress on the largest moral question of all--the decision to invade another nation, pre-emptively and based on fictitious claims.
As we go to press, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is nearing the end of his investigation into the Plame/CIA leak scandal, with indictments of several high-level Bush Administration officials widely predicted. As most readers know, the investigation stemmed from the leak to reporters of the name of Valerie Wilson, née Plame, at the time an undercover CIA agent. In leaking her name to journalists, officials are suspected of having violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act and the section of the 1917 Espionage Act that prohibits leaks of classified information to unauthorized people. (Secondary charges stemming from the investigation, such as perjury or obstruction, are also possible.)
We have for years expressed grave doubts about these laws; they inhibit the free flow of information and have a chilling effect on the practice of responsible journalism, especially when government classifies far too much information in the first place. But the Plame investigation illuminates the larger scandal of the Bush Administration's lying to the American people to sell us on an unnecessary war--a war that has cost the lives of 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, has fostered terrorism in the Middle East and has set Iraq on the path to civil war. Even if the Plame affair ends without a strong resolution, the far larger scandal of this war and all its associated horrors will be with us for years. The question of impeachment might sound unlikely at this hour, but it is not too soon to study up on the matter--see Elizabeth de la Vega's exploration on page 11...........