To confirm this challenge my pastor spoke today about lining everything up with our faith.  He had a whole list of things (government, rest, marriage, sociology, marriage, technology, art, health, lifestyle, psychology, logic, faith, family, philosophy, ethics, morals, economics, sexuality, recreation, entertainment, education) that we sometimes look at in a way that does not line up with the way that God looks at it. 

The scripture for me today is Psalm chapter 15.  However, reading Psalm chapter 24:4 (came to me because that's where my pastor read from today) wouldn't hurt.  "He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully..."  It goes on to say that this person will receive a blessing from the Lord.  AMEN!  Guess what Psalm 15 says!  "He who walks with integrity and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart..."  God is speaking, isn't He?

If we choose to do this thing (15 day fast) let us do it for the right reason: that God will reign in EVERY part of our lives.  Let us be true to Him.  It is God who makes us pure and righteous and fills us with His truth.  If there is an area of your life where you've come to believe a lie about yourself or those around you..."be still, and know..."

Body/Mind: I was tempted today because of that thinking, "Oh, God isn't really concerned about me completing this thing."  Conviction came when I remembered that I'm accountable to my friends and anyone reading this blog...not to mention God.  I am hungry though!

Spirit: I have a song of praise in my heart to my God.  In Him I rejoice and man, AM I GLAD!!!  God is also asking us to give from the little that we have...may He provide and may He find us faithful.  The character God wants us to have: "He does not put out his money at interest...he who does these things will never be shaken." Psalm 15:5

Write: if you need encouragement or have some!

Gloria

How I hope my hair looks SOON! Is there hope?

Während ich meditierte fühlte Herrn Jörg Haider und Herrn Jürgen Möllemann zusammen im Auto, Ich nehme solche Meditationshinweise sehr ernst und, hoffe, dass wir in Kürze mehr Details über Jög Haider's "Unfall" erfahren werden.

Seine politische Haltung befand ich immer Menschenverachtend. Trotzdem war ich sehr getroffen als ich ihm, bei meiner Meditation hilflos erlebte, da kein Mensch das Recht hat einen anderen Menschen wegen seine Ansichten aus der Welt zu verabschieden. Politiker sollen ihre Wähler mit glaubwürdigen Fakten überzeugen, dann brauchen sie auch keine Angst haben, dass ihre Gegner ihnen ihren liebgewonnnenen "politischen Macht" entziehen..

Mehr von Tedora

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Nationalization

Wall Street learns to sing "The Internationale"

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/10/11/2008

Everyone’s watching the G7 meeting in Washington this weekend. It’s
widely assumed that if they don’t come up with a multinational,
coordinated plan to restore liquidity to the banks, the wild gyrations
and crashes of the past week will turn out to be just the warm-up act.
Simon Bower of the Guardian sounded this ominous note yesterday:
“Anxiety levels in the global financial markets were ratcheted up
yesterday after credit derivatives linked to the failed US investment
bank Lehman Brothers, with a face value estimated at $200bn (£118bn) to
$440bn, began to be unwound.”

That would be credit default swaps, which are the ticking nuclear bomb
in the middle of the financial crisis, the element that could turn a
crash and recession into financial armageddon.

Last night there were reports that they were going to do what one
member, the United Kingdom, had already done and basically nationalize
the banks. I passed that tidbit along to the right wingers on Usenet,
along with a cheery, “Comrades! We are all socialists now!” which failed
to provoke any laughs.

But now the G7 is talking instead about governments buying up all the
NON-voting stock on the banks, a course that would provide plenty of
risk to the taxpayers whilst ensuring that there were no steps they
could take to mitigate that risk. Control of the banks would remain in
the hands of the experts who wrecked the banking system in the first place.

It’s a bit like coming across a bus crash, where passengers are
scattered all about the place, injured and moaning, and the driver is
sitting in the middle of the wreckage, dazed, smelling of booze, and
unable to explain just how that tree jumped out in front of him.

What the G-7 wants to do is hire that same driver to ferry the injured
to the hospital. And they’ll ride along as passengers.

They need to flat-out nationalize the banks, and restore liquidity, and
they need to do it now. While they are at it, they need to call a
moratorium on mortgage foreclosures (the Cook County Sheriff’s
Department has already announced it would stop evicting tenants from
foreclosed properties, an act of rebellion that I hope spreads), and
they need to completely freeze trade on derivatives, and do it by Sunday
night, when the European markets open. The US will be shielded from the
carnage for an extra 36 hours, because of Columbus Day.

Just a few months ago, even suggesting that the banks ought to be
nationalized would get you loudly dismissed as a socialist by plutocrats
unwilling to take the biggest key to their power and hand it over to the
government. Not only was it not on the political radar, but it wasn’t
even about to get air-borne.

I know a lot of people on both the left and right who will tell you that
the biggest mistake America ever made was establishing the Federal
Reserve. This, in effect, ensured that the nation’s money supply was
privatized, which meant that a shadow authority born of sheer economic
power could spring up and vie with the government for control of the
country. Clear back in 1802, Thomas Jefferson foresaw the danger, and
wrote Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, declaring, “I believe
that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than
standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the
banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children
wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing
power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom
it properly belongs.”

Of course, back then, the economy was a tiny little thing, as befitted
an agrarian nation of some 5.5 million people, nearly all of whom lived
in the country. Jefferson envisioned a land where farmers could stamp
their own bullion and use it in trade. Obviously, with bullion reserves
making for far less than a 1% margin, he would probably have to devise
some other process.

But if he came to 2008 America and familiarized himself with the present
crisis, he probably would. He would have little trouble recognizing the
source of the crisis, and would have a remedy similar to what he wanted
over 200 years ago.

Jefferson was far less worried about where the money came from than he
was about where the power accrued. His objection to private banks
rested, not on some fervent desire for nationalization – the man was
hardly a Marxist, after all – but because he didn’t want to see massive
power accrue in the hands of a banking class, as had happened in Europe
since the end of the mediaeval age.

Jefferson felt that the greatest threat to freedom was the rise of an
aristocratic class in America. To that end, he not only proposed that
the power to make money should reside in the hands of the people, but
that all real estate be recycled back to the government for
redistribution upon the deaths of the owner.

He was right: we have seen the rise of a monied class that has twisted
and perverted America, and now we have one of those once-in-a-lifetime
events where its own greed, stupidity, and wretched excess have brought
it down. It happened in the 1930s, and around 1880. It was inevitable
that it would happen again.

Nationalizing the banks may or may not short-circuit the crash.
Certainly it has a better chance of it than any of the other measures
thus proposed. And with a new administration coming, people have an
unparalleled opportunity to take the monied class and bring them down to
size. Yes, they serve an important role in a capitalist society, or any
society which permits private enterprise. But they are not worth giving
90% of the national wealth to for them to squander, and that’s exactly
what has happened. The people can change that, bloodlessly and
effectively, and in manners fair to the monied class but which restore
power to the people.

One minor oddity is the behavior of George W. If you ever need an
example of a worthless third-generation whelp given undeserved power and
position by nothing more than his family name, he is that example. Never
more than a bit player in this whole mess since it blew up several weeks
ago, and more of a joke by this point, he’s been running around telling
his aides that America’s just lucky that he’s the one in charge. I
mention that just in case there is anyone out there who still thinks
George has any connection to reality any more. But he has the sense of
entitlement that is the hallmark of his class.

It is time to put them back in their place, and return America to the
people.

Big Sumo's Gifts

Originally uploaded by Big Sumo

My special powers:

"For those times when you feel exhusted by life, I give you the courage to fight another day. No more wailing. Go forward with strenght and dignity."

From Find Your Voodoo

Very appropriate really. :)

Bob Herbert, The New York Times, October 10, 2008

The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot.

For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.

Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.

Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It’s not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan — the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 — has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

Read More Here

Upon entering I learned that it’s not just a doughnut shop, but a wedding chapel too (a $175 service includes a legal wedding with doughnuts and coffee for 10). At first I thought it was a little strange, but then I tasted their doughnuts and realized what all the buzz was about.

Tony (well, that’s what all Chef Bourdain’s friends call him, and after watching the show for three years now, I feel we’ve become quite close) had the Bacon Maple bar, and I was pretty sure that’s what I was going to indulge in (apparently Brad Pitt is a fan too!). When I first shared with my friends that was the doughnut I wanted they all winced, until I reminded them how delicious the perfect bite of warm pancakes with syrup and bit of salty, crispy bacon is (I probably should have mentioned that it was Brad’s favorite, but the fact eluded me at the time).

However, when I got to Voodoo, the bacon didn’t look very appetizing, so I decided to go with the No Name, and boy am I glad I did. You can’t go wrong with a glazed raised drizzled with chocolate and peanut butter sauces and then sprinkled with rice krispies. It was deliciously sweet and had just the right crunch. I made the mistake of not getting a cup of coffee with it. Then it would have been perfect.

If you find yourself in Portland (it’s a quick hour and change on Southwest), find your way to Voodoo Doughnuts.

By Kim Bedwell  

Paul Krugman, The New York Times, October 10, 2008

Last month, when the U.S. Treasury Department allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, I wrote that Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was playing financial Russian roulette. Sure enough, there was a bullet in that chamber: Lehman’s failure caused the world financial crisis, already severe, to get much, much worse.

The consequences of Lehman’s fall were apparent within days, yet key policy players have largely wasted the past four weeks. Now they’ve reached a moment of truth: They’d better do something soon — in fact, they’d better announce a coordinated rescue plan this weekend — or the world economy may well experience its worst slump since the Great Depression.

Let’s talk about where we are right now.

The current crisis started with a burst housing bubble, which led to widespread mortgage defaults, and hence to large losses at many financial institutions. That initial shock was compounded by secondary effects, as lack of capital forced banks to pull back, leading to further declines in the prices of assets, leading to more losses, and so on — a vicious circle of “deleveraging.” Pervasive loss of trust in banks, including on the part of other banks, reinforced the vicious circle.

The downward spiral accelerated post-Lehman. Money markets, already troubled, effectively shut down — one line currently making the rounds is that the only things anyone wants to buy right now are Treasury bills and bottled water.

The response to this downward spiral on the part of the world’s two great monetary powers — the United States, on one side, and the 15 nations that use the euro, on the other — has been woefully inadequate.

Europe, lacking a common government, has literally been unable to get its act together; each country has been making up its own policy, with little coordination, and proposals for a unified response have gone nowhere.

Read More Here

The Japanese Crash

A Yen to put people ahead of plutocrats.

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://zeppcommentaries.com/10/09/2008

Ironically, the Dow Jones hit its all-time high of 14,164 on this date
last year. It fetched up today at 8,579.19, That came on the heels of
another sickening plunge of nearly 680 points, most of which occurred in
the final 15 minutes of trade.

That is, in technical terms, a fair chunk of change. Five trillion
dollars, according to one economist on NPR today. To paraphrase a 1960s
Republican Senator, Everett Dirkson, “It adds up. A trillion here, a
trillion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.” Of
course, when Dirkson said it, he said “millions”, a term that is
regarded as pocket change in Washington these days.

Some people are comparing the present market crash to 1929. It’s far
larger in sheer size, but then, so is the economy. So I went looking. In
the month following the October 1929 crash, the Dow went from 341 to
220, about 35%. It then rallied over the next few months, back up to
about 290. However, by 1932 it was down to 125. Factoring in inflation,
that meant it lost nearly 80% of its value.

Since September 10th, the Dow has lost nearly 25% of its value. That’s
bad, but not quite as severe as November 1929. Of course, we don’t know
where the bottom lies. People think of the Crash as a single day event
that led promptly to the Great Depression, but that’s not quite true.
The original crash occurred in two stages about a week apart, followed
by a fairly steep decline for three more weeks. It made a partial
recovery, and then went into an extended 26 month decline. It was during
that time that banks began failing, factories closed, and unemployment
started climbing. It wasn’t until 1931 that the crash translated into a
depression, and another year before it became known as the Great
Depression.

Free market optimists on the web have been making hopeful noises,
noting, accurately, that the market suffered even bigger declines in
single DAYS in 1987 and in the wake of 9/11 in 2001, and recovered in
fairly quick order, with no depression, or even recession hitting main
street. Those claims are accurate, but in both instances, they were
rogue events that rattled the economy, but the economy was basically
sound. That isn’t the case here. This is a serial crash following two
months of general decline, and it’s happened despite a mind boggling
$3.5 trillion in bailouts from governments around the world, and a
worldwide concerted effort to staunch the bloodletting. Obviously, basic
conditions are not fundamentally sound, and despite what John McCain
opined three weeks ago, the economy is not strong. (That may have been
the remark that cost him the election).

More realistic market advocates are noting that busts come and go, and
eventually a boom cycle comes around, and the smart investors will make
their money back, and more. This too, is true, and I even entertain some
hope that it will pertain in this case. But I’m not counting on it, and
here’s why:

December 29th, 1989 is an interesting date in Japanese history. It was
on that day that their stock exchange, the Nikkei 225, hit a peak of
38915.87. It was fueled by a monumental run-up in corporate debt and
property values. A penthouse apartment in Tokyo might rent for ten
million dollars –dollars, not yen–a month. In a drive for ever greater
productivity, wages had stagnated and workers will routinely putting in
15 hour days just to keep pace with their income of three years earlier.
Japan was a huge fad among capitalists here in America, with the
smartest guys in the room all chorusing that we needed to adopt and
emulate the Japanese model, and that it would make everyone unimaginably
wealthy, except of course for the 95% of Americans who are just workers
and thus don’t count. (They were similarly enthused by the German
“economic miracle” that seemingly beat the Great Depression in the mid
to late 30s).

Then the Nikkei crashed, and it was a gigantic crash, as bad for Japan
as 1929 was for America. It lost 2/3rds of its value over the following
eight months, fetching up at about 14,000.

It was a speculative bubble popping that fueled the crash. If you
compare the rate of growth of the Nikkei from 1975, when it stood at
5,000, to where it was in August of 1990, it was actually above what a
straight line progression would have made it going by the pre-bubble
rate of growth. So the crash corrected the anomaly of the bubble, and
the market came out of it basically healthy, right?

Wrong. The Nikkei stayed essentially flat for the next EIGHTEEN YEARS,
hovering around 14,000. The economy slumped in the wake of the bubble
bursting, and never recovered. Now the events of the fallout from the
vast American derivatives bubble has impacted Japan, and as of this
hour, the Nikkei crashing again today and down nearly 10% in the
session, is just below 8,000. That would be the 80% loss that the Dow
experienced between 1929 and 1932. It just took six times as long for
the bottom to arrive this time.

Still, despite the vicissitudes the Tokyo stock market has faced and is
facing, the Japanese economy, while subdued, it in some ways prepared to
weather the financial storm better than America’s will. Japan, in the
wake of the bubble and growing social discontent, pushed for higher
wages and stronger control of companies. CEOs only make about 22 times
what an average worker makes, compared with something like 450 times
here. The result is that while the markets haven’t made a killing, the
economy has been generally healthier.

For us here in America, it could be as long term, and with harsher
consequences, because America, intent on staving off even a mild
recession, has played out most of the tools they have to level out the
bumps in the economy. Everyone is leveraged (Wall Street talk for “in
debt”) to the teeth, including the country itself. The US was already
hemorrhaging money before the crisis began, corporations were deep in
the red from “leveraged buyouts” and the citizenry carried a mountain of
personal debt, something not helped when the crash in property values
wiped out their equity.

The market advocates are right: there is a bottom at some point, an area
where the market must simply stop dropping because it does have
intrinsic value that underpins the false values given to it by
speculators with far too much money and greed, and phony “securitized”
loans. Nobody’s quite sure where that bottom is. Henry Paulson warned
that if the Congress didn’t act to pass the bailout bill, we could be at
8,500 in a few weeks. It passed it, and we’ve wound up there anyway.
I’ve heard guesses of 7,500, 5,000, and even 2,500. I suspect people
live those numbers because they are benchmarks, nothing more.

If you look at the market from the time the last recession ended in the
Carter years and the beginning of the bubble in the third year of
Clinton’s presidency, you can straight line it out, factor in inflation,
and come up with a hypothetical value of around 6,500, which is where it
would be now if the big boom of the nineties hadn’t occurred.

I suspect that’s about where it will end up, and that’s where it will
hover while the economy at large stagnates into another major depression.

But the Japanese were smart, and put the population ahead of the market,
and as a result, they kept a decent standard of living and a good safety
net at the expense of the idle rich.

If we’re very, very lucky, America’s next government that comes to power
in January of 2009 will look at the Japanese response to their great
crash, and work along similar lines.

i also was talking to my friend forrest who works at btc and he told me they are having casting calls for their own reality show. they are going to have a show like sunset tan, you know that stupid show on E! with those stupid olly girls. well yea, of course i would try out anyways bc it would just be fun. i would become more famous than i already am [if thats even possible].

he also told me they are looking for models for their 2009 calendar. obvioulsy not me, but i did think of vibe as soon as he told me so i let her know. they are also having a promo party sun night at voodoo so we might hit that up too. vibe said "are you asking me to go out on a sunday?!?" i respond with "i might as well take advantage of this no job thing and go out on sundays whenever i get the chance."

Love spells can be cast for a variety of reasons, including a desire to meet your soul mate, reuniting with a former lover, or spicing a current relationship up.  Love spells are very controversial, and some people even believe them to be unethical.  It’s often believed that casting a love spell on a specific person would be a way of forcing your will upon him or her, going against fate, and in the long run, causing you bad karma.

Of course everyone has their own opinion on the matter, and while I do advise to use caution if you ever want to attempt a love spell, you should always follow your heart.  To be honest, I have seen a lot of bad karma resulting from a specific person having a love spell cast upon him or her, but I have also seen success.  We each have our own experiences that we must learn from.  And while I recommend only doing general love spells for the purpose of attracting a soul mate instead of trying to make a specific person fall in love with you, if your mind is already set on the latter, then go for it.  If you think that any possible consequence(s) will be worth it, then nothing I can say will stop you.

So how can you do a love spell?  Love spells work best when they come from the heart.  But if you’re not confident with your own spellcasting abilities at this point in time, then here is a powerful love spell that you can try.  You’ll need:

•    One large pink candle and four mini red candles.  Place the pink candle in the middle of your alter, table, or floor (just don’t knock it over!).  Place the red mini candles into each corner of the room—one in each quarter.

•    Light some vanilla incense and place it near a window.

•    Take some rose petals and throw them all around the room.

•    Dress all in white clothing.

•    You’ll also need an athame or a sword (be careful with them!)

This love spell, as with all love spells, are best cast on the Friday nights of either a full moon or a new moon.

After getting everything prepared to conduct a love spell, make sure you either call on the four watchtowers or perform the LBRP.  If you have no idea how to do either, then I recommend you not to cast any spell whatsoever, let alone love spells.

Once you made all of the pre-spell preparations, sit in the middle of the room in front of the pink candle.  Spend a few minutes meditating.  Once you begin to feel some energy surrounding you, began chanting this mantra over and over again: “I call upon the powers of love and passion, Please come from above in a timely fashion.  I shall have the man/woman I desire, deliver him/her to me through earth, water, air, and fire.”

After a few minutes of chanting this, stand up and grab your sword or athame.  Walk around in circles, starting from East, and then South, West, North, and back to East again.  Say “I am now destroying all the blocks that separate me from him/her.”  While walking, visualize all the negative energy that is separating you from him/her being destroyed by your athame/sword.  After a few minutes, you may stop.  Thank the spirits who have heard your plea, and then do a proper banishing.  Again, if you don’t know how to do a proper banishing, it’s best that you don’t attempt to do a love spell.  Leave the candles and incense burning for as long as you can (don’t burn your house down, though!)

The days and weeks after you cast the spell should be spent by you being positive and doing things that make you happy, and that will take your mind off of that person.  Obsession toward a goal hinders the chances of love spells working successfully.  Not only should you do things that make you happy so that your mind will be occupied, but you need to remain as positive and patient as possible.  Love spells usually start happening by 3's: 3 days, 3 weeks, or 3 months.  The more positive your overall feelings are toward the outcome, the faster the love spell will work for you.

Mark Crislip rains on Parade - A little over a week ago, I blogged about my intention to write Parade Magazine for a particularly credulous story they ran that recommended acupuncture among other crap-based medicine. Well, I never got around to it. Fortunately Mark Crislip tore them a new one. Great job, Mark!

NY Times endorses dowsing - I hope they got a good price for that journalist integrity. Maybe the subject of this article would care to take the Randi Million Dollar Challenge.

Speaking of Randi, I'm going to get to see the amazing one in person tomorrow in NYC.

And Randi's annual skeptic's convention is also the focus of the latest Captain Disillusion video:

Voodoo! - George Ann Mills, a South Carolina voodoo high priestess, is alleging that Annette Kesting, an Atlanta, Georgia county commissioner, tried to pay her to cast curses on a political rival and bounced checks in the process.

WHAT'S THE HARM?

Attempted Witch Burning - Darin Najor, a 20-year-old adult education student in Michigan, has been charged with assault and battery after dousing his teacher with holy water and trying to burn her with a lighter because he thought she was a witch. Amateur Scientist points out:

Nor does he understand how to properly burn a witch. If someone's wet, you're going to have a hard time burning him or her. Yes, even if the water is holy.

For more info. on this story, click here.

The Amateur Scientist blog is now banned in China

Campus Crusade For Christ is raising money to buy supplies for the soldiers - So what are they buying? Armor? No. Guns? No. Bullets? Food? No. Medical equipment? Anything even remotely useful? No. Just useless Bibles.

Sydney Atheists doing charity work in the name of reason

ATHEIST DISCRIMINATION:

Those Evil Humanists - The Humanists and Freethinkers of Cape Fear in North Carolina set up a booth about Humanism and Freethinking at an annual street festival. Someone noticed a sign directed right at them at a local church nearby (and God's a terrible spell checker):

Richard Dawkins named one of the 50 people who wrecked Britain! WOOO!!! - This critical document was produce by some random guy named Quentin Letts, who clearly has been granted special authority on these matters. And to think I didn't even know Britain was wrecked? Funny, in all my exchanges with friends living in Britain, not one of them has ever mentioned that Britain is wrecked.

Review of The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville

Christian reality dating show - I can't beat the comment on Skepchick: "Get advice from a twice-divorced Pentecostal minister who plead guilty to assaulting one of his ex-wives! What better source could there be? "

Browse the artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker’s library - Coolest library ever!

MONKEY NEWS:

Monkey waiters - In America we only have to compete with Indians and Mexicans for jobs. The Japanese are losing their jobs to monkeys! It's a mad house. A MAD HOUSE! Damn, dirty primates!

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Circadian Clock May Be Critical For Learning - "The circadian rhythm that quietly pulses inside us all, guiding our daily cycle from sleep to wakefulness and back to sleep again, may be doing much more than just that simple metronomic task, according to Stanford researchers.

Working with Siberian hamsters, biologist Norman Ruby has shown that having a functioning circadian system is critical to the hamsters' ability to remember what they have learned. Without it, he said, 'They can't remember anything.' "

Computers 'Taught' To Search For Photos - "A pair of Penn State researchers has developed a statistical approach, called Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time (ALIPR), that one day could make it easier to search the Internet for photographs."

Genome Of Relapsing Malaria Parasite Decoded - "In research aimed at addressing a global epidemic, a team of scientists from around the world has cracked the genetic code for the parasite that is responsible for up to 40 percent of the 515 million annual malaria infections worldwide, Nature reveals in its October 9 cover story."

I still think the Dodgers will beat your team, but if they don't, I want you to blow the final game of the season. Game 7 of the World Series at either the bandbox that is Fenway Park, or the shithole that is Tropicana Field. I will make sure to have my voodoo doll sitting on top of TV. Maybe I'll have it pinned to a dartboard. And as I hit the bullseye, you will give up a home run to Pujols. But how will Pujols hit a home run if he's not in the playoffs, you ask. There will be a rip in the space-time continuum and Pujols will replace whomever is up, doesn't matter if it's Dustin Pedroia or Evan Longoria. Nobody will notice. But I will. I will see the flicker of Pujols' soul engulf the puny mortal's frame. Mark my words: PUJOLS WILL DESTROY YOU ONCE AGAIN.

Robert Scheer, TruthDig, October 7, 2008

I am not a conventionally religious man, or even a very superstitious one, but I do wish George Bush would stop asking God to bless America. Every time he does, we seem to be visited with another plague, suggesting divine wrath over our president’s evil ways. How else to explain the persistent calamity that has marked this administration: a pointless but very costly war over nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the devastating New Orleans flood, the betrayal of the nation by the money-changers—from Enron to Goldman Sachs—that Bush welcomed into the temple of the White House?

What’s next? Pestilence, frogs, locusts or incurable boils? Dare we risk four more years of catastrophic misrule by a “W” alter ego? For those indifferent to the serious implications of that question, I recommend Oliver Stone’s new bio-flick, which brilliantly captures the “banality of evil” that has controlled our political life these past eight years. This phrase from Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the mundane cruelty that so marked the daily experience of European fascism has a frightening applicability to the Republican leadership that has done so much damage to this nation’s reputation for democratic integrity.

Cynicism rules even as ritualistic prayer breaks, as depicted in the film “W,” abound. The pretense of piety earns the president and his accomplices a get-out-of-jail-free card; at no point in the film do any in the top ranks of this administration—captured so accurately and depressingly—accept one iota of accountability for how much damage they have wrought. Unrepentant, the same Republican apparatchiks are employing the familiar Rovian tactic of divide and conquer in seeking to continue their hold on power. Once again, they seek to focus attention on hot-button social issues and patriotic litmus tests to draw attention from the fact that family values are being destroyed by the loss of job and home.

Perhaps John McCain is not a perfect replica of George W. Bush, but the parallels go beyond the senator’s enthusiastic support for the toxic mix of Bush’s imperial foreign policy and his arrogant indifference to the travails of our domestic existence. Neither man seems to have any sense of how we actually live or what we need from government. How else to explain their common antipathy to Social Security and Medicare, which, after public education, represent the nation’s most successful programs? Can you imagine the panic today if McCain and Bush had succeeded in tying Social Security to investments in the stock market? They view government as nothing more than a proud sponsor of the military-industrial complex while ignoring the threat to homeland security from corporate pirates.

Don’t say we weren’t warned. Bush came into office believing fervently that what was good for Enron and its CEO, Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, Bush’s top financial sponsor, was good for the country. So, too, McCain, who chose Phil Gramm as co-chair of his presidential campaign, ignoring the huge loophole in Gramm’s Commodity Futures Trading Act, which allowed Enron, where his wife, Wendy Gramm, was on the board of directors, to so shamelessly game the energy market.

Read More Here

Gene Lyons, The Arkansas Democrat Gazettee, October 8, 2008

If the economic situation weren’t so grim, it’d be darkly amusing watching conservatives hunting for a scapegoat other than Bush administration True Believers. Hey, they’re all Brownies now. Heckuva job. For a generation, devotees of the very bad novelist Ayn Rand have assured us that greed is a virtue and government oversight of financial institutions an impediment to genius. In the “ownership society,” financial regulations were for pantywaists. In GOP-think, governments exist purely to drop bombs and monitor other people’s sex lives. Financial deregulation has been the Republican miracle elixir since Ronald Reagan. Back in March, Sen. John McCain reassured The Wall Street Journal that despite being “aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in debacles like the sub-prime lending crisis, “I am fundamentally a deregulator.”

In between winks and shout-outs to “Joe Sixpack” during the vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin also wanted it both ways. She praised McCain for “pushing for even harder and tougher regulations.” Then she said patriotism means saying, “Government, you know, you’re not always the solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem, so government... get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper.”

You'd think that any adult who’d ever bought real estate, avoided losing his life savings to Nigerian e-mail scams or even spent rainy afternoons playing Monopoly as a child would understand this fundamental fact of human nature: If you make it easy for people to steal, they’ll steal everything, including the silverware and Grandma’s dentures.

Alas, too many heeded pie-in-the-sky GOP theology. The miracle-working market absolved us all from sin; hence, from the Reagan-created savings-and-loan crisis onward, corporate financial scandals have grown steadily larger and more dangerous. But abandon dogma ? Never.

Now come GOP apologists to identify the real perps of the Wall Street meltdown: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, feckless black folks, Mexican Americans and U. S. Rep. Barney Frank, who’s evidently been covertly running Wall Street all this time.

See, while you fretted over Bush screwups in Iraq, Afghanistan and New Orleans, a sinister, dusky cabal built a speculative bubble in ghetto real estate. Overpriced luxury condos were constructed with borrowed money in fashionable Harlem, Watts and the south side of Chicago; also, downtown Atlanta, Newark, St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis and Philadelphia. In Monopoly terms, the entire U. S. economy drained into a black hole of defaulted loans on Baltic and Mediterranean.

So how come you haven’t heard this before ? Maybe because you don’t spend enough time watching FOX News or listening to GOP talk radio. In those precincts, the real cause of the national (and world ) financial debacle turns out to be an obscure 1977 law known as the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA.

Read More Here

I have been thinking about religion lately.   With the current financial melt down and the bail-out, I imagine that religion is on a lot of people's minds.   How many people do you think are praying that Pelosi loses her seat in Congress? Right now, how many people are on their knees saying, “please, Jesus, may Obama keep just one campaign promise”?  Maybe people are praying that their jobs are not outsourced to the mysterious East, or maybe they are praying for the safety of a loved one in Afghanistan or Iraq.  The Almighty must hire a legion of angels simply to keep all the prayers organized.

What really puzzles me is how the Almighty decides which prayers to answer. For every person who prays that Pelosi loses her seat in Congress, there is at least one person who is praying that she keeps her seat for the sake of his mutual fund portfolio.  For every Democrat who prays that Obama wins the election, there is somebody praying that the dark-skinned man with the funny name loses the election.  For that matter, for every American praying for a serviceman, there is a very angry Iraqi or Afghani praying that God smites the invaders.  So just who does God listen to?  When there is a choice between two sides, does God flip a coin?

There are religions out there who think they are really slick and they try to bribe God.  Pagans and Catholics will light candles and burn incense in order to entice God to see things their way.   Voodun will sacrifice a chicken.   For the life of me, I cannot imagine what God would do with a dead chicken.   I suppose a chicken sacrifice is as good a way as any to make chicken soup. What I would like to know is if their prayers are answered more often than Protestant or Jewish prayers.

Another thing that really puzzles me is why people argue over God.   I recently saw a quote on an Atheist website that said something about arguing over who's make-believe friend is better.  That's what it comes down to. Muslims claim that Allah is supreme.   If so, why are Christianoids rocking and rolling through Iraq and Iran?  Christianoids claim that Jesus is Lord!  In that case, how come a bunch of Arab hillbillies managed to utterly pants us and destroy the World Trade Center?   If Jesus or Allah were actually the high poobahs, wouldn't you think that one of them would put his divine foot down and say, “that's a no-no”?   More recently, there is a huge tempest in a teapot over which gender God is.   Is God a woman?

Another mountain out of a molehill is the amount of Gods there are.  God is one.  God is a pantheon.   God is male.  God is returning and She is pissed.   It amazes me to see what people can argue over.  In the cosmic scheme of things, we have more important things to worry about than the existence or non-existence of somebody else's make-believe friend.   We have real life problems going on right now.   Who cares if your make-believe friend is male or female?   Who cares if you have one huge almighty make-believe friend, or a whole storybook full of them?

If we are going to spend all this energy over a being or beings who probably does not even exist, why don't we agree on a nice make-believe friend.  This is why I have decided that I am directing all my prayers to Hobbes the Stuffed Tiger.  Could you think of a better make-believe friend?   He's loyal, he tells the truth, he is a comfort during the bad times, and a faithful troublemaker during the good times.   Hobbes gives good advice, but he's there with a warm hug when you ignore the good advice and Suzy gives you what you deserve.   At the same time, Hobbes has never smitten anybody for his sins. He has never killed anybody's firstborn kids, or commanded wars.   (Well, maybe a snowball fight or two.)  Best of all, he's a stuffed tiger so he can just as easily be Hobbesette.   Could you think of a better God than that?  There is no God but Hobbes and Calvin is his prophet.

Screw you, Pat Robertson.

]]> http://lonesomemongoose.wordpress.com/?p=1092 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:50:15 +0000 rikkitikkitavi http://lonesomemongoose.pl.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/they-keep-pushing-their-luck/

This gripping tale of murder and romance in The Big Easy will distract you from your troubles. In this story, Noel Galliano has always wanted her own business--Ao despite critics who believe she won't succeed, she opens a tiny French Quarter Voodoo shop. What she doesn't count on is finding a dismembered corpse upstairs. Detective Mathieu Bergeron is considered a screw up around the district station, until he puts away the Bayou Ripper. Then another body is found mutilated, and both his arrest and his competence are thrown into question. Matt and Noel must work together to solve this terrifying crime in the Big Easy...and along the way, they fall in love.

This e-book is available NOW at http://www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/voodoobones.htm

Hope you'll check it out! You can read more about it and my other books (and find some excerpts) at www.melanieatkins.com

Voodoo priestess says Cobb official bounced checks

MARIETTA, Ga. — A voodoo priestess told police a commissioner trying to get even with her political rival wrote the priestess bad checks.

George Ann Mills, a high priestess in Blythewood, S.C., told Cobb County Police that Cobb Commissioner Annette Kesting wrote her $3,000 in bad checks.

A police reports says the commissioner wanted commissioner-elect Woody Thompson to "catch cancer" to "have a car accident."

Kesting paid Mills a $2,000 check for the ritual on Aug. 27 and postdated a $1,000 check for Sept. 11. Both checks bounced. The report said Kesting paid cash to make up for the first bounced check.

Kesting defeated Thompson, a two-term Republican incumbent in the 2004 general election to become Cobb County's first black commissioner.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating.

The Associated Press

It is so rare to come across an AP article that involves voodoo and this one is woefully short.  I'm left wanting more information.  I have questions that beg answers:

#1: If you are a voodoo priestess would you ask the police to help solve your problem or would you deal with it in your own voodoo-y priestess-y way?  I guess kudos are in order to her for not abusing her power and trying to resolve the issue legally. 

#2: If you go to a voodoo priestess, it is assumed that you believe in the service you are seeking.  So, if you believe that this woman can really curse someone, why on god's green earth would you write her not one, but two bad checks?  You are just asking to "catch cancer." 

C: If I were a voodoo priestess paid to perform rituals where the intent is for something unsavory to happen to another, I would not want a paper trail for the transaction.  Cash only, please. 

IV: Is there an implied warranty when it comes to voodoo priestess rituals?  In this case, the priestess can say she delivered a service in that Commissioner Kesting did win the election.  Even if her rival didn't get an incurable disease or have an accident, the intended outcome (ie. winning the election) did come to pass. 
However, what if the commissioner didn't win?  Would the priestess even be entitled to payment? 

If you are the GBI agent assigned to this case (especially if you have a "I Want to Believe" poster in your cube) please give me a call to discuss your findings.   Thanks!

Does she:

1. Perform voodoo rituals to curse the check writer
2. Cuts off the heads of chickens and leave them on the check writer's doorstep
3. Calls Judge Judy
4. Files charges against the check writer

 If you chose "d", you are right!

This NutBunny, Annette Kesting, a Cobb County Commissioner (Georgia), "allegedly" wrote $3,000 in bad checks to voodoo priestess, George Ann Mills (S.C.), in an attempt to curse her opponent Woody Thompson.

Kesting wrote $3,000 in bad checks, allegedly for the services of a "high priestess of voodoo" to prepare an untimely demise for commissioner candidate Woody Thompson. Kesting wanted the priestess, identified by authorities as George Ann Mills of Blythewood, S.C., to cause Thompson to "catch cancer" or "have a car accident" according to a police report obtained by WSB-TV. [SOURCE]

Kesting....YOU ARE A DUMB ASS!! Not to mention crazy as hell! Who in the HOT KRISPY HELL elected this deranged mentally unstable ass to office? Oh, I forgot!! The stupid phvckers that live in MY district!!

She paid the voodoo woman with a dayum check creating a paper trail!! DUH! Under-handed shit ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS requires cash you dipshit!!

Chiiiile, you are sooooo screwed!!!

The legal trouble for the bad checks are just the beginning. I would bet my hard earned money that the voodoo woman is NOT dumb. She's a resourceful ruthless agent of the Dark Lords.

Aside from the legal woes surrounding your alleged bad checks, don't be surprised if you wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself butterball ass nekkid, clucking like a chicken, doing the Macarana on the steps of the county courthouse in Marietta Square.

What I wouldn't give to see that shit!!! :D

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Having taken part in their workshop during the recent Open Rehearsal Weekend (part of the Cultural Olympiad), I have no doubt it will be an exhilarating experience to be in a room awash with animated songs of praise to Orishas (deities) of the Yoruba tradition, to a rhythmic accompaniment of Afro-Cuban percussion including Batá drums.

The word 'Lucumi' derives from Yoruba and is how the Yoruban people used to salute each other in Cuba in the early days of slavery: it roughly translates as 'My friend'. These days, the word Lucumi is used to describe the practitioners of the religion Santeriá or Regla de Ocha (the rule of the Orishas), a religion now spread worldwide which has its roots in West Africa.

The fascinating thing, I find, is the literally and metaphorically arduous journey that frequently ill-understood Traditional African Spirituality that was exported from West and Central Africa through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, took to Latin America, was absorbed and integrated by virtue of the strength of the bearers and descendants of this tradition, and inevitably evolved and manifested into distinct but related forms – Candomblé in Brazil, Santeriá in Cuba, Haitian Voodoo, amongst others - through the organic syncreticism of a ‘pure’ African practice with the then current local culture and tradition, which constituted the indigenous populations (aka ‘Indians’) and the Roman Catholic faith imported by the Spanish Conquistadores.

These newly formed, unique religions in their own right (aka New World religions), have since been exported by significant numbers of the Latino and Caribbean diaspora, e.g. to the USA, thus inevitably spreading their practice to non-Caribbean / non-Latino converts. Interestingly, on the African continent, Benin is the only country that recognises Voodoo as its official religion.

If it hasn't yet been assessed, it would be a fascinating ethnographic enquiry to explore the exportation of these Afro-Latino / Afro-Caribbean religions to Africa or their practice by Africans in the diaspora. Afterall, the merging of Christianity with Traditional African Spirituality is not a novel concept in post-colonial Africa. (Any ideas Native Anthropologist?)

Quoting Anani Dzidzienyo whose sentiments accurately resonate with mine,

That these institutions moved from the clandestine to the marginal to their present day status as national institutions [in Latin America] is indeed remarkable.

For me, the survival and proliferation of these syncreticised religions with African roots is even more jaw-droppingly remarkable as I reflect on my personal circumstance as an East African who went to a Catholic primary school in Nairobi and had a short stint in not-overtly-Catholic-'modern' Spain, participating in a West African-via-Cuba spiritual tradition that emanated from a region that was historically colonial French West Africa (i.e. Dahomey), conducted in an archaic West African patois that has since evolved, in the former HQ of the British Empire. In addition, the London Lucumi Choir is itself a cosmopolitan mestizo of various nationalities. If this is not a powerful attestation to globalisation, then I don’t know what is.

We actually were gonna go watch that Nick & Norah movie but decided to go to Fridays instead.

Fridays with the mini burgers and a drink.

RJs ugly face...

Taking pictures with little babies in Jays.

Signing someone's hat at Voodoo.

That's how he doo!

If you are what you say you are...A superstar...Then have no fear...The camera's here!

Neil laughing at him. HAHA

Pretty packed

The DJ was "real DJ'in and turntablism" until me and RJ noticed he was 1. using Serato, and 2. had the Serato mixer and never even touched his laptop...Real DJ?! come on...

End of the night Safeway find...

Also at Safeway, this lady slipped on some soup or something and ate it hella hard! That's a million dollars right there! We witnessed it, so hopefully we get a tiny cut of that check! HAHA jk...

I did get a comment yesterday, for the first time in a while, from Ann's New Friend. It was a bit snarky, but any attention is good I guess. I felt it was unfair of him/her to imply that I wasn't interested in reading opinions that conflicted with my own; I look at right-wing journals and blogs all the time. I was just worried that readers might interpret the fact that I had linked to Real Clear Politics without any comment as meaning that I had some sympathy with the views expressed therein.

Hats off to ANF's work rate though; I had been feeling pleased that I had managed six posts in a week, but he/she is a true stakanovite who produces fifteen in a day. It's interesting that the biggest item in his/her tag cloud is "Obama" (as indeed mine is "Palin"); it's always easier to talk about your opponen's failings rather than your candidate's qualities.

It did make me think about why I bother commenting on the US election; hardly anyone reads these posts, and those few who do are unlikely to be swayed by a few links to stuff they've probably seen before anyway. I have previously expressed the opinion that blogs are vastly overrated as a medium of political discourse, but I am finding myself more and more drawn into the cross-linked world of the political blogosphere.

I made a light-hearted reference to voodoo the other week, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that blogging has a lot in common with primitive religious rituals. (No offence to adherents of voodoo; I'm using "primitive" in the sense of "uncontaminated by civilisation").

Faced with a process that is likely to affect my life in many fundamental ways, yet which is completely outwith my control - like a volcano, or winter, or the US Presidential race - I am reverting to simple superstition, offering tribute to the secular gods of liberal elitism, and bowing before the mighty deity that is Tina Fey.