Archive for November 2009

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It’s no secret that I enjoy watching Glenn Beck. His self proclaimed “entertainment and enlightenment” has been a breath of fresh air. I’ve also enjoyed his candidness when dealing with political figures on his show. He is willing to ask the questions we are asking at home. Continuing to claim that he is not a journalist, he continues to lead the way, breaking huge stories and scandals. Love him or hate him, he has proven himself worth listening too.

With that being said, I want to point out something I notice while watching him last night. I noticed a change in gears. While I was watch his “One Thing” segment, I noticed a determination in his voice. He had fire in his eyes. It seemed something was missing. The light heartedness was on vacation last night. As he shredded the New York Times for being a time capsule for the news, he also began to reveal an agenda of empowerment for conservatives. He spoke of nation wide seminars educating people on the economy, history, principles, values, and climate change.(and more)

During an interview on his show last night, Beck stayed serious. His demeanor and expressions were that of a  concerned man. Remember, this is a man who used to chomp on M&M’s with his feet up on his desk while making faces at the camera during interviews. All that was gone. He was attentive and eager to listen. Was that a move by his producers? I doubt it. It seems the severity of the situation we are in has warranted this response. How is that any different for any of us? We should all sit up in our seats, put on serious faces, and listen attentively as our government seeks to bury us is treaties, taxes, debt and scandals.

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ACORN’s San Diego office isn’t the only place its been careless with sensitive documents. Late last year, ACORN abandoned an office in Oklahoma. In its haste to vacate the office–and skip out on the landlord’s claim of back-rent–ACORN abandoned piles of documents, as well as a computer. Below is a copy of ACORN’s “Oklahoma Power Plan,” a long-term political plan to reshape politics in the Sooner State.

OKlahoma Power Plan -

The “Power Plan” is a very interesting document. First, it provides another example for how ACORN’s political operation thinks strategically. The plan is focused on impacting state legislative races to create momentum and a power base to affect political races next year.

The second interesting feature of the document is how overtly partisan it is. At the beginning of the document, ACORN makes clear its goal is to put the Democrats in charge of the state Legislature:

Second, become an influential organization by shaping a handful of strategic legislative districts that, by themselves, can change who controls the state legislature. In other words, by taking credit for controlling some swing seats that return state senate power to progressives in 2008 and the state house to progressives in 2010, ACORN may not have members in a majority of districts, but we will be seen as the force that is making Oklahoma a progressive state in the way that it was 100 years ago.

By using this power to win significant changes for working people, by the end of our 5 years, we will have legitimized the progressive takeover of the statehouse and head into 2012 with a real possibility of changing what Oklahomans look for and expect out of their Congressional delegation.

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Nepalese Hindus lead buffalo to the slaughter in Bariyapur.

The world’s biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.

The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

With up to a million worshippers on the roads near the festival grounds, this year’s fair seems more popular than ever, despite vocal protests from animals rights groups who have called for it to be banned. “It is the traditional way, ” explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, “If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.” .

Crowds thronged the roads and camped out in the open, wrapped in blankets against the cool mist. The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls broadcasting music and offering tea and sugary snacks.
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THE VAST majority (72 per cent) of people want to see a reduction in the number of non-Irish immigrants living here, according to an Irish Times /Behaviour Attitudes opinion poll.

Overall, a total of 43 per cent say they would like to see some, but not all, immigrants leave the State, while 29 per cent would like to see most immigrants leave. In contrast, just over a quarter (26 per cent) would like to see the number of immigrants remain as it is.

In a reversal of trends from polls in recent years, younger people’s attitudes towards immigration have hardened the most.

For example, 81 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 would like to see the number of immigrants fall, compared to 69 per cent in the 25-44 age group. People in rural areas and those from less well-off backgrounds are also more likely to support a reduction in the number of foreign workers based here.
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Racial attacks like the ones behind the arrest of 32 suspects in Denver are part of a trend spreading across the country, gang experts said Saturday.

As part of the trend, black gang members videotape the assaults in trendy tourist districts and sell them on the underground market as entertainment.

“They knock a young white guy out with one blow to see if his knees will wobble and surround them and take their money,” said the Rev. Leon Kelly, who runs a Denver gang-prevention program. “It’s a joke.”

Denver police announced the 32 arrests Friday after a months-long undercover investigation into what authorities said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in Denver, including in the Lower Downtown entertainment district.

They seek the arrests of three more suspects.

Kelly said he has been warning gang members for months that for the $20 they snatch from someone, they could do 20 years in prison.

“There’s always consequences,” he said. “They’ve been targeting each other for years. Once it starts venturing out of the ‘hood, it becomes a major issue.”

Denver police Lt. Matt Murray said that the same day Chief Gerry Whitman announced the arrests, a national TV program profiled a similar gang-fueled onslaught in Minneapolis.
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MINNEAPOLIS - Charges against eight people involved in the long-running probe of young men who left the United States to fight in Somalia were unsealed in Minnesota on Monday.

As many as 20 young Somali men have left Minnesota over the last two years for Somalia, and are believed to have joined the terror group al-Shabab. At least three have died.

The crimes alleged Monday include providing financial support to those who traveled to the east Africa country to fight on behalf of the terror group, al-Shabab.
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The Speech delivered by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko at Mykhaylivska Ploshcha on the occasion of commemoration of those who died in Holodomor (Famine) of 1932–1933.

They are already here.

They have traveled a long way.

They are millions upon millions of our grandfathers, fathers, brothers, sisters.

The wagons, on which they have been riding, are coming from heaven. Mothers must have taken great care not to leave behind anybody, particularly the youngest, the most precious ones who found their peace and silently fell asleep in God’s arms.

For 75 years this caravan of souls has been traveling across the Milky Way — three, five, seven, or even ten million of innocent people, hundreds of thousands of families, dead villages, millions of souls, over whom the burial services were not read, millions of those who were tortured, massacred and left unburied.

They want to go back home. They see these small lights [thousands of candles were lit on the square].

They trust in us.

Because we are their unlived lives.

Dear Ukrainian nation,

Brothers and Sisters, we are united. Today Ukraine and Ukrainians of the whole world begin to commemorate the 75-th anniversary of a most terrible catastrophe, the famine known as Holodomor of 1932–1933.

We honor every soul, every victim, and every martyr.

Even until now we don’t know the full scale of the tragedy.

Slowly its death mask emerges from witnesses’ accounts, from secret archives, from those satanic “separate files” [top secret archives dealing with the famine].

“I remember everything that happened… I was swollen from hunger; my brother was even more swollen… He was dying; fluid was leaking from his swollen body. I was sitting beside him; he was gritting his teeth and he kept asking for a cucumber… Then he died… His dead body was wrapped in a blanket — the color of this blanket is incised on my memory…” These words come from the recollections of Hanna Nelasa who was born in Luhansk Oblast. This woman mastered her fear and made her testimony.

“Confiscators [of food and food products] would stop at nothing — they ignored the suffering of children, they did not care how many children there were … They kept coming back again and again and taking everything they could find. They were worse than fascists”. These words are from the recollections of Nonna Cherveva from Horlivka.

And now an excerpt from a letter written by Mykola Antonovych Reva from Hylivka, Poltava Oblast, to Joseph Stalin: “Hundreds of thousands of people have died of hunger, right in front of the communists, who were riding over our dead bodies arrogantly praising life”. [For writing this letter,] Mykola Reva was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

From a letter of Kaganovich [one of Stalin’s henchmen] to Stalin: “I fully agree with your evaluation of the state of affairs in Ukraine… The theory that ‘we, Ukrainians are innocent victims’ creates the ground for solidarity and corrupt practices… I think that… the time has come… to urge the organization to make a real breakthrough…”

They wanted to break everyone.

The evil force attacked us. The name of this evil is genocide — it was a well-planned attempt to subjugate our nation.

It was the totalitarian communist regime that organized and carried out this plan. The [soviet communist] regime was the murderer. That pack of rascals had no mercy for any people — every nation under their domination was drowning in rivers of blood.

Stalin, following a well-thought out plan, chose the Ukrainian peasantry who were the core, the foundation, the pillar of the nation, to be the victims. That’s what he did in our land.

“There is no and there can be no powerful national movement without a peasants’ army. The national question boils down to a question of peasantry.” These words of Stalin provide an answer to the question why millions of Ukrainians were to die.

Terror was launched according to plan, step by step. During 1932–1933, the Political Bureau of Central Committee [of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] held 69 sittings at which Ukraine was discussed 270 times and separate decisions were taken.

They spared no effort [to carry out their plans of destruction]. At the Famine’s worst period of time 25 thousand people died every day.

We must know every fact, every directive [of the communist regime], we must know every name — both of the victims and of the murderers. Search for truth cannot be stopped and it shall not stop.

First food was confiscated. Then the territories of Ukraine and Kuban were cordoned off by troops. A third of all the Ukrainian villages was put on the “black lists” — these villages were turned into ghettos of famine, long before Hitler set up his ghettos.

The harvested grain was exported in great quantities — the grain that could have saved millions of lives was processed into vodka.

There was no chance to survive. People started to eat corpses.

Holodomor is much more than our pain and wound. It is a black hole in our history, the black hole that could devour not only Ukraine itself but any slightest hope for life as well.

Holodomor is a peak of the tragedy however it is not the only one.

I ask that today we remember everyone.

[...]

More here.
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Private investigator Derrick Roach says he found thousands of documents containing sensitive personal information dumped outside the San Diego branch of ACORN.

Derrick Roach, a licensed investigator based in San Diego, told FoxNews.com he paid an impromptu visit to the city’s ACORN branch on Oct. 9 and watched from his car as a man tossed bags of files into a Dumpster outside the building.

After ACORN staff left for the day, he says, he searched the trash bin and discovered more than 20,000 documents he believes point to illicit relationships between ACORN and a bank and a labor union — as well as confidential information that could put thousands at risk for identity theft.

“We’re talking people’s driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, tax returns, credit reports” — all tossed in public view in the Dumpster, he said.
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When it comes to celebrating the nation’s history, officials in Provincetown, Mass., are tired of seeing their city taking a back seat to Plymouth Rock — and they’re launching a publicity campaign aimed at grabbing some of the spotlight, according to the Boston Globe.

Plymouth is the site of the Pilgrims’ first settlement in the New World — and of the first Thanksgiving. But the newcomers first touched American soil 389 years ago in Provincetown, not Plymouth. They were there for just five weeks, but it was the scene of a slew of other Pilgrim firsts, including the birth of their first baby. Still, Plymouth gets most of the attention.

The 253-foot Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Mass., will turn 100 in August. City officials are using the occasion to highlight Provincetown’s historical importance as the spot where the Pilgrims first landed nearly 400 years ago.
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Sgt. Don Pilcher, supervisor of the Arlington Police Department gang unit, monitors the Bowie-Mansfield high school football game last month at Maverick Stadium. On Friday nights, gang officers have been patrolling parking lots and concourses at high school football games looking for known troublemakers.

ARLINGTON — Working an undercover surveillance detail at an east-side apartment complex, Detective Gus Klinkenberg didn’t have to wait long before the shooting started.

Two gang members firing semiautomatic weapons rushed toward the New York Avenue apartment, and two rival gang members returned fire, forcing their assailants to race away in a speeding car.

Klinkenberg radioed for help from two nearby gang officers, Brett Worman and Clint Weil, and the detectives were able to stop and arrest the fleeing suspects. The detectives — nominated for medals of valor — then returned to help raid the targeted apartment, where they seized a large quantity of drugs and arrested more gang members, one from the city’s Most Wanted List, in connection with other shootings.

Was it dumb luck that the gang officers happened to be at the right place at the right time?

Klinkenberg and others will tell you no.

“You know they are going to try something at some point. What you try to do is put yourself in a location where you can try to catch them in the act or catch them before they do it to keep everybody safe,” said Sgt. Don Pilcher, the gang unit supervisor. “The actions they are often involved in are a great threat to the citizens.”
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