The New Zealand department of conservation maintains a network of huts in the backcountry — these are little shelters with a radio for emergency calls and a mattress so hikers can wait out a spell of bad weather. It's all very sensible. Until the evangelicals discovered them. Now there's a missionary campaign to put a bible in every one of them, too, since, as the founder of this plan says, "I realised then this was a captive audience."
I think I'm going to have to move to New Zealand now. The response by hikers to this effort is classic pragmatism. They think it is a fine idea.
"Given the option of a ropey old Reader's Digest I would rather use a page from a Bible to start a fire."
Notice how polite he was to avoid mentioning the other use in which the tissue-thin pages of the bible are superior to the thick glossy sheets of Reader's Digest.
Story here.
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American viewership of Al-Jazeera English rose dramatically during the Israel-Hamas war, partly because the channel had what CNN and other international networks didn't have: reporters inside Gaza.
But the viewers weren't watching it on television, where the Arab network's English-language station has almost no U.S. presence.
Instead, the station streamed video of Israel's offensive against Hamas on the Internet and took advantage of emerging online media such as the microblogging Web site Twitter to provide real-time updates.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/25-0
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This sounds like a cool book:
The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
Narrated by the big hearted Enzo, this story reminds us of the grace of everyday, the preciousness of each moment. "In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers into the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life." Enzo, watches everything, the untimely death of Denny's wife and the 3 year battle with his inlaws for custody of their daughter, doing all he can to keep this family intact. Heartbreaking and achingly perfect this book is really impossible to describe. Enzo is a dog who can explain what it is to be human.
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Who Cares? John McCain ran on more Republican tax cuts - he lost. He is irrelevant and it's OK to ignore him.
Who Cares? The Republicans ran on more of the same insane Reagan/Bush economic policy and they lost and it's OK to ignore them. They are irrelevant.
They've already shown us that they're willing to lie through their teeth to kill this bill. Now we know that Republicans will do everything they can to keep our economy broken just to deny Democrats a political victory.
It's pathetic, and it should be a constant reminder why Republicans shouldn't be trusted with power until they get serious about helping build a government that works.
WTF? They're men.
They can't fly, can't leap tall buildings, can't stop a speeding locomotive; their operations are mitigated by financing and logistics. They're not running home and getting the 'Hijacking Aircraft Made Easy Kit' out of the garage, only to hop on the next plane and fly it into one of our cities. I'm tired of the whining.
P.S. There is one small problem. Pres. Obama promised that the file of every detainee would be reviewed, but the Bushies were so busy torturing they couldn't bother gathering evidence for prosecution and there are no files.
President Barack Obama is staffing his Justice Department with some of his predecessor's fiercest critics, among them lawyers who were fired by President Bush or who quit jobs working for his administration.###
Now, the opposition is in charge, and lawyers who spent years defining the limits of executive power will be helping wield it.
The change may be most dramatic at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel — which defended some of Bush's most controversial policies — where a small cadre of lawyers who had an outsized influence on legal criticism of Bush are taking the top three jobs.
She found a job she liked, and is trying to use the rules to keep the Obama people from firing her. If she can't be gotten rid of, per civil service rules, they can, I suspect, simply cut her out. She has already proven that she is incompetent and that her views can't be trusted. While it is possible Obama can't discharge her, he may be able to create a firewall around her, as an employee whose views are untrustworthy and traditionally wrong. That's not political retribution, it's minimizing the damage of an employee who is clearly biased, insufficiently educated, and incompetent.
I'm happy to see that despite enthusiastic financial support early on in his campaign from Wall Street, Obama is indeed biting the hand that fed him. This bodes well for his political courage:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to move quickly to tighten the nation's financial regulatory system.
Officials say they will make wide-ranging changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis.
Just a few days into office, President Obama has already become an obstacle to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups:
Obama has been called a "hypocrite," a "killer" of innocents, an "enemy of Muslims." He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office.
"He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection," an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month.
The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda's skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.
With Obama, al-Qaeda faces an entirely new challenge, experts say: a U.S. president who campaigned to end the Iraq war and to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and who polls show is well liked throughout the Muslim world.
Of course, Obama's honeymoon with the Muslim world – and with Americans, for that matter – won't last forever.
But what this underscores is what a lot of we progressives have been saying for a long time: that George Bush has been a boon for terrorist recruitment. Everything from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation techniques" have vindicated the poisonous propaganda terrorists have spread throughout the Muslim world about the United States. Having a president who rejects those policies poses a significant threat to terrorist groups, who have used the strife and bloodshed of the past 8 years or to advance their savage agendas.
Global terrorism increased under George Bush because of the policies he employed; hopefully President Obama will heal some of the wounds that have infected the Muslim world's view of the United States.
Daily Kos brings us a visual summary of the economy George Bush left behind. Heckuva job, GOP.
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Last night 60 Minutes ran a segment called "Is Peace Out of Reach?" It was the single most unbiased piece I've ever seen in the corporate media about the plight of Palestinians. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4752349n
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Born Again American: http://www.bornagainamerican.org/
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Next month Iraq will re-open the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, site of the egregious torture and human rights abuses conducted during the Bush administration. The new prison will hold up to 15,000 inmates and will be called "Baghdad's Central Prison" because the name Abu Ghraib left a "bitter feeling inside Iraqis' hearts," deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said yesterday.
Gee, ya think?
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Four US soldiers were killed on Monday when two helicopters crashed in northern Iraq: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Four_US_soldiers_killed_in_Iraq_0126.html
4,236 killed in Iraq; 641 in Afghanistan.
Afghans protesting against US on civilian death reports http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/01/25/afghans-protest-against-us-on-civilian-deaths-report-2/
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Talk about a good way to capture the sentiment of a lot of fed up people:
Feingold to Introduce Constitutional Amendment Ending Gubernatorial Appointments to Senate Vacancies
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Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
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William Kristol: Although conservatism has failed, let's not forget liberalism sucks and needs to prove itself before the public will accept it as legitimate. I will do my part to sow doubt. And, btw, this is William Kristol's last column.
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