Why you should have sex at least once a week...

Sometimes it is important to speak truth to self and speak truthfully about that which matters most. When we marry, we promise before God and the assembly that we have forsaken all others and will place each other first for the rest of our lives. The subject of this article is a good litmus test for how well we are actually doing in keeping our word...



All stressed up with nowhere to go? Stress can take a major toll on your sex life. For men, work and money-related stress is particularly likely to take its toll on libido. For women, stress that originates at home, including what’s going on in her relationship, can send her sexual desire packing.

In today’s harried world, many couples find themselves juggling a laundry list of responsibilities (no pun intended). From kids to careers to simply getting enough sleep, it’s all too easy for many couples to allow their relationship to fall to the bottom of that to-do list, since there are so many other pressing concerns.

The problem is that even if a couple shares a strong commitment and partnership as parents, without sex, a relationship becomes very vulnerable. Sex isn’t all that matters—unless a couple isn’t having it! Then it becomes the elephant in the room that no one’s taking about. Often times, one partner is more interested in sex than the other, and the lack of physical intimacy becomes a source of conflict. As a result, in addition to stress taking its toll on sex, our sex lives themselves can become a source of stress and anxiety, which creates a vicious, destructive cycle for our relationships.

Not surprisingly, sex is one of the main reasons people argue, often above money, housework and other common sources of conflict. Sex is also one of those subjects that women tend to keep bottled up because they’re afraid of eliciting an angry reaction.

Arguing naturally triggers the brain’s “fight or flight” response system. Many men respond by fighting, and it’s been shown that this confrontational approach raises one’s heart rate, increases blood pressure, and plays a big role in cardiac disease. But interestingly, the opposite reaction, flight, can be just as harmful, if not worse, for women. It leads to self-silencing: a bottling-up of emotions that causes anxiety, depression, and a cascade of unhealthy behaviors.

Whether they’re arguing or allowing resentment to build, a couple will get further and further away from physical intimacy, which is an important part of reconnecting and buffering stress. As they start to feel more disconnected, they’re not apt to feel very sexual and the vicious cycle takes over. One or both partners may turn to sex-substitutes, which often comes in the form of overeating, alcohol and drug use, or, if the problem goes on too long, some form of infidelity. Drinking too much can result in sexual dysfunction, which will only make matters worse. Alcohol interferes with erectile function, lubrication and sexual desire, as do other common treatments for too much stress, like anti-depressants and sedatives.

To jumpstart a positive sex cycle, which, admittedly, can feel awkward after a dry spell, couples need to find a way to make sex a priority again and to dedicate themselves to reducing daily stresses where they can. Men and women must redirect some energy towards their relationship with each other, and get over feelings of guilt or excuses that they are “too busy” to do so.

If one person reaches out and starts to make the effort, most couples find that it becomes easier relatively quickly. Both people begin to feel closer to each other. Couples stop existing as roommates and remember what they had together before the kids and all of the responsibilities came along.

I advise couples to try to have sex once a week, unless there is an illness or recent childbirth. Whether you plan a date night, or simply spend some time together after the kids have gone to bed, try to devote some attention to each other at least one night a week, if not more. Start a new ritual together, then work from there. Soon, you’ll find you’re taking a bite out of stress from both ends—you’ll be a more connected, supportive presence for each other, and you’ll feel the benefits regular sex for body and mind.

Ian Kerner is a sex therapist, relationship counselor and New York Times best-selling author of numerous books, including the recently published “Sex Detox: A Program to Detoxify and Rejuvenate Your Love Life.” He was born and raised in New York City, where he lives with his wife, two young sons and plump Jack Russell terrier.

By Ian Kerner, Ph.D.
Sex therapist and relationship counselor
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 3:07 p.m. CT, Thurs., May. 29, 2008

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24879711/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Bush loyalist turns harsh critic in memoir

It is freakin' sweet to speak truth to power!



WASHINGTON - In a White House full of Bush loyalists, none was more loyal than Scott McClellan, the bland press secretary who spread the company line for all the government to follow each day. His word, it turns out, was worthless, his confessional memoir a glimpse into Washington's world of spin and even outright deception.

Instead of effective government, Americans were subjected to a "permanent campaign" that was "all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage," McClellan writes in a book stunning for its harsh criticism of Bush. "Presidential initiatives from health care programs to foreign invasions are regularly devised, named, timed and launched with one eye (or both eyes) on the electoral calendar."

The spokesman's book is called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

The book, which had been scheduled for release on Monday, was being sold by bookstores on Wednesday after the publisher moved up its release. McClellan planned promotional appearances on news talk shows on Thursday.

Governing via endless campaigning is not a new phenomenon, but it accelerated markedly during the tumultuous Clinton White House and then the war-shaken years of the Bush administration. Bush strategist Karl Rove had a strong hand in both politics and governing as overseer of key offices, including not only openly political affairs and long-range strategic planning but as liaison for intergovernmental affairs, focusing on state and local officials.

Bush's presidency "wandered and remained so far off course by excessively embracing the permanent campaign and its tactics," McClellan writes. He says Bush relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war.

That's about right, says Brookings Institution political analyst Thomas Mann, co-author of a book entitled "The Permanent Campaign."

"It was such a hyped-up effort to frame the problem and the choices in a way that really didn't do justice to the complexity of the arguments, the intelligence," Mann said in an interview. Though all presidents try to "control the message," he said, "it was really a way of preventing that discussion. It just had enormously harmful consequences. I think they carried it to a level not heretofore seen."

Each day, underscoring the daily blend of politics and government, Bush and his administration make an extraordinary effort to control information and make sure the White House message is spread across the government and beyond. The line for officials to follow is set at early-morning senior staff meetings at the White House, then transmitted in e-mails, conference calls, faxes and meetings. The loop extends to Capitol Hill where lawmakers get the administration talking points. So do friendly interest groups and others.

The aim is to get them all to say the same thing, unwavering from the administration line. Other administrations have tried to do the same thing, but none has been as disciplined as the Bush White House.

It starts at the top
McClellan recounts how Bush, as governor of Texas, spelled out his approach about the press at their very first meeting in 1998. He said Bush "mentioned some of his expectations for his spokespeople — the importance of staying on message; the need to talk about what you're for, rather than what you are against; how he liked to make the big news on his own time frame and terms without his spokespeople getting out in front of him, and, finally, making sure that public statements were coordinated internally so that everyone is always on the same page and there are few surprises."

In September 2002, Bush's chief economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, ran afoul of the president's rules by saying the cost of a possible war with Iraq could be somewhere between $100 billion and $200 billion. Bush was irritated and made sure that Lindsey was told his comments were unacceptable. "Lindsey had violated the first rule of the disciplined, on-message Bush White House: don't make news unless you're authorized to do so," McClellan wrote.

Within four months, Lindsey was gone, resigning as part of a reshaping of Bush's economic team.

While message control has been part of many administrations, Mann said that, "They were just tougher and more disciplined about it than anyone else had been."

'Political propaganda campaign'
As spokesman, McClellan ardently defended Bush's decision to invade Iraq and the conduct of his presidency over the course of nearly 300 briefings in two years and 10 months. Now, two years after leaving the White House and eager to make money on his book, McClellan concludes Bush turned away from candor and honesty and misled the country about the reasons for going to war.

It wasn't about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, McClellan writes. It was Bush's fervor to transform the Middle East through the spread of democracy. "The Iraq war was not necessary," writes McClellan, who never hinted at any doubts or questioned his talking points when he was press secretary.

McClellan writes that Bush and his team sold the Iraq war by means of a "political propaganda campaign" in which contradictory evidence was ignored or discarded, caveats or qualifications to arguments were downplayed or dropped and "a dubious al-Qaida connection to Iraq was played up.

"We were more focused on creating a sense of gravity and urgency about the threat from Saddam Hussein than governing on the basis of the truths of the situation," McClellan wrote.

McClellan is not the first presidential spokesman to write a tell-all book, but his is certainly the harshest, at least in recent memory. He says his words as press secretary were sincere but he has come to realize that "some of them were badly misguided. ... I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured."

White House colleagues were stunned, but not lacking for the day's response. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew," said Dana Perino, the current press secretary who was first hired by McClellan as a deputy.

Later in the day, she relayed the reaction of Bush himself: "He's puzzled, he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years."

The Associated Press

updated 5:56 p.m. CT, Wed., May. 28, 2008

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24863127/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Sex abuse by aid workers widespread: Peacekeepers, humanitarian experts prey on kids as young as 6

I am not yet as pessimistic as Lord Acton; but, I am pretty close...

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."



LONDON - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep concern" Tuesday after a leading children's charity said it uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of U.N. peacekeepers and international aid workers.

The report by Save the Children UK, based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual crimes against children as young as 6.

It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.

"The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward," Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News.

"A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It's despicable."

At the U.N. headquarters, spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban "is deeply concerned" by the report.

"We welcome this report. It's fair, and I think it's essentially accurate," Montas said.

Steps to prevent, investigate abuse
She noted the report states the United Nations has already undertaken steps designed to tackle the problem, from establishing conduct and discipline units in all U.N. missions to strengthening training for all categories of U.N. personnel. She said the United Nations also needs to strengthen its investigative capacity.

The study was based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year. The charity emphasized it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to indicate the problem is severe.

The report said that more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of sexual abuse and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

The Save the Children UK researchers, who met with 129 girls and 121 boys between the ages of 10 and 17, and also with a number of adults, found an "overwhelming" majority of the people interviewed would never report a case of abuse and had never heard of a case being reported.

The threat of retaliation, and the stigma attached to sex abuse, were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the topic is so taboo it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers. But she said the new report provides a useful starting point.

"This will never be a statistical study," she said. "We'd call it a pilot work exploring the start of an issue. All the research shows kids don't make it up."

Children afraid to report abuse
Buchanan, who directs the Oxford Center for Research into Parenting and Children, said the biggest obstacle to accurate numerical studies of child sexual abuse is the reluctance of children to come forward and tell adults they have been taken advantage of.

"Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it's not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what's happened to them," she said. "Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They've gone about it as sensitively as you can."

Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt said U.N. peacekeepers are involved in many abuse cases because they are present throughout the world in such large numbers. But he praised the United Nations for improving its reporting and investigative procedures regarding sex abuse.

"We're not singling out the U.N. In some ways they do a good job. It's all peacekeepers and all aid workers, including Save the Children," that are involved in sexual abuses, he said.

The report says several Save the Children workers were fired for having sex with 17-year-old girls in violation of agency guidelines.

In its report, Save the Children UK makes three key recommendations: establish a way for people to report abuse locally, create an international watchdog agency this year to deal with the problem, and set up a program to deal with the underlying causes of child abuse.

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at the London think tank Chatham House, said there is no "magic bullet" that can solve the problem quickly.

"The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states," he said. "So it's difficult for the U.N. to pursue charges and difficult for the U.N. to investigate them."


The Associated Press

updated 8:16 a.m. CT, Tues., May. 27, 2008

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24838344/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Does the Constitution apply to an enemy combatant on U.S. soil?

America, we have a huge problem and his name is George Bush. How far away are we from being able to say...and there arose a president who knew neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson. This is exactly how it starts. In all seriousness, we have a usurper presiding over our executive branch of government; and, whether it is his intention or just the results of his inane mind, we have slowly stepped across the line from a free republic into a troubling unitary autocracy. Kyrie Eleison...may the Lord have mercy on us!



WASHINGTON (AP) -- If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a resident and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

There is little middle ground between the two sides in al-Marri's case, which is before a federal appeals court in Virginia. The government says the president needs this power to keep the nation safe. Al-Marri's lawyers say that as long as the president can detain anyone he wants, nobody is safe.

A Qatari national, al-Marri came to the U.S. with his wife and five children on September 10, 2001. He arrived on a student visa seeking a master's degree in computer science from Bradley University, a small private school in Peoria, Illinois.

The government says he had other plans.

According to court documents citing multiple intelligence sources, al-Marri spent months in al Qaeda training camps during the late 1990s and was schooled in the science of poisons.

The summer before al-Marri left for the United States, he allegedly met with Osama bin Laden and September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The two al Qaeda leaders decided that al-Marri would make a perfect sleeper agent and rushed him into the U.S., the government says.

A computer specialist, al-Marri was ordered to wreak havoc on the U.S. banking system and serve as a liaison for other al Qaeda operatives entering this country, according to a court document filed by Jeffrey Rapp, a senior member of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

According to Rapp, al-Marri received up to $13,000 for his trip, plus money to buy a laptop, courtesy of Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi, who is suspected of helping finance the September 11 attacks.

A week after the attacks, Congress unanimously passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force. It gave President Bush the power to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against anyone involved in planning, aiding or carrying out the attacks.

The FBI interviewed al-Marri that October and arrested him in December as part of the September 11 investigation. He rarely had been attending classes and was failing in school, the government said.

When investigators looked through his computer files, they said, they found information on industrial chemical suppliers, sermons by bin Laden, how-to guides for making hydrogen cyanide and information about chemicals labeled "immediately dangerous to life or health," according to Rapp's court filing. Phone calls and e-mails linked al-Marri to senior al Qaeda leaders.

In early 2003, he was indicted on charges of credit card fraud and lying to the FBI. Like anyone else in the United States, he had constitutional rights. He could question government witnesses, refuse to testify and retain a lawyer.

On June 23, 2003, Bush declared al-Marri an enemy combatant, which stripped him of those rights. Bush wrote that al-Marri possessed intelligence vital to protect national security. In his jail cell in Peoria, Illinois, however, he could refuse to speak with investigators.

A military jail allowed more options. Free from the constraints of civilian law, the military could interrogate al-Marri without a lawyer, detain him without charge and hold him indefinitely. Courts have agreed the president has wide latitude to imprison people captured overseas or caught fighting against the U.S. That is what the prison at Guantanamo Bay is for.

But al-Marri was not in Guantanamo Bay.

"The president is not a king and cannot lock people up forever in the United States based on his say-so," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who represents al-Marri and other detainees. "Today, it's Mr. al-Marri. Tomorrow, it could be you, a member of your family, someone you know. Once you allow the president to lock people up for years or even life without trial, there's no going back."

Glenn Sulmasy, a national security fellow at Harvard University, said the issue comes down to whether the nation is at war. Soldiers would not need warrants to launch a strike against invading troops. So would they need a warrant to raid an al Qaeda safe house in a U.S. suburb?

Sulmasy says no. That is how Congress wrote the bill, and "if they feel concerned about civil liberties, they can tighten up the language," he said.

That would require the politically risky move of pushing legislation to make it harder for the president to detain suspected terrorists inside the U.S.

Al-Marri is not the first prisoner who did not fit neatly into the definition of enemy combatant.

Two U.S. citizens, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, were held at the same brig as al-Marri. But there are differences. Hamdi was captured on an Afghanistan battlefield. Padilla, too, fought alongside the Taliban before his capture in the United States.

By comparison, al-Marri had not been on the battlefield. He was lawfully living in the U.S. That raises new questions.

Did Congress really intend to give the president the authority to lock up suspected terrorists overseas but not those living here?

If another September 11-like plot was discovered, could the military imprison the would-be hijackers before they stepped onto the planes?

Is a foreign battlefield really necessary in a conflict that turned downtown Manhattan into ground zero?

Also, if enemy combatants can be detained in the U.S., how long can they be held without charge? Without lawyers? Without access to the outside world? Forever?

These questions play to two of the biggest fears that have dominated public policy debate since September 11: the fear of another terrorist attack and the fear the government will use that threat to crack down on civil liberties.

"If he is taken to a civilian court in the United States and it's been proved he is guilty and it's been proved there's evidence to show that he's guilty, you know, he deserves what he gets," his brother, Mohammed al-Marri, said Friday from his home in Saudi Arabia. "But he's just been taken there with no court, no nothing. That's shame on the United States."

Courts have gone back and forth on al-Marri's case as it worked its way through the system. The last decision, a 2-1 ruling by a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, found that the president had crossed the line and al-Marri must be returned to the civilian court system. Anything else would "alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic," the judges said.

The full appeals court is reviewing that decision and a ruling is expected soon. During arguments last year, government lawyers said the courts should give great deference to the president when the nation is at war.

"What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?" Judge William B. Traxler asked.

"Yes, your honor," Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

The court seemed torn.

One judge questioned why there was such anxiety over the policy. After all, there have been no mass roundups of citizens and no indications the White House is coming for innocent Americans next.

Another judge said the question is not whether the president was generous in his use of power; it is whether the power is constitutional.

Whatever the decision, the case seems destined for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the first military trials are set to begin soon against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Al-Marri may get one, too. Or he may get put back into the civilian court system. For now, he waits.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/24/enemy.combatant.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

© 2008 Cable News Network

“We will be OK…as long as the wind blows.” -- Kate Wilson, age 3†



I am feeling today a heavy burden to capture for you in words something that would dramatically deepen your understanding of our mission and leave you as breathless as we are most days. How can I get just one spark to fall in the right place so that a blaze of generosity, volunteerism, and abiding love will ignite around us!?

So, I sit here looking inside my soul, waiting for inspiration to pen some great insight or profound mystical understanding. I hear a silent voice ask me to look at the trees outside…how they move with the wind. Watch the birds…how they coast and dive with the breeze. Gaze upwards to the puffy clouds…how they follow along at their own pace. The smell of springtime in the wind lifts my spirit and calms my breathing. A slow, deep breath overtakes me and I hold it in for as long as I can. Inspiration is literally all around me and within me.

The ancient Greeks and Semitics each used only one word for wind, breath, and spirit. As they observed the world around them, they knew that something was pushing on them both inside and outside. Sometimes the pneuma or ruach was very gentle, other times they were literally blown away. I think the same is true for those of us who are moved by the mission of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The wind is always pushing and pulling us. Most of the time it is a soothing breeze, but sometimes the wind is so strong that it hurts. Each of us offers unique breath to “hope, strength, and joy.” Most of the time laughter and joy fill our lungs, but sometimes the pain and sorrow take our breath away. Most of the time we sense a spirit swirling around us and binding us together, but sometimes we cannot find it and feel lost.

You are pneuma and ruach to us. Thank you for sharing with us and walking alongside us as we travel our winding roads of wish granting. Some days you are the wind in our sails. Some days you are the breath on our lips. Some days you are the spirit which binds us tightly. We should tell you more often how much power and effect you have on us and on our mission. You move us! Your gifts of encouragement, time, and resources are what fill and move our wishes…nothing else will! Therefore, I believe with great certainty that, “We will be OK…as long as the wind blows.”

I wish you grace and peace,

Paul Griffin Jones, III (Trey)

†Kate Wilson is the youngest daughter of Stan and Jennifer Wilson. Stan is the pastor of my church. Kate spoke these words during Sunday school on Pentecost Sunday. Let the little children come…indeed!

Officer breast-feeds quake orphans

What a beautiful act of kindness, tenderness, and love. Jiang Xiaojuan demonstrates to all of us a simple, yet profound, way of living: Offer what you have to those in need. She has milk. What do you and I have?



JIANGYOU, China (CNN) -- A Chinese police officer is being hailed as a hero after taking it upon herself to breast-feed several infants who were separated from their mothers or orphaned by China's devastating earthquake.

Officer Jiang Xiaojuan, 29, the mother of a 6-month-old boy, responded to the call of duty and the instincts of motherhood when the magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12.

"I am breast-feeding, so I can feed babies. I didn't think of it much," she said. "It is a mother's reaction and a basic duty as a police officer to help."

The death toll in the earthquake jumped Thursday to more than 51,000, and more than 29,000 are missing, according to government figures. Thousands of children have been orphaned; many others have mothers who simply can't feed them.

At one point, Jiang was feeding nine babies.

"Some of the moms were injured; their fathers were dead ... five of them were orphans. They've gone away to an orphanage now," she said.

She still feeds two babies, including Zhao Lyuyang, son of a woman who survived the quake but whose breast milk stopped flowing because of the traumatic conditions.

"We walked out of the mountains for a long time. I hadn't eaten in days when I got here, and my milk was not enough," said that mother, Zhao Zong Jun. "She saved my baby. I thank her so much. I can't express how I feel."

Liu Rong, another mother whose breast milk stopped in the trauma, was awed by Jiang's kindness.

"I am so touched because she has her own baby, but she fed the disaster babies first," Liu said. "If she hadn't fed my son, he wouldn't have had enough to eat."

Jiang has became a celebrity, followed by local media and proclaimed on a newspaper front page as "China's Mother No. 1."

She's embarrassed by the fuss.

"I think what I did was normal," she said. "In a quake zone, many people do things for others. This was a small thing, not worth mentioning."

There has been a huge outpouring of support from families who want to adopt babies orphaned by the quake. But that process takes time, and there are mouths to feed.

Jiang misses her own son, who's being cared for through the emergency by in-laws in another town, but she is aware of the new connections she's made.

"I feel about these kids I fed just like my own. I have a special feeling for them. They are babies in a disaster."


From Hugh Riminton

CNN International

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/22/china.breastfeed/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Money fears might have led to bridge collapse

Money before life, safety, and general welfare? Gasp! Choke! Spew! Sigh. Whimper. Tear. Sadness. Anger! Will this ever stop? Can we change our ways? Si, Se Puede!



ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) -- Transportation officials' concerns that fixing or replacing a Minneapolis bridge would be a "budget buster" may have led to bad maintenance decisions before its deadly collapse in August, a report released Wednesday concluded.

The report, commissioned by the Legislature, also criticized the Minnesota Department of Transportation for bridge inspections that were mishandled or not acted upon over the years, even when they called for immediate repairs.

The department has come under sharp criticism for its upkeep of the 40-year-old Interstate 35W bridge, even as an ongoing federal investigation has highlighted a design flaw and the weight of construction materials on the bridge, rather than maintenance, as critical factors in the collapse that killed 13 people.

"Financial considerations, we believe, did play a part in the decision-making" over repair of the bridge, said Robert Stein, who oversaw the report prepared for lawmakers by the law firm Gray Plant Mooty.

"Sometimes it's easier just to take the least expensive alternative or just commission another study," Stein said.

For example, instead of a $40,000 ground-penetrating radar survey of the bridge deck in 2006, engineers dragged a chain across the span to listen for unsound concrete. The radar test, an internal e-mail notes, "was not completed due to lack of funding."

That same year, officials from the state's bridge division examined rehabilitation and reconstruction options. In meeting minutes, they noted that a replacement bridge would cost $75 million or more, a project they concluded would be "cost-prohibitive" and not in the cards for 20 years.

In 2004 and 2005, presentations assembled for top-level department meetings had the Interstate 35W bridge on a list of "budget buster" bridges, referring to the major spans that were due for costly renovations or replacements over the next 10 years.

The new bridge, expected to be completed by this fall, will cost at least $230 million.

Transportation Commissioner Tom Sorel, who took the job last month after Carol Molnau was ousted, said he was reviewing the report and couldn't comment in detail on many of its findings.

"Addressing the condition and safety needs of our bridge system has never been and never will be subject to question due to budgetary concern," Sorel said. "We rely on and invest in the expert opinions and recommendations of our bridge engineering professionals."

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has asked Sorel to determine whether the report should lead to changes in organization of the transportation department. But Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said, "Until the cause of the collapse is determined, it is not possible to know whether anything in this report is relevant to the bridge collapse."

Much of the report was devoted to flaws in the way the state Department of Transportation carried out inspections and then reacted to what it found. The report noted a lag of as much as six months between an inspection and the writing of a report, raising concerns that "fading memories" might lead to a lack of useful detail.

The 35W bridge was rated in "serious to poor" condition for 17 consecutive years by the National Bridge Inventory Standards.

The report said state guidelines called for the rust to be scraped off bridge trusses so the good steel could be measured precisely. But after 1993, precise measurements weren't included in yearly bridge reports. That meant that in 1998, transportation officials recalculating the bridge's weight capacity had to use the original design measurements rather than the amount of good steel that was really on the bridge, the report said.

Two state inspectors who wrote inspection reports said they had never even seen a written copy of the guidelines about measuring the remaining metal. And supervisors who should have made sure the reports were complete did not, the report said.

The National Transportation Safety Board's investigation of the collapse has found that some of the bridge gussets -- the plates that helped connect its steel girders -- were too thin because of a design error. The NTSB investigation also said that the weight of construction materials placed on the bridge during resurfacing was a factor in the August 1 collapse, which injured 145 people in addition to the 13 killed.

The NTSB investigation is expected to conclude this year.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/21/bridge.collapse.ap/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Gates: U.S. 'stuck' in Guantanamo

I am no legal expert; but, I am pretty sure there is no "stuck" classification in the Constitution. One is only guilty after being tried by a court defined within the scope of the Constitution with the benefit of legal counsel and, of course, presumed innocent until guilt is found.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Efforts to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are at "a standstill," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

"The brutally frank answer is that we're stuck, and we're stuck in several ways," Gates told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Human rights groups have long called for the facility to be closed, alleging that detainees endure numerous human rights violations amounting to torture.

CIA chief Michael Hayden admitted this year that the agency had used waterboarding, a controversial technique that simulates drowning, on three Guantanamo detainees.

Gates said that he favors closing the detention center, which currently holds about 270 detainees, but that a number of problems stand in the way.

For one, Gates said, there are about 70 detainees ready for release whose home governments either will not accept them or may free them after they return.

He referred to former Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, who killed himself in a suicide attack last month in Mosul, Iraq, after being released from Guantanamo in 2005.

Al-Ajmi was not the first former detainee reported to have returned to the battlefield after leaving Guantanamo. Pentagon officials say that more than 10 people have been killed or captured in fighting after being released from the detention facility.

Gates said there were also several detainees who cannot be freed but who are also ineligible for prosecution under the military courts set up by the Bush administration. Gates did not elaborate on why those detainees would not be charged.

"What do you do with that irreducible 70 or 80, or whatever the number is, who you cannot let loose but will not be charged and will not be sent home?" Gates asked.

Furthermore, he said, there are lots of obstacles to overcome in order to send the detainees to U.S. prisons.

"We have a serious 'not in my backyard' problem. I haven't found anybody who wants these terrorists to be placed in a prison in their home state," he said.

Last week, a lawyer for several Guantanamo detainees said that a judge's decision could further delay efforts to try al Qaeda figures held at Guantanamo Bay.

A military judge ordered Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a Pentagon lawyer, to stay out of the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver and bodyguard, after ruling that he exerted improper influence on prosecutors trying the case.

Defense attorney Charles Swift said the ruling is likely to stall the case against Hamdan and other al Qaeda figures being tried in the Bush administration's military courts.

The Bush administration insists that it does not torture suspected terrorists during interrogations. The president said that top al Qaeda suspects had been subjected to "tough" but legal interrogation methods in prisons overseas.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/20/gates.guantanamo/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

© 2008 Cable News Network

U.S. soldier uses Quran for target practice; military apologizes

I am afraid that the sins of one soldier could set our children's teeth on edge for another generation. I cannot believe the foolishness of using a holy book of indigenous people as a target by an occupying soldier...surely he knew what he was doing and how it would be received by ANYONE in Iraq?! My comments are not religious or political in nature this time...they are simply pointing out what is to me obvious, common sense reasoning. I say with equal conviction that most religious zealots need to take a chill-pill and learn to laugh a little bit. Perhaps God will raise up a Mel Brooks within the Muslim world...we can only hope and pray!



BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A soldier used the Quran -- Islam's holy book -- for target practice, forcing the chief U.S. commander in Baghdad to issue a formal apology on Saturday.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, flanked by leaders from Radhwaniya in the western outskirts of Baghdad, apologized for the staff sergeant who was a sniper section leader assigned to the headquarters of the 64th Armored Regiment. He also read a letter of apology by the shooter.

It was the first time the incident -- which tested the relationship between U.S.-backed Sunni militiamen and the military -- was made public since it was discovered May 11.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Hammond said to tribal leaders and others at the apology ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers." VideoWatch villagers protest the Quran incident »

Another military official kissed a Quran and presented it as "a humble gift" to the tribal leaders.

The soldier, whose name was not released, shot at a Quran on May 9, villagers said. The Quran used in the incident was discovered two days later, according to the military.

Hammond also read from the shooter's letter: "I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together. ... My actions were shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible, but in my heart [the actions] were not malicious." VideoWatch Hammond issue apology »

A tribal leader said "the criminal act by U.S. forces" took place at a shooting range at the Radhwaniya police station. After the shooters left, an Iraqi policeman found a target marked in the middle of the bullet-riddled Quran.

Copies of the pictures of the Quran obtained by CNN show multiple bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages.

A military investigation found the shooter guilty and relieved him of duty; he will be redeployed to the United States for reassignment away from the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, a U.S. official said.

"The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior," Hammond said. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you -- not to harm you -- and the behavior of this soldier was nothing short of wrong and unacceptable."

Officials said the soldier claimed he wasn't aware the book was the Quran. U.S. officials rejected the claim.

Tribal leaders, dignitaries and local security officials attended the ceremony, while residents carried banners and chanted slogans, including "Yes, yes to the Quran" and "America out, out."

Sheikh Hamadi al-Qirtani, in a speech on behalf of all tribal sheiks of Radhwaniya, called the incident "aggression against the entire Islamic world."

The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq also condemned the shooter's actions and the U.S. military's belated acknowledgment of the incident.

"As the Association of Muslim Scholars condemns this heinous crime against God's holy book, the Constitution of this nation, a source of pride and dignity," the groups statement said, "they condemned the silence by all those who are part of the occupation's agenda and holds the occupation and the current government fully responsible for this violation and reminds everyone that God preserves his book and he [God] is a great avenger."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/17/iraq.quran/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

Be sure to click on the link on Mel Brooks' name if you missed it!!!

How do pilots spell relief: AMXD

When you gotta go...you gotta go!



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Where do fighter pilots traveling faster than the speed of sound go when they really need to "go"?

Until recently, the answer has been: into a bag.

But it's not a great solution. "Piddle packs" -- heavy-duty bags containing absorbent sponges -- have been blamed for at least two crashes over the years, and they're not always tidy.

A few years ago, after enduring years of complaints from pilots, the Air Force let it be known that it was looking for an answer.

A small medical equipment development company in Milton, Vermont answered the call.

"The DoD put out a list of projects they needed solutions for," said Mark Harvie, president of Omni Medical Solutions. "Bladder relief for pilots was one of the items on the list and we were looking for a new project," he said.

That project turned into the Advanced Mission Extender Device, known in military jargon as the AMXD.

After four years of testing by the Vermont Air National Guard and the Air Force and about $5 million in government and private funds, AMXD is spelling relief for pilots aloft.

Under the old system, pilots routinely avoid liquids before taking off to prevent the unmentionable. But dehydration can make them more susceptible to the G-forces typically seen in fighter aircraft, Harvie said.

When nature's call becomes too pressing to ignore, a pilot has to fly and unbuckle the harness at the same time -- while using both hands to maneuver around in a seat to which he or she is virtually molded.

The aerobatic maneuver is even harder for female pilots.

On long or cold-weather flights, the amount of gear and clothing made the maneuver nearly impossible, and pilots would sometimes have no choice but to relieve themselves in their flight suits.

In the AMXD, a cup for a man and a pad for a woman is strategically placed before the pilot dons a flight suit.

An instructional DVD tells pilots: "When the time comes to urinate, unzip the flight suit, remove the hose.... The control unit will pump the urine from the cup to the collection bag, where it will be chemically gelled."

Pilots are free to think about other business.

Harvie said the reviews have been positive from pilots of both genders. "One woman had the device taken away after testing and was quite unhappy about having to return to the old method," he said.

"The AMXD worked as advertised. I believe it's a much better system and needs to be fielded ASAP," says an unidentified pilot in a testimonial on the instructional DVD.

The Air Force recently bought its first 300 systems for U.S. pilots around the world at $2,000 each.

There's room for expansion. The air service has more than 4,200 fighter pilots who fly planes that have no bathrooms, planes like the F-16, F-15, A-10 and the most advanced fighter, the F-22.

The system has already seen action in combat zones: Female helicopter pilots from the Netherlands used the system in Afghanistan.

Harvie said it's too early to know whether the device will become standard issue, but it has attracted plenty of interest. "The Navy and Army are starting to look at the system for ground troops and carrier pilots, and looking at a version for private-sector uses," Harvie said.

Harvie said the Belgian Air Force has bought the system for its F-16 pilots.

From Mike Mount

CNN

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/16/airforce.relief/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

This is why I remain inclined towards the type of Republicanism espoused by Representative Ron Paul...

Ron Paul Prior to the Iraq War

Joe Biden: Bush's comments were 'bullshit'

Speaking truth to power is not always eloquent...



Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.

“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.

"If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”

In a separate statement, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said that Bush "is still playing the disgusting and dangerous political game Karl Rove perfected, which is insulting to every American and disrespectful to our ally Israel. George Bush should be making Israel secure, not slandering Barack Obama from the Knesset."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also weighed in.

“Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round," said Reid. "For the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics."

The White House insists that Bush wasn’t referring specifically to Obama, an argument that Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) called "baloney."

"There is no escaping what the president is doing," said Durbin, who supports Obama. "It is an attack on Sen. Obama’s position that we should not be avoiding even those we disagree with when it comes to negotiations and diplomacy."

Durbin called Bush's remarks "unfair and really unfortunate."

UPDATE: In a conference call with reporters later in the afternoon, Biden said his initial word choice was "not very eloquent" and said he should have just stuck with the word "malarkey." Biden said he "reacted viscerally" when asked about Bush's speech after stepping off an elevator.

However, Biden again did not mince words when discussing Bush's remarks, accusing the president of engaging in "long-distance swiftboating" with his speech in Israel. Biden also cited numerous examples of the Bush Administration reaching out to unfriendly regimes in Libya, North Korea and Iran, arguing that Bush's insinuation that the Democrats were soft on terrorism was "truly delusional ... and truly disgraceful."

Posted on The Crypt at Politico.com
By Daniel W. Reilly
May 15, 2008 at 11:54 AM

Permalink: http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0508/Biden_Bushs_comments_were_bullshit.html

© 2008 Capitol News Company LLC

Model ‘too fat’ for runway speaks out

Speaking truth to power includes how we view and treat women. First reported by the Wall Street Journal on February 28, 2008, accomplished teenage model, Alexandra "Ali" Michael, was told that she could not model in the Paris Fashion Week because her legs were "too fat." She has now begun to speak out about what happened. I think that the culture of fashion designers verges on the criminal. I applaud Ali's mother for standing by her and encouraging her to get "healthier." While I am opposed to excessive government regulation and oversight, I wonder if this is a legitimate workplace safety issue?



It’s one thing to have a figure to die for, but quite another to risk your life for your figure — a truth that teenage model Alexandra Michael is glad she learned before it was too late.

“My kind of wake-up call was I was on a plane from Paris to Texas, which is where I’m from,” Michael told TODAY’s Ann Curry Wednesday in New York. “I ran my fingers through my hair and when I took my hand away, there was a dry, brittle clump of hair in my hand.”

Michael had started her modeling career in Texas as a 5-foot-9, 130-pound 15-year-old, and at every rung she climbed on her career ladder, she heard the same thing: She needed to take off a few pounds.

It was a couple of pounds for Dallas, a few more for New York, and even more for Paris and the big international shows. Finally, she starved herself down to 102 pounds. The designers loved her.

But when she found her hair coming out in clumps as she flew home from a show last fall, she knew something was terribly wrong. “That’s kind of when I realized this wasn’t worth it anymore. This had completely taken over.”

Serious consequences
Michael, who turns 18 on Thursday, attracted the attention of The Wall Street Journal, which ran a story on the fashion industry’s continuing obsession with emaciated models and the eating disorders, illnesses and even deaths that are the price of their success. That led to an invitation from Teen Vogue for a cover shoot and the opportunity to tell her story to that magazine’s readers in the June/July issue, now on newsstands.

After her hair started falling out, Michael said she went to a nutritionist and her doctor. “I had serious consequences from not eating, like loss of my period for over a year and very, very low energy level,” she said.

Such complaints are common among models, for whom anorexia and bulimia are often just part of the job, Michael told Curry. She discovered that in Paris last year.

“I was sitting in a group of four girls,” Michael said. “I mentioned I hadn’t had a period in over a year and one by one, each one of them said, ‘Me, too.’ These were girls in their late teens, early 20s. There was no reason for that.”

No reason except the whims of the fashion designers, Leslie Goldman, author of “Locker Room Diaries,” told NBC. “In general, what designers are looking for is a model who in a sense will resemble a hanger when the clothing is on her,” she said. “The pressure to look thin is prevalent and rampant throughout our society. Modeling is like the microcosm of society, and there’s even more pressure.”

Thinner and thinner
“There’s been a shift in the fashion industry the last few years to extremely thin girls, almost emaciated,” Amy Astley, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, told Curry. “It’s coming from the designers and it’s too much.”

It was Astley’s decision to feature Michael in her magazine’s new issue, and she hopes the teen’s story can help change the perception of beauty.

“The taste changes in models,” Astley said. The first skinny supermodel was the appropriately named Twiggy, a big-eyed waif who was all angles and who took the fashion world by storm in the 1960s. The industry then swung to curvy and athletic supermodels like Christie Brinkley and Naomi Campbell before turning to the cadaverous “heroin chic” look of the 1990s.

Today, super-thin continues to rule. Michael learned that after deciding she didn’t want to die for her job. She followed the advice of her medical advisers and put on 7 pounds. In January, now weighing 109, she went back to Paris for another big show. Only one designer would give her any work. The others sneered at her if they looked at her at all. Her legs, they told her, were too fat.

“I think it’s time to shift to something healthier,” Astley said. “We’ve been in this cycle of hyper-thin too long. I think that someone like Ali speaking out and Teen Vogue giving her a forum to speak out is part of the step toward changing.”

Michael agreed. “From my personal experience, it has to change,” she said. “We’re sending a message, and the fashion industry affects everybody — anybody who opens a magazine, anybody who watches TV.”

The average American woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 163 pounds. The average supermodel is between 5-foot-9 and 5-foot-11 and weighs no more than 125 pounds. And as the United States spends $33 billion a year on diets and health professionals warn that the general population is getting fatter and fatter, the models get skinnier and skinnier — and so, too, do the girls and young women who try to emulate them.

“I don’t think that people realize that there are lifelong consequences,” Michael said. “Anorexia and bulimia can cause heart failure and osteoporosis and infertility. It’s a serious problem, and I think that it really needs to change.”

By Mike Celizic

TODAYShow.com contributor

updated 10:16 a.m. CT, Wed., May. 14, 2008

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24614666/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

6 gas-saving myths

This article agrees that we want to save gas, but suggests that there is a lot of bad advice on how to do it. Some of it makes no difference, and some of it can wind up costing us.



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With gasoline prices hitting record levels, it seems everyone has a tip on how to save fuel. Much of the advice is well-intentioned, but in the end, much of it won't lower your gas bill.

Here's a look at a few misconceptions:

#1. Fill your tank in the morning

You may have heard that it's best to fill your gas tank in the early morning while the fuel is cold. The theory goes that fluids are more dense at lower temperatures, so a gallon of cold gas actually has more gas molecules than a gallon of warmer gas.

But the temperature of the gasoline as it comes out of the nozzle varies little during the course of the day, according to Consumer Reports, so there's little, if any, benefit, to getting up early to pump gas.

#2. Change your air filter

Maintaining your car is important, but a clean air filter isn't going to save you any gas. Modern engines have computer sensors that automatically adjust the fuel-air mixture as an increasingly clogged air filter chokes off the engine's air supply.

While engine power will decrease slightly as the air filter becomes clogged, a lack of performance or an increase in fuel consumption will be negligible, Consumer Reports says.

#3. Use premium fuel

With prices already over $4.00 a gallon, premium gasoline is a hard sell these days. But a lot of drivers think because their owners' manual recommends premium, they'll get better fuel economy if they stick with it. Really, they're paying more money for nothing.

Even cars for which premium is recommended won't suffer with regular fuel. Modern engine technology comes to the rescue again. When sensors detect regular instead of premium fuel, the system automatically adjusts spark plug timing. The result is a slight reduction in peak horsepower - really, you'll never notice - but no reduction in fuel economy.

#4. Pump up your tires

Proper tire inflation is important for a number of reasons. Under-inflated tires are bad for handling and can even cause a crash. Improper tire inflation also causes tires to wear out faster and to heat up more, which could trigger a dangerous high-speed blow-out.

According to on-the-road driving tests by both Consumer Reports and auto information site Edmunds.com, underinflated tires reduce fuel economy, so proper inflation is key.

But you should never over-inflate your tires. They'll get you slightly better fuel economy because there will be less tread touching the road, reducing friction. But that means less grip for braking and turning. The added risk of a crash isn't worth the extra mile a gallon you might gain.

#5. To A/C or not A/C

There's no question air-conditioning makes extra work for the engine, increasing fuel use. But car air conditioners are much more efficient today than they used to be. In around-town driving, using the A/C will drop fuel economy by about a mile a gallon.

Meanwhile, driving at higher speeds with the windows down greatly increases aerodynamic drag. As speed increases, drag becomes more of an issue, making A/C use the more efficient choice at high speeds.

At most speeds and in most vehicles, A/C use drains slightly more fuel than driving with the windows down, contends David Champion, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. "My final take on is that it's very close," says Phil Reed, consumer advice editor for Edmunds.com. "It's hard to measure the difference and every vehicle is different."

The best choice - if temperature and humidity allow - is to keep the windows rolled up and to turn the A/C compressor off. You can keep the fans running to blow in air from the outside, but your car will be as aerodynamic as possible while still letting you breathe. You will save gas, but the fuel economy improvement will be slight.

#6. Bolt-ons and pour-ins

Before you buy a device that's supposed to make your car more fuel-efficient or pour in an allegedly gas-saving additive, ask yourself this: Don't you think oil and car companies aren't doing everything they can to beat their competitors?

If British Petroleum (BP) could add something to its gasoline that made cars go farther on a gallon, cars would be lining up at the company's pumps. Sure, people would burn their fuel-saving BP gas more slowly, but then they'd drive right past rivals' gas stations to come back to BP for more. BP stations could even charge more for their gas and still sell tons of the stuff.

So if there really was an additive that made gas burn up more slowly, it wouldn't be sold over the Internet one bottle at a time.

Likewise, car companies are already spending big bucks to increase fuel mileage. If General Motors could make its cars go significantly farther on a gallon simply by putting a device into the fuel line, don't think for a second it wouldn't be doing that. GM's car sales would go through the roof.

"There are a number of these gas-saving devices that are generally useless," says Champion.

But drivers who try them will swear they work. In reality, it's probably an automotive placebo effect, says Reed. Buy one of these devices or additives, and you're like to pay extreme attention to your fuel economy and how you drive.

Of course it can't hurt to keep a close eye on your driving habits -- and what kind of car you drive. In the end, that can make the most difference in saving gas.

Gas prices have climbed to record levels. Are you feeling the pinch? Tell us how gas prices are affecting you and what you're doing to cope. Send us your photos and videos, or email us to share your story.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
First Published: May 13, 2008: 11:38 AM EDT

Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/12/autos/ways_to_not_save_gas/index.htm?cnn=yes

© 2007 Cable News Network LP, LLP.

Instructions for the Care of Your Baby

Here Chris...this is for you. I followed these tips. Evan and Gabi turned out just fine!































Originally found on http://www.makememinimal.com/2008/instrucciones-para-cuidar-un-bebe/

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

Today is Pentecost...the day that the Church celebrates the outpouring of the Spirit of God in a manner consistent with the prophet Joel. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word for spirit could also be translated wind or breath. During children's Sunday School, our pastor's 3 year old daughter, Kate, uttered an amazingly profound and insightful thought that is worth sharing:

"We will live...as long as the wind blows."

To that all I can say is, Amen!


Acts 2:16-21

...this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:
17 'AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS,' God says,
'THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND;
AND YOUR SONS AND YOUR DAUGHTERS SHALL PROPHESY,
AND YOUR YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS,
AND YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS;
18 EVEN ON MY BONDSLAVES, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN,
I WILL IN THOSE DAYS POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT
And they shall prophesy.
19 'AND I WILL GRANT WONDERS IN THE SKY ABOVE
AND SIGNS ON THE EARTH BELOW,
BLOOD, AND FIRE, AND VAPOR OF SMOKE.
20 'THE SUN WILL BE TURNED INTO DARKNESS
AND THE MOON INTO BLOOD,
BEFORE THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS DAY OF THE LORD SHALL COME.
21 'AND IT SHALL BE THAT EVERYONE WHO CALLS ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.'

Is It Time to Invade Burma?

Is this an example of neo-conservatism...or liberalism with a gun? Take our aid or die!!!



Saturday, May. 10, 2008
By Romesh Ratnesar

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.

Burma's rulers have relented slightly, agreeing Friday to let in supplies and perhaps even some foreign relief workers. The government says it will allow a US C-130 transport plane to land inside Burma Monday. But it's hard to imagine a regime this insular and paranoid accepting robust aid from the U.S. military, let alone agreeing to the presence of U.S. Marines on Burmese soil — as Thailand and Indonesia did after the tsunami. The trouble is that the Burmese haven't shown the ability or willingness to deploy the kind of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale — and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will devolve beyond anyone's control. "We're in 2008, not 1908," says Jan Egeland, the former U.N. emergency relief coordinator. "A lot is at stake here. If we let them get away with murder we may set a very dangerous precedent."

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government's xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it's unlikely the junta would believe them. "You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?" says Egelend. "I can't imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food."

So what other options exist? Retired General William Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations says the U.S. should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get them to open up and then supply support to the Thai and Indonesian militaries to carry out relief missions. "We can pay for it — we can provide repair parts to the Indonesians so they can get their Air Force up. We can lend the them two C-130s and let them paint the Indonesian flag on them," Nash says. "We have to get the stuff to people who can deliver it and who the Burmese government will accept, even if takes an extra day or two and even if it's not as efficient as the good old U.S. military." Egeland advocates that the U.N. Security Council take punitive steps short of war, such as freezing the regime's assets and issuing warrants for the arrest of individual junta members if they were to leave the country. Similar measures succeeded in getting the government of Ivory Coast to let in foreign relief teams in 2002, Egelend says.

And if that fails? "It's important for the rulers to know the world has other options," Egeland says. "If there were, say, the threat of a cholera epidemic that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and the government was incapable of preventing it, then maybe yes — you would intervene unilaterally." But by then, it could be too late. The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible. As the response to the 2004 tsunami proved, the world's capacity for mercy is limitless. But we still haven't figured out when to give war a chance.

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1739053,00.html

Copyright 2008 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Data recovered from Columbia disaster

Now that is really impressive...but also a little scary. Can our personal data truly be destroyed if we wish it? I mean come on...a computer hard-drive fell from space in a burning fuselage, hit the ground at an amazing rate, and fused with another piece of metal; but, the data was recovered and published! Wow!



* Information found on melted disk drive from shuttle Columbia disaster
* The drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment
* Columbia broke apart during re-entry in 2003, killing its seven astronauts
* Researchers published results in the April issue of Physical Review E

(AP) -- Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.

Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

"When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn't even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned, and the edges were melted," said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. "It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot."

During Columbia's fateful mission, the drive had been used to store data from a scientific experiment on the properties of liquid xenon.

Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia's voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.

That led Kroll Ontrack to share details of its salvage effort.

Columbia broke apart during re-entry into the atmosphere February 1, 2003, killing its seven astronauts. The shuttle had been damaged at launch by foam insulation that fell off an external fuel tank.

Like other Columbia debris, the mangled disk drive turned up in Texas. It was six months after the disaster when a NASA contractor sent the drive to Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in data recovery.

Edwards had reason for pessimism. Not only were the drive's metal and plastic elements scorched, but the seal on the side that keeps out dirt and dust also had melted. That made the drive vulnerable to particles that can scratch the tiny materials embedded inside, destroying their ability to retain data in endless 0s or 1s, depending on their magnetic charge.

However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives, as other approaches do.

After cleaning the platters with a chemical solution, Edwards used them in a newly built drive. The process -- two days from start to finish -- captured 99 percent of the drive's information.

Edwards was gratified.

And to drive home just what a long shot his recovery had been, he later had no success with two other drives found in Columbia's wreckage. Blasted by the unfathomable furnace of entry into the atmosphere, their metals had lost the ability to hold a magnetic charge.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/09/columbia.data.ap/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network

R2D2 Projector: The Ultimate Geek Toy/Tool

I think I have found one of my wishes...Star Wars R2-D2 Projector.

Pentegon Keeping Secrets From the CIA

Why was Langley cut out of clandestine meetings with Iranian informants? Because the CIA would have deeper access to the facts, could contradict the intentions of the Bush administration wonks, and would likely point out seeming impropriety since burned by the Iran-Contra treason. Even if they did not do anything "wrong" they sure did not do anything right either. Do not hear this opinion as an endorsement of the CIA. It is just another example of how inept and isogetic the current administration has become once drunk with power and motivated by fear. Speak truth to power...



The Senate Intelligence Committee is about to release a report that sheds new light on "inappropriate" back-channel contacts between Pentagon officials and a group of Iranian informants—including a key figure from the Iran-contra affair.

In December 2001, two Pentagon Mideast experts—Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode—secretly traveled to Rome. They met with a group of Iranians who supposedly had information about plans by Iranian-backed terrorists to attack Americans—including U.S. troops who were then closing in on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The meetings were approved by high-level officials at the White House and the Pentagon. The CIA, however, was kept in the dark. When the CIA and the State Department found out about the meetings a few weeks later, they strenuously protested to the White House and demanded that the contacts be terminated immediately. At least officially, the White House complied.

Now, years later, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally producing a report on its investigation of those meetings. The document is part of the panel's "phase two" investigation into the misuse of pre-Iraq War intelligence. The report is not likely to satisfy either the White House or the administration's most vocal critics. While Intelligence Committee officials are keeping details of the report under wraps, several sources familiar with its contents—who asked for anonymity discussing an unpublished report—said that congressional investigators found nothing illegal about the secret contacts. The meetings were brokered by two Iran-contra figures: Michael Ledeen, a Washington academic and prominent neoconservative activist who was close to a number of senior Bush administration officials at the time, and Manucher Ghorbanifar, a Paris-based Iranian businessman who served as a middleman for arms deals in the 1980s and was long ago branded a "fabricator" by the CIA. U.S. intelligence agencies said at the time that Ghorbanifar had a history of offering information that proved unreliable.

But in the report, the panel does conclude that senior Bush administration officials (including then deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and deputy national-security adviser Stephen Hadley) approved the meetings without informing the CIA or its director at the time, George Tenet, thereby allowing intelligence gathering outside of normal channels. The sources say the report also suggests that Ledeen misled the National Security Council about the meetings--a charge that Ledeen strongly denied this week in an e-mail exchange with NEWSWEEK.

The Rome meetings provoked controversy when they were first disclosed in the summer of 2003. They seemed typical of the rocky relations between the Pentagon and CIA during the early years of the Bush administration. According to Ledeen, there was a reason the CIA was excluded from the secret discussions: the Iranians, he said, wanted nothing to do with the agency. That would not be surprising, given the CIA's deep antipathy toward Ghorbanifar. Three intelligence sources familiar with the investigation told NEWSWEEK that the Senate report questions whether Ledeen, who first approached administration officials about meeting with the Iranian informants, made up the claim that the Iranians refused to deal with the CIA. The report, the sources said, notes that the two Pentagon officials involved in the discussions said the issue never came up. In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, however, Ledeen said he is sure he told senior officials who authorized the contacts—including Hadley and Zalmay Khalilzad (now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations)—that the Iranians "did not want to talk to CIA people."

According to several accounts of the Rome meetings—including one published by former CIA director Tenet in his memoir "At the Center of the Storm"—Ledeen persuaded Wolfowitz and Hadley, now White House national-security adviser, to allow him to set up the secret sessions. Only later did it emerge that the Iranian informants were in fact contacts of Ghorbanifar. (In his book, Tenet himself labeled Ghorbanifar a "con man and fabricator.") "Steve, this whole operation smells," Tenet wrote that he told Hadley after he learned about the contacts. In 2003, administration officials close to Hadley told NEWSWEEK that Hadley had become concerned that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar might be dragging the Bush administration into a repeat performance of the Iran-contra affair, and ordered that the contacts be cut off.

In an interview with NEWSWEEK in Paris in November 2003, Ghorbanifar said that despite the official cease-and-desist order, he still kept in contact with both Rhode and Franklin for months. Ghorbanifar said he told the Americans he could help them recover hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cash that, he claimed, Saddam Hussein had buried. He envisioned splitting the money with the U.S. government: the United States could use part of it to overthrow Saddam; he would use the rest to finance an effort to overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran. The scheme came to nothing.

In e-mails to NEWSWEEK, Ledeen said that the Rome meetings were productive and useful. "We obtained information on Iranian support for terror operations in Afghanistan; that information saved American lives. But the CIA and State then threw a joint tantrum and cut off all contact with proven sources of information. Go figure."

Despite the unorthodox way in which the meetings were arranged and the problematic histories of the people who arranged them, sources familiar with the congressional inquiry said investigators could not declare that the Rome contacts broke the law. The reason: even if the CIA was cut out of the meetings, it was not illegal for National Security Council officials to authorize the contacts. If the committee's criticism of the administration's performance is as mild as advance reports suggest, critics who felt the Rome meetings could unravel deeper Bush scandals about the selling of the Iraq War are likely to be disappointed.

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball


Newsweek Web Exclusive


Updated: 6:20 PM ET May 8, 2008

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/1360840

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

From the Evangelical Manifesto: Christians become 'useful idiots' when faith is politicized

I think it was the prophet Carlos Mencia who often said, "Dee dee dee" to refer to such obvious idiocy. The bard Bill Engvall would agree with, "Here's your sign." All joking aside, I am glad to see that my people are starting to wake-up and reclaim their role as the brokers of honesty who speak truth to power!



DALLAS - A group of U.S. evangelical leaders called on Wednesday for a pullback from party politics so that followers would not become "useful idiots" exploited for partisan gain.

One in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical Protestants, giving them serious clout in a country where religion and politics often mix. Conservative evangelicals have become a key support base for the Republican Party.

But the movement has had growing pains and the statement issued on Wednesday, called an "Evangelical Manifesto," is the latest sign of emerging fractures as some activists seek to broaden its agenda beyond hot-button social issues such as opposition to abortion and gay rights.

"Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith," the manifesto declares.

"That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes 'the regime at prayer,' Christians become 'useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form," it said.

The manifesto was signed by leading and mostly centrist evangelicals, such as Leith Anderson, president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals; Mark Bailey, president of the Dallas Theological Seminary; and evangelical academic and author David Gushee.

Many of the more than 70 signatories have been critical in the past of evangelical partisan involvement that was seen as the crucial element behind President Bush's re-election victory in 2004.

Leading figures on the conservative "Religious Right" such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, did not sign the document, and his office said he had not been asked to sign it.

Limited political impact
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative Washington think tank that explores the relationship between religion and politics, said of the statement: "It's a sign of maturation of the evangelical movement ... It's an important theological document, but it will have limited political influence because it is making essentially a theological argument."

The document also highlights divisions that have been there for a while as some leading evangelicals attempt to redirect the movement's considerable energies toward areas such as action on global poverty and climate change.

Polls show growing numbers of evangelicals receptive to a wider social agenda and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been attempting to woo them in a bid to peel some away from the Republican camp ahead of the November election showdown with John McCain.

But analysts say most are still center-right politically and polls consistently show most remain opposed to abortion rights. They are also deeply committed to their faith.

"We have a big umbrella called evangelicalism which is theological in nature. We are called to be followers of Jesus Christ and men and women of the book," said John Huffman, a pastor and chairman of the board of Christianity Today.

Huffman, who helped draft the document, told Reuters by telephone that the group wanted to bring back "civility of discourse in the public square."

Copyright 2008 Reuters.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24506486/from/ET/

© 2008 MSNBC.com

Your blog can be group therapy

Wow! There are therapeutic benefits to contributing to my blog. Flush the Effexor and Paxil and just get your doctor to write a script for Truly Jones p.r.n. no generics.



* Report: Some 12 million people have a blog; many use it for group therapy
* Experts: Blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling
* Study: Men blog about politics, technology and money
* Study: Women tend to blog more about private lives

By Anna Jane Grossman

(LifeWire) -- When a 24-year-old woman who called herself "90DayJane" launched a blog in February announcing she would write about her life and feelings for three months and then commit suicide, 150,000 readers flocked to the site. Some came to offer help, some to delight in the drama. Others speculated it was all a hoax.

Few, however, questioned why she would share her deepest thoughts and feelings with strangers online. In the age of cyber-voyeurism, the better question might be: Why wouldn't she?

Overeating, alcoholism, depression -- name the problem and you'll find someone's personal blog on the subject. Roughly 12 million Americans have blogs, according to polls by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006, and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy.

A 2005 survey by Digital Marketing Services for AOL.com a found nearly half of the 600 people polled derived therapeutic benefits from personal blogging.

'Instant support system'

For Stacey Kim, a 36-year-old book editor who lives in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts, emotional blogging has become a reflex. On April 11, 2007, Kim curled up next to her husband and held him as he succumbed to a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The next morning, she went online to post about the experience.

"It cemented the reality that he was gone," Kim says. "I got hundreds of comments back that were all so loving and supportive. It gave me a really tangible sense of community."

She blogs about life as the widowed mother of 22-month-old twins at snickollet.blogspot.com.

"Right after he died, people kept asking if I was in therapy," says Kim, "and I'd say, 'No, but I have a blog.'"

Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds: Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.

But it's the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support.

Reading someone else's blog can be surprisingly beneficial, says MightyGirl.net blogger Margaret Mason, 32. She reads about other women's experiences with everything from in-laws to apartment-hunting at blogs like SuburbanBliss.net and SuperHeroDesigns.com.

"Blogging can create an instant support system, especially at a time when you might not have the energy or resources to seek out people who've shared your experiences," says Mason, author of "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch," a book on keeping a blog interesting.

A way to be heard

John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University in New Jersey, has studied the overlap of psychology and cyberspace. Blog audiences are usually small, he says, but "going public with one's thoughts and experiences can be a self-affirming process."

He and other experts say blogging shouldn't replace face-to-face counseling -- although it can complement sessions when a patient shares their writing with the therapist.

"Some psychologists take special interest in any activities that their clients may undertake online," Suler says, "because such activities often reveal a lot about how they express their identity and relate to other people."

Kim did start psychotherapy, but kept blogging. "My therapist will give me little assignments and I'll blog about them," she says. "If I come home (after a session) and write about it, it solidifies it."

One Chicago licensed social worker and therapist in her 50s encourages patients to release bottled emotions through blogging. Leah, who asked that her last name not be used because of the nature of her profession, started EveryoneNeedsTherapy.blogspot.com to share professional insights.

Soon, however, she was talking about her own feelings -- and her husband told her it seemed to lift her mood.

"It's a form of group therapy," says Leah. "Not only can you express your feelings, but you can get comments, and that creates a dialogue."

Blogging about personal matters seems to be more of a feminine pursuit. In the 2004 study "Effects of Age and Gender on Blogging," researchers examined more than 37,000 blogs on blogger.com. Their conclusion: Male bloggers tend to write about politics, technology and money; women are more likely to blog about their private lives and use an intimate style of writing.

This doesn't surprise Patricia Wallace, author of "The Psychology of the Internet."

"Women tend to self-disclose more online in general," says the senior director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. "Women far outnumber men in certain blogging worlds in which feelings are shared, such as cancer blogs."

Permanent marks

The only problem, some bloggers find, is that many posts become passé -- yet they're on the Web forever.

"The Internet takes momentary thoughts and freezes them in amber as if they're permanent," says Scheherazade Mason, a career counselor and sailing coach at Bowdoin College in Maine. She stopped posting her deepest thoughts, but calls the experience positive.

"Through my first blog, I learned to be braver," Mason says. "I learned that my weakness was also likable. In real life, you try to show only strength and to hide your weaknesses, but I exposed everything."

90DayJane also said she learned important things. After seven days, she announced the blog was an art project and she wasn't planning to kill herself.

"I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth," she wrote in her final post. "But the correspondences I have received have taught me more about those qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane ... has changed my perspective as a human being."

LifeWire provides original and syndicated lifestyle content to Web publishers. Anna Jane Grossman is a freelance writer based in New York City.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/07/blog.therapy/index.html

© 2008 Cable News Network