Man Sues After "POLICE" T-Shirt Arrest

A Belleville Police officer arrested a St. Charles man for wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "POLICE."

Now, Adam C. Weinstein, of St. Charles, has sued the department for what he calls a violation of his constitutional rights.

According to police documents, Weinstein was arrested in 2006 outside a bar in Belleville for "impersonating officers." He was wearing a black t-shirt with the word police striped across the front and back under a sweater. The t-shirt became exposed when he removed the sweater because he was hot.

"Those t-shirts are a sign of solidarity," said Howard A. Shalowitz, an attorney representing Weinstein. "How many people wear NYPD caps? Are they impersonating police?"

According to the lawsuit, a waitress told Weinstein that some police officers wanted to speak with him outside the bar. Weinstein went outside, he said, and was greeted by Belleville Police Officer Jeff Vernatti.

Vernatti, Weinstein alleges, asked him for his police credentials. Weinstein says he told the officer he didn’t have any credentials because he wasn’t a police officer.

That’s when, according to Weinstein, the police officer started screaming curse words and became physically and verbally abusive. Weinstein says he was cuffed and later released by the officer, but made to take the t-shirt off while standing in the cold.

Weinstein was ticketed for impersonating a police officer, but it was later dismissed. The ticket only alleges Weinstein wore the t-shirt.

"I’m afraid to go to Belleville," Weinstein said in an interview. According to the lawsuit, Weinstein is a firefighter.

Weinstein said he bought two of the shirts--one for him, one for his wife--at Leon’s Uniform Company in St. Louis while buying supplies for firefighting.

The lawsuit was filed last week in St. Clair County. Vernatti and the city of Bellevile are named as defendents.

In 2005, Vernatti and the city of Belleville were sued for allegedly tasering a man. That case was later settled before going to trial.

Belleville Mayor Mark W. Eckert declined to comment through an aide. A spokesperson for the Belleville Police also declined to comment. Vernatti couldn’t be reached for comment.

Steven Beckett, professor and director of trial advocacy at the University of Illinois’ law school, said the arrest may be a violation of Weinstein’s First Amendment rights.

"A t-shirt alone isn’t enough to arrest someone," Beckett said. "There must be some overt act."

Beckett added: "The police complaint on its face is inconsistent with the First Amendment."

Dubai & Egypt Stop NYE Celebrations Over Gaza

Dubai Calls off New Year's Eve Extravaganza

Dubai's opulent, multimillion-pound New Year's Eve celebrations have been cancelled due to the Gaza violence, leaving hordes of expatriates hastily making alternative plans.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of the Gulf state, called off festivities late last night.

He said "all public New Year’s celebrations" should be stopped "in solidarity with the Palestinian people, who are currently enduring death, suffering and destruction in Gaza".

Egypt Cancels New Year's Eve Over Gaza 'Massacres'

Egypt has cancelled official New Year's Eve events in solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinians being "massacred" in Gaza, the state-owned Al-Ahram daily reported on Wednesday.
"In solidarity with the painful events in the Palestinian territories and the massacres which Gazans are faced with ... the ministries of culture and information have decided to cancel New Year's festivities," the paper said.

Cancelled events include a special concert by famed Egyptian singer Mohammed Munir set to be held at Cairo's Opera House and a variety performance hosted by the ministry of information due to be broadcast on state television.

Egyptian state television official Ossama al-Sheikh said on Tuesday that the launch of new channel "Nile Comedy," set for January 1, would be delayed "out of solidarity with the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip."

Since Israel unleashed its massive aerial attack on Hamas and the Gaza Strip on Saturday, at least 374 Palestinians, including 39 children, have been killed and 1,720 wounded, Gaza medics say.

During the same period, four Israelis have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza.

Not Advertised on American News

'Hobbit' Fossils Represent A New Species, Concludes Anthropologist

University of Minnesota anthropology professor Kieran McNulty (along with colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York) has made an important contribution toward solving one of the greatest paleoanthropological mysteries in recent history - that fossilized skeletons resembling a mythical "hobbit" creature represent an entirely new species in humanity's evolutionary chain.

Discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, controversy has surrounded the fossilized hominid skeletons of the so-called "hobbit people," or Homo floresiensis ever since. Experts are still debating whether the 18,000-year-old remains merely belong to a diminutive population of modern-day humans (with one individual exhibiting "microcephaly," an abnormally small head) or represent a previously unrecognized branch in humanity's family tree.

Using 3D modeling methods, McNulty and his fellow researchers compared the cranial features of this real-life "hobbit" to those of a simulated fossil human (of similar stature) to determine whether or not such a species was distinct from modern humans.

"[Homo floresiensis] is the most exciting discovery in probably the last 50 years," said McNulty. "The specimens have skulls that resemble something that died a million years earlier, and other body parts reminiscent of our three-million-year-old human ancestors, yet they lived until very recently -- contemporaries with modern humans."

Comparing the simulation to the original Flores skull discovered in 2003, McNulty and Baab were able to demonstrate conclusively that the original "hobbit" skull fits the expectations for a small fossil hominin species and not a modern human. Their study was published online this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

The cranial structure of the fossilized skull, says the study, clearly places it in humanity's genus Homo, even though it would be smaller in both body and brain size than any other member. The results of the study suggest that the theorized "hobbit" species may have undergone a process of size reduction after branching off from Homo erectus (one of modern day humanity's distant ancestors) or even something more primitive.

"We have shown with this study that the process of size reduction applied to fossil hominins accounts for many features seen in the fossil skull from Flores," McNulty said. "It becomes much more difficult, therefore, to defend the hypothesis that the preserved skull is a modern human who simply suffered from an extremely rare disorder.

Public interest in the discovery, analysis and implications of Flores "hobbits" has been high ever since 2003, inspiring several television specials (including a recent episode of "NOVA" entitled "Alien From Earth") and other media attention.

While the debate over Homo floresiensis will continue, McNulty believes this comprehensive analysis of the relationship between size and shape in human evolution is a critical step toward eventually understanding the place of the Flores "hobbits" in human evolutionary history.

"I think the majority of researchers favor recognizing this as a new species," McNulty said about the categorization of Homo floresiensis. "The evidence is becoming overwhelming, and this study helps confirm that view." via

Marc Maron: Cracker Highlights (2008)

Be Rational!

Bronze Age Beliefs:
The Earth Was Flat
Constellations Were Celestial Beings
Spitting on a Wound Cured It
Sea Monsters Were Considered a Legitimate Hazard

If you would not believe any of these things that at once were considered 'facts' about the world we live in, why would you believe in a book from the same time period?

Be rational with yourself! Grow up or we all die.....

Bill Maher - Religulous

Shooting of a 3 Year Old Happens Underneath a Crime Cam

Not one suspect and it happened under a crime camera? Then why are you invading people's privacy for safety when you can't even keep these people safe?

A single shell casing remained on the ground this morning at the scene of a Christmas night shooting in the 3800 block of Annunciation Street.

Police say shortly before 9 p.m., between 5 and 10 young men shot into a car in the parking lot of an apartment complex run by the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

A three-year-old boy in the car with his grandmother, aunt and uncle was the only one wounded in the attack.

His cousin who did not to give his name, the toddler is expected to make a full recovery.

"He's doing all right. He got hit in the arm and it came out and grazed him on the chest."

A neighbor says the little boy lives with his extended family in an upstairs apartment. She called the shooting is upsetting and scary. "It could have been a visitor coming to see me. We really don't know what to do."

Joe LaPrieur lives down the street and says he heard six gunshots. "Them boys, man, I'm going to tell you the truth, bro, they got a lot of drugs around here, man," said LaPrieur. "I'm just sick of this place, man."

The shooting happened right underneath one of the much maligned city crime cameras. According to the NOPD, the camera just happened to be pointed in the complete opposition direction. Neighbors aren't surprised.

"(Criminals) don't worry about that crime camera, man," said LaPrieur.

"What good is it to be pointed in that direction when crime and the people that frequent here, hangs in this block," said the other neighbor. "This is basically a project. This could be considered a project. It's just two apartment buildings."

The gunmen ran off after the shooting. Right now, police have few leads and no suspects. They're not sure if any of the three adults in the car was the intended target.

The wounded little boy was last listed in good condition at Children Hospital.

Meet the Second Christ

The minister has the number 666 tattooed on his arm.

But Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda is not your typical minister. De Jesus, or "Daddy" as his thousands of followers call him, does not merely pray to God: He says he is God.

"The spirit that is in me is the same spirit that was in Jesus of Nazareth," de Jesus says.

De Jesus' claims of divinity have angered Christian leaders, who say he is a fake. Religious experts say he may be something much more dangerous, a cult leader who really believes he is God. (Watch followers get 666 tattoos for their leader )

"He's in their heads, he's inside the heads of those people," says Prof. Daniel Alvarez, a religion expert at Florida International University who has debated some of de Jesus' followers.

"De Jesus speaks with a kind of conviction that makes me consider him more like David Koresh or Jim Jones."

Is de Jesus really a cult leader like David Koresh, who died with more than 70 of his Branch Davidian followers in a fiery end to a standoff with federal authorities, or Jim Jones, the founder of the Peoples Temple who committed mass suicide with 900 followers in 1978?

Prophets 'spoke to me' - De Jesus and his believers say their church -- "Creciendo en Gracia," Spanish for "Growing in grace" -- is misunderstood. Followers of the movement say they have proof that their minister is divine and that their church will one day soon be a major faith in the world.

But even de Jesus concedes that he is an unlikely leader of a church that claims thousands of members in more than 30 countries.

De Jesus, 61, grew up poor in Puerto Rico. He says he served stints in prison there for petty theft and says he was a heroin addict.

De Jesus says he learned he was Jesus reincarnate when he was visited in a dream by angels.

"The prophets, they spoke about me. It took me time to learn that, but I am what they were expecting, what they have been expecting for 2,000 years," de Jesus says.

The church that he began building 20 years ago in Miami resembles no other:

Followers have protested Christian churches in Miami and Latin America, disrupting services and smashing crosses and statues of Jesus.

De Jesus preaches there is no devil and no sin. His followers, he says, literally can do no wrong in God's eyes.

The church calls itself the "Government of God on Earth" and uses a seal similar to the United States.

Doing God's work with a Lexus and Rolex
If Creciendo en Gracia is an atypical religious group, de Jesus also does not fit the mold of the average church leader. De Jesus flouts traditional vows of poverty.

He says he has a church-paid salary of $136,000 but lives more lavishly than that. During an interview, he showed off a diamond-encrusted Rolex to a CNN crew and said he has three just like them. He travels in armored Lexuses and BMWs, he says, for his safety. All are gifts from his devoted followers.

And what about the tattoo of 666 on his arm?

Although it's a number usually associated with Satan, not the son of God, de Jesus says that 666 and the Antichrist are, like him, misunderstood.

The Antichrist is not the devil, de Jesus tells his congregation; he's the being who replaces Jesus on Earth.

"Antichrist is the best person in the world," he says. "Antichrist means don't put your eyes on Jesus because Jesus of Nazareth wasn't a Christian. Antichrist means do not put your eyes on Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Put it on Jesus after the cross."

And de Jesus says that means him.

So far, de Jesus says that his flock hasn't been scared off by his claims of being the Antichrist. In a show of the sway he holds over the group, 30 members of his congregation Tuesday went to a tattoo parlor to have 666 also permanently etched onto their skin.

He may wield influence over them, but his followers say don't expect them to go the way of people who believed in David Koresh and Jim Jones. Just by finding de Jesus, they say, they have achieved their purpose.

"If somebody tells us drink some Kool-Aid and we'll go to heaven, that's not true. We are already in heavenly places," follower Martita Roca told CNN after having 666 tattooed onto her ankle.

Merry Fuckin Xmas

The Truth about Christmas or as I love to call it, X-Mas!

Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana

The stoner community is clamoring to say it: "Yes we cannabis!" Turns out, with several drug-war veterans close to the president-elect's ear, insiders think reform could come in Obama's second term -- or sooner.

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the United States banking system during the first seven days of his first term.

And what did he do on the eighth day? "I think this would be a good time for beer," he said.

Congress had already repealed Prohibition, pending ratification from the states. But the people needed a lift, and legalizing beer would create a million jobs. And lo, booze was back. Two days after the bill passed, Milwaukee brewers hired six hundred people and paid their first $10 million in taxes. Soon the auto industry was tooling up the first $12 million worth of delivery trucks, and brewers were pouring tens of millions into new plants.

"Roosevelt's move to legalize beer had the effect he intended," says Adam Cohen, author of Nothing To Fear, a thrilling new history of FDR's first hundred days. "It was, one journalist observed, 'like a stick of dynamite into a log jam.'"

Many in the marijuana world are now hoping for something similar from Barack Obama. After all, the president-elect said in 2004 that the war on drugs had been "an utter failure" and that America should decriminalize pot:

In July, Obama told Rolling Stone that he believed in "shifting the paradigm" to a public-health approach: "I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives -- it's expensive, it's counterproductive, and it doesn't make sense."

Meanwhile, economists have been making the beer argument. In a paper titled "Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," Dr. Jeffrey Miron of Harvard argues that legalized marijuana would generate between $10 and $14 billion in savings and taxes every year -- conclusions endorsed by 300 top economists, including Milton "Free Market" Friedman himself.

And two weeks ago, when the Obama team asked the public to vote on the top problems facing America, this was the public's No. 1 question: "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?"

But alas, the answer from Camp Obama was -- as it has been for years -- a flat one-liner: "President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana." And at least two of Obama's top people are drug-war supporters: Rahm Emanuel has been a long-time enemy of reform, and Joe Biden is a drug-war mainstay who helped create the position of "drug czar."

Meanwhile, in 2007, the last year for which statistics are available, 782,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana-related crimes (90 percent of them for possession), with approximately 60,000 to 85,000 of them serving sentences in jail or prison. It's the continuation of an unnecessary stream of suffering that now has taught generations of Americans just how capricious their government can be. The irony is that the preference for "decriminalization" over legalization actually supports the continued existence of criminal drug mafias.

Nevertheless, the marijuana community is guardedly optimistic. "Reformers will probably be disappointed that Obama is not going to go as far as they want, but we're probably not going to continue this mindless path of prohibition," NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre tells me.

Some of Obama's biggest financial donors are friends of the legalization movement, St. Pierre notes. "Frankly, George Soros, Peter Lewis, and John Sperling -- this triumvirate of billionaires -- if those three men, who put up $50 to $60 million to get Democrats and Obama elected, can't pick up the phone and actually get a one-to-one meeting on where this drug policy is going, then maybe it's true that when you give money, you don't expect favors."

Another member of that moneyed group: Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a fundraiser for Obama and "bundled" an impressive $204,000 for his campaign. She said that based on what she hears from inside the transition team, she expects Obama to play it very safe. "He said at one point that he's not going to use any political capital with this -- that's a concern," Rosenbaum tells me. And the Path to Change will probably have to pass through the Valley of Studies and Reports. "I'm hoping that what the administration will do," she says, "is something this country hasn't done since 1971, which is to undertake a presidential commission to look at drug policy, convene a group of blue-ribbon experts to look at the issue, and make recommendations."

But ultimately, Rosenbaum remains confident that those recommendations would call for an end to the drug war. "Once everything settles down in the second term, we have a shot at seeing some real reform."

Still, a certain paranoia prevails. Rumors about Obama's choice for drug czar have lingered on Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. "He's been a standard anti-drug warrior for the whole time he's been in Congress," says St. Pierre. Another possibility is Atlanta police chief Richard Pennington, who raises fears in the legalization community of more of the same law-enforcement model. Another prospect stirring the bong waters is Dr. Don Vereen, the chief drug policy thinker on the transition team. "He's really a believer in prohibition and he can excite an audience," says Rosenbaum, who says a friend on the transition team refused to hint at final contenders for the drug czar pick. "I'm joking with him, 'I'm going to have to open up the New York Times for this, aren't I?'" His answer: "We're going to send out smoke signals."

With the Economy in Shambles, Congress Gets a Raise

Because they have done such a great and wonderful job fixing our problems. This is disgusting and the people need to say something...hello? Anyone home???

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”

Coming This January

The Greedy Man Who Conned the World

What the Fuck Did He Need All This Money For?

Investors around the world are counting the spiralling cost of the biggest fraud in history, a $50bn scam that has ensnared billionaire businessmen and tiny charities alike and whose tentacles have stretched further and deeper than anyone imagined.

The fallout from the arrest of the Wall Street grandee Bernard Madoff was continuing to grow last night, as institution after institution detailed the extent of their possible losses, and the victims in the UK were headlined by HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is majority-owned by the British Government.

A charity set up by the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg was among those revealed to be among the victims, along with a foundation set up by Mort Zuckerman, one of the richest media and property magnates in the United States, dozens of Jewish organisations, sports team owners and a New Jersey senator.

But the biggest confessions were coming from Wall Street, from the City of London and from the headquarters of European banks and from banks around the world. They have poured billions of dollars into Mr Madoff's too-good-to-be-true investment fund, which appeared to post double-digit annual returns come rain or shine.

RBS said that it could take a hit of £400m if American authorities find there is nothing left of the money Mr Madoff had pretended to be investing for many years. HSBC, Britain's largest bank, said a "small number" of its clients had exposure totalling $1bn in Mr Madoff's funds.

The Spanish bank Santander, which owns Abbey and the savings business of Bradford & Bingley in the UK, could be on the hook for $3.1bn. Japan's Nomura said it has hundreds of millions of dollars at risk. City analysts said that even banks who invested only on behalf of clients could end up on the hook, because clients are almost certain to sue for bad advice.

Mr Madoff confessed last week that his business was "all one great big lie". The investment returns were fake, and he had been paying old clients with money from new ones. In its conception, the scam is a classic. In its size, it is breathtaking, eclipsing anything seen before. He personally estimated the losses at $50bn, according to the FBI, and as investors owned up to their exposure yesterday that did not seem impossible. For 48 years, until Thursday morning, Mr Madoff was one of Wall Street's best-respected investment managers, able to harvest money from a vast network of contacts and to trade on his name as a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange.

His arrest has further shaken confidence in the barely regulated hedge fund industry, which is already suffering some of the worst times in its short history. Mr Madoff – who is now on a $10m bail and under orders not to leave the New York area – was able to operate his fraud under the noses of regulators for many years.

Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the New York Daily News and one of the 200 richest Americans, said that one of the managers of his charitable trust had been so taken by Mr Madoff that he invested $9bn with him, including all the money from Mr Zuckerman's trust. "These are astonishing numbers to be placed with one fund manager," he said. "I think we have another break in whatever level confidence needs to exist in money markets."

Nicola Horlick, the British fund manager known as Superwoman for juggling her high-flying City career with bringing up five children, turned her fire on US regulators. Her Bramdean Alternatives investment fund had put 9 per cent – about £10m – with Mr Madoff. She told BBC Radio: "This is the biggest financial scandal, probably in the history of the markets."

Louisiana Has More Prisoners Than Any Other State

Louisiana is last in education, last in health care and now we can brag about a new accomplishment!

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday released figures showing that the United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world. And Louisiana has more than any other state.

As of Dec. 31, 2007, nearly 2.3 million people were in U.S. prisons and according to state correction officials, Louisiana has 37,969 adults behind bars. That number does not include juveniles or those doing municipal time.

The ACLU says Louisiana has nearly five times as many prisoners than in Maine, the state with the lowest rate of incarceration.

ACLU of Louisiana executive director Marjorie R. Esman said that Louisiana continues to lock up too many elderly prisoners and too many people whose biggest problem is addiction.

"We still haven't learned that the solution for many of our problems do not lie in the jailhouse," Esman said. "Of course people who are violent and dangerous to society need to be taken off the streets. But it doesn't make sense to lock up those who are not a danger."

According to figures released in June by the Louisiana Department of Corrections, 13 percent of the prison population in Louisiana is over age 50. More than 30 percent of Louisiana inmates were convicted of drug offenses.

With the current economic crisis, Esman hopes the state legislature will look into other solutions.

"Other states have proven that there are more effective ways to treat the problem of crime at lower costs," she said.

Those include parole and probation reforms, diversion programs, increasing good-time programs for people behind bars, and sentencing reforms for nonviolent offenders, she said.

Estimates put the annual cost of incarceration at about $20,000 per prisoner, Esman said.

"That money could be used to pay for a lot of early childhood education that has been shown to have a significant effect on later problems," she said.

And they clam we are free...

Marc Maron on Drug Tests & Work

Milwaukee Neighborhoods Could Print Its Own Money

I wonder how long it will takes the feds to get there and stop them.

Residents from the Milwaukee neighborhoods of Riverwest and East Side are scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss printing their own money. The idea is that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses, thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals with a recession.

"You have all these people who have local currency, and they're going to spend it at local stores," said Sura Faraj, a community organizer who is helping spearhead the plan. "They can't spend it at the Wal-Mart or the Home Depot, but they can spend it at their local hardware store or their local grocery store."

Incentives could be used to entice consumers into using the new money. For example, perhaps they could trade $100 U.S. for $110 local, essentially netting them a 10 percent discount at participating stores.

It's not a new concept—experts estimate there are at least 2,000 local currencies all over the world—but it is a practice that tends to burgeon during economic downturns. During the Great Depression, scores of communities relied on their own currencies.

And it's completely legal.

As long as communities don't create coins, or print bills that resemble federal dollars, organizations are free to produce their own greenbacks—and they'd don't even have to be green.

Wall Street & Big Business Has Punk'd Us

Legalizing Marijuana Top Issue on Change.gov

On the website http://www.change.gov/, Americans can submit what they feel should be the things we change in this country. You can post a vision for our nation and then vote on other issues that are important to you.

The legalization of marijuana for recreation and medicinal purposes is ranked number two in the list of top ideas.

The "Dream Act" is ranked at number one, followed by repealing the Patriot Act at number 3. Number 4 is build a U.S. public service academy. With closing the Guantanamo torture camp at number 5.

Check it out, share your ideas and vote.
http://www.change.org/ideas/top_ideas#listSection

Fast Food Causing Alzheimer's?

Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said on Friday.

The findings, which come from a series of published papers by a researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, show how a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.

"On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain," Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, who led the study, said in a statement.

"We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors ... can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer's."

Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language.

While the most advanced drugs have focused on removing clumps of beta amyloid protein that forms plaques in the brain, researchers are also now looking at therapies to address the toxic tangles caused by an abnormal build-up of the protein tau.

In her research, Akterin focused on a gene variant called apoE4, found in 15 to 20 percent of people and which is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's. The gene is involved in the transport of cholesterol.

She studied mice genetically engineered to mimic the effect of the variant gene in humans, and which were fed a diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol for nine months -- meals representing the nutritional content of fast food.

These mice showed chemical changes in their brains, indicating an abnormal build-up of the protein tau as well as signs that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another protein called Arc involved in memory storage, Akterin said.

"All in all, the results give some indication of how Alzheimer's can be prevented, but more research in this field needs to be done before proper advice can be passed on to the general public," she said.

Kentucky Law Requires Homeland Security Credit God

Like God has done so well with protecting the rest of the world...

Kentucky’s Homeland Security office must publicize God’s benevolent protection of the state in its reports under the 2006 law that organized the department.

Under the law, Homeland Security’s religious duties come before anything else the department does, including distribution of millions of dollars in federal grants and analyzing possible threats.

The law lists the office’s initial duty as “stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

State Rep. Tom Riner of Louisville, who pushed for the religious requirement, told The Lexington Herald-Leader it was appropriate because government alone cannot protect the state.

State Sen. Kathy Stein of Lexington said the religious requirement takes away from the department’s mission.

Cocaine Linked to Immune System Suppression

Seven people in Alberta have developed a form of immune system suppression after consuming cocaine laced with a chemical compound, public health officials said Friday.

The individuals developed agranulocytosis, a condition that makes the immune system incapable of fighting off infections.

It makes common infections become serious, even fatal, quite quickly.

"We are advising anyone who develops a fever or other signs of infection and has used cocaine to seek medical attention quickly," Dr. Gerry Predy, Alberta's Acting Chief Medical Officer of Health, said in a news release.

"Any skin abscess or lung infection that develops rapidly should also be treated immediately."

Officials have linked the cases to cocaine laced with levamisole, a chemical compound developed to treat intestinal worms in humans and animals.

The cases were reported in Edmonton, Red Deer, and in undisclosed locations in southern and northern Alberta.

Doctors in Alberta have been advised they should test and treat patients for this condition if they complain of a fever or other signs of infection after using cocaine.

Katt Williams on Pharmaceutical Drugs

Iran's Culture Cops

Pot Joins the Fight Against Alzheimer's, Memory Loss

A large-scale study released this week showed that the herb gingko biloba has no effect in preventing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. But alternative medicine aficionados may find hope in a new research touting the bennies of another "herb" in preserving memory.

Scientists from Ohio State University report that marijuana, contrary to the conventional wisdom, may help ward off Alzheimer's and keep recall sharp. Their findings, released today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington D.C.: chemical components of marijuana reduce inflammation and stimulate the production of new brain cells, thereby enhancing memory.

The team suggested that a drug could be formulated that would resemble tetrahydroannibol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot sans making the user high. But the research may ultimately drive those who fear impending dementia to roll their own solution to the problem.

Study co-author Gary Wenk, a professor of psychology, had already devised a preliminary version of a THC-like synthetic drug that improves memory in lab animals. His team at the meeting said that it works by activating at least three receptors in the brain targeted by THC—proteins on the surface of nerve cells that then trigger cellular processes resulting in reduced inflammation and production of new brain cells that can boost recall. Understanding how the compounds work may pave the way for a pharmaceutical company to prepare its own med for human clinical trials.

The researchers ducked the obvious question of whether it might be simpler, faster and cheaper to simply light up a joint. “Could people smoke marijuana to prevent Alzheimer’s disease if the disease is in their family?" Wenk said in a statement. "We’re not saying that, but it might actually work.”

Rich Get Off While the Poor Do Time & Lose Rights

In 1989 I was convicted of felony possession of pot. I have no right to carry a gun or even vote.

Ted Stevens, an Alaskan Senator , has been convicted of 7 Felony counts. He will lose no rights. As a matter of fact, the Government will pay him 150 thousand dollars a year for his pension.

The best part, the longer he is alive, the more the pension will grow.

So if you are rich and a politician, you can be convicted of multiple felonies and still collect from tax payers? If you are a regular person like me and get caught with 2 oz of pot, they lock you up and take your rights.....

This disgusts me beyond belief. How is this even possible in a free country where all of us are to be treated equal? How is this equal at all? It is clearly one rule for one kind and another rule for others! How is this "justice"? This teaches if you truly want to be a criminal and get away with it, to become a politician or civil servant that has money & power.

The ethnics reform that has been passed recently has many loop holes and does not bring any true reform. It is mind blowing to me how the rich & powerful are treated different than those without money & power.

Then we wonder why this nation is failing?

Rise of Racist Related Incidents

Republican officeholders on the national stage have reacted to the election of Barack Obama as a promising step forward in the history of race relations and democracy in the U.S. But gaining much less coverage from the national media are local reactions that are far less accepting and positive.

Away from the spotlight, many local newspapers around the country have covered recent incidents of racially motivated reactions to last week's election, from flags hung upside-down to the dangling of nooses and cross burnings. As we noted last week, a couple in northern New Jersey who had an Obama sign on their front lawn woke up to find the charred remains of a cross. Local residents today announced a "unity march" to protest the still-unsolved incident.

In Midland, Mich., a man dressed in full Ku Klux Klan regalia walked around toting a handgun and waving an American flag. Initially denying it, the man eventually admitted to police that the display was a reaction to the Obama victory. “[The man] had a concealed weapon permit and was walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a vehicle dealership while some motorists shouted obscenities at him and others shouted accolades," police told The Saginaw News.

Parents in Rexburg, Idaho, contacted school officials this week after they learned that 2nd and 3rd graders on a school bus were chanting, "Assasssinate Obama!"

The Associated Press revealed on Wednesday, "Police on eastern Long Island are investigating reports that more than a dozen cars were spray painted with racist graffiti, reportedly including a message targeting President-elect Barack Obama. The graffiti included racist slurs and sexually graphic references. At least one resident in the quiet Mastic neighborhood told Newsday her son's car was scribbled with a message threatening to kill Obama."

From the Staten Island Advance this week: "The NYPD yesterday confirmed they are treating the Election night beating of a black Stapleton teen by a group of whites as a hate crime. Ali Kamara, 17, a black Muslim and immigrant from Liberia, said he was beaten with a baseball bat Tuesday night by four white men who shouted 'Obama,' before beginning the attack."

From The Republican in Springfield, Mass.: "Community leaders including area clergy gathered Wednesday to show support and offer help to congregation members whose new church on Tinkham Road was destroyed last week by arson....The predominantly black congregation's new church was under construction in the Sixteen Acres neighborhood when it was consumed in an early morning blaze on Nov. 5, a few hours after the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first black president. The timing prompted the church pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., to question whether the fire was set and a hate crime."

Employees at Hampel's Key and Lockshop in Traverse City, Michigan, flew an American flag upside down last Wednesday protesting of the new president-elect, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. One worker used a racial slur during an interview with the Record-Eagle: "(The inverted flag is) an international signal for distress and we feel our country is in distress because the n----- got in," said Hampel’s employee Rod Nyland, who later apologized for the comment, according to the Record-Eagle.

One North Carolina man who flew his flag upside-down claimed that voters were racist, electing Obama because of his skin color, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. “The flag is stretched upside-down between two poles in a field, with a black X running from end to end. The X is a reference to the Confederate flag, said flag-owner Tony Heath. It reflects his belief that the Confederate flag has been unfairly targeted for protest by people trying to be politically correct,” the Journal reported.

In Pennsylvania, an interracial couple in Apolacon Township discovered the remains of a burned cross in their front yard. “The couple discovered the remnants of the cross about 8:15 a.m. Wednesday (Nov. 5) when a man knocked at their door. Johnson looked out the front window and noticed charring on the utility pole, then discovered two charred 1-by-3-inch planks, each about 4 feet in length, beneath it,” according to the Star-Gazette. The woman, who is Jewish, lives with her husband, who is black. "The Little Meadows area was the site of KKK rallies several decades ago, and a local woman who worked on Obama's campaign said Wednesday she heard tales of racist remarks directed at supporters," the story concludes.

Just today, two men were arrested there: 19-year-old Forrest Ashcraft and 22-yearold Stephen Barret of Friendsville. They're charged with ethnic intimidation and trespassing.

Authorities in Temecula, Calif., found spray-painted graffiti on a city sidewalk containing a swastika and anti-Obama slogan.

From today's Los Angeles Times: "Vandals spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on a house and several cars in Torrance that displayed campaign signs or bumper stickers for President-elect Barack Obama, authorities said Tuesday. The incidents occurred Saturday night in the Hollywood Riviera section of the city, said Sgt. Bernard Anderson. Four separate incidents were reported the next day, he said. No arrests have been made.

"At one house, the phrase 'Go Back to Africa' was spray-painted across the wall, in addition to a racial epithet on the garage door, Anderson said. Several parked vehicles on the streets were spray-painted with racial slurs, he said."

Today, the NAACP called on North Carolina State University to expel four students who spray painted racist messages about Obama. Two of the messages said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head" and "Hang Obama by a noose."

Students at Baylor University woke up on Election Day to a rope tied like a noose hanging from a tree outside of Morrison Hall, according to college newspaper The Lariat: “Later, verbal altercations occurred outside of Penland Residence Hall. A group of Obama supporters were walking around shouting 'Obama' and then passed a group of white men outside who made threatening and racist remarks, said Emmanuel Orupabo, Arlington senior,” according to the Lariat.

Another post-election noose incident happened in Maine. “More than 75 people rallied Sunday against an incident last week in which black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island the day after Barack Obama won the presidential election,” according to the Bangor Daily News. At a high school in Gray, a student was suspended after standing up in class, making a racist comment, and saying Obama should not be president, the News reported. Later that day, graffiti making a similar statement was found in a boys’ restroom.

In Allison Park, Pa., a student claimed that a teacher's aide went on a rant attacking the Obama victory on two occasions, one time in front of another teacher. According to the eleventh-grader's mother, the aide told the biracial student that Obama was going to be shot and killed, the U.S. flag would be changed to the KFC flag, and the national anthem would be changed to "Movin' On Up," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The teacher's aide has been suspended while the school investigates.

At the University of Alabama, The Tuscaloosa News reported, "a political candidate's poster" on a faculty member's office door was defaced Monday evening. A university spokeswoman interviewed by the News withheld which candidate was on the poster and what was written on it, but WVUA-TV -- a Tuscaloosa station owned by the university -- reported today that the poster featured a picture of President-elect Barack Obama. The TV station also reported that message said "He'll be shot..." followed by the "N" word. The university provost and vice president of student affairs wrote to students, faculty, and staff, calling the incident "totally unacceptable," according to the News.

Earths 6th Mass Extinction?

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in our knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance.

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

Edward O. Wilson, The world's leading authority on Biodiversity, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Harvard and author of "The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth."

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past, the most devasting being the Third major Extinction (c. 245 mya), the Permian, where 54% of the planet's species families lost. As long ago as 1993, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson estimated that Earth is currently losing something on the order of 30,000 species per year -- which breaks down to the even more daunting statistic of some three species per hour. Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis -- this "Sixth Extinction" -- is even more severe, and more imminent, than Wilson had supposed.

With the human population expected to reach 9-10 billion by the end of the century and the planet in the middle of its sixth mass extinction — this time due to human activity — the next few years are critical in conserving Earth’s precious biodiversity. The cause of the Sixth Extinction, Homo sapiens, means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part.

At a casual glance, the physically caused extinction events of the past might seem to have little or nothing to tell us about the current Sixth Extinction, which is a human-caused event. For there is little doubt that humans are the direct cause of ecosystem stress and species destruction in the modern world through transformation of the landscape, overexploitation of species, pollution, and the introduction of alien species

The Sixth Extinction can be characterized as the first recorded global extinction event that has a biotic, rather than a physical, cause, due to massive asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions. Yet, looking deeper, human impact on the planet is a similar to the Cretaceous cometary collision. Sixty-five million years ago that extraterrestrial impact -- through its sheer explosive power, followed immediately by its injections of so much debris into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that global temperatures plummeted and, most critically, photosynthesis was severely inhibited -- wreaked havoc on the living systems of Earth, which is precisely what we are doing to the planet right now.

Phase two of the Sixth Extinction began around 10,000 years ago with the invention of agriculture-perhaps first in the Natufian culture of the Middle East. Agriculture appears to have been invented several different times in various different places, and has, in the intervening years, spread around the entire globe.

Agriculture, which began around 10,000 years ago in the Natufian culture of the Middle East, is a major engine driving the Sixth Extinction, represents the single most profound ecological change in the entire 3.5 billion-year history of life. With its invention humans did not have to interact with other species for survival, and so could manipulate other species for their own use nor did humans have to adhere to the ecosystem's carrying capacity, and so could overpopulate

Homo sapiens became the first species to stop living inside local ecosystems. All other species, including our ancestral hominid ancestors, all pre-agricultural humans, and remnant hunter-gatherer societies still extant exist as semi-isolated populations playing specific roles (i.e., have "niches") in local ecosystems. This is not so with post-agricultural revolution humans, who in effect have stepped outside local ecosystems. Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems - converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species all now classified as unwanted "weeds" -- and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.

Yet, upon further reflection, human impact on the planet is a direct analogue of the Cretaceous cometary collision. Sixty-five million years ago that extraterrestrial impact -- through its sheer explosive power, followed immediately by its injections of so much debris into the upper reaches of the atmosphere that global temperatures plummeted and, most critically, photosynthesis was severely inhibited -- wreaked havoc on the living systems of Earth. That is precisely what human beings are doing to the planet right now: humans are causing vast physical changes on the planet.

"The comparison I make between these big extinction events, prehistoric meteorite-caused or natural event-caused extinctions and the present one," says E.O. Wilson, "is parallel to the difference between a heart attack and cancer. We understand that what we are doing is a slow but insidious, and only can be seen when you lay it out over the whole world over a period of decades. The hopeful thing about it is that this cancer can be treated. A lot of damage has been done, and it can be dangerous to us if we really just go on until half the species of organisms are extinct forever. Or we can halt the hemorrhaging.

"In terms of scale, it’s hard to put a figure on it," Wilson adds: "We’re in a pronounced early stage of an extinction event that would probably be, by the end of this century if human activities continue unabated, right up to the Cretaceous level. We’re part way there. Whether you can say its 10 percent there or 25 percent there, a lot of it depends on the organisms you’re talking about. One estimate has it that, particularly when you throw in the mass extinction of the Pacific Island birds, which are the most vulnerable on Earth, something like 20 percent of bird species has been extinguished by human activities."

Biocide is occurring at an alarming rate. Experts say that at least half of the world’s current species will be completely gone by the end of the century. Wild plant-life is also disappearing. Most biologists say that we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction. Numerous scientific studies confirm that this phenomenon is real and happening right now. Should anyone really care? Will it impact individuals on a personal level? Scientists say, “Yes!”

Critics argue that species disappear and new ones emerge all the time. That’s true, if you’re speaking in terms of millennia. Scientists acknowledge that species disappear at an estimated rate of one species per million per year, with new species replacing the lost ones at around the same rate. Recently humans have accelerated the extinction rate to where several entire species are annihilated every single day. The death toll artificially caused by humans is mind-boggling. Nature will take millions of years to repair what we destroy in just a few decades.

A recent analysis, published in the journal Nature, shows that it takes 10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach what existed before a die-off. Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and amphibians. It is likely that some species will become extinct before they are even discovered, before any medicinal use or other important features can be assessed. The cliché movie plot where the cure for cancer is about to be annihilated is more real than anyone would like to imagine.

Research done by the American Museum of Natural History found that the vast majority of biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, and is even more serious of an environmental problem than one of its contributors- global warming. The research also found that the average person woefully underestimates the dangers of mass extinction. Powerful industrial lobbies would like people to believe that we can survive while other species are quickly and quietly dying off. Irresponsible governments and businesses would have people believe that we don’t need a healthy planet to survive- even while human cancer rates are tripling every decade.

A lot of us heard about the recent extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin. It was publicized because dolphins are cute and smart, and we like dolphins. We were sort of sad that we humans were single-handedly responsible for destroying the entire millions-of-years-old species in just a few years through rampant pollution. Unfortunately the real death toll is so much higher than we hear on the news. Only a few endangered “celebrity favorites” get any notice at all.

Since animals and plants exist in symbiotic relationships to one another, extinction of one species is likely to cause ”co-extinctions”. Some species directly affect the health of hundreds of other species. There is always some kind of domino effect. This compounding process occurs with frightening speed. That makes rampant extinction similar too disease in the way that it spreads. Sooner or later- if gone unchecked- humans may catch it too.

Amphibians are a prime example at how tinkering with the environment can cause rapid animal death. For over 300 million years frogs, salamanders, newts and toads were hardy enough to precede and outlive the dinosaurs up until the present time. Now, within just two decades many amphibians are disappearing. Scientists are alarmed at how one seemingly robust species of amphibians will suddenly disappear within a few months.

The causes of biocide are a hodge-podge of human environmental “poisons” which often work synergistically, including a vast array of pollutants, pesticides, a thinning ozone layer which increases ultra-violet radiation, human induced climate change, habitat loss from agriculture and urban sprawl, invasions of exotic species introduced by humans, illegal and legal wildlife trade, light pollution, and man-made borders among other many other causes.

Is there a way out? The answer is yes and no. We’ll never regain the lost biodiversity-at least not within a fathomable time period, but there are ways to prevent a worldwide bio collapse, but they all require immediate action. Wilson, and other scientists point out that the world needs international cooperation in order to sustain ecosystems, since nature is unaware of artificially drawn borders. Humans love to fence off space they’ve claimed as their own. Sadly, a border fence often has terrible ecological consequences. One fence between India and Pakistan cuts off bears and leopards from their feeding habitats, which is causing them to starve to death. Starvation leads to attacks on villagers, and more slaughtering of the animals.

Some of the most endangered wildlife species live right in between the borderland area of the US and Mexico. These indigenous animals don’t know that they now live between two countries. They were here long before the people came and nations divided, but they will not survive if we cut them off from their habitat. The Sky Islands is one of many areas smack in the middle of this boundary where some of North America's most threatened wildlife is found. Jaguars, bison, and Wolves have to cross through international terrain in the course of their life's travels in order to survive. Unfortunately, illegal Mexican workers cross here too. People who know nothing of the wildlife’s biological needs want to create a large fence to keep out Mexicans, regardless of the fact that a fence would devastate these already fragile animal populations.

Wilson says the time has come to start calling the "environmentalist view" the "real-world view". We can’t ignore reality simply because it doesn’t conform nicely within convenient boundaries and moneymaking strategies. What good will all of our money and conveniences do for us, if we collectively destroy the necessities of life?

There is hope, but it requires radical changes. Many organizations are lobbying for that change. One group trying to salvage ecosystems is called The Wildlands Project, a conservation group spearheading the drive to reconnect the remaining wildernesses. The immediate goal is to reconnect wild North America in four broad "mega-linkages". Within each mega-linkage, mosaics of public and private lands, which would provide safe migrations for wildlife, would connect core areas. Broad, vegetated overpasses would link wilderness areas normally split by roads. They will need cooperation from local landowners and government agencies.

It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so, projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity’s best chance of saving what’s left of the planets eco-system, and the human race along with it.

Medvedev: Ready to Respond if U.S. Ends Missile Plan

Russia could cancel its deployment of missiles near the Polish border if U.S. President-elect Barack Obama scraps plans for a missile defense system in central Europe, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.

In an interview with French daily newspaper Le Figaro published on Thursday, Medvedev said Moscow had no choice but to react to U.S. plans to set up a network of missiles and radar systems near its own frontiers.

"But we are ready to abandon this decision to deploy the missiles in Kaliningrad if the new American administration, after analyzing the real usefulness of a system to respond to 'rogue states', decides to abandon its anti-missile system," he said.

"We are ready to negotiate a 'zero option'. We are ready to reflect on a system of global security with the United States, the countries of the European Union and the Russian Federation."

Washington says the missile defense system it plans to set up in Poland and the Czech Republic is needed to protect the United States against missile strikes from what it calls rogue states, notably Iran.

Russia believes the system poses a threat to its security and last week announced plans to deploy Iskander tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad region bordering Poland in response.

Medvedev said he had spoken with Obama by telephone and hoped to meet him in person soon.

"We hope to create frank and honest relations with the new administration and resolve problems that we were not able to resolve with the current administration," he said.

Asked about his response to the global financial crisis, which has hit the Russian banking sector hard, Medvedev said there had been a flight of capital out of Russia and moves to protect key banks and private savings were necessary.

He said the government might take stakes in certain banks, as had been done in the United States and Britain but he said "nationalization is not the solution" and added that any government stakes would be sold as soon as possible.

UN Mandate Against the US

More Proof Your Religions Are Flawed

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

"Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bishops spoke out on abortion more boldly than four years earlier, telling Catholic politicians and voters that the issue should be the most important consideration in setting policy and deciding which candidate to back. A few church leaders said parishioners risked their immortal soul by voting for candidates who support abortion rights.

But bishops differ on whether Catholic lawmakers — and voters — should refrain from receiving Communion if they diverge from church teaching on abortion. Each bishop sets policy in his own diocese. In their annual fall meeting, the nation's Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights.

According to national exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics chose Obama, who is Protestant. In South Carolina, which McCain carried, voters in Greenville County — traditionally seen as among the state's most conservative areas — went 61 percent for the Republican, and 37 percent for Obama.

"It was not an attempt to make a partisan point," Newman said in a telephone interview Thursday. "In fact, in this election, for the sake of argument, if the Republican candidate had been pro-abortion, and the Democratic candidate had been pro-life, everything that I wrote would have been exactly the same."

Conservative Catholics criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 for supporting abortion rights, with a few Catholic bishops saying Kerry should refrain from receiving Holy Communion because his views were contrary to church teachings.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama's win. A Boston-based group that supports Catholic Democrats questioned the move, saying it was too extreme.

"Father Newman is off base," said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. "He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. ... Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words."

A man who has attended St. Mary's for 18 years said he welcomed Newman's message and anticipated it would inspire further discussion at the church.

"I don't understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who's a pro-abortion candidate," said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. "You're talking about the murder of innocent beings."

Katt Williams on Stupid Shit

More Spying on YOU from the Patriot Act

The Bush administration has been planning since last spring to issue a final burst of federal regulations just before leaving office. It was recently announced that over 90 new regulations would be finalized before November 22 -- 60 days prior to the end of Bush's term -- making them difficult, though not impossible, for President Obama to reverse.

Although many of the regulations have to do with energy and the environment, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted on Tuesday that there's also "one that'll kick opponents of the Patriot Act right in the teeth."

The proposed regulation "would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to collect intelligence on individuals and organizations even if the information is unrelated to any criminal matter," Maddow explained. She added, "Even if they weren't already watching you -- they soon could be."

Maddow was joined by the Nation's sports correspondent, Dave Zirin, who began by complaining about Bush, "Hemorrhoids are more popular than this man. Why is he making laws?"

Zirin described how he had been involved in an episode where "the Maryland State Police sent people to infiltrate meetings I was in -- a very seditious organization called the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, where we planned such horrifying acts like tabling at the local farmer's market or planning rallies."

"Why were they spying on us?" Zirin continued. "Because the governor at the time, Bob Ehrlich -- a right-wing Republican who makes Sarah Palin look like Emma Goldman -- I mean, he's somebody who saw us as political opponents. He was for the death penalty, we were against the death penalty, therefore in his mind we deserved to be spied upon."

"We were entered into a database the heading of which was 'Terrorists/Anti-Government,'" Zirin noted angrily. "The person who organized all of this, the head of the Maryland State Police ... called us 'fringe people' in the hearings. He said we deserved it because we were fringe people.'"

Zirin pointed out that the final report which exposed the state's anti-constitutional behavior recommended future safeguards but held no one accountable. "We either have a Constitution or we don't," he stated. "Either our rights were violated or they weren't."

"They're talking about expanding this nationwide," Maddow commented, "and what they will say in order to argue for it is, 'Oh, what's the harm done?'"

"Here's the harm," Zirin replied. "It has a chilling effect on the Constitution. It has a chilling effect on our ability to assemble. ... We need to be welcoming new people into community activism, welcoming new people into struggle. And what you have instead is people looking at each other in Maryland as if, 'Is that person an enemy? Is this person a plant?'"

"And it has a horrible effect," concluded Zirin, "right at a time where in the wake of the Obama victory we should be talking about solidarity, we should be talking about expanding our forces, we should be talking about fighting for the change that we all waited on line to vote for."

Scientists to Conduct Ecstasy Trial for Counselling

American scientists said today they were planning to conduct a study into whether the dance drug ecstasy can be used to help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The researchers believe that the drug could help people open up in therapy and express deep fears and painful memories.

If the study is successful the scientists hope that the drug ­ MDMA ­ will eventually be made available on prescription.

Dr Rick Doblin, president of the Florida-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, said the US Food and Drug Administration had already approved the trial.

He said that the feelings of self-acceptance and closeness to others reported by recreational ecstasy users suggested that the drug would work in a counselling environment.

“In a therapy setting it’s not that you take MDMA and feel ecstasy and happy and your problems go away,” Dr Doblin said.

“But it helps you go deeper into the problems and work through them.

“We anticipate that people who have had traumatic experiences but haven’t been able to really move past them, because they are too scary, will be able to really open up.

“They will be able to go through really deep emotions of fear, anger, pain, sadness, and let it go,” he said.

The test subjects would be patients who have already failed to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder with the therapy and drugs currently available.

The volunteers would include victims of violent crime, including rape.

Cancer sufferers in the end stages of terminal illness would be studied to see if the drug aids them in coming to terms with the prospect of death.

A parallel study, to be conducted in Israel, would include victims of terrorism and political violence which have dogged the region for many years, Dr Doblin said.

He went on: “There’s often a lot of shame and self-blame when people are attacked that’s really unnecessary and problematic.

“MDMA has this fundamental ability to help people with self-acceptance.”

The study could begin as early as January as long as the US Drug Enforcement Administration gives clearance for the researchers to handle the illegal drug.

Initially 20 victims will be studied. Each will be given a pill ­ either a placebo or 125mg dose of MDMA ­ before undergoing therapy sessions.

Neither the patients or therapists will know who has been given the drug and who has been given the placebo.

Even if the trial goes ahead without scientific or political disruption it could be at least five years before MDMA is available on prescription, Dr Doblin predicted.

Studies would have to be conducted on a much wider scale before Government agencies could be convinced of the benefits of making the drug legally available, he said.

Texas Official: Obama Sides with Terrorists

State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar isn't backing down from her claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is plotting with terrorists to attack the U.S.

The Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog group that monitors the board, released a public statement on Monday asking Dunbar to retract the statement.

"I don't have anything in there that would be retractable," said Dunbar, R-Richmond. "Those are my personal opinions and I don't think the language is questionable."

In a column posted on the Christian Worldview Network Web site, Dunbar wrote that a terrorist attack on America during the first six months of an Obama administration "will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny."

She also suggests Obama would seek to expand his power by declaring martial law throughout the country.

"No matter who you support for president, we should all be able to agree that Ms. Dunbar's disgusting attack is a shocking example of the extremism that has infected the state board," TFN President Kathy Miller said.

"It's stunning that a board member who helps decide what Texas children learn in their public schools would say something so disgusting and reprehensible. She should be taking refresher courses in civics and good citizenship, not deciding what Texas kids learn."

The State Board of Education will begin revising public school social studies curriculum standards after adopting rules for science next year. Those standards will determine the content in new public school textbooks.

"Right now, we're still in America and we still have freedom of speech," Dunbar said. "And unless that's changed, I'm not aware of it."

Should Congress Bail Out The Auto Industry?

Pot Wins in a Landslide

A Thundering Rejection of America's Longest War

On Tuesday, largely under the radar of the pundits and political chattering classes, voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.

Michigan voters made their state the 13th to allow the medical use of marijuana by a whopping 63 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin ever for a medical marijuana initiative. And by 65 percent to 35 percent, Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing arrests, legal fees, court appearances, the possibility of jail and a lifelong criminal record with a $100 fine, much like a traffic ticket, that can be paid through the mail.

What makes these results so amazing is that they followed the most intensive anti-marijuana campaign by federal officials since the days of "Reefer Madness." Marijuana arrests have been setting all-time records year after year, reaching the point where one American is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds. More Americans are arrested each year for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- than for all violent crimes combined.

And the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, with “drug czar” John Walters at the helm, has led a hysterical anti-marijuana propaganda campaign. During Walters' tenure, ONDCP has released at least 127 separate anti-marijuana TV, radio and print ads, at a cost of hundreds of millions of tax dollars, plus 34 press releases focused mainly on marijuana, while no fewer than 50 reports from ONDCP and other federal agencies focused on the alleged evils of marijuana or touted anti-marijuana campaigns.

Walters himself campaigned personally in Michigan against the medical marijuana initiative, calling it an "abomination" and claiming yet again that there is no evidence that marijuana has medical value -- an assertion flatly contradicted by at least four published clinical trials in just the last two years.

In Massachusetts, the state's political and law enforcement establishment lined up solidly against the marijuana decriminalization initiative, including both Republican and Democratic politicians and all 11 district attorneys -- several of whom actually admitted to having smoked marijuana. They warned of rampant drug abuse and crime should the measure pass, simply ignoring the fact that no such thing has happened in the 11 other states (including California, Ohio and New York) that have had similar laws for years.

Voters were having none of it, giving a thumping rejection to government officials’ lies and hysteria in both states. Americans have taken a hard look at our national war on marijuana and rejected it for the cruel, counterproductive disaster that it is.

The voters are right. Of over 872,000 arrests in one year, 89 percent are for possession only.

What has this gotten us? Not much. Marijuana arrests weren't the only thing that set a record last year. So did the number of Americans who have tried marijuana. Usage rates came down marginally in the last few years but are still higher than in the early 1990s. Marijuana is our nation's number one cash crop.

The one thing our costly and futile efforts to "eradicate" marijuana have accomplished is to create a boom for criminal gangs, to whom we've handed a monopoly on production and distribution. Unlike producers of legal drugs like beer, wine or tobacco, these criminals pay no taxes and obey no rules. Their illicit efforts despoil our national forests and bring violence and destabilization to Mexico.

For years, politicians who know our current marijuana laws make no sense have been afraid to change them for fear of political retribution. The voters' thundering rejection of our misguided war on marijuana shows that those fears are misplaced.

It's time for Congress and the new administration -- not to mention state governments around the country -- to listen to the public. It's time for a new approach.

Georgia Congressman Calls Obama Marxist

Ku Klux Klan Murder Shocks Bogalusa, La.

James Stokes said aside from a rebel flag he used to see hanging outside of the Foster's home, there was never a red flag that anything unusual or criminal ever happened at the house next door.

"We don't know of anything out of the ordinary with them," said Stokes. "They are pleasant people and we have never had problems with them or their children."

The news left Stokes, and the Bogalusa community, speechless that his neighbor Raymond "Chuck" Foster, and seven others--including Foster's son, Shane Foster--were arrested in the murder of a woman during a Ku Klux Klan initiation.

"We have not seen anything in the town that would suggest anything going on that is racial in nature or anything," Stokes said.

The Bogalusa mayor and police chief said that the last allegations of Klan activity were from two years ago. The police, along with the FBI, investigated that incident, but did not find any evidence of Klan activity then, nor have they in decades.

"It is really disappointing to know you could have someone in your community that could do that, it looks like he (Raymond Foster) has only been here a couple of years," said James "Mack" McGehee, the Bogalusa mayor.

But the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office said the Dixie Brotherhood of the KKK was based in Bogalusa. Sheriff Jack Strain said the Oklahoma woman who was murdered was recruited and brought to Sun, La., just outside of Bogalusa, for an initiation ceremony.

"From there part of the ritual was to go on a camping trip off of Lock 3 Road," said Sheriff Strain.

It was during that trip, authorities believe sometime on Sunday, the woman and the group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, argued--perhaps because the woman wanted to leave the ceremony--and Foster shot and killed her.

Strain said the group then tried to sanitize the area and conceal the crime, burning the woman's belongings at the campsite. Authorities said an employee at a nearby Circle K helped police make arrests when some Klan members stopped in and asked how they could get blood out of their clothes.

"It is a situation that defies logic, when you think you've seen it all something like this happens," said Sheriff Strain. "This was a case where, in the woods, during some sordid ritual event, things went terribly wrong."

Sheriff Strain said the Klan leader, Raymond Foster, has a long criminal history in St. Tammany Parish and in Washington Parish. He is charged with second-degree murder. The seven other suspects are charged with obstruction of justice.

How Much Will President Obama Embrace Internet?

Stop The “Detroit 3″ Bailout - $375,000 Cost Per Employee To Taxpayers

America’s Two Auto Industries - Why Bailout The Old - The New Is Healthy

Government Aid to GM, Ford, Chrysler Could Preserve Old Way of Building and Selling Cars

Last Friday, November 7, 2008, GM announced that unless its financial performance improves, there is a substantial risk of the company collapsing by the middle of next year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122608860916209213.html?mod=article-outset-box

Discussions abound about the current “credit freeze”, economic turndown, etc ….. a discussion of current economic trends is misplaced …. a broader historical perspective is needed. A perspective that looks ahead and not just back at GM’s and the rest of the Detroit 3’s historical importance to the Country.

I believe the term is “throwing good money after bad”.

The value of GM did not suddenly decline. In 2007 GM lost 38.7 Billion Dollars. It has been a five year slide for GM stock from $60 a share to today’s $3.00 and change per share.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/gm_loses_big.php

Also see: http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/24/markets/thebuzz/index.htm?eref=aol

GM’s solution, “reduce costs by offering buyouts to more of its union employees. It’s astonishing how lavish these buyout packages can be, and yet still save the company money–early retirement plus $45,000 is apparently cheaper than keeping them on the line. It’s a sign of something deeply out of whack in the labor market when companies are consistently this desperate to shed workers–how can the UAW swing enough clout to keep the automakers tottering in and out of unprofitability?”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081109/ap_on_bi_ge/autos_what_happened

http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/25/news/gm_possibilities/index.htm

Critics say leaders over the years at Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and what is now Chrysler LLC were slow to take on unions, failed to invest enough in new products, ceded the car market to the Japanese and were ill-prepared for the inevitable rise in gas prices that would make their trucks and SUVs obsolete.

“There’s been 30 years of denial,” said Noel Tichy, a University of Michigan business professor and author who ran General Electric Co.’s leadership program from 1985-87 and once worked as a consultant for Ford. “They did not make themselves competitive. They didn’t deal with the union issues, the cost structures long ago, everything that makes a successful company.”

Whatever the reasons, the Detroit Three are closer to collapse than ever, and likely won’t make it without billions in government loans.

On Friday, GM posted a $2.5 billion third-quarter loss and ominously said it could run out of money before the end of the year. The company spent $6.9 billion more than it took in for the quarter and reported that it had $16.2 billion in cash available at the end of September.

Ford reported a $129 million loss but said it burned up $7.7 billion in cash for the period. It had $18.9 billion on hand as of Sept. 30. Its chief financial officer says he’s confident Ford will make it through 2009, but that’s because the company took out a huge loan last year.

Industry analysts believe Chrysler, now a private company that does not have to open its books, is as bad off as GM as U.S. sales continue to plummet because of tight credit and lack of consumer confidence due to the economy.

The Detroit 3 failed to challange the Union, the companies say the UAW drove up their labor costs to $30 per hour more than Japanese companies paid their workers. When the Detroit 3 have pushed for change the Union has simply called for strikes, strikes which cost the companies 10’s of billions in lost profits. The last strikes came just this past summer, in the midst of the current economic turmoil.

America has two auto industries. The “Old Auto Industry” the one represented by GM, Ford and Chrysler is Midwestern, unionized, burdened with massive obligations to retirees, and shackled to marketing and product strategies that have roots reaching back to the early 1900s.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122608860916209213.html?mod=article-outset-box

The other American auto industry, the “New Auto Industry” is largely Southern and non-union, owes relatively little to the few retirees it has, and enjoys a variety of advantages because its Japanese, European and Korean owners launched operations in this country relatively recently. Their factories are newer, their brand images and marketing strategies are more coherent – Toyota uses three brands in the U.S. to GM’s eight — and they have cars designed for the competitive global market that exists today.

Despite the economic turmoil, they are all profitable.

The New Industry has controlled costs, developed superior products and marketing. In fact the “New Industry”can’t produce some vehicles (Toyota Prius) fast enough to meet consumer demand.

The Old American auto industry is represented by the “Big Three” of Detroit. The “Detroit Three” employ approximately 200,000 people.

The New American Auto industry employs approximately 113,000 people, this is according to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research.

This bailout debate is strictly about the Old American Auto Industry.

At present, the “Detroit 3″ are talking about a preliminary bailout number of an additional $50 Billion dollars. This would bring the total to $75 Billion Dollars for the “Old Auto Industry”.

The original $25 Billion has already been approved but is currently tied up in the Energy Committee of Congress.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/081110/business/stocks_us_auto_company_gm

A $75 Billion dollar bailout for the “Detroit 3″. $75 Billion Dollars!

$75 Billion for an industry that has 200,000 direct employees?

That comes out to $375,000 per direct employee. I kid you not, $375,000 per direct employee.

You try the math, $75,000,000,000 divided by 200,000. ($750,000 / 2 = $375,000).

You’ve got to be kidding me.

It just isn’t worth the gamble. Over the last 30 years the Detroit 3 has failed to demonstrate it can complete globally. How will throwing more money at their problem help. Throwing money at the Detroit 3 won’t solve their problems and they seem incapable of solving them on their own.

At Ford Motor Co. they called it “Blue,” a team set up around the year 2000 to design an array of small, fuel-efficient cars to compete with the Japanese. It didn’t get far because no one could figure out how to make money on low-priced compacts with Ford’s high labor costs. The same thing happened at GM & Chrysler. The Detroit 3 concentrated on trucks and SUV’s, markets that the New Auto Industry nearly conceeded, because focusing on that market (SUVs & Trucks) was just too short sighted for ongoing business success.

Now the Government is considering buying the Old American Auto Industry. That is essentially what a bailout would mean. The Government buying the Detroit 3.

“We are lowering our target on GM equity to zero dollars,” the Deutsche Bank report said. “Even if GM succeeds in averting a bankruptcy, we believe that the company’s future path is likely to be bankruptcy-like,” it said. “While we believe that GM’s secured creditors may get a par recovery, unsecured creditors may get very low recovery. Equity shareholders are unlikely to get anything.”

Duetsche Bank’s assessment, the bailout isn’t likely to work. Duetsche bank noted, “even if there is a government bailout of the auto giant, shareholders would not benefit.”

The US Government should not be in the business of buying private businesses, especially not businesses that will still be bankrupt after a $75 Billion cash investment at taxpayer expense.

Throwing good money after bad? Absolutely!

In a Capitalist economy, poorly run companies that can’t control costs, successfully plan future product or get desired products to market in a timely manner, fail. Simple enough, bad companies fail. They are not rewarded for inefficency. Successful companies are rewarded.

The current proposal to bailout 1/2 of the US Auto Industry does so at the expense of the other successful half and at tremendous costs to the American taxpayer.

Further bailouts are a bad idea. Its time to let the chips fall where they may.

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

Georgia Congressman Warns of Obama Dictatorship

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado in which he called for expanding the nation's foreign service.

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

The Obama transition team declined to comment on Broun's remarks. But spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure—an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.

Broun said he believes Obama would move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national security force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."