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I grew up in a storybook family. My parents, refugees from the urban jungle, felt like royalty in our little suburban home. They even referred to our lives as a fable, with a happily ever after ending. The problem for me was the disconnect between what my parents said and what I experienced. As a kid my life felt more like a Greek tragedy than a fairy tale. While my parents partied hardy, I was bored out of my gourd at home. When what you're told doesn't jive with your own eyes, you proceed in one of two directions. One...

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Christian Poveda spent years documenting El Salvador's Mara 18 street gang, practically living among its members while filming initiations, drug use, tattoo sessions and funerals. Authorities believe Poveda, 53, fell victim to the same brutal violence he portrayed in his documentary "La Vida Loca," after the French filmmaker was found shot in the head in a car outside the capital, San Salvador. Police arrested a purported gang member suspected of involvement in the killing on Thursday, a day after Poveda's body was discovered. Inspector Oscar Nuila Ramos declined to give further details of the arrest,...

The Democrats, whose presidential administration previously condemned as "potential terrorists" those who oppose same-sex marriage and are offended by restrictions on firearms, all based on Internet chatter, has suggested blasting those who oppose Obamacare as "right-wing domestic terrorists" on 9/11 of this year. According to an "Organizing for America" campaign document unveiled by the Heritage Foundation the plan involves having activists telephone their "State Senators" on Sept. 11, 2009, to demand a "public option" which essentially would involve a government-funded and government-run monopoly on health care. Bobby Eberle, posting on a Republican Party site called The Loft, said Obama "and...

Minnesota's top teachers union official is urging schools to show President Barack Obama's live speech to students on Tuesday. It's the first day of school for most Minnesota districts. Dooher says some superintendents are getting pressure not to show the speech, and are even getting calls from parents threatening to keep their children home because they don't want them to watch what they view as a political message from the Democratic president. Dooher says the speech shouldn't be taken as political. He says he expects it to focus on the importance of education. A spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of...

Plainclothes officers shot and killed a small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said. Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn't targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers. Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman...

Public Policy Polling releases a fascinating survey of the Virginia electorate, one that gives former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), defeated in a razor-thin 2006 re-election bid, a solid 50 percent approval rating, with 38 percent disapproving. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) is at 47-40. The electorate is split on whether they’d vote for Allen again — 36 percent say definitely no, 31 percent say definitely yes. This is the finding that leaps out: That’s right: A majority of Hispanics, and 40 percent of African-Americans, would either vote for Allen or consider doing so. That’s interesting for a number of reasons. In...

There's at least one group of people who are happy Cash for Clunkers is over: demolition-derby drivers. Participants in these events, in which drivers smash into one another until there's only one engine left running, don't enjoy the sight of old cars going out of commission without making a pit stop at the county fairground. "Obama is an anti-demo-derby guy," says Tory Schutte, head of the Demolition Derby Drivers Association. "He's targeting the cars we've been using." Also contributing to the shortage of derby-worthy cars: scrap-metal prices have doubled in the past two years, leading more owners to sell their...

Today's dogs are all descended from a pack of wolves tamed 16,000 years ago on the shores of the Yangtze river, according to new research. It was previously known that the birthplace of the dog was eastern Asia but historians were not able to be more precise than that. However, now researchers have made a number of new discoveries about the history of man's best friend - including that the dog appeared about 16,000 years ago south of the Yangtze river in China. It has also been discovered that even though the dog has a single geographical origin it descends...

September 1, 2009 (MOSCOW) -- Thousands of tropical fish reportedly have died at a Russian airport after being held in customs for 15 hours in the summer heat. The state RIA Novosti news agency says more that 4,000 fish worth $480,000 died in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after customs officials spent 15 hours clearing the cargo Saturday. The fish had been shipped from China and made a brief stop in India. [snip]

HOLLYWOOD studios love to use the Toronto Film Festival... In an online letter to event chiefs, an array of notables -- Jane Fonda, Naomi Klein, Danny Glover and David Byrne among them -- have protested the festival's choice to spotlight the city of Tel Aviv and 10 Israeli moviemakers.

Connecting The Dots In The “Sealed Lawsuit”; Obama Conspiracy To Defraud The System: ~snip ...What is taking place is indeed conspiracy as in the sense a violation of the RICO Act. This involves the state of Hawaii and Occidental College, if not Columbia of New York and Harvard. What requires explanation in this is a generation of crime in supplanting the United States for money. It is as simple as that in local government policy being fed huge sums of money at the behest of Ford Foundation incorporating globalist policy into American culture. Barack Obama is simply the tip of...

Kids in Napa won't hear the usual "clackety clack" of a diesel engine when district bus HY-2 lumbers up to their stop next month. In fact, when the bus is sitting still, they won't hear anything at all. Within a week or two, Napa Valley Unified School District will premiere one of the first small hybrid buses in the nation, thanks to state grants aimed at curbing school bus emissions and a transportation manager's aggressive campaign to green his fleet. "I just got tired of seeing the commercials with the big puff of black smoke coming out of the tailpipe...

AN eagle-eyed security guard with too much time on his hands claims to have found photographic evidence of the Loch Ness Monster in satellite images. British security guard Jason, 25, told The Sun "I couldn't believe it. It's just like the descriptions of Nessie." Researcher Adrian Shine, of the Loch Ness Project, said: "This is really intriguing. It needs further study." Sightings have been claimed for centuries. The object, pictured to the right, can be found by entering co-ordinates Latitude 5712'52.13"N, Longitude 434'14.16"W in Google Earth.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Health officials in Ohio say a 20-year-old pregnant woman has died of swine flu. The woman's baby was delivered prior to her death Thursday at a Columbus hospital, and officials say the baby is doing well. No other details about the woman were released.... ...Through Aug. 27, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 556 swine flu deaths in the U.S. and 8,800 hospitalizations

President Obama wants to use his prime-time address to a joint-session of Congress next Wednesday as a way to jump-start the health-care debate. He would be better off trying to restore civic order that has become dangerously frayed over the last few months. The liberal interest group MoveOn organized a rally Wednesday evenings in Thousand Oaks, California to show support for Obama's health care reform. Yet, demonstrating how snake-bitten the effort has become, a pro-reform participant bit off the finger of 65 year-old William Rice, a member of a counter-rally. Even though the incident began with Rice throwing the first...

NEW YORK (AP) -- A firefighters union says a New York City engine company had to close its firehouse for 30 minutes to bathe a circus elephant on city orders. The Uniformed Firefighters Association says Brooklyn's Engine Company 245 didn't want to participate in the photo opportunity with circus elephant Suzie, part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show in Coney Island. But it says city officials ordered the engine company to participate. [snip]

It has been my contention for the past decade that when it comes to politics, as Florida goes, so goes the nation. Think about the 2008 presidential election. First, following the CNN-YouTube debate, the last major Republican debate to be held before the Iowa caucus, our firm polled Floridians for the Florida Chamber of Commerce. We asked respondents who won the debate. A then-unknown candidate was the clear winner, and the boost he received in Florida gave Mike Huckabee a win in Iowa just over a month later. The tipping point in the Republican presidential contest was Florida Gov. Charlie...

On my last and final job, the new CEO on his first day wanted to change my schedule effective immediately, and let my sons find another way to get home that day. That was a telltale. His insistence on my instant obedience told me clearly that I was soon to be unemployed. I was. When I walked into Doré’s apartment in 1976, I saw a sea of stuff from where I stood in the doorway to the farthest wall—lone boots, rolls of toilet paper, stacks of magazines, dirty clothes and dishes, canned goods, a set of wrenches, a basket of...

House Liberals Write Directly To Obama: No Public Option, No Support In a letter delivered to the White House moments ago, the two leaders of the bloc of House progressives bluntly told President Obama that they will not support any health care plan without a public option in it — and demanded a meeting to inform him face to face. The not-yet-released letter — the first joint statement from progressives since news emerged that Obama might not address the public option in next week’s speech — is their sharpest challenge yet to the president, given the extraordinary sensitivity of this...