The Sack Lunches

I put my carry-on in the luggage compartment and sat down in my assigned seat. It was going to be a long flight. "I'm glad I have a good book to read. Perhaps I will get a short nap," I thought.

Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation. "Where are you headed?" I asked the soldier seated nearest to me.

"Chicago - to Great Lakes Base. We'll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we're being deployed to Iraq."

After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sack lunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hours before we reached Chicago, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time.

As I reached for my wallet, I overheard a soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. "No, that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn't be worth five bucks. I'll wait till we get to Chicago."

His friend agreed. I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch. I walked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty-dollar bill. "Take a lunch to all those soldiers." She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. "My son was a soldier in Iraq ; it's almost like you are doing it for him."

Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, "Which do you like best - beef or chicken?"

"Chicken," I replied, wondering why she asked. She turned and went to the front of the plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class. "This is your thanks."

After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room. A man stopped me. "I saw what you did. I want to be part of it. Here, take this." He handed me twenty-five dollars.

Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked, I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand, an said, "I want to shake your hand."

Quickly unfastening my seat belt I stood and took the Captain's hand. With a booming voice he said, "I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot." I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.

Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.

When we landed in Chicago I gathered my belongings and started to deplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!

Soon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. "It will take you some time to reach the base. It will be about time for a sandwich. God Bless You."

Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travelers. As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals. It seemed so little...

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life wrote a blank check Made payable to The United States of America for an amount of up to and including my life. That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

(author unknown)

Archaeologist says he found oldest Hebrew writing

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer Matti Friedman, Associated Press Writer –




In this photo taken on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, Archeologist Yossi Garfinkel AP – In this photo taken on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008, Archeologist Yossi Garfinkel displays a ceramic shard bearing …

HIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel – An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he believes is the oldest known Hebrew inscription on a 3,000-year-old pottery shard — a find that suggests Biblical accounts of the ancient Israelite kingdom of David could have been based on written texts.

A teenage volunteer discovered the curved shard bearing five lines of faded characters in July in the ruins of an ancient town on a hilltop south of Jerusalem. Yossi Garfinkel, the Israeli archaeologist leading the excavations at Hirbet Qeiyafa, released his conclusions about the writing Thursday after months of study.

He said the relic is strong evidence that the ancient Israelites were literate and could chronicle events centuries before the Bible was written. This could suggest that some of the Bible's accounts were based on written records as well as oral traditions — adding credence to arguments that the Biblical account of history is more than myth...

3,000 year old Hebrew writing

Now...what a shock this would be...to find a pot shard witn 3000 year old Hebrew written on it! I really don't know why so many want to deny that there ever was a "real" King David? It is as I asked one group once, "What actual evidence can be presented that proves that there was not a real King David?"

Of course there is none...just as there is no evidence that there was no exodus out of Egypt as described in the Bible...etc.

Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate

By Andrew Orlowski, 29 October 2008


Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday - the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session.

In order to combat a projected two degree centigrade rise in global temperature, the Climate Change Bill pledges the UK to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The bill was receiving a third reading, which means both the last chance for both democratic scrutiny and consent.

The bill creates an enormous bureaucratic apparatus for monitoring and reporting, which was expanded at the last minute. Amendments by the Government threw emissions from shipping and aviation into the monitoring program, and also included a revision of the Companies Act (c. 46) "requiring the directors’ report of a company to contain such information as may be specified in the regulations about emissions of greenhouse gases from activities for which the company is responsible" by 2012.

Recently the American media has begun to notice the odd incongruity of saturation media coverage here which insists that global warming is both man-made and urgent, and a British public which increasingly doubts either to be true. 60 per cent of the British population now doubt the influence of humans on climate change, and more people than not think Global Warming won't be as bad "as people say"...

The Register

How wonderfully ironic! First October snow in London in 76 years...while they vote in "Global Warming" as a fact.

God is just loving making the wisdom of men look foolish. I can almost hear heaven laughing...

We have terrorists murdering women and children in the Congo...axes and machetes hacking...clubs and sticks bludgeoning to death innocent humans...


Terrorism in the Congo

'Kidnapped'

"We came over here because the LRA looted and burnt our houses," says Marie Bimisa, who fled from Kiliwa, a village north of Dungu.

They encircled us and forced us to follow them deep in the bush up to the River Dungu
Jean Tahuko, 15
"They killed our local chief and then kidnapped children from school. They killed people with axes and machetes. They burnt down all houses before they left."

According to official sources, about 1,000 LRA fighters are estimated to be operating in the area.

full BBC article

I guess we just need to go negotiate with the terrorists, find out what their demands are, grant them their desires, so they will promise to be conscience citizens of the world...

Some women are finally getting the bias...and it's about time! First he degraded Hillary...and now it is Palin...


Former Hillary (Now McCain) Supporters Say New Obama Ad Featuring Palin Winking Is Sexist

October 29,2008

They don't like the new Obama ad, these women.

Shelly Mandell, president of Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women: "I am outraged by the new ad put out by Barack Obama. It is sexist and demeaning to women. These tactics started with Hillary Clinton and continue, growing even more disgusting with Gov. Palin. I was a Hillstar for Hillary and an avid supporter. Trashing two women clearly in a sexist manner in one election is an outrage and must be identified and stopped. There must be consequences. Let female Obama supporters take a good look at this and still believe their candidate supports women's rights and women's dignity..."

full NOW article from abc news

Arrogant and defiant. I saw it when the Senator from Chicago flipped Hillary off in the middle of one of his speeches during the primaries...stood there laughing...the crowd laughing...disgusting...absolutely disgusting demonstration of a demeaning character.

article and video of the "flip-off"

And, the women were...silent. I was...dumbfounded at the silence.

Every American who supports this person is guilty of overt sexism against women...pure and simple.

xtnyoda, shalomed

American Thinker article









October 29, 2008
Negative Liberties and Obama Newspeak
By Bruce Walker
The 2001 audio tape of Barack Obama describing the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties" reveals an utterly Orwellian Obama. How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as "positive liberty" be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.

Notions like "positive liberty" are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of "positive liberty" as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.

Obama could have spoken about the limited value of liberty. Government does some things which reduce our private rights and yet which increase the common good. Politics is all about where the boundary between broad notions of promoting the general welfare by state coercion and preserving liberty should be. Politicians on the Left have often argued that liberty should be reined in more tightly so that "the people" can live better. But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument...

This is a must read...go read it all...then read it again...then meditate on it...

Whoever Bruce Walker is...he is a genuine thinker.

No problem here...right?






Violence toward women...now that's artistic humor.

Shucks, it's only halloween man...get over it!

One thing I've learned about blindness...well political and social blindness...is that it selectivley chooses what it doesn't want to see.

Now...how's that for "moral" conviction?

The Wall Street Journal is obviously worried, very worried...in a current article about the Senator from Chicago who is running for President of the United States of America...they write...


{Speaking in July 2007 at a conference of Planned Parenthood, he said: "[W]e need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

On this view, plaintiffs should usually win against defendants in civil cases; criminals in cases against the police; consumers, employees and stockholders in suits brought against corporations; and citizens in suits brought against the government. Empathy, not justice, ought to be the mission of the federal courts, and the redistribution of wealth should be their mantra.

In a Sept. 6, 2001, interview with Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ-FM, Mr. Obama noted that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society," and "to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical."

He also noted that the Court "didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted." That is to say, he noted that the U.S. Constitution as written is only a guarantee of negative liberties from government -- and not an entitlement to a right to welfare or economic justice.

This raises the question of whether Mr. Obama can in good faith take the presidential oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution" as he must do if he is to take office. Does Mr. Obama support the Constitution as it is written, or does he support amendments to guarantee welfare? Is his provision of a "tax cut" to millions of Americans who currently pay no taxes merely a foreshadowing of constitutional rights to welfare, health care, Social Security, vacation time and the redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the candidate ought to be asked to answer these questions before the election rather than after...}

WSJ article

So...the Senator from Chicago thinks that the courts should "favor" the little guy over "powerful" people and institutions?

Why then have we not heard about the use of national intelligence against Joe the Plumber? And, that from the Senator from Chicago's own camp?

We are to be led into a legal precedence where the socio/economic condition of the individual takes precedence over law?

And, the WSJ's question about can the Senator from Chicago in good faith swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States is a vital question...esp when the Senator from Chicago has on more than one occasion openly expressed sarcastic, as well as in his mind reasoned, disdain for the Constitution of the United States of America.

It now makes one question just exactly when the Senator from Chicago thinks the United States of America was ever truly great? That has been his pitch...to restore the once and lost greatness of America...when Senator, do you think America was ever truly great...if her founding document is so detestably flawed?

Will you answer this question...? Senator...?

Pastor becomes IRS target
Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 10/26/2008







(Bishop Robert Smith)

A group that supports the false philosophy of separation of church and state has filed action against another pastor for having his say about politics.

Bishop Robert E. Smith is senior pastor at Word of Outreach and Christian Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has lodged a complaint against him for endorsing John McCain for president from the pulpit on October 12.

"Bishop Smith knowingly and flagrantly violated the law and has even dared the IRS to investigate him for it," says Americans United leader Barry Lynn in a press release. "I hope the federal tax agency promptly takes him up on that."

But Smith contends the law upon which the complaint was filed with the Internal Revenue Service is unconstitutional.

"Congress cannot make any law that prohibits the free exercise of my faith," the pastor explains. "So a part of my faith as a minister is not only to deal with issues, but to deal with the people who are making the laws that affect the issues -- because I preach a two-sided gospel: the gospel of Christ for salvation, and the gospel of the kingdom for the political stability of its people. So that gets into politics."

The Arkansas pastor remembers a time when pastors could speak freely from the pulpit -- and did. "Well, that's the way it has been," he laments, "but since it's coming out in the form as it is now, a lot of the pastors are getting cold feet and they're backing up."

Ark Times article

What is just a little ironic about this is that for decades the "black" pastors in central Arkansas officially endorsed their selected candidates...publicly...both verbally and in writing. No one said a word about it then...of course the candidates they openly endorsed were always democrats.

Now we have a "black" pastor endorsing a candidate other than a democrat and it's, "Call in the IRS!"

I've no dog in this fight, I just am enjoying the hypocrisy and the blatant double standard.

Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

Columnist Michael Malone Looks at Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
Column By MICHAEL S. MALONE
Oct. 24, 2008


The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The media have covered this presidential campaign with a bias and that ultimately could lead to its downfall.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling...

...what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del...

Joe the Plumber

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power...

read the full abc report

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation."

I'm honored to have found one such as this journalist who senses the same dread for the MSM over their biased coverage.(Certainly not comparing myself to this accomplished writer!)

Perhaps it is too late for the MSM to even begin attempting to rectify their insanity...then again...perhaps they are counting on the opportunities they will have for sensational headlines with a democratic win? Could we envision some of those headlines now...selling papers..."READ ALL ABOUT IT...!!!"

"CONGRESS APPOINTS COMMITTEE TO BEGIN WORK ON REWRITING CONSTITUTION"
"SMALL BUSINESS CRASH ON NEAR HORIZON"
"HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS FEARED DEAD FROM NUKE ATTACK ON TEL AVIE ISRAEL"
"PRESIDENT IN NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN AND SYRIA FOR TRUCE"
"RUSSIA MOUNTING TROOPS FOR PUSH INTO EUROPE"
"OIL PRICES RISE TO NEAR $200 DOLLARS A BARREL DUE TO WORLD CONFLICT"
"HEALTH CARE SUFFERING LACK OF SUPPLIES ON NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT"

Now, those headlines ought to reinvigorate sales for the paps.

XtnYoda, shalomed

Yesterday it was ol' Barney I quoted as to his desire to slash the military budget.

Today it is Barack himself you will see promise to not only drastically cut the military budget...but he actually promises to begin working with Russia to DISARM the United States of America!

here is the link

And, here is what he clearly says he will do as president.

“I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems....I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material. And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBM’s off hair-trigger alert.”

With the current world situation of crazed terrorists and genocidal hatred this sounds just a little...bizarre to me...to say the least...OK...it sounds absolutely preposterous or remarkably naive...

Go watch the video for yourself...he is quite determined in his one minute declaration.

H/T to Bill Whittle of National Review you can read here

Frank envisions post-election stimulus from Democrats
By Steve Urbon
Standard-Times senior correspondent
October 24, 2008

NEW BEDFORD — After the November election, Democrats will push for a second economic stimulus package that includes money for the states' stalled infrastructure projects, along with help paying for healthcare expenses, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said Thursday.

In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay.

The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.

"The people of Iraq want us out, and we want to stay over their objection," he said. "It's extraordinary." The Maliki government in Iraq "can't sell (the withdrawal deal with the U.S.) because it sounds like we're going to stay too long."...

article

This is the same economic measures that Clinton used for his economic efforts...reduce the military, slash the military, cut the military.

All the while doing noting other than encouraging terrorism by placating terrorist's attacks, noble negotiation, and otherwise assuming that if we just ignore it then it will go away.

Well, it didn't.

Slashing the military only encourages terrorists.

This song and dance has been sung before.

It's really difficult to see such quick evidence unfold that this writer suggests is happening/about to happen! Many folds are flocking away from the MSM to find non-biased reporting elsewhere. It was just yesterday we reported this was coming/happening...and lo and behold...

Star-Ledger cuts newsroom staff by nearly half
Oct 24
By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK (AP) - The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.

Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said Friday that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees. He said 17 buyout applications were rejected.

Some staffers already have left, and others are leaving by year's end, many after the elections.

"We've got from now to the end of the year to figure out what adjustments we have to make," Willse said. "We will be able to produce an abundance of good stories. We will still have a good paper but we have to figure out exactly how to accomplish that." ...

repoort in full

So...go ahead and keep your arrogant noses stuck up in the air dear media folks...just like the turkey will watch it rain until it literally drowns because it doesn't have enough sense to close it's mouth.

XtnYoda, shalomed

Analyst: Network news paying price for liberal bias
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 10/24/2008

Media analyst Robert Knight believes the consistent drop in viewership of the mainstream media news programs shows that Americans are on to the media's liberal bias, most notably their glowing coverage of Democrat Barack Obama's presidential run.

A study by Nielsen Media Research shows that the Big Three network news programs experienced a sharp drop in viewers last week during the height of the presidential campaign. CBS Evening News with Katie Couric lost a half-million viewers, as did World News with Charlie Gibson on ABC. Ratings leader NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams dropped from 8.2 million viewers to 7.8 million.

Robert Knight is director of the Culture and Media Institute (CMI), a division of the Media Research Center. He believes the ratings decline indicates that Americans have a healthy skepticism of the three evening news shows.

"The fact that this is happening at a time of year when a lot of people are glued to the screen -- right before an election -- shows that there is a systemic problem with the network news. People don't believe it any more. They're tuning out by the millions," Knight explains. "This continues a trend we've seen over the last couple decades, but it's experienced a real uptick lately. Katie Couric in particular is down below figures Dan Rather descended to after he misplayed his accusation of President Bush and his National Guard records."

full article

How is it now that they say it? "By, by!"

Obama seeks delay in voter fraud investigation
Jim Brown - OneNewsNow - 10/24/2008



Barack Obama's presidential campaign is pressuring the Department of Justice to put off a probe of voter registration fraud allegations leveled against the now infamous liberal group ACORN.

Lawyers for the Obama campaign have written U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to delay any investigations of voter fraud until after the election. The Obama campaign's general counsel, Robert Bauer, says the FBI should instead be investigating those who have lodged complaints of voter registration fraud against groups like ACORN. Bauer contends that concerns about voter registration fraud are "manufactured allegations" being used to intimidate and disenfranchise low-income voters.

Former Oklahoma Republican Congressman Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow for government relations at the Heritage Foundation. He says the Obama campaign is encouraging ACORN to continue its "nefarious" conduct.

"They're saying that they think that there's a plot between the McCain campaign and the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout by complaining about voting fraud and irregularities in registration, and so forth," says Istook...

article

So...now we are to believe that the United States Justice Department is in cahoots with the McCain campaign to suppress low-income voters?

This stuff is simply amazing, the twisting and manipulating.

Oh, and the MSM's journalists are all over this...that the Democratic party's candidate's lawyers are trying to forestall the investigation until after the election? Have you seen the articles?

Don't worry if you haven't...you won't in the MSM...

Cryosphere Today

Here is a great site! Animated pictures from outer space of both polar regions that are up to date to the current date! Features include compare and contrast pictures by date for the past several years.

I have pictured yesterdays picture of the north polar region. Watch the animation of the past 30 days and be prepared to watch in amazement as you will see with your own eyes the virtual explosion of new ice coverage take place before your very eyes!

Some of their comments are of a "global warming" nature, but it won't be long before the site administrators will be forced to concede that "global warming" is a hoax theory destined for the history books of discredited and embarrassing junk science that proves we should keep science and politicians far away from each other.

"Global Warming" will serve to demonstrate once again that allowing politicians and the lure of tax revenues leads to corrupt orthodoxy...and the perversion of whatever industry or entity that control is sought over...by the politicians holding tax revenue.

Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner delivers environmental message at Harvard

Thu Oct 23


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Al Gore returned to his alma mater to help Harvard University launch its new greenhouse gas reduction effort.

The former vice president and 1969 Harvard graduate, told a campus audience on Wednesday that it's time to find ways to make better use of knowledge to save the global environment.

Riffing off Harvard's Latin motto of "truth," he said the challenge is to find truth in the climate crisis and "use that as a basis of a new concept of who we are."

Gore, who has shared the Nobel Peace Prize and starred in the Academy Award-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," also received an annual service award.

yahoo report

Hey, Al, looking for "truth" in the "climate crisis?" I would be more inclined to say you are "looking to dupe in the "climate crisis."

I was never good at telling a lie, esp. after it was revealed that I was trying to lie...so...how does it feel? You know...to be exposed as a great fabricator...and then going on to expound the very fabrication you have been exposed in spewing?

I mean...to lie in the face of people that know you are lying...just what does that feel like?

That's what I'd like to know...sort of like to know...OK, on second thought...you can keep the understanding...I don't want to know.

chuck

House GOP leader asks Bush to cut off ACORN funds

By JIM ABRAMS

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican leader John Boehner on Wednesday urged President Bush to block all federal funds to a grass-roots community group that has been accused of voter registration fraud.

"It is evident that ACORN is incapable of using federal funds in a manner that is consistent with the law," Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote Bush, saying that funds should be blocked until all federal investigations into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now are completed.

ACORN, a group that has led liberal causes since it was formed in 1970, this year hired more than 13,000 part-time workers to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods in 21 states. Some of the 1.3 million registration cards submitted to local election officials, using the names of cartoon characters or pro football players, were obviously phony, spurring GOP charges of widespread misconduct.

ACORN has said it was its own quality-control workers who first noticed problem registration cards, flagged them and submitted them to local election officials in every state that is now investigating them.

To commit fraud, a person would have to show up on Election Day with identification bearing the fake name.

Local law enforcement agencies in about a dozen states are investigating fake registrations submitted by ACORN workers and the FBI is reviewing those cases.

Boehner said his office had determined that ACORN had received more than $31 million in direct federal funding since 1998. He said the group had likely received far more indirectly through federal block grants to states and localities. "Immediate action is necessary to ensure that no additional tax dollars are directed to ACORN while it is under investigation," he wrote Bush.

Boehner said he and other Republicans were also asking the Justice Department to investigate ACORN's connections to the home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying ACORN "appears to have played a key role in the irresponsible schemes that led to the current financial meltdown."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has asked if ACORN, which he accused of perpetuating voter registration fraud, was "destroying the fabric of democracy." ACORN and other advocacy groups have suggested that Republicans are exaggerating the issue to keep the underprivileged, who tend to vote Democratic, from casting ballots.

AP report

Will a true investigative reporter be looking into these continued reports about ACORN from concerned legislators? Is there not one journalist with a shred of integrity left in the MSM?

This is the real story of our day...and it's not about ACORN...but about the corruption of "journalism." Gone for now are the days when journalists prided themselves with "informing" the people, now their obvious mantra is "guiding" the people. For, what we see is that "journalists" no longer see the American public as worthy of logic or thought, but rather "journalists" see the American public as "sheep" who need "journalists" as "shepherds"...

You see, it's not about informing the American public so they can make informed decisions, it's about forming the American public's opinions for the American public, because the American public is too simple minded to form proper opinion from raw truth.

So the real story is that journalists no longer trust the American public.

And, one day, the "journalist's" lack of trust, when finally figured out by the American public, will be journalism's "ides of March." For you see, journalist's lack of trust is based on the now evident fact that journalist's can't be trusted.

It's kind of like the American public is going to discover that "journalists" have been sleeping around in other lovers beds...a thing we call "adultery." And, once that "unfaithfulness" is discovered...there will be hell to pay.

(And, it has already started.)

Here is a hard hitting piece from Orson Scott Card...telling the truth about the "lie-protectors" that we formerly referred to as the "media." A "hat's off" to Brutally Honest.





Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

...If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

journalist Card's article

Scientists in England have learned five steps to happiness in life. They then go on on to elaborate on some rather surprising discoveries about the last step.

Steps to happiness

Connect
Developing relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours will enrich your life and bring you support

Be active
Sports, hobbies such as gardening or dancing, or just a daily stroll will make you feel good and maintain mobility and fitness

Be curious
Noting the beauty of everyday moments as well as the unusual and reflecting on them helps you to appreciate what matters to you

Learn
Fixing a bike, learning an instrument, cooking – the challenge and satisfaction brings fun and confidence

Give
Helping friends and strangers links your happiness to a wider community and is very rewarding

...Among the other issues it highlights is a strong link between mental illness and debt. Half of people in Britain who are in debt have a mental disorder, compared with just 16 per cent of the general population.

Rachel Jenkins, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who led this section of the report, said: “We’ve known for a while there’s a link between mental health issues and low income, but what more recent research has shown is that that relationship is probably mostly accounted for by debt.”

Times Online article

Even though "global warming" is proven a hoax of remarkable proportions, we can expect this from a President Obama, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Obama's Carbon Ultimatum

The coming offer you won't be able to refuse.

Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming "solution." But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail -- or rather, greenmail -- Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda.
[Review & Outlook] AP

Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that classify carbon as a dangerous pollutant under current clean air laws. That move would impose new regulation and taxes across the entire economy, something that is usually the purview of Congress. Mr. Grumet warned that "in the absence of Congressional action" 18 months after Mr. Obama's inauguration, the EPA would move ahead with its own unilateral carbon crackdown anyway.

Well, well. For years, Democrats -- including Senator Obama -- have been howling about the "politicization" of the EPA, which has nominally been part of the Bush Administration. The complaint has been that the White House blocked EPA bureaucrats from making the so-called "endangerment finding" on carbon. Now it turns out that a President Obama would himself wield such a finding as a political bludgeon. He plans to issue an ultimatum to Congress: Either impose new taxes and limits on carbon that he finds amenable, or the EPA carbon police will be let loose to ravage the countryside.

The EPA hasn't made a secret of how it would like to centrally plan the U.S. economy under the 1970 Clean Air Act. In a blueprint released in July, the agency didn't exactly say it'd collectivize the farms -- but pretty close, down to the "grass clippings."

The EPA would monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of "lawn and garden equipment" as well as everything with an engine, like cars, planes and boats. Eco-bureaucrats envision thousands of other emissions limits on all types of energy. Coal-fired power and other fossil fuels would be ruled out of existence, while all other prices would rise as the huge economic costs of the new regime were passed down the energy chain to consumers.

These costs would far exceed the burden of a straight carbon tax or cap-and-trade system enacted by Congress, because the Clean Air Act was never written to apply to carbon and other greenhouse gases. It's like trying to do brain surgery with a butter knife. Mr. Obama wants to move ahead anyway because he knows that the costs of any carbon program will be high. He knows, too, that Congress -- even with strongly Democratic majorities -- might still balk at supporting tax increases on their constituents, even if it is done in the name of global warming.

Climate-change politics don't break cleanly along partisan lines. The burden of a carbon clampdown will fall disproportionately on some states over others, especially the 25 interior states that get more than 50% of their electricity from coal. Rustbelt manufacturing states like Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will get hit hard too. Once President Bush leaves office, the coastal Democrats pushing hardest for a climate change program might find their colleagues splitting off, especially after they vote for a huge tax increase on incomes.

Thus Messrs. Obama and Grumet want to invoke a political deus ex machina driven by a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act to force Congress's hand. Mr. Obama and Democrats can then tell Americans that Congress must act to tax and regulate carbon to save the country from even worse bureaucratic consequences. It's Mr. Obama's version of Jack Benny's old "your money or your life" routine, but without the punch line.

The strategy is most notable for what it says about the climate-change lobby and its new standard bearer. Supposedly global warming is the transcendent challenge of the age, but Mr. Obama evidently doesn't believe he'll be able to convince his own party to do something about it without a bureaucratic ultimatum. Mr. Grumet justified it this way:

"The U.S. has to move quickly domestically . . . We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus."

Normally a democracy reaches consensus through political debate and persuasion, but apparently for Mr. Obama that option is merely a nuisance. It's another example of "change" you'll be given no choice but to believe in.

Wall Street Journal article

This article should be read and contemplated very, very carefully by every American. Obama will attempt to sidestep congress to levy taxes on the American people by using the prop of junk science about "global warming"...

Will the MSM pick up this report? Please...don't hold your breath.

The burning of the Branch Davidian's in Waco, Texas...remember?

Speaking in Seattle on Sunday, Biden said he could guarantee that the world will want to find out if Obama is up to the job, which he assured voters he is.

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking," Biden said.

"Remember I said it standing here. if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough -- I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen," Biden continued.

The Delaware senator's remarks were the second of their kind over the weekend. At a fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden said Obama's challengers will "find out this guy's got steel in his spine" when he is tested...

a promise of peace?

"Say it ain't so, Joe!"

I thought the projected new administration was to bring in a new age of peace, prosperity, and world understanding?

Biden tells Israel to get used to the idea of a nuclear Iran...now he tells us to get ready for some major world wide traumatic event that is going to test the mettle of Obama...

Reminds one of how Clinton was tested within his first six months by the dreaded "Branch Davidian's" in Waco, Texas. He had to be so strong...so they were all burned to death...women, children, all except a precious few that were able to excape...and we didn't all agree, but we stood by him...

chuck

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof
Posted: October 20, 2008, 10:26 AM by Kelly McParland
Lorne Gunter


In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.

Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.

On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.

Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate...

National Post full article

Suit against God thrown out over lack of address
Wed Oct 15
This is State Senator
Ernie Chambers
LINCOLN, Neb.


A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator's lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn't properly served due to his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers has said he filed the lawsuit to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

On Tuesday, however, Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled that under state law a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a lawsuit to move forward.

"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Polk wrote.

Chambers, who graduated from law school but never took the bar exam, thinks he's found a hole in the judge's ruling.

"The court itself acknowledges the existence of God," Chambers said Wednesday. "A consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience."

Therefore, Chambers said, "Since God knows everything, God has notice of this lawsuit."

Chambers has 30 days to decide whether to appeal. He said he hasn't decided yet....

comcast report

And here are part of the original charges against God by Chambers:

Chambers, a United States Senator has denounced God in a court of law, accusing him of terrorism because Mr. God is the cause of the world's earthquakes; because “God is responsible for hurricanes; lightening storms; Tsunamis and the floods that kill U.S. citizens,” and then later - the Senator said, “God is having fun at the expense of human beings" and therefore, the Senator of the United States asked that "God be condemned as a terrorist and sent to jail.”

I wish I had a laughing face for this ridiculous action by Chambers. He should be charged with at least court costs.

God Bless the Judge for having to endure such nonsense from a Nebraska state senator.

Who elects these people?

A scripture and a prayer for one struggling with the fear of death.

Eph 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
Eph 1:12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
Eph 1:13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,
Eph 1:14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
(ESV)

Dear One.
This child, this child...
Is longing for the fresh breeze
Of heaven.
Like a cool draught
that calms the fervent blast,
Fill this struggling one...
With peace
That only you can grant...
and that right early.

Iran hails world financial crisis as 'end of capitalism'

Iranian leaders say the world financial crisis indicates the end of capitalism, the failure of liberal democracy and divine punishment -- marking the superiority of the Islamic republic's political model.

"The school of Marxism has collapsed and the sound of the West's cracking liberal democracy is now being heard," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday, recalling the fate of the Soviet Union.

Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is backed by Khamenei, said on Tuesday that "it is the end of capitalism."

Such convictions can be traced back to the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which Ahmadinejad has sought to revive since he rose to power in 2005.

The firebrand president, who has not missed a chance to denounce Western "decadence" since his election, has exploited the scale of the global crisis to play up his argument.

He benefits from the luxury that the Tehran stock market has been unaffected by the losses that bourses in neighbouring Gulf states have suffered. That stability is attributable to the absence of foreign investors and to the government's firm grip on economic activity.

Several Iranian newspapers, regardless of their reformist or conservative leanings, have also blamed the global economic crisis on excessive liberalism.

And some officials, such as the head of Iran's electoral watchdog body, have come up with less conventional theories and branded the turmoil as "divine punishment."

"These people see the outcome of their bad deeds. This problem has spread to Europe now which makes us happy. The unhappier they are the happier we become," Ayatollah Ali Janati, who heads the Guardians Council, said in last Friday's prayer sermon.

Ahmadinejad has recently echoed that, saying "the reason of their defeat is that they have forgotten God and piety." ...

article

Perhaps just a little premature folks, just a little premature. Let's see now, the list of America's dooms-day prophets continues to grow...Falwell, P Robertson, Jeremiah Wright, now Iran's leadership...and Iran with 30% interest swallowing her economy up as I write...perhaps just a little premature to count capitalism out just yet...

Hey, by the way Iran...with all that "interest free" money to loan...how about sending some of it this way?

God Bless...seriously...God Bless your people.

chuck

A hard working plumber finally elicited the truth from the democratic candidate for President. Robin Hood is seeming to convince a great number of Americans that rewarding...the lower economic class by penalizing success, hard work, and determination is the way to go!

(Well, it might not be the best way to go, but it just might win one an election.)

Joe Wurzelbacher approached the candidate.

Wurzelbacher said he planned to become the owner of a small plumbing business that will take in more than the $250,000 amount at which Obama plans to begin raising tax rates.

"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the blue-collar worker asked.

After Obama responded that it would, Wurzelbacher continued: "I've worked hard . . . I work 10 to 12 hours a day and I'm buying this company and I'm going to continue working that way. I'm getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream."

"It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama told him. "I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success, too.

Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

NY Post article

Pure socialist rhetoric. Seems I can almost see Regan turning over in his grave.

chuck

Here's Jackson grinning as cutting away at Barack, in back alley methods of course...

JACKSON ON OBAMA'S AMERICA: Expects Obama to stop "putting Israel's interests first" in making Mideast policy.

By AMIR TAHERI, EVIAN, FRANCE

PREPARE for a new America: That's the message that the Rev. Jesse Jackson conveyed to participants in the first World Policy Forum, held at this French lakeside resort last week.

He promised "fundamental changes" in US foreign policy - saying America must "heal wounds" it has caused to other nations, revive its alliances and apologize for the "arrogance of the Bush administration."

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

Jackson believes that, although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they'll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

"Obama is about change," Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. "And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it."

..."We helped him start his career," says Jackson. "And then we were always there to help him move ahead. He is the continuation of our struggle for justice not only for the black people but also for all those who have been wronged."

Will Obama's election close the chapter of black grievances linked to memories of slavery?..."No, that chapter won't be closed," he says. "However, Obama's victory will be a huge step in the direction we have wanted America to take for decades."

Jackson rejects any suggestion that Obama was influenced by Marxist ideas in his youth. "I see no evidence of that," he says. "Obama's thirst for justice and equality is rooted in his black culture."

But is Obama - who's not a descendant of slaves - truly a typical American black?

Jackson emphatically answers yes: "You don't need to be a descendant of slaves to experience the oppression, the suffocating injustice and the ugly racism that exists in our society," he says. "Obama experienced the same environment as all American blacks did. It was nonsense to suggest that he was somehow not black enough to feel the pain."

...He sees a broad public loss of confidence in the nation's institutions: "We have lost confidence in our president, our Congress, our banking system, our Wall Street and our legal system to protect our individual freedoms. . . I don't see how we could regain confidence in all those institutions without a radical change of direction."

...On Iran, he strongly supports Obama's idea of opening a direct dialogue with the leadership in Tehran. "We've got to talk to tell them what we want and hear what they want," Jackson says. "Nothing is gained by not talking to others."

Would that mean ignoring the four UN Security Council resolutions that demand an end to Iran's uranium-enrichment program? Jackson says direct talks wouldn't start without preparations.

"Barack wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy," he says. "He also wants adequate preparatory work. We must enter the talks after the ground has been prepared," he says....

"Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims," Jackson says. "Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith."

article

If one realizes what one is reading, one will readily see the hatred and all out effort to paint Barack as terrifying as possible to mainland America.

Not very subtly either. Jackson wants Obama beaten...badly beaten...

Probably one of the strongest reasons to seriously consider voting for Obama.

Here is Trooper Wooten who has admitted that he tasered Palin's 10 year old nephew, who was his step-son at the time of the crime.

Trooper admits he Tasered Palin nephew
Article from: The Courier-Mail

From correspondents in Anchorage

September 10, 2008 11:31pm

ALASKAN State Trooper Mike Wooten admitted yesterday he had used a Taser stun gun on Sarah Palin's nephew, his stepson, but claimed he was no danger to her family.

Mr Wooten - who is Mrs Palin's former brother-in-law - is at the heart of a legislative investigation into whether the Republican vice-presidential nominee abused her power as Alaska Governor.

The state legislature is investigating whether she fired former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan because he would not dismiss Mr Wooten, who went through a messy divorce from Mrs Palin's sister, Molly...

article

I would not only have fired Walt Monegan for not firing Wooten, I would have pressed charges against him for failing to report a felony abuse against a minor child. That would be the only moral thing to do. And all those who are riding Palin over this are likewise being protective of a child abuser, and that a state trooper, which makes the crime even worse.

US to buy stake in banks; first since Depression

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer


WASHINGTON - The government will buy an ownership stake in a broad array of American banks for the first time since the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said late Friday, announcing the historic step after stock markets jolted still lower around the world despite all efforts to slow the selling stampede.

Separately, the U.S. and the globe's other industrial powers pledged to take "decisive action and use all available tools" to prevent a worldwide economic catastrophe.

"This is a period like none of us has ever seen before," declared Paulson at a rare Friday night news conference. He said the government program to purchase stock in private U.S. financial firms will be open to a broad array of institutions, including banks, in an effort to help them raise desperately needed money.

The administration received the authority to take such direct action in the $700 billion economic rescue bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed last week.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown
God is certainly at work in the hearts of His people. It is easy to castigate blame, and for certain there are some to blame...but...

Let us begin at the House of God. We have assumed that debt, non-secured debt, is quite the appropriate thing to do. We have made it a life-style. Buy now, pay later, easy payments...living on the edge of financial collapse with any unexpected turn...and the turn has arrived. By diving deeper and deeper into an entitlement mentality we have buried ourselves in this wretched position.

Oh yes, Joe American is mad...and understandably so...but Joe Christian should be on his face in abject repentance and grief. Look around you. There is not a hair breadth of difference between the economics of the typical Christian and the typical Non-Christian...and Jesus had a great deal to say about money and the wise use of it. Matter of fact...Jesus spoke five times more about the importance of wise stewardship than any other single topic...heaven, hell, salvation...you name it...five(5) times more than any other topic.

We should proclaim a solemn fast and do business with God and the truth of God's Word. We need to get our own houses in order...before advising others on getting their houses in order.

The Book still says, "If My People, called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways...then I will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin...and heal their land."

The land needs healing, and a repentant church is the only sure help.

Ah, yes, we like to talk about taking responsibility...talk is cheap.

XtnYoda, shalomed aka chuck

The investigative report concludes that a family grudge wasn't the sole reason Gov. Sarah Palin fired the public safety commissioner but says it likely was a contributing factor.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's Republican ticket.

Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.

The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.
The panel found that Palin let the family grudge influence her decision-making even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed. "I feel vindicated," Monegan said. "It sounds like they've validated my belief and opinions. And that tells me I'm not totally out in left field."

Branchflower said Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act....

But the panel of lawmakers voted to release the report, although not without dissension.

"I think there are some problems in this report," said Republican state Sen. Gary Stevens, a member of the panel. "I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye."

The nearly 300-page report does not recommend sanctions or a criminal investigation.

MSNBC article
OK, a grudge a "contributing factor" but not the "sole factor." No recommended sanctions nor a recommended criminal investigation...

So be it.

Barack thinks that William Ayers just might be rehabilitated? This photo was taken in August of 2001. Doesn't look very rehabilitated to me...standing on the American Flag...
The article that featured the picture quotes Ayers during the interview as saying...

Talk to him for any length of time and some rhetoric of the past slips into the conversation. "I think there will be another mass political movement," he predicts, "because I believe that the kind of injustice that is built into our world will not go quietly into the night."

Bill Ayers...still feeling the injustice.
chicago mag

And the current article where Barack muses that Ayers has changed...

The Illinois senator again did not mention McCain's attacks for associating with a former 1960s radical, William Ayers. When asked on a radio talk show, however, Obama said he thought Ayers, now a college professor and neighbor in Chicago with whom he worked on community projects several years ago, was rehabilitated...

yahoo article

Standing on the American Flag...hands in pockets...smug face...not quite my idea of rehabilitation.

I have a question...Why doesn't some American journalist just go and do an interview with William Ayers? Is the man in hiding? Will he not speak to the American people?

Farrakhan on Obama: 'The Messiah is absolutely speaking'
'Barack has captured the youth,' will bring about 'universal change'
Posted: October 09, 2008

© 2008 WorldNetDaily


Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, another powerful Chicago-based political figure associated with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other long-time associates of Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, is leaving no doubt about what he thinks of the leader in the campaign for the White House.

He says when Obama talks "the Messiah is absolutely speaking."

Addressing a large crowd behind a podium with a Nation of Islam Saviour's Day 2008 sign, Farrakhan proclaims,

"You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn't care anything about. That's a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking."

article

Well, ol' Farrakhan is doing everything in his power to ensure the defeat of Obama! This must be Farrakhan's way of paying Obama back for throwing him under the bus...along with almost every other person Obama has used to "make it to the top" and then to turn around and throw them in his scrap heap of denials and incensed, "Well, they just don't know who I am!" or "I denounce them" statements. He's just about thrown everyone under the bus who has ever helped him rise to the top is seems.

Pretty soon there is going to be a back-lash for Barack.

I am thinking of what is called an opportunistic infection. Following is a pretty good definition from MedicineNet.com

Opportunistic infection: An infection that occurs because of a weakened immune system. Opportunistic infections are a particular danger for people with AIDS. The HIV virus itself does not cause death, but the opportunistic infections that occur because of its effect on the immune system can.

So you go into a weakened system, come along side them and use them...ultimately for one's own benefit...then denounce them and deny you knew who or what they were...really pitiful when you think about it...pitiful. I'm actually feeling rather sorry for the Wrights, Ayers, Farrakans, etc...who have invested so much in this man...to have him then turn around and slam them, embarrass them, belittle them, denounce them, and in so doing convince us how noble he is...

Yes, I think an opportunistic infection just might be quite appropriate.

XtnYoda, shalomed aka chuck