Isiah 1:17- Learn to do well. Seek justice, Relieve the oppressed, Judge the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
In 2004, with ammunition running low, a British unit launched a bayonet charge toward a trench outside of Basra, Iraq, where some 100 members of the Mahdi Army militia were staging an attack. The British soldiers later said that though some of the insurgents were wounded in the bayonet charge itself, others were simply terrified into surrender.Well this lead to a serious of assumptions about who the Mahdi militia was. I would've just assumed that they were a group of fundamentalist who would have went down in glory fighting the infidels. Well whatever their backstory was they quivered in the face of a bayonet assault by a Western power!
Instilling such terror is at the heart of the philosophical argument for keeping bayonet training, historians say.
“Traditionally in the 20th century – certainly after World War I – bayonet training was basically designed to develop in soldiers aggressiveness, courage, and preparation for close combat,” says Richard Kohn, professor of military history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Not to say that I know a whole lot about military training, but surely if the military's goal is to win an armed conflict you might want to do everything to insure that they will be able to do it. So perhaps bayonet training isn't a very important aspect of military life these days, even then why not encourage the development of aggression in our military personnel. They will need it in a combat environment although do be sure doing such a job I can't envy anyone.
Bayonet training is, in short, used to undo socialization – to “basically to try to mitigate or eradicate the reluctance of human beings to kill each other,” Mr. Kohn says. It is one of the challenges in US or Western society “where we have such reverence for the individual, where we socialize our people to believe in the rule of law, and all of that,” he adds. “What you’re doing with young people is trying to get them used to the highly emotional and irrational and adrenaline-filled situations in which they are liable to find themselves whether they are within sight of the enemy or not – and the reluctance to take a life.”
Seven months ago, the Rev. James Meeks of Salem Baptist Church issued a challenge to the unmarried couples in the congregation: If 25 of you tie the knot, I'll foot the bill for the wedding expenses.Ah promoting marriage within the Black community. A laudable goal if you believe in general that there is an issue as far as out of wedlock births in the Black community. Whatever the reasoning, I just hope that these marriages work out. :)
The result was a mass wedding Saturday in which 17 couples said "I do" inside the 10,000-seat House of Hope on the city's Far South Side.
The event, aimed at promoting marriage in the African-American community, was part of a series of initiatives celebrating the church's 25th anniversary. Salem members have also written 25,000 letters to U.S. troops overseas and donated $25,000 to Haiti relief efforts.
Each couple received a reception for 25 friends and family, wedding photography, premarital counseling and a one night stay at Swissotel -- all free of charge. Church members also donated wedding dresses, jewelry and flowers.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Saturday criticized U.N. calls for increased "global governance" of the world's economy, saying the world body should leave that role to national governments.
The solution to dealing with the global economic crisis, Klaus told the U.N. General Assembly, did not lie in "creating new governmental and supranational agencies, or in aiming at global governance of the world economy."
"On the contrary, this is the time for international organizations, including the United Nations, to reduce their expenditures, make their administrations thinner, and leave the solutions to the governments of member states," he said.
Klaus appeared to be responding to the address of the Swiss president of the General Assembly, Joseph Deiss, who said on Thursday at the opening of the annual gathering of world leaders in New York that it was time for the United Nations to "comprehensively fulfill its global governance role."
"The reference to a social acquaintance is a private and personal matter between me and my wife that was handled some time ago," Jackson said in his statement. "I ask that you respect our privacy. I know I have disappointed some supporters, and for that I am deeply sorry. But I remain committed to serving my constituents and fighting on their behalf."Whatever is going on, I can't say that it matters a lot to me. What matters more is whether or not Jackson made a move to get a US Senate appointment from Blago before he was arrested and impeached. This social acquaintance just added another dimension.
Before he dined with [Giovana] Huidobro and Jackson on Oct. 8, 2008, [Raghuveer] Nayak said he had a critical conversation with the congressman about the seat while the two were alone. Nayak, also a former Blagojevich fund-raiser, said that Jackson asked him to tell Blagojevich that if the then-governor appointed Jackson to the U.S. Senate, Chicago's Indian community would raise $1 million for Blagojevich and -- after Jackson was appointed -- Jackson would raise $5 million for the then-governor.Just last Friday, Jackson urged the feds to "bring it on" if they found any evidence of wrong doing. According to Rich Miller the last man to say that did that to him. I'm assuming he's referring to Rod Blagojevich (Ousted governor).
Quinn is clearly annoyed when Brady, who voted against the state funding a capital bill, shows up at ribbon cuttings, ground breakings and such to take a bow. "He's showing up in Bloomington at the ribbon cutting of the high speed rail depot there that he had nothing to do with."The CapFax has a video of Gov. Quinn rambling.
At roughly the same time Duncan was dumping on for-profit schools, his boss was feting another subset of higher education:When I was looking for a college years ago, I just rejected the idea of going to a "for-profit" college. In fact I still look down on that option today, although my view on that may be somewhat different today than it is then. Back then in high school I considered DeVry or ITT or other similar schools a joke.
At roughly the same time Duncan was dumping on for-profit schools, his boss was feting another subset of higher education: historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Indeed, he was kicking off National HBCU Week, and lauding the schools’ work. But guess what? While the Education Department doesn’t release default rates for HBCUs as a group, quickly pulling those schools’ data together and averaging their default rates indicates a rate even higher than for-profit schools: almost 12 percent. Moreover, for four-year, private, non-profit HBCUs — which like for-profit colleges don’t get big state subsidies to help keep tuition artificially low – the default rate is nearly 13 percent.
So why no criticism by Duncan of HBCUs? Heck, why was his boss celebrating them?
Because they are politically favored, that’s why. Of course, this is in part because of their very important historical mission to furnish higher education to long-oppressed African Americans. It is also, though, because like all “non-profit” colleges and universities, HBCUs act as if their employees have no interest in higher salaries, nicer facilities, easier workloads — all the rewards that the people in not-for-profit schools give themselves instead of paying profits out to shareholders. But there’s no evidence that people in HBCUs or other non-profit schools are any less self-interested than people working or investing in for-profit institutions.
Why do I point this out? Not to pick on HBCUs, but to further illustrate the point that the attack on for-profit schools isn’t really about saving taxpayer dollars or protecting students, but going after the easiest target to demagogue – people honest about trying to benefit themselves as much as “the students.” It is also to illustrate, once again, that when we let government fund something, it is political calculus – not educational benefits, economic effectiveness, or what’s best for taxpayers – that ultimately drives the policies. Which is why government needs to get out of the higher ed business that it has made both bloated and, ultimately, a net drain on the economy.
Mr. Yoshitake recalled documenting what a fiery explosion did to pigs — whose skin resembles that of humans.Ummmm, those pigs were suffering!
“Some were still squealing,” he said. “You could smell the meat burning. It made you sick. I thought, ‘Oh, how terrible. If they were humans they would have suffered terribly.’ ”
In sharp contrast to the rest of the Detroit metropolitan area, an area known as Midtown just north of the central business district has been holding its own in the recession.I probably excerpted a lot more from this article than I should of, but this is an interesting article that is worth your time. Not all is bad in Detroit and there are people there - oustide of the political establishment - who are working to rebuild Detroit. Finding your groove of course takes lots of time.
Much of the success of Midtown — as it was branded a decade ago — is a result of the strength of institutions like Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center, the Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all of which contribute students and employees as well as residents.
Another component of Midtown’s success is that its developers are refurbishing older buildings, using tax credits and public financing, as much as they are building from scratch.
“For a long time, there was a big effort to tear things down in Detroit,” said Michael Poris, a principal of the architecture firm McIntosh Poris Associates, which is restoring a former vaudeville house in Midtown for multiple uses. “But if we have all these great historic buildings here, why not take the historic tax credits and reuse them? Plus it’s a greener, more sustainable form of development.”
According to the CoStar Group, a real estate information company in Bethesda, Md., the vacancy rate for office space in Midtown — including an adjacent area called New Center, where the former headquarters of General Motors now houses state offices — stood at 8.2 percent in the second quarter of this year.
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“We really have lost almost no businesses during the recession,” said Susan Mosey, the president of the University Cultural Center Association, an organization formed by several Midtown institutions that guides development in the area. “That isn’t to say that businesses haven’t had to reduce costs and become more efficient, but the neighborhood’s remained pretty stable.”
The housing market is thriving too, Ms. Mosey said. Many obsolete buildings in Midtown have been converted to rental housing in recent years, and the rental market has been strong. An association study found that 92 percent of the 4,295 rental units in the area were occupied last spring.
A handful of condominium projects begun right before the national housing market collapsed had to shift gears and become rental apartments. Those were leased quickly, Ms. Mosey said.
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Preservationists had the foresight to get much of Midtown designated as historic in the 1990s, thus ensuring they would be eligible for tax credits, said Diane Van Buren, vice president of sustainable planning at Zachary & Associates, a property development and development consulting group.
Zachary & Associates, with several partners, is in the process of creating an area within Midtown called the Sugar Hill Arts District, in tribute to the traveling black jazz musicians who once played in clubs and stayed in stately homes in the neighborhood, Ms. Van Buren said.
Much of the district was destroyed in the urban renewal movement in the mid-20th century that displaced many African-American neighborhoods in Detroit and elsewhere, she said.
Several buildings and sites in Sugar Hill are being redeveloped, including 71 East Garfield Street — the former site of a hotel that was destroyed by fire — which has undergone a $6 million renovation into 22 live-work spaces for artists and eight commercial spaces.
Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) awarded three scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to his stepdaughter and wife’s niece between 2003 and 2005, according to records from the nonprofit group.This seems to be a bad time to engage in sheer nepotism. This is a form of it anyway! Hat-tip Instapundit!
Bishop is the second Democrat found to have funneled CBC Foundation scholarship funds to relatives, threatening to turn the program into a larger political problem for the party. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) recently paid back $31,000 to the foundation for scholarships that she improperly awarded to various relatives and children of a top staffer.
Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), chairman of the CBC Foundation, has promised an "extensive audit of the scholarship program" run by the organization.
Bishop, though, also appears to have favored family members with CBC scholarships.
In 2003, Emmaundia Whitaker, the niece of Vivian Creighton Bishop, who is Bishop’s wife, was awarded an education scholarship. She was also given a similar award in 2005.
And in 2003, Aayesha Owens Reese, the congressman’s stepdaughter, was granted an education scholarship as well.
The minister of a Florida church said he has canceled plans to burn copies of the Quran because the leader of a much-opposed plan to build an Islamic Center near ground zero has agreed to move its location. The agreement couldn't be immediately confirmed.Well, it's a good sign that this Islamic group who wants to build a "community center" near "Ground Zero" is willing to compromise on their plans. Not sure I like the idea of burning Qurans however.
The Rev. Terry Jones said Thursday that Americans oppose the mosque being built at the location and that Muslims do not want the Quran burned. He said instead of his plan to burn the books on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11, he will be flying to New York to speak to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf about moving the mosque.
"We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans," Jones said during a news conference. We would right now ask no one to burn Qurans. We are absolutely strong on that. It is not the time to do it."
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Jones said Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida told him that officials would guarantee that the mosque would be moved.
I wasn't close to a TV set Tuesday to see that this news was so huge, local TV news departments broke into regularly scheduled programming to break the news to Chicagoland. To be sure this is huge, a man who has been in office for over two decades has just decided to up and retire.