Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Daily Cartoon
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Bruce Plante
Tulsa World
Nov 20, 2008
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Supremes to review Barack's citizenship
Case challenging his name on ballot set for 'conference'
A case that challenges President-elect Barack name on the 2008 election ballot citing questions over his citizenship has been scheduled for a "conference" at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Conferences are private meetings of the justices at which they review cases and decide which ones to accept for formal review. This case is set for a conference Dec. 5, just 10 days before the Electoral College is scheduled to meet to make formal the election of Obama as the nation's next president.
The Supreme Court's website listed the date for the case brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the secretary of state in New Jersey, over not only Obama's name on the 2008 election ballot but those of two others, Sen. John McCain and Roger Calero.
Read More Here: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81484
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America's Best Leaders: Terence Blanchard & Herbie Hancock, Musicians
LOS ANGELES—At a recent afternoon practice, jazz drummer Zach Harmon assumes the role of mentor for members of the jazz combo at Washington Preparatory High School. The group is off to a rocky start, and it's Harmon's job to help get them back on track. "What happened to your solo?" Harmon asks the keyboard player. "I got lost," the young player answers. Harmon turns to the drummer and the saxophonist. "I didn't hear any communication between the rhythm and the horns. Really start opening up your ears," he tells them, sounding a lot like two of his own mentors, pianist Herbie Hancock and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
Before reaching the pinnacle of musical success, Hancock and Blanchard were not much different from the young musicians at Washington Prep. Despite being earnest and talented students, they had to rely on professionals like Harmon to point the way. Today, Hancock and Blanchard are expanding opportunities for public school students interested in jazz by connecting them with professional musicians who want to give back. Their Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz features "jazz in the classroom" programs that reach millions of students. "How else are people going to find out about the cultural history of America if they don't find out about jazz?" says Hancock, the institute's chairman.
The short answer is that most schools don't make music education a priority. Despite evidence that music instruction can boost student achievement and improve graduation rates, strapped public schools have been cutting back on music programs in order to give more time to core subjects like math and reading. The current economic slowdown could accelerate that trend.
Read More Here: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/best-leaders/2008/11/19/americas-best-leaders-terence-blanchard--herbie-hancock-musicians.html?s_cid=rss:americas-best-leaders-terence-blanchard--herbie-hancock-musicians
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Public School Parents, Unite!
by Sandra Tsing Loh
Now that we’ve made history by electing our first African-American president, what has changed? On first blush, not much, especially when it comes to our schools. Indeed, as the spiraling United States economy takes precedence, education is moving to the back burner, though sadly it was never really on the front burner during the campaign. Meanwhile Washington high society is swooning as chatty lifestyle stories document the courtship of Barack Obama’s daughters by a bevy of exclusive private schools. Am I the only one who is outraged here?
Again, I feel compelled to point out, one last time: Sarah Palin was taken tirelessly to the mat for every detail of her personal life — her mothering skills, hunting proclivities, reading habits (such as they were), the wacky names of her children, her pricey outfits and even the height of her heels. By contrast, the Obama family’s move from toney Chicago private school (chosen before presidential security was an issue) to toney Washington private school draws little national commentary. Why? Because for the ruling American political and professional class, not to mention the news media, sending one’s child to public school is unthinkable; and has nothing to do with public education policy. (Love that Teach for America, though! And universal preschool — it’s great! Computers! Innovation! Stimulation!
Read More Here: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/public-school-parents-unite/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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'Idiot' husband pretends to name newborn Carter Barack Obama
By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
It's 2 1/2 weeks since Election Day, and so far no Colorado parents seem to have named their newborns either Barack or Obama.
Roger Sealy pretended he did. The Broomfield man sent notices to several newspapers saying his and his wife Jackee's new boy was named Carter Barack Obama Sealy.
Roger Sealy got some ink and did a few interviews, enhancing the story by saying he'd named his other two kids Brooke Trout Sealy and Cooper John Elway Sealy.
But then his mother-in-law busted him, telling the Boulder Daily Camera that it was just a joke.
Mom Jackee dug out some birth certificates Wednesday and showed a Daily Camera reporter that the real names were Brooke Emma Sealy and Cooper Jacob Sealy.
Read More Here: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/20/idiot-husband-pretends-name-newborn-carter-barack-/
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It's Not a Tumor - Doctors Find Worm In Woman's Brain Instead
Doctors in Arizona thought a Phoenix-area woman had a possible brain tumor, but it turned out there was something else penetrating her brain – a worm.
Rosemary Alvarez started experiencing numbness in her arm and blurred vision. She went to the emergency room twice and had a cat scan, but everything came up clear, MyFOXPhoenix.com reported.
It wasn’t until doctors took a closer look at an MRI that they discovered something very disturbing.
“Once we saw the MRI we realized this is something not good,” neurosurgeon, Dr. Peter Nakaji told the news station. “It's something down in her brain stem which is as deep in the brain as you can be.”
Alvarez was wheeled into surgery where Nakaji and his colleagues were expecting to remove a tumor, but they uncovered a worm instead.
Watch Video and Read More Here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,455067,00.html
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How the media’s oversaturation of violence makes us care less and less about what’s happening globally.
Here in my relatively safe haven in “The West” I’m ashamed to say I’ve become numb to the daily news reports of suicide bombings occurring throughout the Middle East and Asia. Every day there seems to be one or two more—useless, senseless acts of vengeful kamikaze violence that crush families, decimate cities and villages, and disturb the fitful, fragile moments of peace in nations whose wounds never have the time to heal. Here in my reinforced left-leaning concrete bunker with my green Vespa and yoga classes, the echoes of their tragic explosions don’t scare or upset me, they just leave a bad taste in my mouth. Like desperate, shouting car commercials, bad bagels, Jackie-O sunglasses and the Billboards on Santa Monica BLVD of Paris Hilton’s perfume line (now with a male version), I’m sick and tired to death of them.
And that scares me.
Read More Here: http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-end-of-empathy
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Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber,” has signed a deal to write a new book entitled “Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream.” To capitalize on his recent fame, Wurzelbacher is planning to release it on Dec. 1 – less than two weeks from now. The New York Times reports that the book “will address Mr. Wurzelbacher’s ideas about American values.” Wurzelbacher, who had failed to pay his taxes and wasn’t licensed as a plumber, revealed during the campaign that he was once on welfare but is opposed to welfare programs. He also said, “Social Security’s a joke.”
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World leaders refuse to shake Bush's hand during G20 photo-op.
CNN’s Rick Sanchez highlighted yesterday that during last weekend’s G20 Economic Summit, leaders from around the world refused to acknowledge or shake hands with President Bush as they walked on stage for a photo-op. As Sanchez explained, everyone was “greeting each other and shaking hands, but Bush walks with his head down like the dejected most unpopular kid in high school.”
Watch Video Here: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/20/bush-snubbed-g20/
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Michael Moore: 'It's the end of capitalism as we know it'
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Following Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's admission that there is currently little chance of a federal bailout for the country's beleaguered automakers, things are looking bleak for the industry and the possibility of a complete collapse does not seem out of the question.
CNN's Larry King spoke about the causes of the failure with Michael Moore, who first made his reputation 20 years ago with a film about the decline of General Motors in his home town of Flint, MI.
Moore was emphatic in blaming the automakers' problems on their own bad decisions over many years and not on the current economic crisis. "General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country," he told King. "So their attitude was we'll build it and you buy it."
"Eventually, the consumer got smart," Moore continued, "so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn't change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them."
Watch Video and Read More Here: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Michael_Moore_sees_the_end_of_1120.html
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Army shreds documents on friendly fire deaths
John Byrne
In late 2006, two American soldiers from Fort Carson died in Iraq. The army said the privates were killed by enemy action. But in October of this year, Salon revealed that the two men had in fact been killed by friendly tank fire.
Now, Salon has found that the documents related to the men's deaths were shredded just hours after the story was published.
"Three soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo. -- including two who were present in Ramadi during the friendly fire incident, one of them just feet from where Nelson and Suarez died -- were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents about [Albert] Nelson and [Roger] Suarez," reporter Mark Benjamin writes. "One of the soldiers preserved some of the documents as proof that the shredding occurred and provided them to Salon. All three soldiers, with the assistance of a U.S. senator's office, have since been relocated for their safety."
The night the Salon story ran, Oct. 14, 2008, a staff sergeant told three soldiers to shred two boxes of documents relating to the privates' deaths.
Watch Video and Read More Here: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Army_shreds_documents_on_friend_fire_1120.html
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D.L. Hughley asks: If it's a center-right country, what about the election?
Bay Buchanan tried spouting the right-wing meme that "this is still a center-right country" when she was on D.L. Hughley's CNN show this weekend, and he had a simple question:
Hughley: Bay, do you think all the evidence -- even the election? That's the biggest evidence we would have. It's kind of shifted, don't you think?
Watch Video and Read More Here: http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/dl-hughley-asks-if-its-center-right--
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Five detainees ordered released "forthwith" after seven years at Guantanamo
A guard keeps watch from a tower at the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.A federal district judge, Richard Leon, today ordered the Bush administration "forthwith" to release five Algerian detainees who have been held in Guantanamo without charges since January, 2002 -- almost seven full years. The decision was based on the court's finding that there was no credible evidence that the 5 detainees intended to take up arms against the U.S. The court found sufficient evidence to justify the ongoing detention of a sixth Algerian detainee.
When they were detained in 2001 in Bosnia, the Bush administration claimed that they were plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. Buth once they were shipped to Guantanamo, the U.S. backed off that accusation and instead claimed they intended to travel to Afghanistan to fight against the U.S.
I don't want to say too much about the legal reasoning behind the decision because it was just issued via an oral ruling from the bench, and I haven't yet been able to obtain a copy of the judge's decision. For now, then, the following can be noted about this landmark ruling -- the first time a court has ruled that the Government's evidence is insufficient to justify ongoing imprisonment of a detainee as an "enemy combatant":
Read More Here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/20/guantanamo/
And here is their Story in detail- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/01/11/trapped_at_guantanamo/
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Katie Couric Talks Palin Interview With David Letterman
Katie Couric discussed her infamous interview with Sarah Palin Wednesday night on the "Late Show with David Letterman." Couric took Letterman inside the process of scheduling Palin's interviews — the campaign actually rushed an interview because "they didn't want a week to go by without hearing anything from Governor Palin," as Couric put it — and said the campaign was "very generous" and gave her "tremendous access" to Palin.
Couric said that Palin may have gotten tripped up because she was not prepared to answer more general questions during their interview following her visit to the UN.
"I started by asking her who most impressed her as Vice President and why, what was the best and worst things Dick Cheney had done as Vice President, why was Roe v. Wade an ill-conceived or a bad Supreme Court decision," Couric told Letterman. "And I think she really hadn't anticipated those kinds of questions, so I think it might've thrown her off a bit. And then we got into foreign policy — because, after all, she was at the UN meeting with world leaders — and clearly she was struggling with some of those answers."
Read More and Watch Video Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/katie-couric-talks-palin_n_145115.html
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Cheney, Gonzales Arraignment Set For Friday
RAYMONDVILLE, Texas — A Texas judge has set a Friday arraignment for Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and others named in indictments accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a federal detention center.
Cheney, Gonzales and the others will not be arrested, and do not need to appear in person at the arraignment, Presiding Judge Manuel Banales said.
In the latest bizarre development in the case, the lame-duck prosecutor who won the indictments was a no-show in court Wednesday. The judge ordered Texas Rangers to go to Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra's house, check on his well-being and order him to court on Friday.
Half of the eight high-profile indictments returned Monday by a Willacy County grand jury are tied to privately run federal detention centers in the sparsely populated South Texas county. The other half target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of Guerra.
Read More Here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/20/arraignment-set-for-chene_n_145161.html
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Poor McCain: People Streaming Into His Office For Obama Inauguration Tickets
By Michael Leahy
He has returned to where he did not wish to return. Back to walking the spotted white marble corridors of the Russell Senate Office Building. Back to Room 241, which says "Senator John McCain -- Arizona" on the door, and where a trickle of people stroll in on this morning in hopes of getting his pre-autographed photo and to inquire about obtaining tickets for Barack Obama's inauguration. Others stare. He has perfected his own middle-distance stare and the curt nod of someone coping.
He quietly enters the office a few minutes after 8 a.m. on this Wednesday, tightly smiles at a receptionist and, without a word to anyone, makes a hard left through a suite of his aides' offices that leads to his own. He is alone. He walks now without so much as a single bodyguard, the Secret Service having disappeared when his dream of winning the presidency did, 15 days ago. It is a jarring reminder of just how much a defeated candidate's station changes in about two weeks.
Read More Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111904207.html?hpid=artslot
A case that challenges
Now that we’ve made history by electing our first African-Am
Doctors in Arizona thought a Phoenix-ar
