“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — The main opposition party and independent observers said today that President Robert Mugabe was suffering a resounding defeat as election results were tallied, but no official returns were released and capital was rife with speculation that they were being rigged.
Mugabe apparently faces major defeat in Zimbabwe - Los Angeles Times
I was on my home from snowboarding today (thanks to the timely arrival of a snowstorm in the Cascades) thinking of writing this entry. When I got home and turned my TV on, I found an uncanny coincidence between my planned topic and what was currently playing on the ‘History’ Channel (square quotes meant to indicate that the content of the show was not very historical).
Last night, I dreamt that I was with my family and some strange woman showed up to portend events. We were able to see certain symbols which the woman seemed able to decipher, as well as point us to other signs. Among these, she showed me a mirror in which my nose appeared broken, and then in the next moment, my neck seemed to be as well. In my dream, knowing I was planning on going snowboarding today, I wondered if that was meant to predict some calamitous injury to myself.
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Barack Obama may not be off the hook just yet. Trinity United Church of Christ, whose former pastor Jeremiah Wright Jr. made comments that’s stirred up the campaign for the past couple weeks, recently revealed a number of perhaps even more disturbing details of their beliefs.
It turns out that the church preaches belief in an invisible, all-powerful ghost, believes this ghost to be locked in a battle against an evil conspiracy led by a former follower of the ghost. Among their other beliefs is that this invisible ghost fathered a son millenia ago, and then preordained that his son would be tortured and killed by crucifixion in order to save the nonmaterial Cartesian theatres of all humanity.
‘US of KKKA’ seems pretty tame next to that crazy shit!
I was getting ready to simply post a blurb about Wal-Mart’s ridiculous lawsuit against a former employee who suffered brain damage from being hit by a truck, but then I also came across another Wal-Mart related story which I thought complemented the story nicely.
Debbie Shank, a Wal-Mart employee, suffered a traffic accident and was left brain damaged. Her health insurance (through Wal-Mart) apparently paid $470,000 for her care; she later won a lawsuit of which she received $417,000 (after legal fees) in a trust to help pay for her continued care. Wal-Mart then sued the Shanks to recoup their $470,000 (a court ruled that they can only collect the $417k in trust). Recouping the cost is within their rights, per a standard clause in their health care policy.
Oh, did I mention also that the Shanks lost a son in Iraq?
Brain-damaged woman at center of Wal-Mart suit - CNN.com
Then, I came across this great little blurb:
Wal-Mart heiress roils art world
That’s Alice Walton’s money to do with as she pleases… but I thought what great timing that while Wal-Mart is busy suing a brain-damaged mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, Walton’s heiress is dropping stacks on art and building a new museum in the Ozarks (guess they don’t have much use for book-learnin’ in Arkansas).
It’s good to be the king!
Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.
[...]
In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.
Five percent.
The Long Defeat - New York Times
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