Thursday, September 30, 2010
To register to vote , you can go to : www.votecbc.org/
-You can use this link for WHATEVER STATE you live in.
Wherever you live, please check into that, and
using the words of Larry The Cable Guy..."Get 'er Done"!
You'll be glad you did. In no manner am I going to tell you who to vote for, except that I'm going to ask you to "VOTE THE BIBLE". Vote for the people that uphold the principals and ideals that our Bible teaches. Enough said. ♦
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Here is more news today:
Iranian speaker: Obama is an 'international villain'
By JPOST.COM STAFF09/26/2010 12:04
Photo by: Associated Press
Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani slammed US President Barack Obama as an "international villain" for his comments on Iran and warned that Teheran needs to be vigilant during its confrontation with Washington, according to a Fars news agengcy report on Sunday.
"Today, the US is standing against the Iranian nation, Obama should know that we do not want his messages, rather we need to be able to trust his words," Larijani said during an address in Iran's Southern province of Fars on Saturday.
Larijani spoke about Obama's recent remarks on Iran and asked "how dare Obama announce that he wants to help the Iranian nation? He should know that he is an international villain, he has never sided with the Iranian nation."
Larijani said, according to the report, that Washington has a hypocritical approach towards nuclear issues in Iran, specifically with regards to the supply of nuclear fuel for the Teheran research reactor.
The parliament speaker said the measure sends the signal that the US must be dealt with vigilantly."
Larijani's comments follow messages that Obama sent to Iran, saying that Washington is interested in creating friendly ties with the Iranian nation to topple the Islamic Republic.
Could 'Goldilocks' Planet Be Just Right for Life?
WASHINGTON (Sept. 29) -- Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.
It's just right. Just like Earth.
"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.
Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?
Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.
"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harboring life.
Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.
But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star - 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.
Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between - in the land of constant sunrise - it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."
The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.
The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview.
That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare.
Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.
With an estimated 200 billion stars in the universe, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.
Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in the sweet spot in between, Vogt said.
With the star designated "a," its sixth planet is called Gliese 581g.
"It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's World."
The star Gliese 581 is a dwarf, about one-third the strength of our sun. Because of that, it can't be seen without a telescope from Earth, although it is in the Libra constellation, Vogt said.
But if you were standing on this new planet, you could easily see our sun, Butler said.
The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said.
"It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions," Vogt said.
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New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch’ To Shut Down The Internet
Government would have “absolute power” to seize control of the world wide web under Lieberman legislation -
Paul Joseph Watson
June 16, 2010
The federal government would have “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under the terms of a new US Senate bill being pushed by Joe Lieberman, legislation which would hand President Obama a figurative “kill switch” to seize control of the world wide web in response to a Homeland Security directive.
Lieberman has been pushing for government regulation of the Internet for years under the guise of cybersecurity, but this new bill goes even further in handing emergency powers over to the feds which could be used to silence free speech under the pretext of a national emergency.
“The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined,” reports ZDNet’s Declan McCullagh.
The 197-page bill (PDF) is entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA.
Technology lobbying group TechAmerica warned that the legislation created “the potential for absolute power,” while the Center for Democracy and Technology worried that the bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”
The bill has the vehement support of Senator Jay Rockefeller, who last year asked during a congressional hearing, “Would it had been better if we’d have never invented the Internet?” while fearmongering about cyber-terrorists preparing attacks.
The largest Internet-based corporations are seemingly happy with the bill, primarily because it contains language that will give them immunity from civil lawsuits and also reimburse them for any costs incurred if the Internet is shut down for a period of time.
“If there’s an “incident related to a cyber vulnerability” after the President has declared an emergency and the affected company has followed federal standards, plaintiffs’ lawyers cannot collect damages for economic harm. And if the harm is caused by an emergency order from the Feds, not only does the possibility of damages virtually disappear, but the US Treasury will even pick up the private company’s tab,” writes McCullagh.
Tom Gann, McAfee’s vice president for government relations, described the bill as a “very important piece of legislation”.As we have repeatedly warned for years, the federal government is desperate to seize control of the Internet because the establishment is petrified at the fact that alternative and independent media outlets are now eclipsing corporate media outlets in terms of audience share, trust, and influence.
We witnessed another example of this on Monday when establishment Congressman Bob Etheridge was publicly shamed after he was shown on video assaulting two college students who asked him a question. Two kids with a flip cam and a You Tube account could very well have changed the course of a state election, another startling reminder of the power of the Internet and independent media, and why the establishment is desperate to take that power away.
The government has been searching for any avenue possible through which to regulate free speech on the Internet and strangle alternative media outlets, with the FTC recently proposing a “Drudge Tax” that would force independent media organizations to pay fees that would be used to fund mainstream newspapers.
Similar legislation aimed at imposing Chinese-style censorship of the Internet and giving the state the power to shut down networks has already been passed globally, including in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
We have extensively covered efforts to scrap the internet as we know it and move toward a greatly restricted “internet 2″ system. Handing government the power to control the Internet would only be the first step towards this system, whereby individual ID’s and government permission would be required simply to operate a website.
The Lieberman bill needs to be met with fierce opposition at every level and from across the political spectrum. Regulation of the Internet would not only represent a massive assault on free speech, it would also create new roadblocks for e-commerce and as a consequence further devastate the economy.
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Rush Limbaugh: Obama twisting Holy Scripture
'There's a lot of people who don't know details of their own religious belief'
Posted: September 29, 2010
9:14 pm Eastern
By Joe Kovacs
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
PALM BEACH, Fla. – Is President Obama, who once demeaned Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as "radical," actively trying to socialize Jesus and corrupt Christianity?
 Rush Limbaugh |
The answer is yes, according to conservative radio giant Rush Limbaugh, who is claiming the commander in chief is not only trying to socialize America, but also the Christian religion by twisting Scripture.
The top-rated host made the allegation today during discussion of Obama's profession of faith yesterday in Albuquerque, N.M.
Limbaugh focused in on Obama's statement of "being my brother's and sister's keeper, treating others as they would treat me."
"The reason why this is important is there's an effort by the left to say that Jesus was a socialist," said Limbaugh, "and they are using this to turn many evangelical people into global-warming people. We are the stewards of the planet and so forth. There's an ongoing effort here to corrupt Christianity."
During yesterday's backyard town-hall meeting in Albuquerque, Obama had explained:
I'm a Christian, uh, by choice. Um, you know, my family didn't – frankly, they weren't, uh, folks who went to church every – every week. Um, my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't, uh, raise me in the church. Uh, so I came to, to, uh, my Christian faith later in life, uh, and it was because the, the, the, precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brother's and sister's keeper, treating others as they would treat me ... also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful, and we're flawed, and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God.But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. So that's what I strive to do, that's what I pray to do every day. I think my public service is a part of that effort to express my Christian faith.
Stressing he was not disputing the president's profession of Christianity, Limbaugh went into a detailed analysis of Obama's remarks, noting:
There's a lot of people who do not know details of their own religious belief. But the Golden Rule is not a precept of Christianity. I hate to point this out, but the Golden Rule does not emanate, originate, from Christianity. And this brother's keeper business? That's not Jesus. I hate to say this, but Jesus Christ did not talk about brother's keeper. That is from the story of Cain and Abel, and even that story is misunderstood. The story of Cain and Abel – my brother's keeper does not mean, "I'm going to take care of my brother or take care of my sister." The story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed Abel, and then he said he had no idea. He denied it. He denied killing Abel, and then said to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Meaning, "What, is he my responsibility? He's not my responsibility, I didn't kill my brother." Now, a lot of people misunderstand all this, but the Golden Rule doesn't come from Christianity, and Cain and Abel is not, "I'm going to take care of my brother and I'm going to take care of my sister," and Jesus Christ has nothing to do with either one of them.
The Bible actually does talk about the principle of reciprocal care for others, with Jesus Himself stating, "Do for others what you would like them to do for you." (Matthew 7:12, New Living Translation)
Even in the Old Testament, the command is given to "love your neighbor as yourself." (Leviticus 19:18, NLT)
But Limbaugh said similar ideas had been circulated in ancient Babylon long before biblical Scripture is thought to have been written.
"The early incarnations of the Golden Rule are found in the Code of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," he noted.
Limbaugh said Obama's voicing of the "brother's keeper" concept is a distortion of Christianity:
"This is where Obama now says that public service is part of an effort to express his Christian faith, that Christianity is socialism, that Jesus Christ was a socialist. Jesus Christ was apolitical. He got involved in no political ideology whatsoever."
Limbaugh took issue with Obama's governing style, suggesting it might not be Christ-like.
"How is his Christian faith guiding the way he's dealing with Republicans? I mean he's urging everybody not to listen to Republicans, don't make arrangements with Republicans."
And saying he was reluctant to point it out, Limbaugh also wondered about Obama's perceived lack of compassion for his own relatives in Africa.
"Obama's brother is still living in a hut – a 6-by-9-foot, un-air-conditioned, no-running-water, no-electricity hut in Kenya, outside Nairobi, somewhere over there. Twenty dollars. Guy lives on a dollar a year. Twenty bucks would be the equivalent of winning the lottery. And Obama has not reached out to keep his brother."
This is not the first time Obama's referencing of the Bible has caused controversy. On June 28, 2006, Obama addressed a conference in Washington, D.C., finding fault with both Old Testament instructions as well as Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount in the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew:
And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our Bibles. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles.
As WND reported two years ago, in the wake of repeated comments from Democrats comparing then-Sen. Obama to Jesus and Gov. Sarah Palin to Pontius Pilate, Limbaugh blasted the Democrats' strategy as "pathological" and "insane."
"I know Jesus Christ. I pray to Jesus Christ all the time," said Limbaugh." I study what Jesus Christ did and said all the time, and let me tell you something, Barack Obama, you are no Jesus Christ."
Engineers Slam Internet 'Censorship' Bill Under Review by Senate
Published September 29, 2010
Internet entrepreneurs are in a panic over a Senate bill they say will censor the Web, stifle Silicon Valley startups, damage the United States' credibility on free speech and ultimately trigger the creation of an alternate-universe Internet.
The West Coast engineers say they were blindsided last Monday when the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act was introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill has a bipartisan roster of co-sponsors who say it will be a tool for stopping the worst offenders in the world of online piracy.
The bill would give the attorney general new powers to shut down websites deemed dedicated to counterfeit material -- by going through the courts and by encouraging service providers to go after sites the Justice Department puts on a public blacklist.
According to the bill, a website would have to be "dedicated to infringing activities" to trigger the enforcement.
But Internet advocates warn the legislation would open a door for a handful of people in the federal government to wantonly power off entire websites that may be operating legally under current law. Though senators suggest the bill would save jobs by cracking down on piracy, critics say it will hurt the economy by threatening fledgling companies whenever copyrighted material shows up on their sites.
Eckersley said the bill would mark a drastic departure from current law by allowing the government not just to strip copyrighted material off an offending website, but to order the shutdown of a domain name altogether.
Eighty-seven engineers who played a role in the creation of the Internet have sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee urging it to sideline the bill.
"If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure," they wrote. "All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill."
The bill's authors, co-sponsors and supporters disagree. They say it's dedicated to the worst-of-the-worst -- that the Justice Department could not shut down a site without first winning approval from a federal court and that the bill protects website operators by giving them the opportunity to remove pirating activity to get their site back online.
"No one would dispute that online infringement and counterfeiting of American intellectual property drains the American economy and costs American jobs," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced the bill, said in a written statement Wednesday. "No one would defend websites, primarily based overseas, that are dedicated to infringing activities. We continue (to) welcome input from everyone on the best way to attack the problem, but ignoring the problem, or saying it is too complicated, can no longer be an option."
The bill has broad bipartisan support on the committee, including that of Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. Thirteen of the 16 committee members are co-sponsors, giving the bill a strong chance of passing if it comes up for a vote. It was scheduled to come up for consideration Thursday,. but the chairman postponed it as the Senate prepared to adjourn until after the elections.
Critics are crying foul, saying the panel has not scheduled a hearing for the bill, but committee spokeswoman Erica Chabot noted that the panel held an oversight hearing on intellectual property enforcement in June.
"You can have hearings before you introduce a bill," she said, stressing that Leahy and the co-sponsors are continuing to talk with "stakeholders on all sides."
The biggest supporters of, and contributors to, the proposal come from the business and entertainment communities.
The AFL-CIO, which supports the bill, claims movie and music pirating costs more than 200,000 jobs. A fact sheet put out by the Senate Judiciary Committee claimed intellectual property theft, some occurring on foreign websites, costs the U.S. economy more than $100 billion annually.
Steve Tepp, a piracy expert for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the censorship claims are off-base.
"This bill is a bipartisan effort that targets sites engaged in activities that all 153 countries in the WTO have agreed are illegal," he said. "These websites have no place in a legitimate online market. ... This legislation provides a critically needed tool to try to address what is globally acknowledged as criminal activity to protect America's economic interests."
The Screen Actors Guild and several other entertainment industry groups released a joint statement commending the co-sponsors and claiming the bill would be aimed at "rogue websites" dedicated to "stealing" movies and music.
Specifically, the bill would let the attorney general go through federal court to try to shut down an offending website. If the court approves, the service provider would be required to "suspend" and "lock" the domain name. Those sites would be listed on a public website. Separately, the attorney general would start another public list of offending websites that have not been ordered shut down; the Justice Department would provide immunity to any service provider that takes action against them.
Eckersley called this "outright censorship" and rattled off the names of several prominent file-sharing and file-storing sites -- RapidShare, Dropbox, MediaFire -- that could be affected. He said sites like YouTube would probably survive, but new companies similar to it could easily fall victim to the bill if it becomes law. Plus, he said, people who store files like pictures and music online could, in the stroke of a judge's pen, see those files disappear.
"It's one thing to take down an infringing file. It's another to bully an entire ecosystem of people who are trying to innovate, and that's what this bill is trying to do," he said. "The senators who are well-intentioned haven't realized how much of the astonishing economic value of the Internet they're putting at risk here."
An advocacy group that opposes the bill, Demand Progress, claims 50,000 people have signed its online petition against the bill.
"Censoring the Internet is something we'd expect from China or Iran, not the U.S. Senate," the protest petition says.
Engineers and free-speech advocates have suggested the bill would undermine efforts to press China to unlock the Internet. Plus they warn of a scenario in which engineers will circumvent the law by creating a black-market Internet where outlawed sites could be accessed.
This could create two conflicting Internet worlds, where some sites are accessible to some users and others are not; where commerce, some legitimate, happens in one world and not in the other.
"Errors and divergences will appear," the 87 engineers warned in their letter. "Contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them."
Eckersley had a simpler way to describe it: "Chaos."
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China: U.S. bill on yuan would hurt both countries
New York (CNNMoney.com) -- China on Thursday urged the United States to resist protectionism and avoid damaging both nations' economies, following the U.S. House's passage of legislation designed to combat Beijing's manipulation of currency.
"We firmly oppose the U.S. Congress approving of bill. Exercising protectionism only severely damages the relationship and have negative impact on both economies and the global economies," said Jiang Yu, spokeswoman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs."We have made our position clear to the U.S. side," she said, when asked whether China planned any retaliatory measures.
The House of Representatives approved the legislation on Wednesday, saying that China's moves result in unfavorable trade conditions for the United States.
The legislation, which authorizes the Commerce Department to impose duties on imports from countries with undervalued currencies, passed by a vote of 348-79.
The bill received support from both sides of the aisle, a rarity in recent sessions, with Democrats framing the legislation as a jobs issue.
"We can talk, or we can act. International trade is a high stakes, cut-throat business, and every time we simply talk, the other side acts, and every time they act, an American loses a job," said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-California.
China said this year it would allow its currency, the yuan, to trade in a wider range against the dollar. But the currency has scarcely appreciated since then, inflaming critics who charge that the undervalued yuan, also known as the renminbi, helps steal U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Estimates on the undervaluation of the yuan vary, depending on the economic model used, but one estimate by the Peterson Institute of International Economics puts the number at about 24 percent against the dollar.
Such undervaluing makes Chinese goods cheaper to buy in the United States and likewise drives up the price of U.S. goods sold in China.
The House vote caps years of frustration for lawmakers as the United States has continued to shed manufacturing jobs, and promises of reform from the Chinese have failed to result in policy changes.
"If this risks upsetting the People's Republic of China, so be it," said Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan. "Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative -- millions of good-paying jobs have been lost and hundreds of thousands of families across this country have suffered as a result of China's unlawful trade policies."
The legislation now moves to the Senate. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, says the body will act quickly to move the bill to the president's desk.
"We must take decisive action against China's currency manipulation and other economically injurious behavior," Schumer said Tuesday, noting that the Senate will take up the issue when it reconvenes later this year.
"China is merely pretending to take significant steps on its currency," Schumer said. "This sucker's game is never going to stop unless we finally call their bluff."
But not every member of Congress is convinced, especially after China raised tariffs on U.S. poultry producers earlier this week and accused them of dumping product into the Chinese market.
Citing potential retaliatory measures from China, Texas Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling said the bill was "unwise public policy" during tough economic times.
But trade groups and unions cheered the bill's passage. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a statement of support and Scott Paul, the director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing echoed the message.
"This is one of the most pleasantly lopsided trade votes in recent history," Paul said in a statement. "Voters are mad and Congress is finally responding.
Earlier on Wednesday, President Obama addressed the issue at a town hall-style meeting.
"The reason I'm pushing China about their currency is because their currency is undervalued," he said, adding that "people generally think they are managing their currency in a way that makes our goods more expensive to sell there and their goods cheaper to sell here."
The resulting imbalance is a major factor contributing to the U.S. trade deficit, the president said.
Last week, Obama urged Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to speed up the revaluation of the yuan currency, telling him in a two-hour meeting at the United Nations that the slow pace of reforms was affecting both global and U.S. economies.
The meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly followed a speech by Wen the night before, in which he told the business community in New York that China will continue reforming and opening its markets under a policy it started in 1978 by officially ending decades of isolation.
However, demands by U.S. lawmakers that China revalue its currency by more than 20 percent would bankrupt Chinese companies and lead to "major unrest" in his country, Wen said in the speech.
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Blessings-Missygirl*
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