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Articles Posted by chessplayer

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  • Ted Cruz and the most cynical, despicable political stunt of the year

    09/12/2014 10:16:02 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 321 replies
    Aggressively supporting Israel is a political winner for conservatives. But when it comes at the expense of persecuted Christians who fear for their lives... Since the second half of the 20th century, some of my fellow Christians have been the most persecuted religious group in the world. They still are. You probably are surprised to hear this. That's because most of these persecuted Christians don't live in the West. They are, as the awful phrase has it, too foreign for the right and too Christian for the left. In recent weeks and months, however, the West has heard about the...
  • Tanks at the school gates? San Diego school police acquires its own MRAP

    The nation gaped at the sight of a military-grade Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle trundling through Ferguson, but it turns out that was relatively restrained policing. Relative, that is, to San Diego, where police will use a similar steel behemoth for the city’s schools. The San Diego Unified School District Police Department has acquired its own vehicle, known as a MRAP, and expect it to be operational by October.
  • Army officer is told not to enter his daughter's high school because he's wearing his uniform

    09/10/2014 9:00:41 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 35 replies
    myfoxdetroit.com ^ | Sep 09, 2014 6:47 PM PDT Updated: Sep 10, 2014 7:25 AM PDT | Fox 2 News Staff
    Sherwood, who has served in the Army for 24 years, was told by Rochester Adams High School security that if he wanted to get into the school with his daughter he was going to have to go home and change his clothes. Baker's wife Rachel Ferhadson says, "Before he was allowed in, the security guard stopped him and said sorry you're not allowed in the school. Security told him men and women in uniform weren't allowed because it may offend another student."
  • Michael Moore Slams Obama: HIstory Will Only Remember You Were a Black President

    09/10/2014 7:26:14 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 37 replies
    https://movies.yahoo.com ^ | 9/9/2014 | The Hollywood Reporter
    ..."When the history is written of this era, this is how you'll be remembered: he was the first black president," Moore said during a discussion at The Hollywood Reporter's video lounge at the Toronto Film Festival. "OK, not a bad accomplishment, but that's it," the director said. "That's it, Mr. Obama. 100 years from now, 'he was the first black American that got elected president' and that's it. Eight years of your life and that's what people are going to remember.
  • Ebola spreads exponentially in Liberia, many more cases soon: WHO

    09/08/2014 6:38:41 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 26 replies
    GENEVA/FREETOWN (Reuters) - Liberia, the country worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic, should see thousands of new cases in coming weeks as the virus spreads exponentially, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. The WHO believes it will take six to nine months to contain and may infect up to 20,000 people.
  • Raise the Voting Age

    09/06/2014 10:28:46 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 77 replies
    By and large, 18-year-olds know nothing and shouldn’t be voting. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you actually go to a college campus and talk to some students.
  • 1,500-year-old Papyrus the Last Supper gives valuable insight into Christianity

    09/06/2014 10:09:41 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 12 replies
    A group of researchers have claimed to have unearthed one of the oldest Christian amulets in the form of a 1,500-year-old Greek papyrus fragment with writing that connotes to the biblical Last Supper and ‘manna from heaven’. In a statement, Mazza said, “This is an important and unexpected finding as it is one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context, while the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist – the Last Supper – as the manna of the Old Testament”.
  • Why Is The Muslim World in Thrall to Conspiracy Theories?

    09/06/2014 10:00:34 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 20 replies
    http://www.newrepublic.com ^ | September 5, 2014 | By Mehdi Hasan
    Did you know that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was trained by Mossad and the CIA? Were you aware that his real name isn’t Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Al Badri Al Samarrai but Simon Elliot? Or that he’s a Jewish actor who was recruited by the Israelis to play the part of the world’s most wanted terrorist? But millions of Muslims across the globe have a soft spot for such hoaxes. Conspiracy theories are rife in both Muslim-majority countries and Muslim communities here in the west. The events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror” unleashed...
  • Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?

    09/05/2014 11:01:29 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 158 replies
    In June, Sheila Sillery-Walsh, a British tourist visiting the historic island-prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco, claimed that she captured an image of a ghost in a picture she snapped on her iPhone. In the frame of what was otherwise supposed to be a picture of an empty prison cell was a blurry black and white image of a woman. The story, which was printed in the British tabloid the Daily Mail, featured on the Bay Area's local KRON4 TV station and mocked by SFist, isn't the first time the Daily Mail has claimed that strange images have come up...
  • Was Michael Sam Cut Because of ‘Homophobia’?

    09/04/2014 11:10:14 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 33 replies
    He was drafted late, seventh round. Homophobia was suggested. Now that he has been cut, homophobia has been blamed,
  • Plunge in California kindergartners' vaccination rate worries health officials

    09/03/2014 9:02:40 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 47 replies
    California parents are deciding against vaccinating their kindergarten-age children at twice the rate they did seven years ago, a fact public health experts said is contributing to the reemergence of measles across the state and may lead to outbreaks of other serious diseases. The percentage of kindergartens in which at least 8% of students are not fully vaccinated because of personal beliefs has more than doubled as well, according to data on file with the state. That threshold is significant because communities must be immunized at a high rate to avoid widespread disease outbreaks. It is a concept known as...
  • Why Dying Is Easier for Doctors

    09/03/2014 11:16:03 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 65 replies
    Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as...
  • Statutory rape victim reportedly forced to pay child support

    09/02/2014 10:08:47 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 166 replies
    PHOENIX — A man who slept with a 20-year-old woman when he was 14 — and didn’t learn he was a father until eight years later — is now being forced to pay child support, the Arizona Republic reports. Olivas, who said he was confused and going through a rough patch at that time of his life time, said the two went their separate ways after the encounter. Arizona law says a child younger than 15 cannot consent to sexual relations with an adult under any circumstance. All of it was put behind him, he thought, until two years ago...
  • In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist

    09/02/2014 8:35:52 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 32 replies
    A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Maryland, middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—"taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future. Sheriff Phillips told the newspaper that,...
  • The Last Passenger Pigeon Went Extinct 100 Years Ago

    08/31/2014 8:50:42 PM PDT · by chessplayer · 64 replies
    Tomorrow marks exactly 100 years since the last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. At their peak, millions — some argue billions — of passenger pigeons flew together, creating such a ruckus as to make normal conversation a challenge. Yet their numbers diminished rapidly, plunging perilously close to extinction within just a few decades thanks to our voracious appetite for the birds. Then they flamed out completely, the last wild one shot in 1900 and Martha dying 14 years later. “The bird was hunted out of existence,” wrote journalist Barry Yeoman in Audubon...
  • Feminists Furious About Roofie Detecting Nail Polish

    08/28/2014 8:34:15 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 39 replies
    Most people have been celebrating a new nail polish invented by Undercover Colors, which changes color if it comes into contact with a date rape drug. And then there are the so-called feminists.
  • Is Chivalry Too Risky?

    Earlier this month, a 39-year-old Texan visiting Philadelphia was out in the wee hours of the morning when he saw several men inside a car pull up next to a group of women, whom they began taunting and catcalling. A police captain later reported that the visitor “took offense to something that the guys were saying to the girls and said ‘Hey, watch what you’re saying.’” At that point, one of the men inside the vehicle got out and punched the Good Samaritan, who fell and struck his head on the concrete, knocking him unconscious. The suspects then fled and...
  • Ozone-Depleting Compound Persists, NASA Research Shows

    08/27/2014 8:14:08 AM PDT · by chessplayer · 25 replies
    NASA research shows Earth's atmosphere contains an unexpectedly large amount of an ozone-depleting compound from an unknown source decades after the compound was banned worldwide.
  • Good news: 16% of people in France view ISIS favorably

    Via Vox, the poll was conducted on behalf of a Russian state media outlet but the pollster itself seems credible enough. Besides, if the results are being slanted to tar western countries, why would they be slanted against France but not against the UK? Bear in mind, per Andrew Stiles, that France is only 5-10 percent Muslim. Even if every Muslim in the country were pro-ISIS, you’d still need a chunk of non-Muslims giving thumbs up to these lunatics to get to 16 percent. Vox notes that a similar poll taken recently in Gaza showed 13 percent said they supported...
  • Mike Brown funeral: Uncle Calls for Continued #Ferguson Protests – T-Shirts for Sale

    So, they’re selling T-shirts outside of the funeral for Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. And “Don’t Shoot” T-shirts for sale outside the funeral.