Barack Obama’s (former) pastor, Jeremiah Wright, seems to be taking a break from all the hate-filled speeches he is giving and stumbled onto the internet. If you want to chat with him via instant messaging, you can do so courtesy of 23/6.
Be sure to tell him I said hello.
I thought this was pretty cool and decided to share it (aka, this is finals week and I am too busy to focus on political commentary). Hope you like it.
Yesterday, conservationists announced the discovery of 14 new species in Brazil. Among the species discovered, there were several new species of reptile including a legless lizard.
Conservationists on Tuesday announced the discovery of 14 species probably new to science — among them a legless lizard and a tiny woodpecker — in a Brazilian high plains region that they said is being converted to farms at twice the rate of the neighboring Amazon forest.
A four-week expedition by U.S.-based Conservation International and several Brazilian universities ventured into Brazil’s Cerrado, afterwards describing the species — eight fish, three reptiles, one amphibian, one mammal, and one bird — as poster children for a campaign to save the area.
“Protected areas such as the Ecological Station are home to some of the last remaining healthy ecosystems in a region increasingly threatened by urban growth and mechanized agriculture,” CI biologist and expedition leader Cristiano Nogueira said in a statement announcing the finds.
You can get pictures of some of the animals here.
Want to own a legless lizard? You can buy them here. Given, these aren’t the same specie as the ones in Brazil but they are pretty neat anyways.
Yeah, you remember Kosovo? The country that declared its independence back in February? Well its still independent and now Britain is sending roughly 600 troop battalion to strengthen the NATO peacekeeping mission there.
“We are … well prepared to meet NATO’s request and I have agreed to deploy our Operational Reserve Force battalion until June 30, 2008,” Defense Secretary Des Browne said in a written statement to parliament.
“The deployment will demonstrate our commitment to the security of the region and will provide NATO with extra flexibility in maintaining peace and stability for all communities within Kosovo,” he said.
The soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles, will spend about a month in Kosovo, from late May until the end of June, a Ministry of Defense spokesman said.
The battalion had been on standby since January to go to Kosovo, where they will supplement 16,000 NATO-led peacekeepers.
And these troops may very well be needed quite soon considering the large weapon’s cache discovered near Kosovo’s border with Macedonia.
The Kosovo Police Service (KPS) said on Monday (April 28th) that it arrested four people after stopping a car carrying weapons near the Kosovo-Macedonian border.
“We suspect that the weapons and ammunition were meant for the Macedonian market,” KPS spokesman Veton Elshani told the DPA.
The arsenal seized in a village near the town of Gnjilane on Sunday night reportedly included rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, anti-aircraft machine guns and ammunition of different calibres. Police delivered the seized munitions to the NATO-led force operating in this part of Kosovo.
Police believe the intended recipients were ethnic Albanian extremists in Macedonia. The country endured a seven-month inter-ethnic conflict in 2001.
Remember where World War I was started? Yeah, they call this area a powder keg for a reason.
With the recent AP poll showing that Hillary could beat McCain in a Head to Head battle, I wanted to conduct my own little poll to see what my readers think. Given, this is a conservative blog so obviously everyone should vote for McCain (I’m not happy about this but the alternatives are much worse). Therefore, the question will be who do you think would win in November if they went up against eachother. Please vote in each match up.
With a weird turn of events, a new poll conducted by the Associated Press has Clinton leading McCain in a head to head poll with Barack in a virtual tie with him.
Clinton, who won the Pennsylvania primary last week, has gained ground this month in a hypothetical head-to-head match up with the GOP nominee-in-waiting; she now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent.
Well, this is surely a very interesting twist. This news will definitely add some credibility to Clinton’s campaign staying in the race.
FITSNews posted “Ninety-Five theses” that Sic Willie is rumored to have come up with how the South Carolina state government should be reorganized/restructured. Here are just some of the few that I thought were interesting and worth mentioning.
19) The state’s personal income tax is hereby repealed, with the resulting increase in economic activity and capital investment coming into the state serving as sufficient revenue replacement.
20) The state’s income tax on businesses that employ fewer than fifty persons is hereby repealed, with the resulting increase in economic activity and capital investment coming into to the state serving as sufficient revenue replacement.
22) No private company in the State of South Carolina shall be permitted to solicit or accept union representation, engage in collective bargaining or hold a general strike.
29) An independent Commission on Best Budgeting Practices comprised of corporate leaders shall be established and charged with assigning specific rankings to each recommended disbursement of taxpayer funds in the state budget. These rankings shall be based on each budget item’s “essential and necessary value” toward achieving the broader objectives outlined in the new “zero-based, activity-specific” method of state budgeting.
34) Any spending item included in the state budget must bear the name of the individual legislator who sponsored it as well as the name of the individual legislator whose district is to benefit from it.
38) The use of taxpayer resources for the purpose of lobbying the legislature or any official of government is expressly forbidden. Public employees wishing to lobby the government must do so on their own time, using their own resources, like every other citizen.
50) The State of South Carolina shall maintain an Internet database searchable by a) elected official b) contributor (individual, corporate or other) and c) industry or lobby for all political contributions made to any elected official.
74) State colleges and universities are hereby prohibited from raising tuition at a rate exceeding the growth in population and inflation.
75) State colleges and universities and the Department of Education must immediately implement at 10% reduction in adminstrative force, while holding teachers and professors harmless.
81) South Carolina hereby refuses the acceptance of any radioactive waste within its borders that is not accompanied by a definitive timetable for removal.
86) The Ben Tillman, Jr. statue on the State House grounds is hereby removed and a permanent moratorium placed on the erection of any future memorials. Any memorials which are approved must be paid for exclusively with private funds.
89) The Confederate Flag compromise reached in 2000 shall be written into the new State Constitution and any bill which seeks to undo it shall have to be adopted as a Constitutional amendment.
94) Any South Carolinian who is 18 years of age or older and who is serving our Armed Forces may consume alcohol with a valid Military ID.
Those of just some of the few interesting ideas proposed. I would recommend reading the whole thing.
Plus they are really rude too. Well, the whole student body isn’t rude, just some members of the group La Raza who decided to close down one of the many bridges on MSU’s campus for the sake of illegal immigration. They always like to cause trouble.
…if it wasn’t so sad.
As always, here is your weekend fix of tranquility. For all you college students, like myself, enjoy one of your last weekends before the craziness of finals. For everyone, enjoy of of your last weekends of decent weather before Columbia, SC becomes a sauna.
Hunting Island in Beaufort, SC
The world really doesn’t give Iran’s president, Ahmadinejad, enough credit. I mean, what other president has come up with a revolutionary new economic principle that should help alleviate the rising world commodity prices. This new economic principle, which I have termed “martyrnomics,” involves the act of one sacrificing himself for a religious purpose. Less people means less demand which means lower prices! Brilliant!
