As I thought, the Rockies were much better tonight than last night. But not quite good enough to handle the Red Sox. Final score 2-1, sending the series to Denver with Boston up 2 games to none. I'm pretty sure we can take two more of the remaining five games.Osama bin Laden's latest call for Iraqi insurgents to unite against Americans fell on deaf ears this week in Ramadi, the city that al-Qaeda leaders once declared the seat of a new Islamic caliphate and capital of the Iraqi insurgency. Rather than rise up against them, the people of Ramadi Tuesday invited U.S. forces to watch a massive parade — albeit one so tightly secured that no pedestrian traffic got close to it. The almost surreal, two-hour martial procession was led by the city's children to commemorate the martyred leader of a tribal revolt that has virtually silenced al-Qaeda in Anbar Province.Insha'allah, indeed.
[ ... ]
Marines and soldiers who work in the region every day said they've witnessed a sea change and welcomed the celebration. "I've seen the full transformation of Iraq," said Marine Warrant Officer Bobby Garza, who works on a team of 40 U.S. advisers helping train a 9,000-man Iraqi Army battalion near Ramadi. Garza said he's working on the second half of his fourth tour in Iraq. "It's a beautiful thing," he said from his spot on a wall outside Government Center, which was the focus of al-Qaeda attacks for most of the last four years. "We wouldn't have been sitting here doing this in January. No way," he said. "But just in a blink of an eye you could see this place change. The people just switched and wouldn't let [al-Qaeda] back into their communities. It's wild."
[ ... ]
"Al-Qaeda never wanted to see the sons of Anbar to unite and form security forces. Now I think we have broken their back by building the police and security force," he [Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha] said, adding that he was not afraid of meeting the same fate as his younger brother Sattar. "Let them come forward and show their faces.... Let them come out, we will fight them," he said with a certain swagger before leaving. His younger brother had said something similar several days before he was killed in September. But al-Qaeda's presence has dwindled dramatically since then, officials say. "Insha'allah" — God willing — an Army captain said.
World Series Game 1PALO ALTO, CA–Researchers at Stanford University are refusing to release a comprehensive three-year interdisciplinary study on the grounds that the results are "too terrifying to reveal to the public at large," sources close to the project announced Monday.It seems The Onion was ahead of its time. A survey of airline pilots on air traffic safety commissioned by NASA is too frightening to be released, according to NASA officials.
Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.Their silence speaks volumes.
NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.
Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.
A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry."
So, ALCS game 7 just started, with ex-Red Sox Kevin Millar announcing Boston's starting lineup. Very cool. He's still a favorite in Boston, and every time Baltimore plays there the fans give Millar a standing O. He'll be back.George Clooney will become an executive board member of a new Swiss energy company that will develop environmentally friendly techniques for car motors and other devices, the billionaire who is setting up the firm said Saturday.Hmmm...so Herr Hayek thought Gore would only accept as a PR exercise, yet he's not afraid to hire Clooney for the same reason. He certainly couldn't be taking on Clooney for his impeccable business school credentials. Here's how Wikipedia describes Clooney's education:
The new company will have different branches doing research and development in the clean production of hydrogen, solar energy and fuel cells, said Nicolas Hayek, chairman of the Swatch Group.
"First I hesitated between Al Gore and Clooney," Hayek said in an interview with daily Berner Zeitung.
But he didn't ask the former vice president because it was still unclear whether Gore would run for president and therefore might have accepted the post as a mere public relations exercise, Hayek said.
Clooney began his education at the Blessed Sacrament School in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky. Spending part of his childhood in Ohio, he attended St. Michael's School in Columbus, the Western Row and St. Susanna schools, both in Mason, and - briefly - William Mason High School. Eventually, his parents moved to Augusta in Kentucky, where he went to Augusta High School and graduated in 1979. He was a poor student but was an enthusiastic baseball and basketball player. He tried out with the Cincinnati Reds in 1977 to play professional baseball, but was not offered a contract.And here's what Wikipedia says about his one known previous business venture:
Clooney attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981 and, very briefly, the University of Cincinnati, but did not graduate from either.
On July 8, 2005, news reports said that Clooney would be working with Cindy Crawford's husband Rande Gerber to design and build a new casino hotel in Las Vegas. On August 29, the same year, Clooney officially announced his involvement with the Las Ramblas Resort project. However, the project never came to fruition, and the property on which the resort was to be built was sold in June 2006.I'm not exactly qualified to hand out investment advice, but I feel pretty confident in providing this hot stock tip: Don't invest in Swatch Group's fledgling energy company.
Not surprisingly, the actions of the so-called US Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF) are no different from other US commissions controlled by the Bush administration that have shown a clear pattern of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias.The concerns voiced by the CIRF are well-founded. The ISA uses textbooks approved by and imported from Saudi Arabia, and these texts have been shown to be loaded with Jihadi rhetoric. The writer of the Arab News opinion column, Ray Hanania, is just using this as a pretext to lash out at and attempt to discredit those who expose Saudi Wahhabist influence.
Another such group that comes to mind is the so-called US Commission on Peace, whose members included, at least briefly, renowned anti-Arab and anti-Muslim basher Daniel Pipes. Pipes is accused of heading a campus watch group accused of preaching religious hatred, too, something the CIRF seems to have missed.
Although none of the members of the CIRF come close to Pipes, clearly the organization is driven by an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias that reflects the prejudices brought to it by pro-Israel activists. One director is a member of the American Jewish Committee, an organization that once fairly championed human rights but today is merely a political mouthpiece for pro-Israel policy.
One woman who worked in a Georgetown-area store has been injured after being hit in the head by a brick thrown by a protester through the window of an Abercrombie and Fitch store and a United Colors of Benetton store near the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, according to a report on MyFOXDC.comIf they really want to protest against "excessive wealth and privilege", they should hold a rally at the home of George Soros.
A few dozen protesters gathered at Washington Circle where they planned to begin a march through Georgetown to send a message to what they call "a seat of excessive wealth and privilege."
The official Strategic Air Command seal up until its untimely demise
Well, then, we're left with kidnapping the three of them, locking them up somewhere and torturing them until one of them admits he's Teddy--the George W. Bush method of extracting admissions from people we hate. And, of course, under torture, anybody will admit to anything, so all three of them might admit to being Teddy.So, not only does Woods know for a fact that we're torturing jihadis, but he's an expert on the efficacy of interrogation techniques.
