Michelle Malkin rips a new orifice in some punk. (Remind me not to mess with her!) And Hillary joins the cults in using children as shields. (The SCHIP debate is more like Waco than the JW/SDA, I must say--they plan to burn us all...)

The real health care situation in Cubas is worse than you thought it was. (If you're Cuban, that is...)  And more evidence that "Doctor" Che Guevara was a liar, a coward, and paid killer for the Soviets...

Sail On!  Sail On!  and On!

And he's rather late to the game...

Christians need to get their heads out of the sand and do their own research and see that they are responsible for their own vote.

The 2008 election has conservative, Christian choices...  Duncan Hunter may be one...

But where in Matthew 28:16-32 does Our Lord command us to vote as a block?

You won’t hear about this from John Murtha (D-PA), but you can find it from honorable men: Nathaniel Helms at Defend our Marines has a report on Haditha that the MSM tried to ignore:

Buried in the mountain of exhibits attached to the once secret Haditha, Iraq murder inquiry prepared by US Army Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell is an obscure Marine Corps intelligence summary (see pdf) that says the deadly encounter was an intentional propaganda ploy planned and paid for by Al Qaeda foreign fighters.

Veteran military defense attorney Gary Meyers said he never understood why the Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agents leading the Haditha criminal investigation didn’t “examine the linkage” between Al Qaeda, the local insurgency and the events at Haditha. Meyers was an attorney on the defense team that successfully defended Justin Sharratt, a Marine infantryman accused of multiple murders at Haditha.

The report – apparently overlooked by a Washington press corps awash in leaked Bargewell documents and secret Naval Criminal Investigative Service reports – shows that Marine Corps intelligence operatives were advised of the scheme to demonize the Marines by an informant named Muhannad Hassan Hamadi. The informant was snared by 3/1 Marines on December 11 2005 and decided to cooperate.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN GETTING STUNG BY THE FBI IN ABSCAM.  IS MURTHA ACTUALLY IN THE PAY OF AL QAEDA?  CAN ANYONE WITH THE POWER TO INVESTIGATE ACTUALLY CHECK HIS FINANCES? 

SINCE HE WAS WILLING TO TAKE ARAB MONEY BEFORE, IS THERE REASON TO DOUBT HE'S DOING THEIR BIDDING NOW?!?!?!

READ: Romans 10:1-13

People have many different reasons for rejecting the gospel. A common one is to blame Christians for something they did or did not do. These critics say, "I know a Christian who treated me poorly." Or, "I went to church, and no one talked to me."

Indeed, Christians aren’t perfect, and many can be bad examples. But blaming others doesn’t remove one’s accountability to God.

The truth of the gospel does not depend on the way others live out their faith. Salvation is about Jesus alone. Romans 10:9 says, "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

Some people may use Christians as an excuse to reject the gospel. But they certainly can’t point a finger of blame at Jesus. He is sinless and perfect in every way. Pilate said of Him, "I have found no fault in this Man" (Luke 23:14). And Jesus did what no one else could do—He suffered death on a cross to provide salvation for all who believe in Him. That makes it tough for someone to say, "I’m not going to become a Christian because I don’t like what Jesus did."

Don’t get sidetracked by looking at the faults of others. Look to Jesus. He alone is the way to heaven. —Dave Branon

From http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071002/D8S130500.html via Drudge...

Online Videos May Be Conduits for Viruses
Oct 2, 7:46 AM (ET)

By GREG BLUESTEIN

ATLANTA (AP) - Online videos aren't just for bloopers and rants - some might also be conduits for malicious code that can infect your computer.

As anti-spam technology improves, hackers are finding new vehicles to deliver their malicious code. And some could be embedded in online video players, according to a report on Internet threats released Tuesday by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center as it holds its annual summit.

The summit is gathering more than 300 scholars and security experts to discuss emerging threats for 2008 - and their countermeasures.

Among their biggest foes are the ever-changing vehicles that hackers use to deliver "malware," which can silently install viruses, probe for confidential info or even hijack a computer.

"Just as we see an evolution in messaging, we also see an evolution in threats," said Chris Rouland, the chief technology officer for IBM Corp.'s Internet Security Systems unit and a member of the group that helped draft the report. "As companies have gotten better blocking e-mails, we see people move to more creative techniques."

With computer users getting wiser to e-mail scams, malicious hackers are looking for sneakier ways to spread the codes. Over the past few years, hackers have moved from sending their spam in text-based messages to more devious means, embedding them in images or disguised as Portable Document Format, or PDF, files.

"The next logical step seems to be the media players," Rouland said.

There have only been a few cases of video-related hacking so far.

One worm discovered in November 2006 launches a corrupt Web site without prompting after a user opens a media file in a player. Another program silently installs spyware when a video file is opened. Attackers have also tried to spread fake video links via postings on YouTube.

That reflects the lowered guard many computer users would have on such popular forums.

"People are accustomed to not clicking on messages from banks, but they all want to see videos from YouTube," Rouland said.

Another soft spot involves social networking sites, blogs and wikis. These community-focused sites, which are driving the next generation of Web applications, are also becoming one of the juiciest targets for malicious hackers.

Computers surfing the sites silently communicate with a Web application in the background, but hackers sometimes secretly embed malicious code when they edit the open sites, and a Web browser will unknowingly execute the code. These chinks in the armor could let hackers steal private data, hijack Web transactions or spy on users.

Tuesday's forum gathers experts from around the globe to "try to get ahead of emerging threats rather than having to chase them," said Mustaque Ahamad, director of the Georgia Tech center.

They are expected to discuss new countermeasures, including tighter validation standards and programs that analyze malicious code. Ahamad also hopes the summit will be a launching pad of sorts for an informal network of security-minded programmers.

There are some mistakes that we NEVER stop paying for.  A careless remark can wound a friend and cause them pain for years.  I do regret many of the things I've said in thoughtless jokes, things that killed friendships, alienated potential allies, insulted people I barely knew.

Thoughtlessness is not just laziness, it's evil...

Read Galatians 6:6-9.  Think about it.  And don't make the same mistakes I've made...

Conservative with Attitude!’s Dan Gallic takes a look at the restrictive policies in place for US Citizens and the no quesions asked red carpet treatment for Illegal Immigrants, and asks How Come?

…I can’t walk into a hospital and get free treatment yet illegal immigrants can?

…I can’t send my kids to school without having to pay property taxes yet illegal immigrants demand the same?

…I can’t work without paying self-employment tax, federal income tax, state income tax, disability tax and both the employers and employee’s portion of the Social Security Tax yet illegal immigrants can?

…I can’t get a drivers license without definitive proof that I am who I say that I am yet illegal immigrants can?

…I have to abide by the laws of this county, to every jot and tittle of the law, or fear the wrath of local police, county police, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and thousands of other ”authorities” yet illegal immigrants can?

…statements like “The sleeping giant is awake — wide awake — and we’re paying close attention,” said Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, lead me to be concerned about a fifth column assault on our fundamental freedoms and way of life?

…news like this: “Department of Homeland Security officials, saying that Illinois is complicating their efforts to reduce illegal immigration, have sued the state to overturn an Illinois law that virtually blocks employers from taking part in a program designed to verify whether new employees are legally entitled to work in the U.S.” begs the question of why Illinois would coddle illegal immigrants to the detriment of US workers?

Because I am a US citizen. Part of a large self-loathing, introspective citizenry that throws up so many road blocks to own citizen’s self actualization that we wear ourselves down complying with every little self-imposed rule to the point of physical and emotional deterioration.

I know I’m tired of paying for all this mess, how about you?

-- A.J. Sparxx

70-620 is the new black.

This is what I hear from my friend Slinky down the hall: 70-620: Microsoft Windows Vista, Configuring can, in fact, be used towards your :Messaging or :Security specializations for MCSA and MCSE on 2000 or 2003. The web team is adding it to all the related requirements pages. When those are updated, I'll let you know, so you can believe me, for once.

70-620 is also working on a cure for cancer.

Posted by trikah@microsoft.com | 8 Comments

Monday September 24, 11:44 am ET
United Auto Workers Launches National Strike Against General Motors Corp.

DETROIT (AP) -- The United Auto Workers has launched a national strike against General Motors Corp., GM spokesman Dan Flores said Monday. It's the first nationwide strike during auto contract negotiations since 1976, when Ford Motor Co. plants were shut down.

Workers walked off the job and began picketing Monday outside GM plants after the 11 a.m. UAW strike deadline passed.

The UAW had extended its contract for nine days after it expired on Sept. 14, but the negotiations became bogged down Sunday, apparently over the union's quest to protect jobs by getting the company to guarantee that new vehicles would be built in U.S. factories.

The UAW hasn't called a nationwide strike during contract negotiations since 1976, when Ford Motor Co. plants were shut down. There were strikes at two GM plants during contract negotiations in 1996.

Charlie Coppinger, who has worked at GM's powertrain plant in Warren for 31 years, walked the picket line along with a handful of others shortly after the deadline passed.

The 51-year-old Rochester Hills resident said he hoped a strike could be settled quickly, but that union members were on the line to back the union and its bargainers.

"We're just here to support them," said Coppinger, who said leaflets were passed out indicating that the strike was on.

Columbia University's President Bollinger About
President Ahmadinejad's Scheduled Appearance

On Monday, September 24, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is scheduled to appear as a speaker on campus. The event is sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs (see SIPA announcement), which has been in contact with the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. The event will be part of the annual World Leaders Forum, the University-wide initiative intended to further Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues.

UNLESS a speaker happens to belong to a group that favors defending America's borders, like Jim Gilcrist of the Minutemen.  At the beginning of that "opportunity" a mob (there's no other word for it) of “Students” were allowed to attack the speaker physically and force a cancellation of his speech.  I'd be willing to bet no one will be allowed to confront the Iranian President even verbally.  Campus Security probably has fresh batteries in all of their tasers...

In order to have such a University-wide forum, we have insisted that a number of conditions be met, first and foremost that President Ahmadinejad agree to divide his time evenly between delivering remarks and responding to audience questions. I also wanted to be sure the Iranians understood that I would myself introduce the event with a series of sharp challenges to the president on issues including:

• the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust;
• his public call for the destruction of the State of Israel;
• his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and American troops;
• Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to international sanction;
• his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and
• his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh (see President Bollinger's prior statement).

WHAT in the world does the University think can be accomplished other than giving this despicable tyrant additional status?

I would like to add a few comments on the principles that underlie this event. Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason.

WE do not need to invite this petty despot into our universities to understand his views.  He has been exceedingly clear.  And given that dissimulation (i.e., lying to non-Muslims in order to advance Islam) is considered second only to martyrdom, what will the lies of the Iranian President mean?

I would also like to invoke a major theme in the development of freedom of speech as a central value in our society. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

So providing a highly-respected forum in the US will not be seen in the Muslim world as a victory for his ideas?  Spineless, purposeless fool!  It will be seen as a DEFEAT for Western ideas, you ludicrous coward!  You ignorant illegitimi—you have guaranteed more needless US deaths!  When the current war between Iran and the USA is finally in the open, you will be seen for the traitors that you are.  And may you reap every bit of what you have sown…

That such a forum could not take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. To commit oneself to a life—and a civil society—prepared to examine critically all ideas arises from a deep faith in the myriad benefits of a long-term process of meeting bad beliefs with better beliefs and hateful words with wiser words. That faith in freedom has always been and remains today our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world. This is America at its best.

Instead of inviting that evil runt to your stage, you ought to have insisted upon freedom for academics in his country.  YOU HAVE LOST ANY LEVERAGE YOU MIGHT ONCE HAVE HAD.

You are nothing but dhimmis…

With city shelters filled and a surge of further refugee claimants expected to flood into Windsor, Mayor Eddie Francis is pleading for financial help from Ottawa.

"When there is a possibility of adding thousands to the local social assistance system as a result of refugee claimants crossing the border into Windsor, we will become overwhelmed and our current resources will not suffice," Francis wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Over the past three weeks, 45 families and 31 individuals -- approximately 200 people -- entered Canada at the Detroit River crossings and applied in Windsor for shelter and social assistance after filing refugee claims with the Canada Border Services Agency. Municipal agencies dealing with the sudden influx of mainly Mexican refugee applicants are renting out hotel rooms and bracing for predicted thousands more to come.

We don't have the means, ability or capacity to deal with this additional cost. We are not able to deal with this potential crisis locally," Francis wrote Harper.

"I don't believe that Windsor's residents and taxpayers should have to foot the bill for U.S. immigration policy," Francis told The Star. He was referring to the suspected source of the problem -- a recently begun crackdown on illegal immigrants in economically struggling regions of the U.S. South.

With the bulk of the latest arrivals being long-time Mexican illegals dislodged from their homes and workplaces in southwestern Florida, fingers are being pointed at unscrupulous outfits charging money and then directing desperate individuals and their families toward the Windsor border crossing.

"We are aware of these operations -- they have been advertising incorrect and false information," said Marina Wilson, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Wilson said Canadian immigration authorities have started contacting the Mexican and Haitian communities in Florida, as well as local media there, to get the word out that nothing has changed in Canadian refugee policy.

"The fact someone wants to come here for better economic opportunity or a better quality of life ... that's no basis for a successful refugee claim," said Immigration Refugee Board (IRB) spokesman Charles Hawkins.

But a group operating out of Naples, Fla., vowed to continue sending the so-called economic refugees to Windsor.

"They ask, 'Is Canada an option?' and I say, 'Yes, it is an option,'" Jacques Sinjuste of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center said in a phone interview Wednesday. For a US$300 "donation" (most of those interviewed in Windsor claim they paid US$400), JHCC staff download forms off the Internet, help applicants fill them out and give directions on how to get to the Canadian border.

Sinjuste said he's simply providing a "referral" service.

"Most of the time when the people come, they say they've heard something (about Canada). I say that I've heard the same thing," he said.

Jacquie Rumiel, director of programs for new Canadians at the YMCA, where refugee claimants are referred by Windsor's border guards, said the new people she's seeing are "mostly" Mexicans coming from Florida.

To be successful, refugee claimants must prove they are fleeing persecution at home, something most of the Mexicans arriving in Windsor would be hard-pressed to do. The IRB's Hawkins said there was only a 13 per cent acceptance rate of refugee claims filed by Mexican nationals during the first six months of the year, compared to an overall rate of 47 per cent.

But the average processing time for a refugee claim in Canada is currently 14.2 months, said Hawkins, a period during which the applicant is eligible for financial and other support. A failed claimant then also has the right to seek leave to appeal his or her rejection to federal court.

Despite the high number of failed applications cited by the IRB, Sinjuste said he gets calls to his Naples centre from "a lot of people" who've arrived in Windsor.

 "They say everything is okay -- they are doing good, going to schools, going to work," he said.

Sinjuste said he was visited last week by an official from the Canadian consulate general in Miami but couldn't remember if he was told to stop helping economic refugees go to Canada.

"I don't think they tell me that," he said. Federal bureaucrats confirmed the meeting but said they couldn't divulge details.

Others are warning about the types of activities Sinjuste is engaged in.

"The way he's misleading the most vulnerable is infuriating," said Pegg Roberts, executive director of Detroit's Freedom House, which runs a shelter and assists asylum-seekers with their refugee claims. Sinjuste said he uses the Freedom House website to download refugee claim forms and advises the people he assists to seek help there.

"I do not help economic refugees," said Roberts, adding her non-profit organization assists the fleeing victims of torture and war crimes and has no affiliation with the JHCC.

"This is a problem the U.S. has allowed to create. It's really unfair for Canada to have to face this," said MP Joe Comartin (NDP -- Windsor-Tecumseh),  his Party's  public safety and national security critic.

"This is very much being driven by (the U.S. Department of) Homeland Security," he said, predicting that, "with few exceptions," most of these "economic claimants" will eventually be sent back.

dschmidt@thestar.canwest.com or 519-255-5586

© The Windsor Star 2007

You may be grouchy and old; but my sense of humor is as crippled as yours!