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Beliefs inspired wartime heroes | Amarillo Globe-News
Block was a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. Despite that denomination's opposition to war, he convinced himself that it was his duty to join the war effort as a Marine. Author Bradley wrote that part of the Adventist faith "meant being an active force to help your fellow man."
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Jerry Brown speaks to the Daily News
"When I was studying to be a priest as a Jesuit, they told us when you're trying to convert somebody, you go in their front door but you take them out your own," he said. "What that means is that you let each person be fully heard as to how they want it to happen. And then, if you can demonstrate, not by argument but by demonstration, that it doesn't work, then people will have to adjust."
Amplify’d from www.dailynews.com
Jerry Brown speaks to the Daily News
If he's elected governor again, Jerry Brown says, don't expect the old Governor Moonbeam.
"I might not be as interesting," the Democratic gubernatorial nominee told an editorial board of the Los Angeles Daily News Friday, referring to how he has changed since his days as governor from 1974 to 1982.
Brown, 72, said his maturity and his political sojourn of the last 28 years have given him "patience and maybe a little better common sense" than he showed during his initial tenure as governor.
"When I came in, I was 36 years of age, and I brought in a lot of advocates, people who had been suing the government, and I thought we were going to change everything," he said. "Well, I realized you don't change
things that fast."
Voters retaliated at the polls by defeating him in his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1982 and then in 1986 ousting three of his state Supreme Court appointees, including Chief Justice Rose Bird, over the death penalty, which the justices opposed.
"It was a little too active," Brown said about those appointments. "I would say what you have to learn is incremental change. I worked with the court, and I always thought it was a quiet, pretty slow-moving institution.
"But what I really found out is that courts are slow moving. They're not democratic. And their job is to shape the law gradually over time, so that was a little bit too much excitement for the Supreme Court."
Although he defended
the appointments as "good decisions," Brown nevertheless promised to make different kinds of selections not only to the courts but throughout a new administration.
"What I've learned, certainly I would be very careful," he said. "I'm looking not for advocates but for managers, thoughtful people, and we're not going to create a lot of brush fires that detract me from what I'm trying to do. So, yeah, I would be more cautious."
But Brown left no doubt that he remains the erstwhile
visionary about how to cure California's economic ills.
"My vision is to create an electric car industry in California ... and have it fueled, not by oil from the Middle East or Nigeria or Venezuela but California sun, California wind, California geo-thermal," he said, suggesting that shuttered automobile plants in the state could be producing alternative fuel cars in the future.
"I think that renewable energy could be like aerospace of 20 years ago, 30 years ago."
In an almost hour and a half meeting in which he made allusions to Machiavelli, obscure California political figures, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Tesla electric car and the iPad, Brown offered himself as the savior to California's
problems because of his experience as governor and more recently mayor of Oakland and now the state's attorney general.
"Since I've lived in this state all my life, I think I'm the one to do it," he said. "It's our best hope."
Critics, though, say that those remarks are similar to the hubris that Brown exhibited while governor - and which led to his downfall among voters in his failed 1982 U.S. Senate bid.
"He was very sure of himself even when he was being unorthodox - and he was pretty unorthodox," said Raphael Sonensheim, political science professor at California State University, Fullerton. "I think he's more orthodox now than he was then, although he's still a bit of a walk on the wild side."
With
Sacramento having taken record time to pass a state budget, Brown said the issue would be his top priority - and he would begin tackling it immediately if elected on Nov. 2.
Brown said he has already had talks with Republican legislators about the next budget and believes he now has the skills and knowledge to become a bipartisan consensus-builder.
"I see the problem in Sacramento as getting these parties which don't talk to one another to act as human beings to work on what's needed," he said. "Then we've got to take it on the road, come to L.A., come to San Diego and have a great civic engagement on the refounding of California."
Brown said he would build bipartisanship in Sacramento by using examples of his
father, former Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown - "more socializing in the evenings with the families, certainly I saw that when my father was governor" - and by calling on what he learned as a young man.
"When I was studying to be a priest as a Jesuit, they told us when you're trying to convert somebody, you go in their front door but you take them out your own," he said. "What that means is that you let each person be fully heard as to how they want it to happen. And then, if you can demonstrate, not by argument but by demonstration, that it doesn't work, then people will have to adjust."
It is that vast experience of 40 years in government, he said, that set him apart from Republican opponent Meg Whitman, whom he said lacks the understanding of how government works and has proposed regulatory cuts that he suggested were politically impossible.
"I have a sense of how all these things came to be," he said. "I can see where the openings are for change based on the circumstances. So I think I have a very realistic, nuanced understanding of the regulatory process, the legal process, the political process and also the business cycle ..."
Voters, Brown said, understand that, citing his own recent surveys and a new poll.
On Friday, a Rasmussen Reports poll showed Brown ahead of Whitman among likely voters, 50 percent to 44 percent, with a 4-percentage-point margin of error. It is the first public poll since the controversies caused by the revelations that Whitman had employed an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper for nine years and the voice-mail recording of a Brown aide calling his opponent a "whore."
Whitman declined invitations to meet with the Daily News editorial board.
Brown, who appeared later Friday at a UCLA rally with former President Bill Clinton, also acknowledged that he has been lucky throughout this election year. His potential primary opponents - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-Lt. Gov. John Garamendi - dropped out of the race early. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein chose not to seek the office. Whitman, meanwhile, faced a costly primary against Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
"If Meg Whitman hadn't had a primary and I had a primary where I had to spend all my money, this might be a very different election," he said. "A lot of elections are a certain amount of luck. Machiavelli said you need fortune - fortuna - and you need arte, which is skill or virtue. So you have skill and you have luck.
"When I ran for governor the first time, Ford gave a pardon to Nixon, and that really hurt the Republican side, and I won by 2.7 percent. Had there not been a Ford pardon, maybe ... I wouldn't be here today."
Read more at www.dailynews.com
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Vatican: Pope says rich countries do too little against global hunger | Spero News
Vatican City - Rich countries must realize that if they do not increase aid to poor nations, the food crisis will not be resolved.
See: ENCYCLICAL LETTER CARITAS IN VERITATE http://inquisitionnews.blogspot.com/p/caritas-in-veritate_05.html
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No redistribution, no 'Xiaokang' - China.org.cn
hina's top leaders will be looking for ways to keep economic growth on a more sustainable path while facing the widening wealth gap as they meet on Friday, ...
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Peak Everything
You’ve heard of Peak Oil? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
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Jesuit's Promoting Homosexuality
As Max Voltage and Jodi Bon Jodi. When she was in college, Voltage was the president of the queer alliance at a Jesuit university and created the first drag show at a Catholic university in the United States.
The Associated Press: Turkish nationalists accused of killing bishop
The Associated Press: Turkish nationalists accused of killing bishop
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Turkey's top Roman Catholic bishop has publicly accused Turkish ultra-nationalists and religious fanatics of being behind the slaying of the country's senior bishop in June.
Monsignor Luigi Padovese, the Vatican's apostolic vicar in Anatolia, was stabbed to death by his driver outside his home in Iskenderun on June 3, a day before he was to leave for Cyprus to meet Pope Benedict XVI.
The slaying shocked the Turkish church and cast a cloud over Benedict's visit. It was the latest in a string of attacks in recent years on Christians in predominantly Muslim Turkey, where Christians make up less than 1 percent of the 70 million population.
Turkish officials have insisted the slaying was personal and not religious or politically motivated, and the driver's lawyer has said the suspect had mental problems.
But the head of Turkey's bishops' conference, Monsignor Ruggero Francheschini, told a Vatican meeting Thursday that Padovese was the victim of "premeditated murder" by the same forces that Padovese had denounced for killing a priest in 2006 and three Christians in 2007.
In speech to bishops gathered for a meeting about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, Francheschini said Padovese's killing was part of a "dark plot of complicity between ultra-nationalists and religious fanatics, experts in schemes of tension."
The driver, Murat Altun, was arrested soon after the slaying. His lawyer, Cihan Onal, said Friday that prosecutors in Iskenderun are still investigating the case and it's not clear when they will issue an indictment.
While some church officials and diplomats have quietly said the murder seemed suspect, Franceschini's comments were unusual in their bluntness. He said he wanted to set the record straight to erase the "intolerable slander circulated by the same organizers of the crime."
The rotting fruit of Obamacare begins to show - National Christianity & Politics | Examiner.com
So until they are all willing to not “lord over” us and lead by example and redistribute all they personally have to the poor, they have no businesses forcing the redistribution of wealth and industry nationalization on this country – especially when our Constitution doesn’t give them that authority.
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Socialism vs. Capitalism in America
The tide of fear against Socialism is on the rise in America. At a time when the economy is so rough, why this debate over capitalism vs. socialism?
Michael Prysner a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation explained that to him socialism means that the wealth produced by the society is put into the hands of those in need through housing, jobs, healthcare, education and other human needs.
In contrast, 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee Wayne Allyn Root said socialism as a “way to destroy any economy in the world.” He described the system as theft via the redistribution of wealth, where money earned by one person is taken and given to others who did not earn it; “that’s theft”.
Over the past few years the debate over socialism vs. capitalism has raged in US politics and has been displayed in a negative light by the media.
“The big capitalists benefit from making socialism out to be evil because they are really the only ones who stand to lose anything,” said Prysner.
He argued that there is ongoing massive theft in America, but socialism is not to blame. Prysner blamed capitalists for the theft.
“The big capitalists are sealing from all these working families in this country. We make this country the richest country in the world, there is so much wealth here, and it’s all being sucked up by a tiny group of billionaires and their multi-millionaire puppets in Washington,” he said.
The massive government bailouts of Wall Street and the major banks is evidence of this theft and the corruption built into the Capitalist system.
Root contended that Socialism has never worked, explaining that in Cuba they have decided to fire most of the government employees. Around 500,000 government employees were fired and 500,000 may be fired soon.
“Not everybody can work for government, not everybody can be supported by government, not everybody can have their hands out if you want your country to survive,” he said.
Bank bailouts are bad, root agreed. Corporate welfare is not true capitalism and is usually practiced by democratic socialists like US President Barack Obama.
“Let the banks either succeed or fail but don’t give them taxpayer money,” he added.
Root graduated as a classmate of Obama at Columbia University. He argued that Obama is now following the advice of socialist professors like Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven and overwhelming the economic system on purpose to force America into a socialist structure.
Through the proposed Obama healthcare programs, cap and trade, card check, government bailouts, legalizing immigrants, and other programs, Obama is working to socialize America, Root argued. Obama wants to kill those who fund conservative, Republican, and libertarian causes under a socialist system.
“Obama wants to simply make this a socialist nation and kill people like me,” he said.
Prysner said the demonization of Obama and immigrants makes Root a racist and said everyone is either on one side or another, the side of socialism or the side of capitalism.
“There’s two sides. There is a line drawn in this country,” he said.
The system doesn’t work. The people see the wealth in society benefit the rich, argued Prysner. The government is cutting programs that benefit those who suffer most and giving more to rich.
Root laughed at being called a racist, saying the definition of a racist is “anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal or a socialist. They immediately pull the race card out and call everybody a racist. That’s a joke. We all laugh at it. You can’t even bother us anymore with it. The fact is the biggest racists in the world are in the Obama administration.”
He argued that he favors true equality, no government entitlements. There should be no programs or systems based on race; no loans, college acceptances or other benefits based simply on race. Everything should be based on talent, not skin color.
“Everyone is equal,” said Root.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was headlines “Capitalism saved the miners”. The author argued the American company that sent the technology used to save the minors in Chile was only able possible thanks to Capitalism, because capitalism allowed the company to develop the technology while in pursuit of profits.
Prysner argued that it is ridiculous to believe that only capitalism and profits drive technology. All the great minds in society should be working to better society, not create weapons and seeking profit.
“Imagine if all of those great minds were being put to use to try and better society,” said Prysner.
“America’s been the greatest nation in 200 years; we defeated the Soviet system. China today is becoming a capitalist nation. The Soviet Union became a capitalist nation. I dare say Cuba is trying to becoming a capitalist nation,” said Root. “People get up in the morning with a profit motive and they want to change the world.”
He argued that capitalism works and that Prysner should keep talking because he will scare Americans away from Socialism.
The massive government bailouts of Wall Street and the major banks is evidence of this theft and the corruption built into the Capitalist system.
Root contended that Socialism has never worked, explaining that in Cuba they have decided to fire most of the government employees. Around 500,000 government employees were fired and 500,000 may be fired soon.
“Not everybody can work for government, not everybody can be supported by government, not everybody can have their hands out if you want your country to survive,” he said.
Bank bailouts are bad, root agreed. Corporate welfare is not true capitalism and is usually practiced by democratic socialists like US President Barack Obama.
“Let the banks either succeed or fail but don’t give them taxpayer money,” he added.
Root graduated as a classmate of Obama at Columbia University. He argued that Obama is now following the advice of socialist professors like Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven and overwhelming the economic system on purpose to force America into a socialist structure.
Through the proposed Obama healthcare programs, cap and trade, card check, government bailouts, legalizing immigrants, and other programs, Obama is working to socialize America, Root argued. Obama wants to kill those who fund conservative, Republican, and libertarian causes under a socialist system.
“Obama wants to simply make this a socialist nation and kill people like me,” he said.
Prysner said the demonization of Obama and immigrants makes Root a racist and said everyone is either on one side or another, the side of socialism or the side of capitalism.
“There’s two sides. There is a line drawn in this country,” he said.
The system doesn’t work. The people see the wealth in society benefit the rich, argued Prysner. The government is cutting programs that benefit those who suffer most and giving more to rich.
Root laughed at being called a racist, saying the definition of a racist is “anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal or a socialist. They immediately pull the race card out and call everybody a racist. That’s a joke. We all laugh at it. You can’t even bother us anymore with it. The fact is the biggest racists in the world are in the Obama administration.”
He argued that he favors true equality, no government entitlements. There should be no programs or systems based on race; no loans, college acceptances or other benefits based simply on race. Everything should be based on talent, not skin color.
“Everyone is equal,” said Root.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was headlines “Capitalism saved the miners”. The author argued the American company that sent the technology used to save the minors in Chile was only able possible thanks to Capitalism, because capitalism allowed the company to develop the technology while in pursuit of profits.
Prysner argued that it is ridiculous to believe that only capitalism and profits drive technology. All the great minds in society should be working to better society, not create weapons and seeking profit.
“Imagine if all of those great minds were being put to use to try and better society,” said Prysner.
“America’s been the greatest nation in 200 years; we defeated the Soviet system. China today is becoming a capitalist nation. The Soviet Union became a capitalist nation. I dare say Cuba is trying to becoming a capitalist nation,” said Root. “People get up in the morning with a profit motive and they want to change the world.”
He argued that capitalism works and that Prysner should keep talking because he will scare Americans away from Socialism.
Socialism vs. Capitalism in America - RT Top Stories
The tide of fear against Socialism is on the rise in America. At a time when the economy is so rough, why this debate over capitalism vs. socialism?
Michael Prysner a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation explained that to him socialism means that the wealth produced by the society is put into the hands of those in need through housing, jobs, healthcare, education and other human needs.
In contrast, 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee Wayne Allyn Root said socialism as a “way to destroy any economy in the world.” He described the system as theft via the redistribution of wealth, where money earned by one person is taken and given to others who did not earn it; “that’s theft”.
Over the past few years the debate over socialism vs. capitalism has raged in US politics and has been displayed in a negative light by the media.
“The big capitalists benefit from making socialism out to be evil because they are really the only ones who stand to lose anything,” said Prysner.
He argued that there is ongoing massive theft in America, but socialism is not to blame. Prysner blamed capitalists for the theft.
Read more
“The big capitalists are sealing from all these working families in this country. We make this country the richest country in the world, there is so much wealth here, and it’s all being sucked up by a tiny group of billionaires and their multi-millionaire puppets in Washington,” he said.
The massive government bailouts of Wall Street and the major banks is evidence of this theft and the corruption built into the Capitalist system.
Root contended that Socialism has never worked, explaining that in Cuba they have decided to fire most of the government employees. Around 500,000 government employees were fired and 500,000 may be fired soon.
“Not everybody can work for government, not everybody can be supported by government, not everybody can have their hands out if you want your country to survive,” he said.
Bank bailouts are bad, root agreed. Corporate welfare is not true capitalism and is usually practiced by democratic socialists like US President Barack Obama.
“Let the banks either succeed or fail but don’t give them taxpayer money,” he added.
Root graduated as a classmate of Obama at Columbia University. He argued that Obama is now following the advice of socialist professors like Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven and overwhelming the economic system on purpose to force America into a socialist structure.
Through the proposed Obama healthcare programs, cap and trade, card check, government bailouts, legalizing immigrants, and other programs, Obama is working to socialize America, Root argued. Obama wants to kill those who fund conservative, Republican, and libertarian causes under a socialist system.
“Obama wants to simply make this a socialist nation and kill people like me,” he said.
Prysner said the demonization of Obama and immigrants makes Root a racist and said everyone is either on one side or another, the side of socialism or the side of capitalism.
“There’s two sides. There is a line drawn in this country,” he said.
The system doesn’t work. The people see the wealth in society benefit the rich, argued Prysner. The government is cutting programs that benefit those who suffer most and giving more to rich.
Root laughed at being called a racist, saying the definition of a racist is “anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal or a socialist. They immediately pull the race card out and call everybody a racist. That’s a joke. We all laugh at it. You can’t even bother us anymore with it. The fact is the biggest racists in the world are in the Obama administration.”
He argued that he favors true equality, no government entitlements. There should be no programs or systems based on race; no loans, college acceptances or other benefits based simply on race. Everything should be based on talent, not skin color.
“Everyone is equal,” said Root.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was headlines “Capitalism saved the miners”. The author argued the American company that sent the technology used to save the minors in Chile was only able possible thanks to Capitalism, because capitalism allowed the company to develop the technology while in pursuit of profits.
Prysner argued that it is ridiculous to believe that only capitalism and profits drive technology. All the great minds in society should be working to better society, not create weapons and seeking profit.
“Imagine if all of those great minds were being put to use to try and better society,” said Prysner.
“America’s been the greatest nation in 200 years; we defeated the Soviet system. China today is becoming a capitalist nation. The Soviet Union became a capitalist nation. I dare say Cuba is trying to becoming a capitalist nation,” said Root. “People get up in the morning with a profit motive and they want to change the world.”
He argued that capitalism works and that Prysner should keep talking because he will scare Americans away from Socialism.
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Self-Balancing Unicycle Only Half as Dorky as Segway
Amplify’d from www.wired.com
Self-Balancing Unicycle Only Half as Dorky as Segway
Focus Designs Self Balancing Unicycle (SBU) has hit version 2.0. Seeing as we never covered the previous versions here on Gadget Lab, we’ll only mention one improvement before getting straight to the specs (And, of course, the snark). The new SBU ditches the dirty old chain and external motor for an internal hub motor, making the whole thing much cleaner, both visually and literally.
The electric motor of this one-wheeled Segway puts out 1,000 watts (against 350 watts in the original), and three gyroscopes make for easier and smoother turning. This, along with lowered foot pegs, makes it easier both to learn and to ride.
Finally, the battery has been bumped to 5 amp-hours for an average 12-mile range, and a maximum speed of 10 mph. Regenerative braking helps conserve juice by charging the battery as you slow down.
You can buy the new SBU starting in November, and it’ll cost you $1,500.
And the snark? Well, the machine actually looks pretty cool, and a lot of fun to ride. Take a look at this video, though, and you’ll see just how to make people hate you when you ride it: Talk on your cellphone and mug for the camera while doing some lame hip-hop music-video hand gestures. Cool!
SBU v2 [Focus Designs]
Read more at www.wired.com
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Keep the Faith: Tea Party Christians and Conservatives
A new poll is out from the Public Religion Institute, which describes how Tea Party members view themselves.
“First, it’s an overwhelmingly Christian group. 81% identify as Christian, and nearly half (47%) say they are part of the religious right or conservative Christian movement.
“Secondly, it isn’t libertarian, it’s much more socially conservative, with 63% saying abortion should be illegal and only 18% in favor of gay marriage.
“Third, it is fundamentally a Republican movement. 76 percent identify or lean towards the Republican party.
“And last, not terribly surprisingly, the media has blown their numbers out of proportion, only 11 percent of the population identifies with the Tea Party movement.
Though relatively small so far, the Tea Party is a vocal group. You don’t need a lot of voters to swing an election or a referendum, particularly if the nation is split fairly evenly in its opinions. As religious convictions play a larger and larger roll in national politics, advocates of restoring God in America’s laws, coupled with the idea that God is punishing America for its departure from His laws, there can be serious consequences for freedom of religion and worship. The U.S. Constitution’s separation of church and state could easily be undermined.
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Bacon attack on an American mosque: prank or hate crime? - CSMonitor.com
Strips of bacon spelling 'PIG' and 'CHUMP' were found in front of a South Carolina mosque Sunday. In post-9/11 America, pork – which is unclean in Islam – is a primary form of anti-Muslim protest.
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Dialogue needed in Middle East to prevent Muslim-Christian clash, says patriarch :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Vatican City, Oct 13, 2010 / 07:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Without dialogue a "new clash" of the Muslim East and Christian West could result, said one Eastern ...
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Catholics and Jews Find Ways to Partner and Share in Faith - Press Release - Digital Journal
Sixteen members of The American Conference of Cantors (ACC) have been invited to participate in a mission to the Vatican, November 14-18, 2010, ...
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Summary Box: EU probes church tax breaks in Italy - BusinessWeek
AP INVESTIGATION: The European Commission has placed Italy under investigation for granting tax breaks to either the Italian Catholic Church or the Vatican ...
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