He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more
Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.
50 Cent is planning to create a vibrator of his manhood - so his female fans can pretend to have sex with him. The sexy rapper is desperate to release a line of condoms and waterproof sex toys designed to excite his female fans and make them feel closer to his idols.
Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google.
In court documents, prosecutors said Cunningham admitted receiving at least $2.4 million in bribes paid in a variety of forms, including checks totaling over $1 million, cash, antiques, rugs, furniture, yacht club fees and vacations.
Among other things, prosecutors said, Cunningham was given $1.025 million to pay down the mortgage on his Rancho Santa Fe mansion, $13,500 to buy a Rolls-Royce and $2,081 for his daughter’s graduation party at a Washington hotel.
Pope Benedict XVI is developing a reputation as a clotheshorse with his taste for Prada shoes and designer sunglasses.
The Tablet, a Roman Catholic newspaper in England, points to the new pope's expensive sunglasses, which Vatican officials say were a present. He has also been spotted in baseball caps and red shoes from Prada.
He's a real half-way man, living in his half-way land...probably drinking half and half. This is an example of the kind of develpment we DON'T need in Salemtown. A skinny house crammed into a half lot. Much of the building material is low-cost and ugly, yet the asking price is over 300K.
"......in a time in sports when we wonder where our role models have gone, is it really so bad to ask our young athletes to simply look up"
"Everything that opponents of a pullout say would happen if the U.S. left Iraq is happening already"
The US invasion of Iraq only serves the interest of:
1) Osama bin Laden (it made Iraq safe for al Qaeda, positioned US military personnel in places where al Qaeda operatives can kill them occasionally, helps radicalize youth throughout the Arab and Muslim world, alienates America's most important and strongest allies – the Europeans – and squanders US military resources that otherwise might be finishing off al Qaeda in Pakistan.);
2) The Iranians (who were invaded by Saddam and who suffered massive casualties in an eight year war with Iraq.);
3) And the extremists in both Palestinian and Israeli political circles (who don't really want a peace settlement without the utter destruction of the other side, and probably believe that bogging the United States down in a war in Iraq that will surely become a war between the United States and most of the rest of Arab world gives them the time and cover to wipe out the other side.)
'most second-term governors at least "flirt" with the idea of an income tax, which people might be wary of in a Bredesen second term'.
"Recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, legal employment at a living wage, safe, permanent housing, improved physical, emotional, and spiritual health, reunification with the family and improved social functioning"
“Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on our present course,” Murtha said. He said the GOP resolution was not the thoughtful approach he had suggested to bring the troops safely home in six months.
1. Do you think succeeding in promoting a democracy in Iraq would be a good thing?
2. Isn't that something the Democratic Party stands for?
3. Do you think the 25 million people living in Iraq deserve similar freedoms to the ones we enjoy?
4. Do you prefer we leave now and condemn them to chaos wiping your hands of the whole thing since you never supported the war in the first place?
In a survey issued this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, only 35 percent of people 65 and older said they understood the new drug benefit. Those who said they understood it were more likely to have a favorable impression of it.
Asked about beneficiaries' confusion, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said: "Health care is complicated. We acknowledge that. Lots of things in life are complicated: filling out a tax return, registering your car, getting cable television. It is going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the drug benefit."
"I have a Ph.D., and it's too complicated to suit me," said William Q. Beard, 73, a retired chemist in Wichita, Kan., who takes eight prescription drugs, including several heart medicines. "I wonder how the vast majority of beneficiaries will handle this. I fervently wish that members of Congress had to deal with the same health care program we do."
"...the major threat from Islam ... come(s) from a particular variety of that religion, Wahabism: "The Saudis have directly and indirectly funded the mosques and madrasas which preach hatred against the infidels—Jews, Christians, and above all Hindus—to young minds. . . . But for the Saudis to eschew or put a stop to this funding would undoubtedly create a Wahabi backlash in Saudi Arabia and end the dynasty. . . . For the rest of the world, the poison being spread by this Wahabi evangelism is becoming intolerable. . . . If there is to be an end to the ‘war on terror,’ this poisoning of the Muslim mind clearly has to stop"
Christian Scientist Pharmacist sues Albertsons pharmacies
Sat Jun 11th, 2005 at 11:19:50 AM EDT
Claims Religious Intolerance
J D Guckert - TALUN NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Mark Malouse, a pharmacist employed by the Albertsons chain in Baton Rouge, LA has filed suit against his employer for religious discrimination.
Mr. Malouse, a recent convert to Christian Science, states that the firm is demanding that he fill prescriptions for medications that are in contradiction to his spiritual and moral beliefs.
The Church of Christ, Scientist, teaches that disease is only correctly treated thru prayer. As such Mr. Malouse has stocked his pharmacy with tracts on the efficacy of prayer and for a small fee will provide his customers with copies of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
Pharmacists must be free to exercise their consciences, states Mr. Malouse. "Every day ", he states, " I see customers claiming that they have "diseases" like diabetes come to my counter with false hope in things like insulin, when God teaches us that what we really need is to humble ourselves in prayer".
Mr. Malouse notes that it is intolerable discrimination that Albertsons has adopted the policy of allowing pharmacists of some denominations to refuse to fill prescriptions to which their denomination objects, and yet will not do the same for him and his fellow Christian Scientist pharmacists.
The devout life-long Christian is hoping to start a group, Christian Scientist Pharmacists for Conscience to support others suffering oppression.
"The sad thing", noted Mr. Malouse, "is that our secular culture discriminates against so many people of faith - not just Christian Scientists such as myself"
As an example, he noted the case of a Hindu neighbor who was employed by McDonalds and was forced to serve customers hamburgers.
Sauerkraut sales are going through the roof, with some Midwest stores
reporting an 850% spike just last week on a recent report that scientists at Seoul National University successfully used Kimchi Sauerkraut to treat chickens infected with Avian Flu. Both Kimchi and traditional Sauerkraut are made by fermenting sliced cabbage, producing a high level of lactic acid, which may be the critical
element in preventing Avian Flu.
It's not an intefada. I'm an Australian SF author temporarily living in Paris;....
The problem in France is not the same as in the UK or the Netherlands. There, there's been an overdose of PC multi culturalism... but American critics are wrong to assign that to France. France HAS insisted on integration, as seen by the controversial ban on headscarves in French schools. And most French muslims do consider themselves French, to varying degrees, and Islamic extremism is pretty small thing here (there was far more protest against the headscarf ban outside of France than inside). So it's not an intefada.
There's just no damn jobs. White college grads can't get jobs, what hope do immigrants from regions with bad schools have? I think this is more like the LA Rodney King riots -- there's people there who want the French dream, just as in LA people wanted the American dream, but they just don't see it when they look around, and they resent the fact enormously. They can't change schools to get a better education because the government says you have to go to the school where you live, and they live where they do because of the zoning laws... which I'm no expert about, but I do know that the government owns 30 percent of all housing in France, and poor immigrants basically live where they're told. The government tries to give them everything and does it extremely badly, there's no upward mobility, and it doesn't breed a happy community. Religion exacerbates the feeling of exclusion, I'm sure, but the rioting seems mostly driven by economics and bad social policy.
So yeah, it's a stupid French government problem, but not the one some American critics are ascribing... however attractive it might be to do so.
THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.
His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".
This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to "understand things better".
His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the "intelligent design" view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.
During the past few months, declassified documents and testimony from Army officers make abundantly clear that torture and abuse of prisoners is something that has become quite widespread since 9/11. The most recent evidence comes from autopsies of 44 prisoners who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in U.S. custody. Most died under circumstances that suggest torture. The reports use words like "strangulation," "asphyxiation" and "blunt force injuries." Even the "natural" deaths were caused by "Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular disease"—in other words, sudden heart attacks.
Sen. John McCain has proposed making absolutely clear in law that the United States does not permit the torture of prisoners—returning America to the position it had taken for five decades. McCain's amendment, endorsed by Colin Powell, passed the Senate last month by 90 to 9 in a stunning rebuke of administration policy. But Republicans in the House are trying to kill it. Vice President Cheney is making great exertions to gut it with loopholes. The White House has threatened to veto the entire defense budget, to which McCain's proposal was originally attached, unless his ban is removed. White House spokesmen don't answer questions about the bill plainly, and Cheney simply refuses to explain his views at all. (As the writer Andrew Sullivan has noted, someone needs to remind the vice president that he is an elected and accountable public servant, not a monarch.)
