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Down to 8 pretty good teams. Unfortunately in each game one pretty good team lies down or doesn't show up. Baltimore should be in the Super Bowl and they didn't seem to even try. Minnesota was never in it. Injuries are too big a factor Seattle will have no offensive line going against 2 excellent players on the GB defensive line. Russell Wilson could still pull it out but after16/17 games I think too many teams just give up from exhaustion. It seems to happen year after year.

A volcano in the Philippines has emitted a giant plume of ash, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of some 8,000 people living nearby. The plume coming from the Taal volcano, south of the capital Manila, stretched about 1km (0.6 miles) into the sky. Rumbling sounds and tremors were also reported around Taal - the Philippines' second-most active volcano - on Sunday. Authorities raised the alert level, warning that a "hazardous eruption" was possible within weeks. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology also warned residents living nearby of a possible "volcanic tsunami".

This is the shocking moment two customers attacked members of staff in a kebab shop - while a man calmly sat among the chaos eating his chips and unwittingly became a meme sensation. The footage, believed to be taken inside Ken's Kebabs in Portsmouth, was posted on Twitter on Friday at around 4.40pm. It begins with a young man wearing a grey top and blue cap hurling abuse at a worker, who retaliates by throwing a pair of tongs at him as another aggressive customer, in a blue jacket, enters the fray. Four men, who appear to also work in...

THOUSANDS of democratic protesters took to the streets of Iran on Sunday for the second day of mass protests.

What Now, Pope Francis? The butchers of Beijing tighten the noose on underground Catholics in China. Soon the hanging? “Bitter Winter”, the online journal of Massimo Introvigne on the state of human rights in China, reports the wholly expected news that the butchers of Beijing have decreed the death of religious freedom in China following the Vatican’s sellout of the Underground Church.  Doubling down on the already draconian New Regulation on Religious Affairs enacted in 2017, the Communist Party of China [CCP] has announced new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups” that “will come into force on February 1, 2020.” “Two years after the 2017...

. By October, 150 of Arp’s hives had been wiped out by mites, 12% of his inventory in just a few months. “My yard is currently filled with stacks of empty bee boxes that used to contain healthy hives,” he says. On top of the threat of pesticides, almond pollination is uniquely demanding for bees because colonies are aroused from winter dormancy about one to two months earlier than is natural. The sheer quantity of hives required far exceeds that of other crops – apples, America’s second-largest pollination crop, use only one-tenth the number of bees. And the bees are...

Waymo’s fully driverless vehicles are doing passenger trips in the suburbs outside Phoenix, Arizona. We got to experience it first hand, and our ride included a close brush with a construction site, a wrong turn, and a flock of pigeons. But more importantly, it got us thinking about what it means when Waymo says the future is driverless, and what we lose when we eliminate human driving. Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__EoOvVkEMo Link to article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/9/21000085/waymo-fully-driverless-car-self-driving-ride-hail-service-phoenix-arizona

OK, FREEPERS, LET'S START THIS CONTEST FOR THE GREATEST SONG OF THE '60S. The baseline for the contest is the top 7 hits of each year of the '60s, as compiled by BILLBOARD. This is NOT based on personal preferences, biases, prejudices, or counter-culture fringe-element reactivity. Round 1 is listing candidate songs in order of preference. (The remaining rounds are handled as play-off brackets, starting with 32 pairs of songs to compare.) ROUND 1 We begin by using the #7 songs of each year and paring them from 10 songs to 4 (to set up play-off brackets for the rest...

"No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off the trillion dollar war machine." As President Donald Trump spent the early days of 2020 instigating and then backing down from a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Iran, corporate media in the U.S. turned to the very same people who promoted the country's worst foreign policy disaster in a generation to advocate for repeating the mistakes of two decades ago. The decision of networks and cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to bring on a stream of past advocates for...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday warned Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP colleagues that they would be held accountable by the American people if they dismiss the impeachment trial against President Trump. Pelosi said McConnell “very unusually” signed a resolution last week to toss the case once the Senate takes up the two articles passed by the House in December. “Dismissing is a cover up,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week.” “If they want to go that route, again, the senators who are now thinking about witnesses or not – they will have to be accountable...

American consumers understand that most forms of popular culture have become nothing more than commercials for the Democrat party. Movies, television, and music focus less on entertainment than on influencing the next election. They have gone beyond mere leftist bias. Artists, writers, and musicians subordinate their craft in order to present one endless Democrat commercial. This trend is equally egregious in the case of books. In modern bookstores, the Democrat commercial spreads far beyond the "politics" shelf. "The gardening books advocate hiring illegal aliens. The sports books reminisce about Vietnam." A telling example of this trend appears in a 2018...

More than 6,000 university professors issued a statement following the testimony of the chief of hearts, Haj Qassim Suleimani. More than 6,000 university professors issued a statement following the testimony of Sardar Dale Hajj Qassim Suleimani, according to the Fars News Agency. The text of this statement is as follows: in the name of God "I am al-Mu'minin al-Rijal Sadiqva, our conscience against my fiancé, my judge, and my sincerity," The testimony of the brave Sardar, proud and courageous Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Lieutenant-Colonel Martyr Haj Ghassem Suleimani and his tireless companion,...

The more successful Trump's reality-based policies towards Iran and Israel are, the harder it will be for the foreign policy establishment to restore their delusion-based policies when he leaves power. For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel. Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic. As far as Iran is concerned, as journalist Lee...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Psalm 84 Psalm 84[a] For the director of music. According to gittith.[b] Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. 1 How lovely is your dwelling place,     Lord Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints,     for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out     for the living God. 3 Even the sparrow has found a home,     and the swallow a nest for herself,     where she may have her young— a place near your altar,     Lord Almighty, my King and my God. 4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;...

David Kris served as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. He drew on his prestige as a former senior official in the Department of Justice to disparage Rep. Devin Nunes in his exposure of the FBI’s misconduct in the Russia haox and assure anyone who would listen to him that all was in order. He is an apologist for FBI misconduct who gives the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA misconduct the stupidly credulous reading that absolves the FBI of political bias in the matter. Who better...

Tafida Raqeeb has been in a coma since Feb. 9, 2019, after she suffered an arteriovenous malformation which resulted in a burst blood vessel in her brain.VATICAN CITY — A five-year-old British girl, whose parents won a legal battle to take her to Italy for medical treatment, has been moved out of intensive care, and into a rehabilitative unit for children with incurable illnesses. Her parents say they hope to have more good news about their daughter’s condition in the months to come. Tafida Raqeeb was transferred to the Galini Children’s Hospital in Genoa from the Royal London Hospital, where...

French architects want the roof of the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral to be rebuilt in wood and not in metal or concrete. Advertising One of the heads of the country’s biggest architects’ body said reconstructing the roof in anything other than the original wood would be a mistake. The intervention by Eric Wirth of the Guild of French Architects comes amid controversy over French President Emmanuel Macron’s wish for the spire of the 13th-century monument to be given a “contemporary” touch. “The most modern and ecological material today is wood,” Wirth said Wednesday, which, as well as being more fire-resistant than...

With the new year and decade off to a chaotic start, here are four “Godly exercises” that can help reduce stress but don’t require working out. Instead, you exercise your mind and soul with thinking beyond yourself — beyond the world, into the heavenly realm, and back down again with a new perspective. Now, let’s get real. Any talk of “God” can be threatening, especially if you are not a churchgoer — and part of a growing trend. According to the Pew Research Center, church attendance and Christianity is on the decline in the U.S — especially among the largest...

If you remember The Wizard of Oz you will recall that Toto, Dorothy’s dog, pulled back the curtain, revealing that the wizard was just a little guy working a panel of sound and light gimmicks to fool people into thinking he was more omnipotent than he really was. In the same way, the President’s killing of Qassem Soleimani and the aftermath reveals the four-decades-long treatment of Iranian terrorism and Israel by the foreign-policy establishment -- our presidents from Jimmy Carter up to now and Congress -- was based on myths. The brilliant Caroline Glick makes the case. For the past...

Cardinal Cañizares' warning came ahead of the installation of a radically secularist new governmentSpanish church leaders voiced concern for their country’s future after the government pledged to legalize euthanasia, secularize education and strip the church of “improper assets.” “Spain faces a critical situation, a true emergency for our future,” Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera of Valencia told Catholics in a pastoral letter. He asked that special prayers and Masses be said in Spain “as long as this uncertain future remains unclarified.” The letter, dated January 4, was circulated just before Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez formally took office at the head of...