:comment to Alex Velaquez, on the following -- Posted by: Denice | Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 09:46 AM Obtw, if I were you, I would be very careful at opening your emails, once the obamanoids get a sniff of your vid.
by Pat DarnellI have opinion that really hedges around roles of females in the world. I feel I am not the best person to editorialize about women's roles because I am a man who abandoned my first wife and child. She was just eight when I decided to not stick around for the aftermath of divorce.
So when I speak of this it is not an easy topic for me, and probably about 6 out of ten fathers out there.
I feel that women have been the undisputed "repressed" champion martyred group in all human history. Forget skin color, because I guarantee females of that same skin color are more discriminated, repressed, neglected and under-funded than any male of the said skin color.
Therefore I see this very bright and beautiful young woman, who obviously has much talent, threatened to be sacrificed and repressed by the very same "goat herder mentality" that underlies civilization. Believe me, I have thought long about the futility of female tribulations in 12,000 years in obtaining best conditions for their interests.
Look in with me at these two articles from March 2007, concerning weirdness caused when West meets Middle East customs...
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The Times | March 9, 2007
Miss Israel finalist quits after family’s honour killing plot
Ms Fares’s story has dominated the Israeli media as a high-profile example of a foiled “hon-our killing”, where a woman is murdered by members of her own family for supposed sexual offenses that have somehow brought shame to the family.
Last year, seventeen Palestinian women were reported killed in honour crimes, twelve in the Gaza Strip and five in the occupied West Bank. In Israel, seven women were similarly killed for “crimes” ranging from having sex before marriage to being the victim of rape.
For Ms Fares the controversy began last November, when she decided to enter the Miss Israel contest. She chose the name “Angelina” in honour of her idol, the American actress Angelina Jolie, and spent hours watching Fashion Television to prepare for her audition.
The first phase of the competition was a bikini contest. Ms Fares knew that parading in her red two-piece could be considered controversial in the Druze community, whose religion is an offshoot of Islam.
Her participation in the pageant even raised the judges’ eyebrows. “They were very surprised when they found out I was Druze. They asked me if it would be a problem for me to be in the contest. I told them ‘no’, that my whole family supported me,” Ms Fares said.
Dalia, Ms Fares’ mother, defended that decision, saying that she did not want to interfere with her daughter’s dreams. “She was there to represent herself, not the whole Druze community,” she said.
Ms Fares was chosen as one of twenty finalists, convincing the family that they had done the right thing. “Ever since childhood I was preparing myself for this. It was like the dream I had lived inside my head for so long,” Ms Fares said.
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If you aren’t familiar with the Druze than do yourself a favor and go here. Don’t be ashamed; I never heard of them either till now.
Let us take a trip to the peaceful land of Israel. Here I will introduce to you a lovely girl named Doaa Fares… she is the girl pictured here. She was raised in a deeply conservative Druze village where women are born into a traditional conservative role.
But Fares was ahead of her time and looking to break the mold. She changed her name to Angelina and entered the Miss Israel beauty pageant with delusions of grandeur… a cash prize, a car, and a modeling career.
Unfortunately for Angelina, she was amongst the land of the religious freaks. She was the first Druze to compete in such a competition and was thus targeted faster for extermination than Sara Connor. Even more troubling is the fact that it wasn’t the Terminator trying to silence her… it was her own flesh and blood. Her family was evoking the age-old tradition of Honour Killing to protect their own honor.
I know in the past I have labeled this phenomenon as an Islamic one. Many wrote to suggest otherwise and this may be evidence. If anyone has knowledge on the Druze I would appreciate your insight.
The reason I labeled this story under Islam is because the roots of the Druze appear to stem from there. I must emphasize that the Muslim community does not recognize the Druze.
MooPig's "Housing Watch Dog" Department:"..Southern California is a sprawling, complex and perpetually changing place that enchants some and confounds others. But that’s also what makes it such a great place for stories. SoCal Connected, both online and on air, is dedicated to bringing you the most important and compelling stories - and voices - shaping life in our region."
Comments:"No one forced those people to buy into what they could not afford, now they must suffer the consequences of their own ignorance and greed. Read the contract- it's just like pulling out that credit card: you can buy it now, but you better be darn ready to pay when the bill comes."
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"..Most of these homes were 100% financing or 95% and values dropping up to $150k or more due to short selling this is why the foreclosure market. Wall Street sold mortgage back securities in bulk to investors. Do you ever notice when you buy or refinance a loan your loan is sold to another lender? Your loan is sold in bulk by the thousands to investors and the investors make money on Wallstreet and they want the taxpayers to pay for their mess? I say NO DEAL.-"
"After eight years of unrelenting assault on constitutional liberties by Bush and Cheney, public and judicial enthusiasm for tyranny has waned. Obama has preferred to stand with Bush and Cheney. In February, seeking a liberal profile in the primaries, Obama stood against warrantless wiretapping. His support for liberty did not survive for long. Five months later, he voted in
favour and declared that "the ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool".
"Every politician, good or bad, is an ambitious opportunist. But beneath this topsoil, the ones who make a constructive dent on history have some bedrock of fidelity to some central idea. In Obama's case, this "idea" is the ultimate distillation of identity politics: the idea of his blackness. Those who claim that if he were white he would be cantering effortlessly into the White House do not understand that without his most salient physical characteristic Obama would be seen as a second-tier senator with unimpressive credentials.
"As a political organiser of his own advancement, Obama is a wonder. But I have yet to identify a single uplifting intention to which he has remained constant if it has presented any risk to his progress. We could say that he has not yet had occasion to adjust his relatively decent stances on immigration and labour-law reform. And what of public funding of his campaign? Another commitment made becomes a commitment betrayed. His campaign treasury is a vast hogswallow that, if it had been amassed by a Republican, would be the topic of thunderous liberal complaint.
"Obama's run has been the negation of almost every decent progressive principle, with scarcely a bleat of protest from the progressives seeking to hold him to account. The Michael Moores stay silent. Obama has crooked the knee to bankers and Wall Street, to the oil
companies, the coal companies, the nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of the candidates with Washington lobbyists. He has been fearless in offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful... (Cockburn, A; 10.26.2008) Excerpt retrieved HERE; emphasis's by Pat Darnell]
"...So no, this is not an exciting or liberating moment in America's politics. If you want a memento of what could be exciting, go to the website of the Nader-Gonzalez campaign and read its platform on popular participation and initiative. Or read the portions of Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr's platform on foreign policy and constitutional rights. The standard these days for what the left finds tolerable is awfully low. The more the left holds its tongue, the lower the standard will go." (Alexander Cockburn co-edits counterpunch.org, the US left-wing website, and is a columnist for 'The Nation' and 'The First Post')
by Pat Darnell
an illustration. To do this "back in the day" would have required a second mortgage on the house, to have paid for all the different photo operations.
The top-ranked Longhorns (8-0/4-0 Big 12) survived a rough-and-tumble offensive shoot-out with the rugged, ninth-ranked Cowboys (7-1/3-1 Big 12), who should be moving up in the BCS rankings as a result of their stellar performance rather than down.
Texas continues a murderous stretch of games next Saturday night against undefeated and sixth-ranked Texas Tech (8-0/4-0 Big 12) in Lubbock, which makes it four straight weeks that the Horns will be playing in one of college football's elite games of the weekend.
By the way, there has to be a great deal of concern in Longhorn coaching circles this week on how Oklahoma State's offense carved up the Longhorn defense and special teams (217 yds rushing/200 yds passing/137 yds on returns). Tech's offense is OSU's on steroids.
PHOTO: Texas Tech's offense is OSU's on steroids.
Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin has this to say about Romania... through the lens:
[SOURCE] visit site for captions
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Ovidiu
October 27th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
But they are true, Romanian, just that chances to see young girls dressed like this, well, are very small. Think mobile phones instead, cars, etc.
But you can still find in the villages the horses and unfortunately even in some areas close to the city, sometimes you have the surprise to see horses crossing some roads, next to a BMW X6, if you get my point…
The image with the sheep is however true, you can easily find that in the country side. The truth is that the country side of Romania may be really wonderful and in some cases looking like 300 years ago. [SOURCE]
MooPig TailGate Party Department has sponsored the re-release of these comfortably reproducible posters for avid Tail Gaters...
"Party starts when yo get here," say your friends.
Wish List
combine a fast and exhilarating ride with excellent cross-training for endurance, balance, agility and strength.
As good as it can get -- politics humour, fur real:This is too good. I would like to suggest for the Republican Party: the snake, because of the corruption that infests it; the pig, because it managed to take a budget surplus and turn it into a record deficit; the parrot, for rubber-stamping everything Jr. wants; the chicken; for the cowards who prey on America’s fears of terrorism and use that to undermine our civil liberties; the shark, for preying on the underclasses by giving tax breaks to the rich and corporate fat cats, and finally, the amoeba, because it doesn’t have any intelligence beyond the need to reproduce itself.
2 Anonymous // Apr 9, 2008 at 2:11 pm
My My, let me guess, you are a democrat with blinders! Like the democratic party is so wonderful? I was looking for a weasel for the D’s because of the way they all voted for this stupid war and when it became unpopular they all tried to weasel their way out of the blame game. They seem to weasel their way out of alot of things and put the blame on others more times than not. If this weren’t true Ted Kennedy would be in jail for all that he has done over the years. But you all keep voting him back in office because he represents the midset of most of you. I don’t think there are too many that are happy with Jr. on either side of the aisle but you can’t point fingers at all the Republicans either. Give us a break, there is corruption, rubber stamping and cowards in both parties. (by turfgrrl; April 9th, 2008, pick your own party animal)
A very interesting visual of the US 2009 proposed budget... where are federal tax dollars going? This is only a small part of larger image, click to see the whole picture - read info and buy the print here.
All the plain Political parlay of Palin and the 
others getting to be too much? Too much talk about recession? Well, it is at MooPig Headquarters.... let's take a well deserved break from it.
Today, here is some more sidewalk artistry for your cogitation, and consideration. We do not know who the sidewalk artist is -- these photos keep coming into MooPig email... here is the latest lot.
the artist could be one of these or all:
or --
Julian Beever HERE
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Maybe we could provide Public Works jobs for all these out of work stock brokers. They appear to have slurped up a bowl of Depresso Soup..
"Tell them they can keep their hats on."
