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Liquids Surrendered At Airport Security: Is There An Afterlife? {Gadling}
Jul 12th 2012 6:34PM Your idea makes too much sense. Now that everyone thinks Homeland Security is responsible for the safety of pretty much everything in the country, there's not enough political will in the entire world - let alone in Congress or the White House - to risk giving up responsibility and control, lest something happen, and then whoever is seen as having dropped the ball will see an end to their political career, with no lucrative lobbying jobs in their future.
Liquids Surrendered At Airport Security: Is There An Afterlife? {Gadling}
Jul 12th 2012 6:28PM I used to wonder why they didn't just put those things in a staffed display kiosk at the exit, so that people who had given up their nail files at the previous airport could purchase a replacement at the destination for a buck or two, helping pay for the worker to staff the kiosk and giving a more immediate replacement for the implement that was relinquished rather than making the person have to seek out a store in an unfamiliar town where another could be purchased. Bureaucrats - whether they're in government or business or whatever - are too dense to figure out problems ahead of time, let alone solutions to those problems that will head off the possibility of increasing burdens on already overburdened fellow human beings.
Tennessee Home Burns as Firefighters Watch {AOL Real Estate}
Dec 7th 2011 9:46AM If the "good Christian folk" in towns like this really wanted to show the unconditional and compassionate love of God to others, they would help families such as this pay the required $75 fee.
Blonde in Lingerie and Wheelchair Gets Extensive TSA Pat Down in Oklahoma {AOL Travel News}
Dec 3rd 2010 1:54AM Why do we have to refer to IRA bombers and the Northern Ireland conflict to refute people like Don, who claim that "all terrorists are Muslim"? Is everyone so young or, conversely, so senile that they have forgotten Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski? A recent report indicates that more than 80 judges who hear Social Security disability cases in our federal courts have received death threats in the past year. Does anyone remember the man who walked into a church one morning last year and killed George Tiller? Do we not remember the Columbine High School massacre? We are concerned about Al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, but we have armed militias who are trained and ready in various places in the country, though the ones in Idaho and Montana have, perhaps, gotten the most press. And let's not even go into the neighborhoods in American cities that are ruled by gangs who employ terrorist tactics daily to keep their constituents in line. Oh, we've got enough terrorism to go around, if we just pay attention to it. The 9/11 incident, and the follow-ups in London and Madrid may have been more spectacular, but we aren't lacking for home-grown terrorists in the U.S., many of them brought up in "good Christian homes."
Part of the reason the U.S. is under attack by Al Qaida and other radicals operating under the banner of Islam is that they consider the American lifestyle of individuality and self-indulgence, which we export freely through various media and products, is corrupting their cultures, which they wish to keep under the authority of their conservative brand of Islam. The ludicrous protest in Oklahoma recently over the idea of any jurisdiction in the U.S. being operated according to Sharia law demonstrates the radical kind of response that any cultural threat from "the outside" engenders. Why are we so dense that we can't see that criticizing conservative Muslims for their radical responses is a case of the pot calling the kettle "black"? People devoted to a particular brand of Islam that requires complete obedience to its tenets are no different from people devoted to a particular brand of Christianity or any other religion that requires a similar level of obedience. When they perceive themselves to be under attack, they fight back. Let's get off our moral high horse and start to understand some of the human dynamics that are behind this that our political leadership has been ignoring while they try to manipulate our feelings about it to their own political and financial benefit.
Mama, Make Me a Match {ParentDish}
Jul 14th 2010 3:12PM In many Asian cultures - and perhaps other non-Western-European ones as well - it is common practice for parents to seek potential marriage partners for their children. In fact, the practice is as old as the oldest stories in the Bible. (See Genesis 24, in which is the story of Abraham sending his old servant to the home of some relatives to get a wife for his son Isaac.) The complaints lodged here reflect the tendency of cultures to seek to reinforce their own standards against those who follow different standards than are common to the culture. Some members of the culture do it through ridicule of the mothers, in this case, and others do it through seeking to shame the one the mother is seeking to serve - here the reference is to the son, Colby, but on the site, there are daughters who are listed as well.
Problematic for me is the fact that the site has very few listings, and none in most states. (I'm actually not "in the market," but I wondered what the listings looked like.) Perhaps the numbers will pick up after the highlighting of it by Today, but even so, my guess is it will not amount to many persons listed nor many connections made. It will be interesting to see.
Another problem is that so far, no one lists their child - male or female - as gay or lesbian and looking for a same-sex partner. I'd be curious to know whether any mothers have sought to advertise that and were shut out, or whether no mother has yet attempted this.
Though I don't believe Colby is gay, as an earlier poster suggested, I do wonder if having their mother put their ad up on this website will be the trigger for some who are gay finally to let their mother know. That would be an interesting follow-up to this story!
Why Liberals Are Right to Refuse to Honor the Confederacy {Politics Daily}
Apr 12th 2010 6:13PM John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, condemned slavery and the buying and selling of slaves already in the 18th century. Yet the Methodist Episcopal Church in America split after their 1844 General Conference, because the Southern bishops and clergy wanted to keep their slaves - against Wesley's clear condemnation of the practice - while their Northern counterparts joined founder Wesley in condemning it. To the degree "states' rights" was ever an issue, it was actually, as some have said above, the "right" to keep legal the condemnable practice of holding other human beings in bondage for personal profit. "Fighting for one's state's honor" may have been used as a recruiting tool among those who didn't care one way or the other about slavery, but it was simply a case of "whatever works" to get others to fight for one's own cause - and financial and political benefit. (Think of how many times the Bush Administration's justification for the Iraq War changed!) Most soldiers fight simply in order not to be killed themselves. No one will ever take time to tally the millions - perhaps, now, billions - of people who have died fighting on the morally wrong side of causes locally, nationally, or internationally; because life is given to us to demonstrate love for one another (cf. Jesus' Great Commandments), and it is the ultimate tragedy when it is misused as an instrument of hatred and death.
7 Signs It's Time to Split {Personal Articles}
Nov 7th 2008 3:40PM Psychology tells us that the things that irritate us most in the other person - ANY other person - are those that are in ourselves that we don't like and don't want to recognize as being part of ourselves. The other serves as a mirror to us, reminding us of those irritants, and the easiest way of avoiding working on ourselves so that we can actually grow rather than being satisfied that we are "perfect in every way" and that it is always the other person's problem when we are unhappy is to get rid of the other person. The problem is, until we work on ourselves to grow into more loving persons, we will always end up in relationships with people who mirror the traits we hate most in ourselves, and the cycle of love-hate-breakup-new relationship will just continue.
Hot Seat: A VP for the Dems? {Politics Daily}
Feb 19th 2008 2:44PM Reece,
Check out the NYC website (NYC.gov). Michael Bloomberg isn't the FORMER mayor of NYC; he's the CURRENT mayor.
Leo Clay and others,
It was Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) who was sworn into the House of Representatives using a Koran, NOT Barack Obama in the Senate.
I wish all of you who pontificate and criticize would check your facts first with reliable sources before you go off half-cocked and spread misinformation and outright lies. It's ignorance and disregard for the (widely available) facts such as you display that has helped put our democratic system in such a state of turmoil.
