Current Events - Actual things on the News

[JACkory]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the murder of millions of turkeys from across the world.

[RocDoc]

ha-ha-ha-ha-HAW!

akurat!

Obama pulled off the swindle of the year


<sub>Charles Krauthammer

December 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 — and House Democrats don't have a clue that he did. In the deal struck last week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years — which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?

If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years — $630 billion of it above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts.

No mean achievement. After all, these are the same Republicans who spent 2010 running on limited government and reducing debt. And this budget busting occurs less than a week after the president's deficit commission had supposedly signaled a new national consensus of austerity and frugality.

Some Republicans are crowing that Stimulus II is the Republican way — mostly tax cuts — rather than the Democrats' spending orgy of Stimulus I. That's consolation? This just means that Republicans are two years too late. Stimulus II will still blow another near-$1 trillion hole in the budget.

At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to gross domestic product and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.

Obama is no fool. While getting Republicans to boost his own re-election chances, he gets them to make a mockery of their newfound, second-chance, post-Bush, tea-party, this-time-we're-serious persona of debt-averse fiscal responsibility.

And he gets all this in return for what? For a mere two-year postponement of a mere 4.6-point increase in marginal tax rates for upper incomes. And an estate tax rate of 35 percent — it jumps insanely to 55 percent from zero on Jan. 1 — that is somewhat lower than what the Democrats wanted.

No, cries the left: Obama violated a sacred principle. A 39.6 percent tax rate versus 35 percent is a principle? "This is the public option debate all over again," said Obama at his Tuesday news conference. He is right. The left never understood that to nationalize health care there is no need for a public option because ObamaCare turns the private insurers into public utilities. The left is similarly clueless on the tax cut deal: In exchange for temporarily forgoing a small rise in upper-income rates, Obama pulled out of a hat a massive new stimulus — what the left has been begging for since the failure of Stimulus I, but was heretofore politically unattainable.

Obama's public exasperation with this infantile leftism is perfectly understandable and politically adept. It is his way back to at least the appearance of centrist moderation. The only way he will get a second look from the independents who elected him in 2008 — and abandoned the Democrats in 2010 — is by changing the prevailing (and correct) perception that he is a man of the left.

Hence that news conference attack on what the administration calls the "professional left" for its combination of sanctimony and myopia. It was Obama's Sister Souljah moment. It had a prickly, irritated sincerity — their ideological stupidity and inability to see the "long game" really do get under Obama's skin — but a decidedly calculated quality, too. Where, after all, does the left go? Stay home on Election Day 2012? Vote Republican?

No, says the current buzz, the left will instead challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination. Really now? For decades, African-Americans have been this party's most loyal constituency. African-Americans finally see one of their own achieve the presidency, and their own party is going to deny him a shot at his own re-election?

Not even Democrats are that stupid. The remaining question is whether they are just stupid enough to not understand — and therefore vote down — the swindle of the year just pulled off by their own president.

Washington Post Writers Group

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.

[e-mail]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/ct-oped-1213-krauthammer-20101213-10,0,600040.column</sub>

[RocDoc]

i could swear i saw this already, more than even just one year ago.
but it's very good (rec'd via 2 e-mails from like-thinking friends of mine, ie 'normal' folks):

<sub>SUBJECT: Remarks from CBS Sunday Morning,


The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.



My confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events..... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says 'Thou shalt not kill'; 'Thou shalt not steal,' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay. (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide.)

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet? Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not, then just discard it . . . no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My best regards, honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein</sub>

if you're normal, be included.
if you just hate ben stein for his politics, well 'scuse me but...fuk ya....

[phil]

Fuk ya

Thanks doc!

I know you mean it...

[RocDoc]

that is IF you hate ben stein AND if just for his politics....well, if the shoe fits i certainly can't change that...you say it DOES fit?

well, sorry to hear that.

[RocDoc]

<sub>Danish court charges 3 men with attempted terrorism

By Mette Fraende Mette Fraende – 2 hrs 31 mins ago

GLOSTRUP, Denmark (Reuters) – Three men suspected of planning a deadly attack on a Danish newspaper appeared on Thursday before a court which charged them with an attempted act of terrorism and possession of weapons, officials said.

Police detained four men in Denmark and one in Sweden on Wednesday on suspicion of plotting an assault on offices of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish daily that outraged Muslims in 2005 with cartoons of Prophet Mohammad.

The three -- one Tunisian and two Swedish citizens -- pleaded not-guilty to the charges, Lykke Sorensen, an official of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service PET, told reporters at Glostrup courthouse.

On Wednesday, Danish security police chief Jakob Scharf had said that the arrests prevented an "imminent terror attack" that aimed "to kill as many as possible" of the people present at the Copenhagen offices of the newspaper.

Scharf described the plot as a "Mumbai-style" attack, referring to the 2008 attack in the Indian city in which 10 Pakistani gunmen killed 166 people in a three-day coordinated raid on landmarks including two hotels and a Jewish center.

Police brought the three suspects to a court in the Copenhagen suburb of Glostrup, which ordered that they be held in custody for four weeks pending more investigations.

"The three persons will now be held in custody for four weeks, of which the first two are in isolation," Sorensen said. "The investigation will continue in close cooperation between the police, the PET and (Swedish security police) SAPO."

GUNS AND AMMUNITION

A fourth man detained in Denmark, a 26-year-old Iraqi asylum-seeker, was released but remains a suspect though police did not have evidence to hold him further, Sorensen said.

The fifth detainee, a 37-year-old Swedish citizen, was scheduled to appear before a court in Sweden later on Thursday and was also expected to be remanded in custody, a Swedish court official said.

The men, who came to Denmark from Sweden on the night of December 28, are suspected of plotting to attack by January 1 the office block on Copenhagen's city hall square that houses Jyllands-Posten and another newspaper, police said.

In connection with the arrests, police found plastic strips that could be used as handcuffs, a machine gun, a pistol and more than 100 cartridges, police said.

Jyllands-Posten was the paper that first published the Mohammad cartoons in 2005, provoking violent protests against Danish and European interests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in which at least 50 people died.

The furor sparked by those caricatures, including one of the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb, has led to several plots on the paper, cartoonists and other journalists involved.

Zubair Hussain, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Denmark which represents more than 30,000 of the estimated 200,000 Muslims in the country, condemned the plotters' plans.

"As Danish Muslims, we feel it is important to say that this has nothing to do with Islam," he said. "We are all victims in this case. No one will ask before they blow something in the air, or before they shoot, 'are you Muslim or non-Muslim?'"

(Writing by John Acher; additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Copenhagen and Johan Sennero in Stockholm)

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101230/wl_nm/us_denmark_charges</sub>

'....condemned the plotters plans'?

no shit, so WHY isn't there a BIG fucking movement afoot to not just 'tut-tut' and 'tsk-tsk' these motherfuckers?
take all the hamases and the saudis to task for supporting, bankrolling those piece of shit 'brothers' of theirs because of their inclination to AGREE with what these extremist bastards are putting everyone's feet to the flames for?
that the west is a poison to their entire lifestyle and corrupts them SO evil-ly.
our ridiculous notions of education for all regardless of your sex...include also the ridiculous western idea that IF you don't have the means, DON'T have the kids. or at least not 10 of 'em.
replace yourselves on this earth IF you can but don't be so arrogant to presume that we need 10 of you...when you haven't the means (and in many cases TIME) to devote to them.
sorry, god/allah will NOT provide.
UNDERSTAND that 'we', the global 'we', will be forced to provide JUST so your progeny's misery doesn't cause them to want to KILL us til the end of time.

[RocDoc]

we're willing, um yeah. what ELSE are we to do, eh?
we are IN this fucked up world, see?

and this all absolutely WITH the qualifier that ONLY a complete moron would think there's a complete polyanna-esque LACK of skepticism among the MANY thinking people here.

HERE's an absurd statement from a pollyanna:

And, Israel has 200 or more nuclear warheads, the missile systems to deliver them, and a leadership whose reckless disregard for world peace makes Ahmadinejad look like a model of sanity.

made more idiotic by the absence of even ONE qualifying statement regarding WHY they need have some sort of defense.

at least throw out proximity to 3-4 nations SWORN to eradicate them as though they were the simplest of vermin.

the current state is a result of YEARS of tit-for-tat for which BOTH parties are responsible.
except the israel is ONE 'party' and the 'other' party consists of pretty much of all the (arab) nations in the whole surrounding region.

wait, that would JUST be excuse-making and rationalization. which this writer obviously is weary and tired of.

sez you, 'israel, please give up. drink the fucking cool aid already.'

[skvorecky]

My deal with Israel is that it seems plainly obvious that they can take care of themselves. I would prefer that the US not get involved one way or another because I don't feel it is pertinent for us to continue to engage in religious conflicts.

[Ayinger]

_{dammit....and I'd just paid up my cable subscription for the year!}

End of Days in May? Christian group spreads word
By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Tom Breen, Associated Press – Mon Jan 3, 10:01 am ETRALEIGH, N.C. – If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.

Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011.

To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling through Latin America and Africa to spread the news outside the U.S.

"A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe."

In August, Exley left her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to work with Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio Worldwide, the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible.

She is organizing traveling columns of RVs carrying the message from city to city, a logistics challenge that her military experience has helped solve. The vehicles are scheduled to be in five North Carolina cities between now and the second week of January, but Exley will shortly be gone: overseas, where she hopes to eventually make it back to Iraq.

"I don't really have plans to come back," she said. "Time is short."

Not everyone who's heard Camping's message is taking such a dramatic step. They're remaining in their day-to-day lives, but helping publicize the prophecy in other ways. Allison Warden, of Raleigh, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, post cards and other media in cities across the U.S. through a website, We Can Know.

The 29-year-old payroll clerk laughs when asked about reactions to the message, which is plastered all over her car.

"It's definitely against the grain, I know that," she said. "We're hoping people won't take our word for it, or Harold Camping's word for it. We're hoping that people will search the scriptures for themselves."

Camping, 89, believes the Bible essentially functions as a cosmic calendar explaining exactly when various prophecies will be fulfilled.

The retired civil engineer said all his calculations come from close readings of the Bible, but that external events like the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 are signs confirming the date.

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment," he said.

The doctrine known as the Rapture teaches that believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time. Camping believes that will happen in October.

"If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved. Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all," Warden said.

The belief that Christ will return to earth and bring an end to history has been a basic element of Christian belief since the first century. The Book of Revelation, which comes last in the New Testament, describes this conclusion in vivid language that has inspired Christians for centuries.

But few churches are willing to set a date for the end of the world, heeding Jesus' words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that no one can know the day or hour it will happen. Predictions like Camping's, though, aren't new. One of the most famous in history was by the Baptist leader William Miller, who predicted the end for Oct. 22, 1844, which came to be known as the Great Disappointment among his followers, some of whom subsequently founded the Seventh Day Adventist church.

"In the U.S., there is still a significant population, mostly Protestant, who look at the Bible as kind of a puzzle, and the puzzle is God's word and it's predicting when the end times will come," said Catherine Wessinger, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies millennialism, the belief in pending apocalypse.

"A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society," she said. "Right now, there's a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it's not all random, it's part of God's plan."

Past predictions that failed to come true don't have any bearing on the current calculation, believers maintain.

"It would be like telling the Wright brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn't even try," said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message.

For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion: God's compassion for people, and the hope that there's still time to be saved.

That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley, who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. Her hope is that not everyone who hears her message will mock it, and that even people who dismiss her now might still come to believe.

"If you still want to say we're crazy, go ahead," she said. "But it doesn't hurt to look into it."

[phil]

dammit....and I'd just paid up my cable subscription for the year!

Time to max up all your credit cards
and take a second morgage on the house!!

Me... I was waiting to that 2012 Maya thing...

[phil]

For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion:
God's compassion for people, and the hope that there's still time to be saved.

That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley,
who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. ...

HÉ! At least she got her priorities straight.

As long as you're *saved*...

Who cares about friends and family anyway!!

"If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven,because there is no Heaven.
If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites."
(Isaac Asimov)

"I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell."
(Jean Rostand)

[RocDoc]

_{...the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible.}

yeah, 'based on his reading'.
sure, send all your followers into a panic of 'preparation'.
fuck him anyway.

~

i cannot help but conclude that your jean rostand is full of shit, phil.
sorry.
the 'right' to prefer hell?
perhaps something is lost in some sort of cheeky preferred translation, but generally, the provison of 'hell' is for those engaging in capital crimes, molestation and being on the hurtful 'bad' side of society's moral/ethical compass.
this guy would wish the 'RIGHT' (it's all good, eh?) to choose THAT, fucking people over, even to the extreme of killing them?

sorry phil, but at it's core that quote is fucked in the head, even as some sort of a bold and 'edgy' atheist come-on.

[Ayinger]

Jan 3, 2011 18:41:28 GMT -5 phil said:

dammit....and I'd just paid up my cable subscription for the year!

Time to max up all your credit cards
and take a second morgage on the house!!

Me... I was waiting to that 2012 Maya thing...

Hey, things turned out okay with the great folks at Comcast TV --- they said that I'd get either a 6 month refund or be able to watch everything go up in flames in Hi-Def, my choice!!!

[phil]

Jean Rostand... Full of shit...??

HÉ! Whatever you say, Doc...

Maybe Mark Twain would be more your alley:

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
(Mark Twain)

-------------------------------------

"If God did exist, there would be no nasty people, only clumsy ones"

"You kill a man: you're a murderer.
You kill millions: you're a conquerer.
You kill'em all: you are a God."
(Jean Rostand)

[RocDoc]

Jan 4, 2011 18:50:26 GMT -5 phil said:

Jean Rostand... Full of shit...??

HÉ! Whatever you say, Doc...

...

taking the literal meaning of THAT quote, perhaps completely untranslatable from the native french...oh yes. absolutely.

tell me HOW i understood it wrongly then. please.
he SOUNDS like an antisocial asshole.

or is it just that it's now a fine opportunity (after don's post re those ridiculous people) to over-smugly and undiscriminatingly bash religion and anyone's belief in a god.

as far as i'm concerned, to me he's not close to the atheistic sacred cow which he obviously is to you.
and he's NO mark twain or fergawshsakes, especially not groucho.

<sub>'i would not be a part of ANY club which would have ME as a member.'

- rufus t. firefly</sub>

HÉ!
now THAT's fucking profound!

~

and wtf does he mean 'clumsy'?
i'm telling you, you can't translate idiom and expect people to get it.