Alaska Volcano Has Geologists on Alert

Mount Redoubt, a volcano 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, is rumbling and simmering, prompting geologists to warn that an eruption may be imminent.

Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory have been monitoring activity round-the-clock since the weekend.

On Thursday, the observatory said: “Seismicity remains above background and largely unchanged with several volcanic earthquakes occurring every hour.”
The last time the 10,197-foot peak blew was during a five-month stretch starting in December 1989. It disrupted international air traffic and placed a layer of volcanic dust throughout the Anchorage area.

Volcanoes in Alaska, including Redoubt, typically erupt explosively, shooting ash almost eight miles high. Volcanic ash features small, jagged pieces of rock and glass.
This differs from volcanoes in Hawaii, which usually have slow rolling lava ooze out.
The difference is gas trying to escape gets blocked, possibly by a lava dome or a viscous magma that increases the power from beneath, said observatory geologist Jennifer Adleman.

“Its pressure keeps building and building,” she said.

Source

Pledge of Allegiance Becomes Pledge to Obama

A parent in the Clark County School District of Las Vegas, Henderson area reported January 27th that his son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn’t want to go back to school anymore.

When asked why, the boy said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag.

Thinking that the boy might be exaggerating, the man asked his son if he was sure, and suggested that by “large” he might mean an 8×10 photo of the president. The boy apparently said “No, it is a large picture of Obama and when we are done, the teacher turns off the image.”

The same thing was not done for President Bush last year.

After investigating this morning, the other parent reported that what the boy said was true.

At least three of the five classrooms have an overhead projector and as the children stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the teacher turns on the classroom overhead and a full body image of Obama, with six U.S. flags behind him, comes up about 4 feet away from the flag that hangs on the wall. The screen is apparently around five feet by six feet.

In the image, President Obama appears to be staring straight out with no facial expression, just a serious look. All of the kids in each class faced the President, instead of the flag that hangs in the corner.

Local parents are up in arms over this situation. Teachers clearly do not realize the gravity of what they are doing.

via Source

Bloody Monday: U.S. Cut 50,000 Jobs In One Day

From drugs to computer chips, top companies announced Monday that they are laying off nearly 50,000 employees as a reeling economy took a heavy toll on the already strained job market.

Monday’s efforts to downsize companies included layoffs and buyouts across the economic spectrum, and top economists predict that the job picture will worsen as the year goes on. The departures also come as negotiations continue in Washington, D.C., on the size and shape of an economic stimulus package — a priority for President Barack Obama, in office for barely a week.

Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, announced that its fourth-quarter profit dropped 32 percent, a symptom of the worldwide economic slowdown. Because of the drop, the company will eliminate 20,000 jobs, about 18 percent of its work force, through layoffs and buyouts, Caterpillar announced.

Drugmaker Pfizer, which announced it will acquire rival Wyeth for $68 billion, said it will cut about 8,000 jobs from its current work force. Once the companies are merged, another 15 percent of the work force, nearly 19,000 jobs, could be eliminated, Pfizer spokesman Ray Kerins said in a telephone interview.

Home Depot, the nation’s largest home-improvement retailer, announced it will cut about 2 percent of its work force, or 7,000 jobs. It said it will eliminate about four dozen stores, including all of its specialty Expo Design Center stores.

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Uranium For Iranian Nuke Within 2009

Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) predicts.

The think tank’s Mark Fitzpatrick made the announcement at today’s launch of its annual global review of military powers.

“But being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having a nuclear weapon.”

However, the survey reports doubts over US Intelligence estimates that Iran halted its work on nuclear weapons six years ago.

This points to Tehran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles able to reach targets in Israel and beyond.

The IISS recommends a mixture of carrot and stick as the best international response.

It concluded a dual policy of engagement and sanctions, testing possibilities for Iranian cooperation while adopting targeted containment strategies, is the best way to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme.

Foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said: “Several think-tanks have come to the same conclusion.

“The intelligence agencies are more reluctant to put a time frame on it, and the report itself says having enough enriched Uranium to build the warhead is not the same as building the warhead itself.”

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Is Obama the Most Famous Living Person Ever?

No. That honor goes to  Jesus Christ.

Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.

I’m not trying to induce an acid flashback to John Lennon’s infamous 1966 comment, “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus.” But whether you measure fame in terms of saturation or sheer numbers, it seems indisputable to me that more people know at least something about the new American president than anyone alive, at this point—or any—in the planet’s existence.

Who else could it be? One friend suggest Muhammad Ali, another Princess Diana, and a third said Bill Clinton. Surely all are global brands with enormous reach and broad appeal. But all fall short of the man-meets-the-moment frenzy unleashed by Obama.

To be sure, the digital revolution has made this feat of fame possible. Not only has it helped the son of an erstwhile Kenyan goatherd to become president, it has allowed a current Kenyan goatherd to follow the former’s journey. And he is not alone. Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.’s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe. At the same time, population continues to grow; there are now some 6.7 billion men, women, and children on earth, an historic high.

Read Full Article – Vanity Fair.

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• The post-election Obama euphoria will fade soon enough, but let’s enjoy it while it lasts. (slate.com)

Britain On The Edge of National Bankruptcy?

They don’t know what they’re doing, do they? With every step taken by the Government as it tries frantically to prop up the British banking system, this central truth becomes ever more obvious.

Yesterday marked a new low for all involved, even by the standards of this crisis. Britons woke to news of the enormity of the fresh horrors in store. Despite all the sophistry and outdated boom-era terminology from experts, I think a far greater number of people than is imagined grasp at root what is happening here.

The country stands on the precipice. We are at risk of utter humiliation, of London becoming a Reykjavik on Thames and Britain going under. Thanks to the arrogance, hubristic strutting and serial incompetence of the Government and a group of bankers, the possibility of national bankruptcy is not unrealistic.

The political impact will be seismic; anger will rage. The haunted looks on the faces of those in supporting roles, such as the Chancellor, suggest they have worked out that a tragedy is unfolding here. Gordon Brown is engaged no longer in a standard battle for re-election; instead he is fighting to avoid going down in history disgraced completely.

This catastrophe happened on his watch, no matter how much he now opportunistically beats up on bankers. He turned on the fountain of cheap money and encouraged the country to swim in it. House prices rose, debt went through the roof and the illusion won elections. Throughout, Brown boasted of the beauty of his regulatory structure, when those in charge of it were failing to ask the most basic questions of financial institutions. The same bankers Brown now claims to be angry with, he once wooed, travelling to the City to give speeches praising their “financial innovation”.

Does the Prime Minister realise the likely implications when the country joins the dots? He has never been wild on shouldering blame, so I doubt it. But Brown is a historian. He should know that when a nation has put all its chips on red and the ball lands on black, the person who made the call is responsible. Neville Chamberlain discovered this in May 1940 with the German invasion of France.

via Source

Florida School District Bans Distribution of Bible on Religious Freedom Day

A Florida school district has banned distribution of the Bible on Religious Freedom Day.

Earlier this month, World Changers of Florida was denied the right to distribute the Bible in the Collier County School District during non-instructional time. Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, is handling the case.

“The school district said that the Bible cannot be distributed on Religious Freedom Day,” he explains. “It had been distributed on Religious Freedom Day for the past several years, but this time they changed their decision and said it would be unconstitutional to distribute the Bible in a public school to willing recipients who want to receive the Bible.”

Staver notes that other items are distributed at the schools for secular events. In a Liberty Counsel press release, he stated that “limiting access to the forum based on religious viewpoint violates the First Amendment.”
Matt Staver
“This particular school says that everything goes but the Bible is banned,” he adds. “The Bible is essentially treated like contraband, where it was once the central part of our educational system.”

Liberty Counsel has written to the school district outlining the Constitution and court decisions that demonstrate the error in their decision.

Source

Study Finds Troubling Pattern of Southern California Earthquakes

Large earthquakes have rumbled along a southern section of the San Andreas fault more frequently than previously believed, suggesting that Southern California could be overdue for a strong temblor on the notorious fault line, a new study has found.

The Carrizo Plain section of the San Andreas has not seen a massive quake since the much-researched Fort Tejon temblor of 1857, which at an estimated magnitude of 7.9 is considered the most powerful earthquake to hit Southern California in modern times.

But the new research by UC Irvine scientists, to be published next week, found that major quakes occurred there roughly every 137 years over the last 700 years. Until now, scientists believed big quakes occurred along the fault roughly every 200 years.

The findings are significant because seismologists have long believed this portion of the fault is capable of sparking the so-called Big One that officials have for decades warned will eventually occur in Southern California.

“It’s been long enough since 1857 that we should be concerned about another great earthquake that ruptures through this part of the fault,” said Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena who was not involved in the study.

Many scientists thought the Carrizo area produced relatively infrequent but large-scale earthquakes such as the Fort Tejon temblor. The new work suggests the area produces more quakes but also ones of a smaller magnitude than Fort Tejon, said Ray Weldon, a University of Oregon geologist who was not involved in the research but reviewed the paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research.

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Dick Morris On The Obama Presidency

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished. When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.

via TheHill.com .

1 in 3 American Christians Say Jesus Sinned

Half of Americans who call themselves “Christian” don’t believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent “dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches,” the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications.

“Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible,” he said.

via Source WND Read Full Article

Warning Issued Over Drive For Constitution Convention

Globalists are “salivating” over the possibility of a Constitutional Convention at which issues such as the 2nd Amendment could handily be dismissed, according to a leader who warns Virginia likely is the next target for the drive.

“There is no question in my mind that, should a new Constitutional Convention be called, it would be the end of the United States of America as we know it, and our current Constitution and Bill of Rights would be forever altered beyond recognition,” Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin wrote in his latest commentary.

“The globalists who currently control Washington, D.C., and Wall Street are, no doubt, salivating over the opportunity to officially dismantle America’s independence and national sovereignty, and establish a globalist North American Union – in much the same way that globalists created the European Union. A new Constitutional Convention is exactly the tool they need to cement their sinister scheme into law.”

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Is Russia Biggest Risk To US Security

While all eyes are on the Gaza crisis, the major threat that Russia poses to U.S. security is being overlooked.

Neither the outgoing nor the incoming administrations have effectively addressed the Russia problem. And with President-elect Barack Obama only weeks away from taking office, he must remember Joe Biden’s warning that the incoming president will face an international test within six months of taking office. Russia is that international challenge, and it’s imperative we start paying attention now–because the test has already begun.

The most obvious evidence of this risk came straight from President Dmitry Medvedev’s mouth during an end-of-the-year interview. Medvedev made it clear that military force will continue to be an option for Russia. “Russia’s interests must be secured by all means necessary,” he said. “First of all, by international and legal tools … but, when necessary, by using an element of force.”

Russia also recently announced a massive increase in the size of its military, and it is commissioning the construction of 700 new strategic nuclear weapons. Further, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, General Yury Baluyevsky, has already said his work will inevitably lead to a greater role for the military in the country’s foreign policy, as well as “the legitimate use of nuclear weapons as a tool for strategic deterrence.”

This comes on the heels of unconfirmed reports that Russia agreed to supply an S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran. Although it hasn’t been verified, the rumor must not be taken lightly. Both Russia and Iran tell inconsistent stories. And if this advanced surface-to-air missile system is sold to Iran, it will make any attack by the U.S. or Israel not only dangerous but also more likely to fail.

Magnifying this danger are new reports claiming that Russia is selling other types of missile systems to Syria, Libya and Venezuela.

Source

22-Year-Old Auctions Her Virginity – $3.7 Million

A San Diego woman who is auctioning off her virginity said she has now received a bid of $3.7 million, according to a published report.

A San Diego woman who is auctioning off her virginity said she has now received a bid of $3.7 million, according to a published report.

Natalie Dylan, a 22-year-old San Diego woman, said she got the idea for the auction after her sister was able to pay for her college education after prostituting herself for three weeks, according to the London Telegraph.

Dylan has a degree in women’s studies. She told the paper she hopes to pay for an advanced degree in family and marriage therapy with the proceeds from the auction.

She told the Telegraph that she doesn’t think she’s the only one who will be benefit from the auction.

“I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal,” Dylan told the paper.

, a 22-year-old San Diego woman, said she got the idea for the auction after her sister was able to pay for her college education after prostituting herself for three weeks, according to the London Telegraph.

Dylan has a degree in women’s studies. She told the paper she hopes to pay for an advanced degree in family and marriage therapy with the proceeds from the auction.

She told the Telegraph that she doesn’t think she’s the only one who will be benefit from the auction.

“I think me and the person I do it with will both profit greatly from the deal,” Dylan told the paper.

via FOXNews.com – 22-Year-Old’s Virginity Auction Hits $3.7 Million – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News.

Israel Ready to Strike Iran

Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities soon – possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office.

The reason: The time clock has begun to run out. Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear device under the control of its radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in June that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in as little as six months.

That six-month period has passed.

Reports of Israel’s decision to imminently launch strikes, although unconfirmed, would seem to contradict the Bush stance outlined in a front-page New York Times story last week, which asserted that Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran’s main nuclear complex.

The Times said Israel was rebuffed after it requested from the U.S. specialized bunker-busting bombs that it needs to attack Iran’s nuclear complex at Natanz. The U.S. also reportedly nixed permission to the Israeli warplanes to fly over Iraqi territory to reach Iran.

Israel’s requests to the U.S. for military assistance came as the Jewish state was reportedly angry over a U.S. intelligence assessment in late 2007 that concluded Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons.

But an investigative report circulated by IAEA chief ElBaradei late last year disclosed that Iran was continuing to carry out uranium enrichment and had already established 6,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium, of which 3,800 were then in operation.

American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000 centrifuges, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so, according to the Times.

The IAEA report estimated that Iran has obtained two tons of enriched uranium since its enrichment program was restarted at Natanz two years ago.

Last year 100 Israeli jets took part in an exercise over the eastern Mediterranean that was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.

And on Sept. 6 Israel launched an air attack against a site in Syria believed to be a nuclear-related facility containing material delivered by North Korea.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicted that Israel would stage a raid against Iran’s nuclear facilities if Barack Obama won the presidential election.

via Source – Newsmax.com
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