of course they COULD

be praying to end world hunger but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Tiny crowd prays Supreme Court will invalidate Obama presidency
Nick Juliano
A small but determined band of conservative protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court Friday morning to pray the justices would invalidate Barack Obama's election.

The court was deciding whether it would hear oral arguments in Donofrio v. Wells, which argues that Obama's placement on the New Jersey presidential election ballot was invalid because he is not a natural born citizen. The justices are expected to dismiss the case.
................

kinda cool game

bow street runner (found via wonderland)


the only problem i had was i couldn't find how to quit and save. if i want to play again, i'd have to start from the beginning (i didn't finish the game when i stopped. hey, i'm TIRED)

i NEVER thought this would happen

blackwater indictments. wow. they're NOT tried nor judged yet but man, i really NEVER thought it would get this far. good news in that perhaps justice WILL be served (my fingers are crossed)

now if only they would charge king george and his band of merry good ol' white boys........

Sources: 5 Blackwater guards charged in shooting
By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON -- Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been indicted and a sixth was negotiating a plea with prosecutors for a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqis dead and became an anti-American rallying cry for insurgents, people close to the case said Friday.

Prosecutors obtained the indictment late Thursday and had it put under seal until it is made public, perhaps as early as Monday. All who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because the matters remain sealed.

Six guards have been under investigation since a convoy of heavily armed Blackwater contractors opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection on Sept. 16, 2007. Witnesses say the shooting was unprovoked but Blackwater, hired by the State Department to guard U.S. diplomats, says its guards were ambushed by insurgents while responding to a car bombing......

you go otto!!!

Otto the octopus wreaks havoc

Staff believe that the octopus called Otto had been annoyed by the bright light shining into his aquarium and had discovered he could extinguish it by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.

The short-circuit had baffled electricians as well as staff at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, who decided to take shifts sleeping on the floor to find out what caused the mysterious blackouts.

A spokesman said: "It was a serious matter because it shorted the electricity supply to the whole aquarium that threatened the lives of the other animals when water pumps ceased to work.

"It was on the third night that we found out that the octopus Otto was responsible for the chaos.

"We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000 Watt spot light above him with a carefully directed jet of water."........

they ARE pretty amazing animals
great video at the nyt article: Revealed: Secrets of the Camouflage Masters
By CARL ZIMMER
WOODS HOLE, Mass. — The cuttlefish in Roger Hanlon’s laboratory were in fine form. Their skin was taking on new colors and patterns faster than the digital signs in Times Square..........

and this video is wicked cool too:

The culprit of the smashed glass and broken lamp is two foot seven inch Otto. Photo: EUROPICS

tell me

why in a zillion years are they even ENTERTAINING the THOUGHT of allowing this suit to proceed? can't we use the money being wasted on this shite to let's say, feed some needy families?

when these giant losers LOSE, is the court going to turn around and charge them for wasting precious time and resources and money?


Suit contesting Barack Obama's citizenship heads to U.S. Supreme Court Friday

Justices will decide whether to consider the case

By James Janega |Tribune reporter
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by some opponents of Obama's election.

The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer's supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation's highest court.

The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court's schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama's election over accusations that he either wasn't born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.........

i am almost certain

government to continue to deny the terrorists were FROM the madmen who wreaked terror and rained blood upon the city of mumbai were from pakistan. i am not certain if the government had anything to do with it or not. however, for the pakistanipakistan is not only an insult it is ALSO insane.

you might as well believe turkey when it denies the armenian genocide

Terror Attacks Traced to Two From Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ and ROBERT F. WORTH
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Fresh evidence unearthed Thursday by investigators in India indicated that the Mumbai attacks were stage-managed from at least two Pakistani cities by top leaders of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian and American intelligence officials have already identified a Lashkar operative, who goes by the name Yusuf Muzammil, as a mastermind of the attacks. On Thursday, Indian investigators named one of the most well-known senior figures in Lashkar, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

The names of both men came from the interrogations of the one surviving attacker, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, 21, according to police officials in Mumbai.

While Mr. Muzammil appears to have served as a control officer in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Lakhvi, his boss and the operational commander of Lashkar, worked from Karachi, a southern Pakistani port city, said investigators in Mumbai. .......

we really aren't shocked

or surprised. i don't think we as a country actually DO realize how devastating this disaster was. worse though, is our government's lack of reaction to it. putting everything else aside, even sending 4,209 of our men and women to their deaths in iraq, the government should be made to be accountable for what they did (and didn't do) during and after katrina. of course if you add on iraq, healthcare, homelessness, abstinence only education, the mixing of church and state, the repealing of many laws that protect our earth and the passing of new ones that destroy it even more.........

well if we do NOT demand justice (starting with contacting our senators and congress reps) it's ALL ON US

Many Children Lack Stability Long After Storm
By SHAILA DEWAN
ATON ROUGE, La. — Last January, at the age of 15, Jermaine Howard stopped going to school. Attendance seemed pointless: Jermaine, living with his father and brother in the evacuee trailer park known as Renaissance Village since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, had not managed to earn a single credit in more than two years. Not that anyone took much notice. After Jermaine flunked out of seventh grade, the East Baton Rouge School District allowed him to skip eighth grade altogether and begin high school. After three semesters of erratic attendance, he left Baton Rouge in early spring of this year and moved in with another family in a suburb of New Orleans, where he found a job at a Dairy Queen.

A shy, artistic boy with a new mustache, Jermaine is one of tens of thousands of youngsters who lost not just all of their belongings to Hurricane Katrina, but a chunk of childhood itself.

After more than three years of nomadic uncertainty, many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems. Their parents, many still anxious or depressed themselves, are struggling to keep the lights on and the refrigerator stocked..........

who knew?

suzanne vega thought she was puerto rican for the first few years of her life? who knew she writes for the nyt now and again? who knew she was so f**king articulate (well, i guess we did know THAT one)?

Which Side Are You On?
By Suzanne Vega

In the last few months I have had a chance to review a song I wrote in October of 2007. It’s called “Daddy Is White,” and I haven’t sung it out loud yet in front of an audience except to record a demo of it. My daughter worries that people might make fun of me. However, I feel that it is a truthful song.

In my last blog post I mentioned that I was raised in a half-Puerto Rican family and spent five years in East Harlem as a young child. At some point, when I was about 9 years old, I learned that my birth father was actually English-Scottish-Irish. Or white, as we used to say in my old neighborhood. Actually, anybody looking at me could probably tell that this was the case, but I felt I was the last to know, partly because I was treated by my Puerto Rican abuelita and my aunt and uncle as one of their own. I was proud, and still am proud, to be a Vega.

One person wrote in after my last blog entry to ask whether I had any plans to record Puerto Rican songs or songs in Spanish as a way of honoring those roots. I thought about this, but have to say no, even though I have had experience singing songs in Spanish. One of my first performing jobs was with a group called The Alliance of Latin Arts. I was 15 years old, and it was a government sponsored job, where we traveled from borough to borough singing songs in Spanish, like “La Bamba.” I attracted attention wherever I went, and it wasn’t because of my singing. (Somewhere in storage in a folder marked “scrapbook” I have a flyer from that job — when I find it I will post it here.) If you could look at the photo, you would see one girl in the line of dark-skinned Latinas to the far right looking down, and that is me, sticking out as usual. .........

ok, here he is

the best guitarist that ever lived. i've posted a video or two of his before but here's my favorite song of roy buchanan's

the messiah will come again



(at about the 2 minute mark, he goes and starts playing notes that simply do NOT exist in this time space continuum)

and here's hey joe like you've never heard it before

prop 8 - the musical!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

found via americablog

numbers 7 and 8 trouble me

but all the rest are a go on MY list

(#7 because i believe MOST women in the sex industry are there because they are FORCED to be there and #8 i do think we need better diagnostics as to sexual predators and abusers but in my hearts of hearts i KNOW it is NOT someone we can cure or fix)

9 Ways to Halt the Right Wing Culture Wars and Bring Sanity to Sexual Policy

By David Rosen, CounterPunch.

The recent electoral victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party presents a unique opportunity to overturn the most perverse policy of the Bush administration and the religious right, the conservative repressive sexual agenda. The following nine proposals can help frame a new sexual agenda to be introduced in the first 100 days.

For the last three decades the religious right fought a take-no-prisoners war over popular morality. Taking power with Bush’s victory in 2000, Christian conservatives were finally in the position to impose their beliefs as public policy. And they did so with a vengeance. At the local, state and federal levels, religious zealots, working through the Republican party, took control of the apparatus of the State and aggressively implemented a diverse set of programs to further their goal of creating a morally upstanding, Christian society. Family life, sexual relations, education, scientific knowledge and popular entertainment became battlegrounds of

the culture wars.............

he really IS intent

on leaving us his legacy. let's pray (literally PRAY) all of this shite is reversible. they really MUST believe in the rapture. why else would they allow our earth to be raped?

Bush's Worst Midnight Regulation Yet
Posted by Tara Lohan

There are great running lists of all Bush's midnight regulations as he secures his infamous place as the "worst president ever" in our country's annals. Apparently not satisfied with nearly eight years of environmental rollbacks, deregulation, and blatant disregard for air, water, and climate, his latest midnight regulation may be one of the worst environmental assaults yet.

The Washington Post confirmed today that a ruling was approved to make it easier for coal companies to dump the rock and dirt waste that is blown off the tops of mountains in "mountaintop removal" (or MTR) coal mining into streams and valleys:

The rule is one of the most contentious of all the regulations emerging from the White House in President Bush's last weeks in office ...

A coalition of environmental groups said the rule would accelerate "the destruction of mountains, forests and streams throughout Appalachia."

Edward C. Hopkins, a policy analyst at the Sierra Club, said: "The E.P.A.'s own scientists have concluded that dumping mining waste into streams devastates downstream water quality. By signing off on this rule, the agency has abdicated its responsibility."...............

she's no sarevil palin!!!

on the LIGHTER side of the news......

Ros-Lehtinen hangs up on Obama. Twice.

Is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen a little paranoid?

Maybe.

On Wednesday, the Republican congresswoman got a call from President-elect Barack Obama, didn't believe it was him, and hung up on him. Twice.

According to Ros-Lehtinen's flack Alex Cruz, the congresswoman received the call on her cell phone from a Chicago-based number and an aide informed her that Obama wanted to speak to her. When Obama introduced himself, Ros-Lehtinen cut him off and said, "I'm sorry but I think this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks." Then she hung up.

Moments later, Obama tried again, this time through his soon-to-be chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

"Ileana, I cannot believe you hung up on the President-Elect," Emanuel said. And then--yes, you know what's coming--she hung up on Emanuel saying she "didn't believe the call was legitimate."

A short time later, Ros-Lehtinen received an urgent call from Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who informed her that she indeed hung up on Obama. .........

this is only the tip of the iceberg

i do not understand why men and women continue to enlist. after what happened to the vietnam vets (the medical troubles they've had AND the problems with the military and va saying those medical issues were service related) and what happened in desert storm and what is happening now. our men and women's lives, it would seem, are worthless (to some, NOT to me)

Soldiers sue Iraq contractor over toxic, cancer-causing dust
Nick Cargo

Sixteen soldiers are suing former Halliburton unit KBR, charging that its employees knowingly exposed them to a carcinogenic chemical in the course of their duties.

McManaway v. KBR, filed Wednesday at the U.S. District Court (Southern District of Indiana, Evansville), seeks to recover medical costs, along with monetary damages and monitoring for health problems including cancer, for sixteen Indiana National Guardsmen based in Tell City who were posted at a water treatment plant that KBR was commissioned to repair shortly after the American invasion, from April to September 2003. The Guardsmen charge that KBR was aware of dangerous levels of sodium dichromate on the premises, used to remove corrosion from pipes. Part of its chemical makeup is hexavalent chromium, which is known to cause lung cancer and birth defects. Sergeant First Class David Moore of Dubois, Indiana, was among those said to be affected: he died this year of chronic interstitial lung disease. His death was ruled service-related...........

because apparently god does hate

the gays (the blacks, the cathlics, the jews, the muslims, the hindus, the jains, the b'hai, the buddhists, the democrats, those that provide birth control and/or comprehensive sex education and EVERYONE else who doesn't think, eat, talk, walk and look like "them"

Conservative Episcopalians Vote to Create Alternative Branch
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Conservatives from the Episcopal Church voted yesterday to form their own branch of Anglicanism in the United States and said they would seek new recognition in the worldwide church because of their growing disenchantment over the ordination of an openly gay bishop and other liberal developments.

In the past five years, a small but growing number of Episcopal parishes and dioceses have voted to leave the church, but yesterday's vote, at a meeting in Wheaton, Ill., represents the biggest split for Anglicans and presents a new challenge to U.S. church leaders and the denomination's world spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. ........

oh my but this is SWEET

oh man can he PLAY

ronnie earl

(only one man could perhaps have bested him. that man is now gone from this earth. i've mentioned him before and i sure will mention him again. sit tight, k?)

why do people climb all over clapton when earl just jams rings around him? i don't get it

i think i rag on clapton so very much because of the horrid experience i had back in the day. i went to the hartford civic center to see clapton. his backup singers had gold lame on AND they were doing choreography. i would have forgiven that if i had gone to see madonna or cher or the like. BUT CLAPTON? naw, i NEVER forgave him for it (and i STILL think he's the most highly overrated guitarist out there)

i was unaware of this

and it's sickening, frightening and inhumane AND it was done by the un (among others including church organizations). children (and whole families) are dying

why isn't this broadcast on tv instead of the life and times of some idiotic reality show?

Roma Children Dying of Lead Poisoning

by: Paul Polansky, The New Kosova Report
This month, Germany's second largest NGO, the "Society for Threatened Peoples" will be sending its Head of Mission for Kosovo, Paul Polansky, to the House of Commons, London and to the EU Headquarters in Brussels in an attempt to save 130 Roma families placed by the United Nations in camps with life-threatening conditions.

Below is a shortened version of the speech delivered by Mr. Polansky in the Brussels hearing.

Two hours from here by plane, in Eastern Europe, are two death camps, mainly for children under the age of six years.

If these children don't die by the age of six, they will have irreversible brain damage for the rest of their short lives.

These camps have been running for nine years. They were built on the tailing stands of the biggest lead mine in Europe, and next to a toxic slagheap of 100 million tons.

These camps (there used to be four) were built by the UN administration in Kosovo and their implementing partner Action by Churches Working Together. The hurriedly assembled barracks were also built with old lead painted boards.

To date 77 people have died in these camps, mainly due to complications from lead poisoning. More than 50 women have also aborted because of the lead poisoning. One woman and her baby died at childbirth. During her pregnancy she was being treated for lead poisoning. After her death it was discovered by a well-known laboratory in Chicago that two of her surviving nine children has the highest lead levels in medical history.

According to medical experts from Germany and the United States who have visited the camps, every child conceived in these camps will be born with irreversible brain damage.

In November 1999, UNHCR took charge of homeless Gypsies and moved them to four hurriedly built camps on toxic wasteland, the only places the UN said were available. I protested, calling attention to UN officials and especially to the head of UNHCR in Pristina, that these toxic wastelands could be detrimental to the health of these IDPs (internally displaced people). UNHCR assured me that they had signed contracts with the local municipalities that these IDPs would be in these camps for only 45 days. At the end of 45 days, they would either have their homes rebuilt and moved back or would be taken as refugees to another country. Unfortunately, after almost nine years and many deaths, due to lead poisoning, these IDPs are still living on toxic wasteland............

can you imagine the living conditions

these men came from in their OWN countries in order to endure what conditions they're under in iraq? (AND at least some of them want to CONTINUE to work for the subcontractor for kbr)

Military Contractor in Iraq Holds Foreign Workers in Warehouses

by: Adam Ashton, McClatchy Newspapers
Baghdad - About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who're from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.

"It's really dirty," a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. "For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food - it's three half-liter (one pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it's not dal," he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish.

After McClatchy began asking questions about the men on Tuesday, the Kuwaiti contractor announced that it would return them to their home countries and pay them back salaries. Najlaa officials contended that they've cared for the men's basic needs while the company has tried to find them jobs in Iraq...

A subcontractor to KBR hired Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Indian and Sri Lankan men and is now confining them to windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport with no money or a place to work. (Photo: Times UK)

i fell in love with this video

twice by little dragon little dragon (found via feministing)

fgm

from a different angle. of course ALL angle are bad ones



(found via feministing)