Anti Catholicism has a long history in the US, an inheritance from England, where the religious wars for and against the regency of Queen Elizabeth led to Catholics being demonized as evil. ( Elizabeth was inconveniently conceived before her mother married, and many folks said her mother never married the king at all, so this […]

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A recently launched Save Voice of America Tibetan Radio website (www.savevoatibetanradio.com) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/savevoatibetan) urge supporters to contact their congressmen with a message to oppose elimination of Voice of America Tibetan radio by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal government agency which oversees VOA broadcasts and wants to silence VOA […]

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In 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked what has become a staple question in presidential campaigns: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”   The feckless Jimmy Carter was woefully unprepared to answer that question when Reagan posed it in a debate shortly before the election. A week later, the American […]

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The results have yet to be announced, but I think it is fair to say that no-one gives a damn. The only visible sign that the event was happening was a sign on the door of the local church hall that generally acts as the polling spot explaining that the event had been moved to […]

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I had to laugh. Jane Fonda is among the fainting feminists who want Rush Limbaugh removed from the airways for insulting a woman.
Well, she has a point. Technically, the word to describe those of either or both sexes who have sexual relations outside of marriage is “fornicator”, and this is not illegal in the US […]

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Yesterday, I published an essay about the Facebook fad “The Invisible Children”, a video about Joseph Kony and his murderous terrorist group, that has gone viral in the blogosphere.
I ended the essay with the note that there is a time for war and a time of peace, and that the war to find and punish […]

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An article in yesterday’s National Journal - (http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/panetta-u-s-has-potential-military-plans-for-iran-20120308) by Yochi Dreazen, details comments made by Defense Secretary Panetta this week regarding both Syria, and the Iranian Nuclear issue. This article mentions The fact that the United States is weighing options and contingencies for conflict with Iran, and obviously this is no surprise. […]

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I noticed two of my grandchildren and a niece had shared the “Invisible children” film on my facebook site.
This was a bit surprising, because one is a church going, volunteering teenager, the second is a sophisticated student in the UK, and the third one is a heavy metal music loving Goth.
But all are united in […]

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Yes, we all remember back in 2008 when the coming of Barack Obama was hailed by some as the coming of the Messiah (I am not making a joke: see this Washington Post article), while a much better qualified Hillary Clinton was either ignored or put down as a loser by the pundits in the […]

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Check this out: Natural Gas,via TPMBarnett’s webpage:
natural gas deals are proceeding internationally: the flow out of North America alters things, regionalizing flows more as Japan and Germany move off nukes and seek to ramp up their use of gas to generate electricity, and as emerging markets in general ramp up their […]

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I rarely come on all Catholic. I don’t feel entitled. My Catholicism was acquired via conversion; defending the faith seems best left to those who’ve held it in their heart all along and whose knowledge is more profound. Plus, I’m not a good Catholic in practice. Raised an atheist, I never set foot in a […]

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So here is the deal, the Mormon Church has decided that just because someone is dead and never had the chance to embrace the religion, it is not too late. The deceased can join the fold.
www.catholic.com has this to say about it:
Mormons believe that their church has missionaries in the “spirit world” who are busy […]

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Concerns about an Israeli Preemptive strike against Iranian Nuclear production facilities have gained attention recently and have been the topic of numerous speculative reports in both the foreign and U.S. Press.
The Wisdom and effectiveness of such an attack has been debated, and both U.S. and Israeli Government officials have weighed in on the topic. […]

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There have to be clowns. Without them, we might cry a river during election years. Pinching your nose while voting brings tears to the eyes of many. So send in the clowns. Or at least– a really sharp comedy.
Some clarification as to what counts as comic. The Mitt/Newt/Rick Show and MSM’s Fist Pump 4 Obama […]

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Most folks don’t like going to the doctor’s office, and nearly everyone hates “needles”, whether they be fingersticks, blood tests, or getting your flu shot.
But if you would ask people what is the worst test they ever had, they would say either a Barium Enema or a Colonoscopy.
Yet cancer of the large bowel is a […]

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Ted Lipien, a former Voice of America (VOA) acting associate director, has been warning for some time that marketing and staffing policies pushed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executives have changed the focus of VOA and other BBG broadcasters from serious, accurate and well balanced journalism to ratings-chasing entertainment and sloppy reporting produced […]

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NPR’s Michele Kelemen, a former employee of Voice of America, reported on the recent VOA Russian Service interview with a leading Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny which he later described as “100 percent fake” and complained that VOA “went nuts.” The fake interview may have been created by Kremlin supporters who have been known to […]

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This idea is being floated by the Washington Post.The story does seem to be partially behind closed doors (as in Pay To Play). But if you can access it, there is some good reading. Front and center is Rick Santorum.
It is entirely possible. While he has all of the basic goods required by the Republican […]

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When I retired, our government clinic was just starting to become completely “paper free”.
If I was leery about the idea, it was because we worked in central Oklahoma where power surges would periodically blow my computer, and to make things worse, the entire area’s computer system, along with our computerized patient information summary of medical […]

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There is a  nasty germ that has become more common in recent years, and  it has become almost epidemic in some hospitals.
This bacteria, Clostridium Difficile (called “C Dif” by docs) usually starts after a person gets antibiotics. The reason for this is that if you carry the germ sitting quietly in your bowels, but […]

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It all started with Rick Santorum, his anti gay comments provoked the Gay community to put up a website SpreadingSantorum.com that has caused a good deal of embarrassment to the Santorum camp. Rather than quietly deal with the problem by creating ‘Santorum’ rich articles that Google would place higher in the search rankings, there by […]

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It is written in oh so politically correct language, but it should set off alarm bells. A US government appointed ethicist at the National Institutes of Health just wrote an article in the Journal of Medical ethics (which can be read at the British Medical Journal website)  proposing the handicapped should be killed for organ […]

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In a Washington Times Op-Ed, a Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting member Ted Lipien warned about a pro-Putin bias in the Voice of America Russian programs. Lipien reported that a highly respected independent journalist in Russia hired by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to evaluate the VOA Russian website concluded last year that it has […]

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It’s hard to follow American politics from ten thousand miles away (I live in the rural Philippines, and we get the news a day late), but as a Democrat, I was bemused to read in today’s papers that Rick Santorum just won in the Republican primaries of Minnesota and Missouri.
Santorum? I wasn’t aware he […]

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To watch the film “The Iron Lady” is like trying to learn about a person from a list.
Grocer’s daughter, check. Politician, check. Anti Thatcher demonstrations, check. Falklands war, check. Going to celebrate the fall of the Iron curtain, check.
For anyone not aware of the history of the 1970’s and 1980’s, the quick scenes depicting some […]

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BBG Watch News Commentary

According to BBG Watch sources, executives in charge of U.S. international broadcasting have been trying to keep secret the fake Voice of America (VOA) interview with a Russian opposition leader from members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) who have the ultimate responsibility over VOA and other U.S. government-funded news operations.
Sources […]

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Here in the Philippines, thanks to Wikileaks, we know that not only American money is behind our “Reproductive Health Bill”, but that the American State Department is pressuring our president to pass the bill.
Heaven knows that the Philippines does need access to cheaper Birth control, but it’s not as if it’s not available: they sell […]

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It takes millions of years for a star to implode. It takes mere seconds for a politician to achieve the same result. We saw that with Herman (Munster) Cain, his run for the White House crashed faster than a failed Soviet rocket launch. Today Rick (no one votes for me) Perry also withdrew from winning […]

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A commentary by BBG Watch
Cute High School Intern
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) officials have gotten so used to running their small federal agency like their own private country club that they still frequently forget that at least some of their meetings can now be viewed online.
While the video from the last BBG meeting was streamed […]

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The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) employees are both annoyed and amused by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo’s memo in which he justifies bonuses paid to BBG executives as being in line with awards received by executives employed by other federal agencies. As some employees point out, there is a problem with […]

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