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bviously today is September 11 the 7^th anniversary of the single most deadly attack on American soil. Nineteen radical Muslims hijacked four airliners crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City; one into the Pentagon, while unarmed passengers tried to wrest control of the fourth from the hijackers and it crashed into a Pennsylvania field. In addition to the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died in the attacks. Another 24 are missing and presumed dead. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 90 different countries. In addition, the death of at least one person from lung disease was ruled by a medical examiner to be a result of exposure to dust from the World Trade Center’s collapse.

Imperial Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941 consisted of two aerial attack waves totaling 353 aircraft, launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers. Two U.S. Navy battleships, one minelayer, and two destroyers were damaged beyond repair, 188 aircraft were destroyed and 2,402 killed – included 57 civilians — and 1,282 wounded. 29 Japanese aircraft and five midget submarines, with 65 servicemen killed or wounded.

On Monday data from Rasmussen Markets currently gives Obama a 51.5 % chance of winning in November – it is not a poll but a future’s index. That is a dramatic shift away from Obama who was once thought to be the likely winner by nearly two-thirds.. By Tuesday there has been a 20% shift from Obama to McCain among white women giving him a lead in every major poll although Obama maintains overwhelming leads among blacks and Hispanic women and men.

poll of Russians by the Levada Center (see below) immediately after the Russo-Georgian war found 75% saying Russian-American relations are “not good,” 39% “chilly”; 28% say “strained,” and 8 % say “hostile.” Forty-seven percent believe that major Western countries are Russia’s enemies and will cause harm to Russian interests if they can. Half said the U.S. was trying to “spread its influence over Russia’s neighbors,” and nearly three-quarters said the West’s support of Georgia is an attempt “to weaken Russia and force it out of the Caucasus.”

The Russian people were demoralized after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most have welcomed the push for a new nationalist spirit and renewed Russian pride championed by Vladimir Putin over the past five years. High energy prices have increased the quality of life for the average Russian, and Putin’s push for a stronger Russia on the international stage has been enthusiastically embraced at home.

Putin has worked feverishly to reverse the few democratic gains that were made in the 1990s, has used energy as a diplomatic weapon, has invested heavily in the Russian military, and has worked to counter the United States on virtually every significant international issue.

The war with Georgia was just Putin’s latest jab at the west. Medvedev may be president, but few actually believe he is calling the shots, and Russians are buying what Putin is selling. With the Russian people on Putin’s side, he is likely to continue his adversarial relationship with the West, knowing that Europe has no stomach for a fight with Russia and that the United States is too occupied in Afghanistan and Iraq to do much to stop him. Putin is watching the November presidential election and believe if Obama is elected that will provide an opportunity for Russian nationalism and territorialism to be advanced.

Adults are asking why Sen. Abel Maldonado (R) CA. was chewing gum during his speech to the Republican National Convention?

sing the latest optical brain imaging techniques, University of British Columbia scientists and researchers from Italy and Chile found newborns are hard-wired to learn and repeat words with repeating syllables. “It’s probably no coincidence that many languages around the world have repetitious syllables in their ‘child words’ – baby and daddy in English, papa in Italian and tata (grandpa) in Hungarian, for example,” says the UBC Dept. of Psychology’s Infant Studies Centre.

“The brain areas that are responsible for language in an adult do not ‘learn’ how to process language during development, but rather, they are specialized – at least in part – to process language from the start.” Adapted from materials provided by University of British Columbia.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has agreed to her first interview since last month, with ABC News anchor Charles Gibson later this week.

n 1996 Proposition 209, supported by 54% of California voters, amended the state constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity. It was widely described as anti-affirmative action designed to end racial preferences. The University of California system has been accused of rigging its admission practices to overturn that voters’ decision. The recent resignation of a UCLA professor and member of its admission’s committee because he was refused access to admission’s data has created widespread angst and even anger.

For its part UC says it is obeying the law while adopting a “holistic” approach to admissions relying less on grade point averages (GOA) and college aptitude scores like the SAT and ACT, and more on such things are community involvement and a subjectively refereed admission’s essay.

Critics are raising cane pointing out that only 5% of less qualified whites and being admitted while 75% more blacks are calling it “reverse discrimination”, and pointing out it is a disservice to admit unqualified students because they drop out – the drop put rate for blacks in 2007 at a sampled UCLA school was 41.6%; 15.2% for whites and only 10.2% for Asians.. They point to SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores 400 points lower for admitted blacks than white students.

Proponents of holistic admissions like Sociologist Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph Bunche Center for African-American Studies at UCLA routinely raise three arguments including: that the prior admission policy was a failure; GPA and standardized test are not objective measures of merit, and UC’s mission mandates diversity and that is what is most important. Hunt says it is the responsibility of a tax supported institution, like the UC system to educate future leaders in science, business and art for their communities.

Notwithstanding the arrogance that only UC can fulfill that leadership mandate the issue is exploding because of unanswered questions about the part, if any, race played in the Ivy League educations of Barack and Michelle Obama.

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign. Palin has been mauled, minimized and manhandled by an openly biased media increasing public skepticism over main stream media bias.

ohn McCain’s is wrong in assuming the vile baseness of his opponents with his own American belief that “we are all Americans” is a given. Geographically McCain may be right. But, today; too often that is where the homogeneity ends. Even that is blurred by millions of illegal aliens soaking up billions of tax dollars while taxpaying citizens suffer increasing burdens while watching their country pitching into greater peril.

This past week’s vile attacks on Sarah Palin and her family demonstrate just how untrue the “we are all Americans” premise has become. Palin’s17-year old daughter’s pregnancy is clucked about while Obama’s own illegitimate conception is ignored. After all his mother was impregnated by a man who barely staying around until Barack was weaned before abandoning them.

Those with faith are routinely derided as clinging to God and guns as if they were ignorant, unwashed aboriginal fools to be defamed as too stupid to effectively fight back.

John McCain plays tough but by the rules as he sees them. Do his opponents deserve such nobility or should he throw down his gloves and return the savagery leveled against him?

As distasteful as it must be to John McCain he must realize that today’s America is teetering on the precipice of a bottomless abyss of derangement that could effectively remove it as the best hope for liberty and freedom consigning most of the earth’s people to a new dark age while the USA wallows in a petty ideological battle losing the war for the world.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (prison guards) will begin the process to recall the Republican governor, a spokesman said Monday, calling the 2003 recall “a mistake.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday he would not be intimidated by the union. But, with his job approval rating orbiting he toilet bowl his bluff and bluster sounds gurgling. The bet it the CCPOA gets enough signatures to put his recall on the ballot if it wants to. Republicans are already shying from him like he has a dose of the mechanized dandruff.

eologist Don J. Easterbrook, a professor emeritus at Western Washington University is predicting global cooling saying the Global warming theory is going into the freezer. Global warming proponents say temperatures will warm by as much as 10 degrees by 2100. But, Easterbrook who has written eight books and 150 journal publications predicts that temperatures will cool between now and 2100 and those global temperatures at the end of the century will average cooler than now.

The first half of 2008 was the coolest in at least five years, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and Easterbrook says the global warming that has taken place during the past 30 years is over.

Also snowing on the global warming enthusiasts is the highly respected “Farmers’ Almanac,” which predicts that the coming winter will be “catastrophic” because of bitter cold weather.

Numb’s the word,” the almanac’s 2009 edition says, adding that at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings.

Ivy League geologist Robert Giegengack at University of Pennsylvania says for the last billion years only about 5% has earth been cold enough to have permanent ice at the poles.

Mexican scientist are warning of a “Little Ice Age” that will begin in about ten years and last for up to 80 years because of a decrease in solar activity.

Satellite data indicate that a period of global cooling may have begun in 2005.

A 59-year-old French woman has given birth to triplets after going abroad to get donated eggs. The whole thing has created brouhaha because under France’s socialized medicine program it is unlawful for a woman over age 42-years old to have access to the procedure.

awyers from the Arizona based Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) are recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse a political candidate on Sunday, Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules. Liberal ministers say the Internal Revenue Service must keep a restriction against politics in the pulpit. ADF’s ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship, and of course the often fierce argument about separation of church and state pr from church and state as you prefer.

The Rev. Eric Williams, a minister with the liberal United Church of Christ, planned to file a complaint with the IRS Monday against the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative legal organization based in Arizona that is challenging the restriction as unconstitutional. ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. “It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”

The battle over the clergy’s privileges, rights and responsibilities in the political world is not new. Politicians of all stripes court the support — explicit or otherwise — of religious leaders. Allegations surface every political season of a preacher crossing the line. Rather than wait for the IRS to investigate an alleged violation, the ADF intends to create dozens of violations and take the U.S. government to court on First Amendment grounds.

The root of the matter is a 1954 amendment to the IRS code that says, in part, nonprofit, tax-exempt entities may not “participate in, or intervene in . . . any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”

So far three dozen church leaders from more than 20 states have agreed to deliver a political sermon, naming political names in federal, state or local election. Others have called for hundreds of clergy to preach on Sept. 21 about the value of the separation of church and state.

Founded in 1994 by Christian conservatives including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and William R. Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, the ADF has challenged same-sex marriage initiatives, stem cell research and rules that limit the distance protesters must keep from abortion patients. It helped the Boy Scouts ban gay Scout leaders.

Regular church attendees favor conservative candidates and John McCain 63%-28% while non-church attendees are partial to Obama and other liberal candidates by 51%-29% so the whole thing is dissolving into a partisan mishmash.

Toronto blessing (tuh-RON-toh BLES-ing) noun: A form of religious rapture marked by outbreaks of mass fainting, laughter, shaking, weeping, fainting, speaking in tongues, etc. After Toronto, Canada, where the phenomenon was experienced in a church in Jan 1994.

he Insurance Institute says raising the minimum driving age to 17 or even 18 years old will save the lives of 5,000 teens who die each year in crashes; tns of thousands of injuries and billions of dollars. New Jersey, the only state that issues driver’s licenses at age 17, has a lower rate of teens dying in crashes than do other nearby states, according to the institute’s research. A driver’s license is a “right of passage” in America but it never has had much to do with driver safety or safety in general, was and is more about collecting a fee and control.

Before 1901, governments had little to do with motoring simply because motor vehicles were more a curiosity that serious transportation. 1898 the city of Chicago required owners of “wagons, carriages, coaches, buggies, bicycles, and all other wheeled vehicles propelled by horse power or by the rider” to pay an annual license fee. (The law was declared unconstitutional.) A year later, Chicago passed another ordinance which “required the examination and licensing of all automobile operators” in the city. At the same time, New York City had an ordinance which required that drivers of steam powered cars be licensed engineers as a safety measure since the thing tended to explode ir poorly maintained. Mitchell, South Dakota, (population 10,000: a city supporting two newspapers and a university) banned motorized vehicles!

In 1903 Massachusetts and Missouri were the first to require driver’s licensing. But, Missouri had no driver examination law until 1952 although Massachusetts examined and licensed commercial chauffeurs in 1907. South Dakota was both the last state to impose driver’s licenses (1954), and the last state to require driver license examinations (1959). In Missouri anyone 16-years of age or older could go to any gasoline station; plunk down two bits (25 cents) and have a driver’s license. A hundred years ago sixteen was widely accepted as an age of responsibility when a youth could quit school, and begin work.

In 1989, 79 percent of females and 91 percent of males (aged 16 and older) in America held drivers licenses a total of 169 million. The driver’s license has become the ubiquitous personal identification standard. But, it continues to have less to do with safe driving than “control” and fees. Now the Insurance Institute thinks that should change, and that has triggered a robust and strenuous national debate.

The Bible says, ““Give, and it shall be given to you. For whatever measure you deal out to others, it will be dealt to you in return.”

f I am sitting pretty, and you’ve got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, and I can afford it and she can’t — what’s the big deal for me to say, ‘I’m going to pay a little bit more.’ That is neighborliness,” said Barack Obama to Bill O’Reilly this week.

Meanwhile George Obama who lives in a 6’ X 8’ hovel without sanitation or running water in a Kenyan slum told Vanity Fair “I live here on less than a dollar month,’  and ‘if anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.’  Hypocritically Obama has done absolutely nothing to help his unfortunate half-brother since he found him living there in 2006.

Despite his personal assertion that marriage is “between a man and a woman,” Sacramento mayoral candidate collapsed and Kevin Johnson and hypocritically announced Wednesday his opposition to a proposed statewide proposition to ban homosexual marriage.

uwait has expressed concern over Iraqi interest in an advanced U.S. fighter-jet. Officials said Kuwait has sought clarification from the Bush administration over Iraqi consideration to procure the F-16 multi-role fighter. The officials said Kuwait, occupied by Iraq in 1990, has determined that Iraqi acquisition of the F-16 could change the balance of power with neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council states. Distrust of Iraq remains high especially as the U. S. is poised to withdrawal. “American plans to arm Iraq is a threat to regional security and raises questions about Washington’s policy in the region,” Kuwaiti parliamentarian Nasser Al Duwailah said.

Al Duwailah, believed to reflect the interests of the Kuwaiti government, said Kuwait and Saudi Arabia must maintain their military superiority over Iraq. The parliamentarian has appealed to Kuwaiti Prime Minister Nasser Al Mohammed Al Sabah to oppose U.S. plans to sell advanced weapons to Baghdad including main M1-A-1 battle tanks, attack helicopters, and other sophisticated weapons.

Santa Barbara City Council voted with one dissenting vote to object to offshore oil drilling. Last week the county Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to the contrary. Both votes are worthless since neither has jurisdiction offshore.

he UAE (United Arab Emirates) wants to buy $7 billion worth of American THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile systems to protect itself against the growing arsenal of Iranian ballistic missiles. The UAE is a confederation of small Arab states at the southern end of the Persian Gulf. With a population of only 5.5 million, and large oil and gas deposits, the emirates have a per-capita income of $43,000. Thus the UAE has a lot to defend, and an increasingly belligerent neighbor just across the Gulf. The UAE controls one side the entrance to the Gulf (the Straits of Hormuz). Iran is on the other end, and both nations dispute ownership of some islands in the middle.

Analysts expect Washington Mutual will lose $40 billion on its bad loan portfolio over the next three years and continues to include WaMu on his list of top 12 banks and thrifts at greatest risk of failing.

ristol fashion (BRIS-tl FASH-uhn) adjective: In good order. We know the term is coined after Bristol, England, but we are not so certain why. Some believe the term alludes to the prosperity of the city from its flourishing shipping business. Others claim that the term arose as a result of the very high tidal range of the port of Bristol: at low tides ships moored here would go aground and if everything on the ship was not stowed away properly, chaos would result. The term is often used to describe boats and typically used in the phrase “shipshape and Bristol fashion”. It is something I’ve heard from the grandfathers. Uncles, and father but never knew its origin.