The Nashville Flood...Why Have We Paid So Little Attention to It?

from incharacter:
A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No...you didn't. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground.

No...we didn't loot. Our biggest warning was, "Don't play in the floodwater." When you think about it...that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren't doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Only a brave few acknowledge an entitlement crisis

from WaPo:
Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.

11 Charities Collecting Donations for Haiti

from Desiring God:
If you're looking for an organization to channel your money through for Haiti—and you probably should be—here are some options.

Compassion International
Feed My Starving Children
Food for the Hungry
World Vision
World Relief
Samaritan's Purse
Love a Child
Northwest Haiti Christian Mission
Compassion Weavers
Mennonite Central Committee
Water Missions International

Terence Corcoran: Uprising in Iceland

Terence Corcoran: Uprising in Iceland
Under pressure from voters and taxpayers, Iceland's President, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, this week refused to sign a bill to reimburse almost $6-billion to Britain and Holland for money paid to depositors who put money into two high-flying Icelandic banks that failed in 2008.

The president was responding to taxpayers who are essentially rebelling against being forced to pick up the tab for a financial bailout of depositors, regulators, foreign governments and even their own government and politicians. It is only a bit of an exaggeration to say that the people of Iceland are refusing to pay for all the schemes of private bankers and public officials who, over the course of the last decade, drove the whole of Iceland into bankruptcy.

Not the start of a new bull market

The FP Interview: Vaclav Havel | Foreign Policy

The FP Interview: Vaclav Havel | Foreign Policy

FP: After President Obama's decision to postpone his meeting with the Dalai Lama, you said something to the effect that these small gestures seem harmless, but over time can have a powerful, cumulative effect. For the hardhearted realists, can you explain that effect?

Havel: We know this from our modern history. When [French Prime Minister Edouard] Daladier returned from the [1938] Munich conference, the whole nation was applauding him for saving the peace. He made a miniscule compromise in the interest of peace. But it was the beginning of a chain of evil that subsequently brought about many millions of deaths. We can't just say, "This is just a small compromise that can be overlooked. First we will go to China and then perhaps talk with the Dalai Lama." It all looks practical, pragmatic, logical, but it is necessary to think about whether it is not the first small compromise that can be the beginning of that long chain that is no good. In this case perhaps it will not be, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.

Passing health reform could be a nightmare for Obama

from Washington Post:
So Obama's plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Health benefits are overstated, long-term economic costs understated. The country would be the worse for this legislation's passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of "universal coverage." What it's not is leadership.

Selfless saviours of a new faith

from MercatorNet:

As others have observed, belief in cataclysmic climate change has all the earmarks of a world religion -- except a name. Environmentalism? Too vague, too 1980’s. After encountering a certain term repeatedly in my reading, I have decided to call the institutional expression of this faith The Climate Change Church of Settled-Science. 

Consider the climate creed. It has rigid dogma and sacred writ, the latter including even “long lost” and missing texts in the form of destroyed and suppressed emails, data, and/or doctored computer codes and models. It has prophets and predictions. It attracts the unwavering faith of true believers, provoking them to asceticism (fasting, sacrifice, even unto martyrdom—at least in theory) and filling them with joy and euphoria in the belief that they are “doing the right thing”. It inspires a fervent desire to spread the word and make others see the light; it condemns sin and calls for conversion to a strict lifestyle code -- or punishment for those who do not believe, do not obey, do not comply. And, of course, it is an established religion, or aspires to be one, with the state as the enforcer of its doctrines and codes.

The creed has its heretics: scientists who question the dogma are ostracized, vilified, silenced, excommunicated. It has its atheists, although the label “deniers” is currently more popular. Some CCC of SS true believers feel that deniers ought to be treated with the same scorn and censure as Holocaust deniers; others have suggested that climate-change dissenters ought to be charged with treason. (Against what or whom? The world? Mother Earth?)

For feds, more get 6-figure salaries

from USAtoday:
The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

Italy vows to fight court ruling against crucifixes

Italy vows to fight court ruling against crucifixes

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classrooms, sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

“This is an abhorrent ruling,” said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals.

“It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history,” he said.

Swiss vote to ban minarets a warning to Europes Muslims

Swiss vote to ban minarets a warning to Europes Muslims

The vote to ban minarets in Switzerland warns Muslims to pay more heed to local sensibilities, while highlighting the larger problem of Europe’s failure to integrate immigrants, experts say.

Gang killed victims to extract their fat... sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment

from Guardian: 

A Peruvian gang that allegedly killed people and drained fat from their corpses for use in cosmetics may have been inspired by a grisly Andean legend.

Hilarió Cudeña Simon, the alleged ringleader, linked the crimes to tales of demonic assassins, known as Pishtacos, who purportedly waylaid victims in pre-Columbian times, police said.

Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins

from the Guardian:

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

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

"It is the traditional way, " explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, "If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled." 

The worst is yet to come: Unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses

from NYDailyNews:
Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs...

Other measures tell the same ugly story: The average length of unemployment is at an all time high; the ratio of job applicants to vacancies is 6 to 1; initial claims are down but continued claims are very high and now millions of unemployed are resorting to the exceptional extended unemployment benefits programs and are staying in them longer.

Based on my best judgment, it is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more.

The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double dip recession.

...we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures.

The damage will be extensive and severe unless bold policy action is undertaken now.

Babies tune into langauge before birth

Babies tune into langauge before birth

"...even within the first week after birth, babies imitate the melodic patterns of voices they have heard while still in the womb. And that includes the “tunes” typical of the mother tongue."

Wedded to vitriol, backers of gay marriage stumble - The Boston Globe

Wedded to vitriol, backers of gay marriage stumble - The Boston Globe

Posted using ShareThis

After 31 losses in 31 states, it’s time for same-sex marriage activists to seriously consider a piece of advice Barney Frank offered a few years ago. “There’s something to be said for cultural respect,’’ the nation’s most prominent gay political figure said in 2004. “Showing a bit of respect for cultural values with which you disagree is not a bad thing. Don’t call people bigots and fools just because you disagree with them.’’

Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? - study says "no"

Bombshell from Bristol: Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing? - study says "no"

ET phone Rome.

from google news:

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Root Causes of Ft. Hood Massacre?

Root Causes of Ft. Hood Massacre?
For what it's worth, on the rare occassions when I lecture on the topic of how extremists use Islam to justify terrorism (including sometimes at Ft. Hood), I often draw from these Middle East Quarterly articles:

"Contrasting Secular and Religious Terrorism"

"Peace of Jihad: Abrogation in Islam"

"The Religious Foundations of Suicide Bombings"

"Beheading in the Name of Islam"